Assignment Bangkok (13 page)

The Apache was still there. The Muc Tong had missed it.

At dawn, they were over the Golden Triangle. The folded mountains of shale, schist and limestone, with intrusive granitic caves, were just turning from black to dark green as the sun touched the eastern slopes with bright gold. Once they were buzzed by a Phantom F-4-E, and Durell did not know if it carried the U.S. emblem or the Thai Royal Air Force insignia. Benjie had dodged the screaming plane by dropping the little Apache into a sickening dive, and then she flew through dark valleys with the loom of the mountains on either side, seeming to touch their wingtips. The jet had thundered up and circled and buzzed them again. Benjie bit her lip and leaned forward, holding the controls lightly in her fingertips. A mountain slope rushed at them and she banked steeply, the engines protesting, and they flew even lower down another valley, above a small river that glimmered in the starlight and guided them for a few moments.

Kem murmured some Buddhist prayers as Benjie tipped the wings this way and that, flying low over the meandering river with the steep mountains all around them. When they came up again, just above the treetops, the Phantom was gone, its thunder fading away to the west.

“Xo Dong,” Benjie said now.

She pointed north. The dawn light touched the forested slopes, the granite cliffs, a few cultivated fields where a few tribal peasants were gathering at dawn to work the tobacco, tea or poppy plots. Far to the north, a road wandered toward the borders of Burma and Laos. The village was a thin row of stilted, thatched houses on a branch of the road, below a series of broad terraces planted with tea.

“My place,” Benjie said. “The one I bought from the discouraged Frenchman. It made a profit of ten, twelve thousand a year for a while. Then I had to give it up when the insurgents scared off the workers.”

She flew lower, between two heavy shoulders of the mountain that gave Durell a glimpse of a broader river that twisted sinuously to the south. The sun came up over the eastern folds of the mountains with a flare of gold, and the sky turned from black to orange and blue.

“Are you sure we can land here?” Kem asked anxiously.

“There’s the strip, bhikkhu” she said.

It was an overgrown clearing cut from the tangled foliage above the terraces of the tea plantation. Long, thatched drying sheds flanked one end of the small field. Durell searched the ground carefully, but saw nothing human stirring down there. As they flew lower, he noted that the roofs of the drying sheds had tumbled in, and an air of decay hung over the whole area.

Benjie bit her lip again. “Everything I’ve ever worked for is going to pot. I’ll be broke in six months, if this keeps up. And now with Chuk threatening me about the bank loans—I don’t know what I’ll do. And you—with your ideas about Mike and me ...”

“You have the motive,” Durell said. “It’s easy money, and you need money desperately.”

“I’ll manage,” she snapped. “And without the Muc Tong, or you.”

The wheels touched. The plane bounced, then the girl steadied it and they ran down the length of the clearing toward the sagging drying sheds. The air here was cooler than in Chiengmai. The dawn sky was clear and bright as Benjie rolled the Apache to a halt.

“We’ll hide the plane in the sheds,” Durell suggested. They worked quickly, hurried by the light of the morning. All around them, the mountains sighed with the dawn wind. From far off, a plume of dust lifted off the Thai military road to the border. A blue haze of smoke came from over the mountain spur where they had landed, but Durell could not spot its origin. Benjie took a pack from the luggage compartment of the plane and said thinly, “Breakfast. A Thermos of tea and sandwiches. Okay?”

“Fine,” Durell said. “I’d like your binoculars.”

She looked at the vehicular traffic on the distant road. “That’s Third Army security patrol. They waste their time. All the business is here in the hills, and they’re careful not to interfere. The insurgents are here, all around us. That’s why I had to give up this place. It’s falling apart.” She pointed through the weed-grown terraces, where a large teak bungalow overlooked the tea plants. Everything was desolate. The main house had been firebombed, and stood in gutted black ruins. No one was in sight. Nothing stirred.

“Who uses those fields over the valley?” Durell asked. “Laiao tribesmen, poppy growers. The plants have just been harvested.”

“And taken where?”

“Mike will know if he’s alive. If we find him.”

They ate quickly in the cool shelter of the drying shed, beside the plane. Kem bared one shoulder of his saffron robe and murmured prayers, his black eyes opaque, seeing nothing of the present world while he drank his tea noisily from a small bowl he fished out from under his robe. Finally he said, “Sam, I’ve been here before, on a small pilgrimage, last year. It is a bad place. The Communists are everywhere. Of course, these hill people are alienated from Bangkok, since the Thai consider themselves superior to them. They will be hostile to us. Please stay close to me. They will not offer harm to me or to anyone with me, I think.”

“The rebels have no respect for
bhikkhus
,” Benjie snapped. “You monks have had trouble with them before.”

“But I have friends here.”

Xo Dong was over in the next valley. There was no way to get there except by walking. Durell took the dynamite pack, strapped to his back, Kem carried the batteries, and Benjie had her haversack. The trail was narrow and tortuous, following the natural slope of the mountain. In twenty minutes, they were sweating in the lee of the mountain, cut off from the morning breeze, and the sky took on the hue of copper. The trail had been used by oxen, and once Durell paused to examine the droppings.

“There’s still traffic along here,” he said.

“It’s the opium growers,” Benjie said. “You’d think they’d also keep up the tea plants, though.”

“More money in poppies, I imagine.”

The trail dipped down sharply and they heard the trickle of a mountain stream ahead, and then Durell saw a relatively new military sign nailed to a tree.

“ ‘Yoodt,’ ” he read. “It means, ‘Stop.’ ”

But no one was in sight, and they walked down to a rope bridge over the stream. Another sign greeted them.

“ ‘Ham,’ ” he read again. “ ‘Forbidden.’ Were these here before, Benjie?”

“No. But I haven’t been here for over a year.”

“It’s signed by General Uva Savag, right? So we’re within his military jurisdiction.”

“Yes.”

They crossed the bridge without being challenged. The rutted trail came out of the woods and skirted several cultivated plots where tobacco and bananas were being grown. Normally, there would be women in their lampshade hats, weeding the soil, while children tumbled with the patient bullocks. But again, no one was in sight. A house at the far end of the field was empty; the charcoal stove was cold; and the scrawny chickens and one disgruntled pig scattered away as they neared.

“The land of sanook,” Kem murmured. “But there is little happiness here.”

There was a little weaving loom in the house, where the woman had been weaving cloth. On one wall was a faded poster of Ho Chi Minh, next to a yellowed photograph of Mao.

“This is a Lao-type house,” Durell said.

“Oh, yes,” said Kem. “Over eight million Lao live in northeast Thailand. Ethnically, they are a branch of the Thai people, and they call themselves the ‘Children of the Thai.’ But many of them belong to the Pathet Lao, and lately, Peking organized a ‘Free Thai’ movement here to encourage terrorism and insurrection against Bangkok. In 1965, the Chinese Foreign Minister, Chen Yi, called publicly for guerrilla warfare, and now the rebels are organized as the ‘Thai Patriotic Front.’ The gangsters of the Muc Tong work hand in glove with them.”

They walked on.

Beyond some wild banana groves and tall bamboo that towered a hundred feet overhead, they abruptly found themselves entering a tribal village. There was no way to avoid it. The trail turned suddenly, and they were there. It was a typical fortified
wieng
in the Lao manner, following the course of another mountain stream. The houses were on stilts, with thatched roofs, teak verandas, a jumble of dogs, lean pigs, and chickens. Only women, children and old men were in sight. As Durell, ahead of Benjie and Kem, appeared, a silence fell over the people, who stopped what they were doing and stood and stared. One old man ran into his house and came out with a Sten gun, which he brandished at them and yelled something to his wife, who scuttled into the house, gathering up her children like a frightened, little brown hen.

The old man held the Sten gun as if he knew how to use it. Another man, his ribs showing through his open shirt, came out with a Russian-made Kalashnikov rifle. Durell halted, and Benjie drew a long breath and stood frozen beside him.

“Speak to them, Flivver. Tell them we’re friends.”

The monk walked calmly toward the threatening guns. Except for a single barking dog that cowered in the shad" ows of a nearby house, the whole village had fallen dead silent. The sunlight gleamed on Kem’s shaven head as he spoke quietly.

“We come as friends, old man. Where are your grown sons and daughters?”

The man with the Sten waved toward the valley. “They all work. All the young men and women. Who are you?” “Travelers, pilgrims, seeking peace.”

“Who is the bastard Chinese?”

“A good man, a kind man, a friend. May Buddha’s gentle light fall upon you all.”

“He looks strange to me. And the
fahrang
woman?” “Another friend.”

“What do they want here?”

“They look for the
fahrang
lady’s brother. He was here. We come to find him.”

“There are only the Yunnan people, the engineers who build the road for certain others. Those Chinese are in the valley, too. They burned Xo Dong. Do you see it?” The old man pointed again. “We do not wish them to bum us, too.”

From the village street, they could look down the valley to the river and a newly built road that started from a gorge about five miles away to the northeast. Tall granite cliffs and limestone scraps were capped with dense foliage that almost touched from each side over the pass. Durell used the binoculars to examine the scene. There were a number of trucks in the gorge, neatly hidden from possible air surveillance. There was some activity in the village on this side of the gorge, but the morning haze and the sharp black shadows of the mountainside made it difficult to see details.

More villagers had gathered, old men and women, and their faces were closed and hostile. A number of them were armed with a variety of guns. Durell turned back to the old man with the Sten, who seemed to be the leader.

Durell said, “We ask you again about the
fahrang
lady’s brother.”

“We know nothing. We say nothing. We wish to be left alone.”

“Was he here?”

“We know nothing,” the old man repeated. “It is I who ask questions. Your accent is terrible. I think you—”

Kem intervened smoothly. “It is of no consequence. We will journey on, old man.”

“Father,” said the man to the monk, “you must wait here for the authorities. They will be angry with us, if we let you go.”

“And yet we must go,” said Kem. “It is a holy mission, and we will continue with it.”

Durell pointed down to the distant valley. “Do the Muc Tong frighten you?”

There was a murmur from the crowd of villagers. The old man swung his Sten gun nervously and shouted at them for silence. Fear built upon his anger, and he jabbed the gun at Durell and Benjie. Sweat gathered on the back of Durell’s neck.

“You,” said the old man to Durell. “Why do you ask about the Muc Tong? You are not one of them.”

“You grow opium for them, do you not?”

“It is our business. We grow rice and tea and bananas, too. We grow for whoever pays us.”

“And opium is most profitable?”

The old man spoke in rage. “You look strange to me. Not Chinese, not
fahrang
. Why the holy monk walks with you is not my business. The
bhikkhu
may go. You must stay.”

“We wish no trouble with you.”

“You are a spy from Bangkok. I can see that. All of you are spies. But we are believers in the Patriotic Front. The Front rules here. We pay them taxes, and they take our young men into their army. They take a reasonable

share of our food. In return, they do not burn our wieng. We five in peace.”

“It is the peace of slaves,” Kem murmured.

“One moment.” Benjie stepped forward, directly toward the threatening guns. “Phan Do, why do you not remember me? You were my foreman at the tea plantation. You worked for me for three years, you and your sons and your villagers.”

“I do not know you,” the old man snapped. “And my sons are soldiers now.”

“They are opium smugglers,” Benjie said. “Not an honorable profession. Phan, you are being foolish. Do not threaten us with your gun. We will go in peace.”

“I cannot permit it.”

“We will go,” Kem said.

He walked ahead through the crowd, with Benjie, and Durell moved ahead through the villagers. For a moment, it looked as if they would close ranks against them, and there would be violence. Durell was aware of the old man pointing his Sten gun at their backs, but he did not look at Phan. Kem’s saffron robe stood out brightly against the drab tribal costumes. The monk murmured to the women, touched a child’s head in benediction. There was no fear in his eyes. One woman suddenly ran into her house and came out with a wooden bowl of rice, which she offered to the
bhikkhu
. Kem accepted it gravely. Another woman said, “It is a long time since we were permitted to have a
bhikkhu
. Stay with us, holy man!”

“I cannot. But I shall return,” Kem said gently.

Phan shouted angrily at the other old men, but the women closed ranks and kept the armed men from interfering. Benjie’s face was pale, but her green eyes were steady. Once, in the village street, she stumbled, and Durell caught her quickly.

“Keep walking.”

“I want to look back. They’ll shoot us.”

“Don’t. Stay near Flivver.”