Escape (11 page)

However, we were all eager to hear any unsentimental recollections and Sten had plenty from his last decade bumming around Asia. His first local mischief saw him running gold from Singapore to Bombay in the days when India levelled a weighty tariff on imported bullion. The pay wasn’t so golden but the flights were short and the turnaround quick. Apart from the ability to step on a plane, some skill was needed in moonwalking, for the gold was packed in the soles of large shoes. Airport metal detectors are less perturbed by non-ferrous pure gold and quite untroubled at the base of the walk-through detectors then in use. So the trick was to glide through without appearing to shuffle.

‘How the hell did anyone work that one out?’ Rick wanted to know.

‘Ah, trial and error, Mister Rick,’ replied a polite and wistful voice. ‘Trial and error. Too many times.’

That was not Sten but Bruce the Pakistani speaking. Bruce was also new to #57. Bruce knew all the India scams. His room name had been immediately christened after he had voiced his Bollywood ambitions to remake
Die Hard
in the Indian film capital. To be titled
Dying Hardly
, the all-singing, all-dancing action thriller would not star Mr Willis but a new heart-throb of the subcontinent. At that point in telling the dream, modesty would demand Bruce the Pakistani to lower his head and shyly look away. Bruce was serving seven years in KP for drugging tourists on board Thailand’s trains and had been made a foreigners’ trusty.

Sten demonstrated some gold-footed moonwalking before recounting elements of his next job. So impressed were Sten’s rich employers with their young Swede they promoted him to tour manager for packages of illegal emigrants hoping to leave Asia for a new world.

From China groups of a dozen or less would trek into Laos to quietly cross the Mekong River to northern Thailand. Assembling in Bangkok their photographs would be laminated into European passports stolen or sold by penniless backpackers. They would be given tickets to fly from Thailand to Japan and onward to the USA. Although the US Embassy kept twenty-five staffers in the capital to thwart illegal immigrants, the Chinese had moulded a silent army of corrupt officials at Don Muang Airport who would be blind to the small exodus of hopefuls.

These Chinese wisely assigned the task of dodgy paperwork to the Indians and Sten’s job was to shepherd the emigrants and to safeguard the passports. The documents had to be collected at Tokyo once the passengers had been issued with boarding passes for Honolulu. These passports would be recycled with new faces until their bindings disintegrated.

‘I’d take them to Bangkok Airport in a minibus,’ Sten explained. ‘Collect all their little bags of food they wouldn’t need and point them to the right counter for check-in. That would go all right. We had half a row of the passport clerks under control. The worst part was at Narita. They’d all wander off shopping and I’d have to round them up or they’d miss the next flight.’

Once found, Sten would redirect a Mr Landsburger to the correct gate or empty a Mr Stanley’s bag of the two dozen free travel guides and airline timetables. There had been the moment when one of Sten’s travellers had objected to being asked to abandon a stack of paper cups before boarding. ‘But I be businessman,’ protested Mr Tarkington. ‘Don’t worry,’ assured Sten, adjusting the gentleman’s tie. ‘Anyone can see that.’

Within minutes of the final call Sten would move his huddled mass to the boarding gate, collect their passports and wish them well. On arrival at Honolulu the first-time air travellers could be themselves: lost and confused. They would do what the law asked, fudge their origin, nationality and previous route; request sanctuary and freedom from hardship, persecution and fear. Their unknown status would see them sent to immigration detention prisons for questioning by distrustful officials.

‘I’d have to turn around and go straight back to Bangkok,’ Sten complained of his boss. ‘Not even a night on the town in Tokyo.’

‘How did the Chinese get on in the US?’ asked Eddie.

‘Who knows? In those days they mostly did all right. They were shitting themselves. But, you know, thrilled to bits.’

Having settled in Building Six it was then time to do a grand tour of Klong Prem to survey the openings. Eddie and I thought our cell bars in Six were sufficiently narrow at just over an inch but the building was deep within the prison, very far from the outer wall.

Calvin and Martyn had lately arrived from the Cure so we set out with trusty Charlie to roam the grounds. Our pretext was a bogus survey of Easter religious needs. We set out walking along a main road that fanned with others from the central administration block. This square building had a twenty-metre concrete post topped with a large glassed watchtower.

‘I’ve never seen anyone in there.’ I directed Martyn’s gaze to the top.

‘Probably never is,’ Martyn said. ‘Too many stairs.’

While Eddie and Calvin compared vices I asked Martyn how his case was going.

‘Oh, I had another day of hearings last week. All day spent chewing over two photographs.’

Martyn’s case was full of holes, now being heavily filled by his trial judge. The claim was that two Canadians had been plotting to export fifteen kilos of heroin by some unknown means. One of the Canadians was later revealed as an undercover narcotics policeman. He had long returned to Canada and since died from heart failure. The other Canadian, a well-known villain, had also returned to Canada charged in another case and was not expected back for twelve years, if at all. This left only Martyn and a driver to face trial in Thailand. The dope, if it ever existed, had disappeared although a fuzzy Polaroid of a white bag resting on a coffee table had earlier been accepted as evidence. With the undercover agent sadly deceased only the Thai police captain on the case remained alive for the prosecution. This captain had been transferred to Udon Ratchathani and was fully occupied with a new girlfriend near the Cambodian border.

The photograph at issue during Martyn’s last hearing had been a black-and-white picture of four people at a table outside a café. Supposedly taken by the Canadian agent (remotely, perhaps, as he was in the frame) it was made an exhibit through a police sergeant who worked in the office of the missing captain’s deputy.

‘Well, Martyn,’ I said with a flat sarcasm, ‘not much to worry about with that.’

Martyn assumed his trial judge’s manner and quoted: ‘The photograph as exhibit number twenty-three clearly shows the suspect, Martyn, translating for the Canadian drug syndicate as they planned their strong crimes.’ Adding, ‘If I get less than the lot I’ll have done well.’

Our conversation then turned to old Cure friends and I told Martyn of American Dean Reed’s visits and promises.

Martyn sympathised. ‘Well I don’t have to tell you his reputation, although you can’t fault his enthusiasm, whatever he really intends. Sometimes the thirst for sweet lies must be quenched before there’s strength for bitter truths. Feeling stronger these days?’

We had walked past Building One which held Klong Prem’s ladyboys and
kathoeys
, their partners and other oddballs. Thai law has no provisions for altering the sexual status listed at birth so the prison for men held many transsexuals in various stages of transformation. When illicit supplies of female hormones ran low Building One could be a hairy old place.

Almost all of the ninety Western foreigners in Klong Prem lived in Building Two. The building’s small grounds were filled with ramshackle huts grouped by nationality: English, American, French, Dutch, German and Australian. The Scandinavians seemed to mingle.

‘I’m told they’re not much,’ Martyn said of these huts. ‘Like deserted trading posts in the old Congo. But I’ll move over there when I’m due. Apparently there’s a small electrics workshop.’ Then turning to me, he added, ‘And I don’t have your ambitions. I know I’ll be here for quite some time.’

As Building Two appeared near the outer wall Martyn promised to give me a detailed report on his new home. We moved on to Building Four, the higher security building for people considered a risk. Its grounds were cramped with almost no yard space as so few were let out for more than an hour or two each day. It had been built mostly as tiny single cells, each with heavy slab-like and impenetrable bars. Whey-faced prisoners shuffled about in chains.

‘It would take only one word, just a little whisper,’ Eddie looked about morbidly. ‘Any of us could be put in here.’

Most of the foreigners of Building Five were African, more than two hundred; their days absorbed with food issues. A few years before they had spilled into an aimless riot of frustration. It had led nowhere. Few had made it beyond the gates of Building Five. When some Thais were pushed to the ground the afternoon of the short knives began, with fifty yard-cooks supplying twice that many would-be Thai boxers with hatchets, choppers and paring blades. They formed mobile gauntlets and cut the Africans to pieces.

Some buildings were out of bounds. Building Seven, a punishment house, was overgrown with vines and low-hanging trees. Utterly quiet yet full, we were told. Sweepers, ragpickers and kitchen workers were housed in Building Eight. Buildings Nine and Ten had short-term prisoners and students without a school. Both near the wall but off-limits to foreigners. Officially guards volunteered as teachers. Diplomas were advertised on a colourful notice board, priced by grade. The only accommodation with cell bars as thin as those of Building Six was in buildings Eleven and Three. Building Eleven had 500 prisoners dying from AIDS and the hospital-recovery wards of Building Three held large dormitories rather than cells. Although any climb from Building Six to the outside wall would require scaling three internal walls, all other available accommodation in KP had fat steel crosshatched over cell windows. Even the most well-equipped mountain climber would never see snow if he could not first open his bedroom door.

Gambling within Thai prisons is forbidden and therefore an especially clandestine pleasure. Even the most powerful trusties kept their decks of cards hidden. Possession of a pair of dice carried the risk of a costly punishment. Consequently daytime betting was often facilitated by those possessing some unpredictable handicap.

One such was a young man who had an advanced parasitic infection in one limb. His right leg was swollen to the size of a tree trunk. He would sit by the toilets most mornings attempting to extract one of the thousands of worms that riddled his leg. These thin parasites under his skin looked like fishing line and seemed just as long. The only method of removing a worm intact was to pick out a looped segment as it moved into view through one of his weeping pustules. Then to roll the worm carefully around a pencil until completely extracted. If the worm broke the two halves would live on to produce large families.

Eddie and I were calling odds one morning as a small crowd of Thais and foreigners bet on the number of worm-centimetres that would be visible before a snap. Charlie Lao had joined us and as he was no gambler, I waited for a break to take Charlie aside.

‘David, you know the coffee shop is coming up for sale. It would be good for you. I can speak to the chief, if you want,’ Charlie offered.

‘How much does he want?’

‘Maybe US$10,000. There’s one Thai man bidding but I can keep the price down.’

‘I don’t think that’s for me,’ I said with thanks.

‘You can make your money back in six months, maybe four.’ Charlie saw the coffee shop as the ideal investment for any would-be KP
tai-pan.

‘It’s not a question of money,’ I told Charlie and went on to explain my hopes to excuse myself from all further KP sports. By the time I’d finished outlining a few escape plans we were walking through the clotheslines, that morning heavy with drying bed sheets. Charlie’s smile had frozen.

Charlie had been in Klong Prem for over seven years. He had seen the few escape attempts fail tragically and had heard of one attempt from the courts that had become notorious. He hoped the story would teach me a lesson.

‘These were Chinese guys, David,’ Charlie implored. ‘So they had friends, you know. Some money, too.’

Charlie’s recollection of the escape plan of the four inmates from their court-bound van mirrored the dreams of almost every prisoner transported through hours of stalled traffic to his courthouse. For eight months five men had been held on remand at Klong Prem for the same drug case. Before the trial began the oldest among them had become too ill to attend hearings and was confined to the hospital. The remaining four had planned their escape three months earlier and had used local—that is Thailand-based—contacts only for acquiring equipment and finding a safe house. All those who were to use guns had been brought from Hong Kong. They spent several weeks on motorcycles learning routes and techniques for threading through Bangkok’s congested streets. Few, if any, Thais were involved. The father of one of the escapers later confided that an earlier version of the plan had been to make a snatch from the courthouse as the prisoners arrived or even at the jail upon return. These ideas were rejected because the court police are too heavily armed and, at the prison, the guards in the towers had a serious advantage with their rifles. Shooting would have been assured with inevitable losses.

The four men had left KP one morning on the bus, along with fifty others. They had prepared carefully with each man knowing the location of the safe house in case any found himself separated. Their confederates had planned well, too.

Underneath the first overpass from the prison a stolen truck stopped and stalled in front of the court bus. Abandoning the heavy truck its driver and another man left their cabin and walked amiably toward the bus driver before pulling down masks. They kept the talk to a minimum by unloading a few shots from handguns into the driver’s window. At the same time two others moved up quickly from behind the prisoners’ bus, one pointing a shotgun at the rear guard. The rear door, as usual, had been open to give the guard some air. The second man took the guard’s keys to unlock the prisoners’ cage.