Escape (30 page)

A couple of days before the end of the month a parcel arrived for me from Australia. I joined the huddle of foreigners waiting in the courtyard in front of the KP mail office. The Thai parcels would be opened first.

Between fifty and sixty parcels arrived for prisoners every day. These would be checked by a guard who sat under a tree while the receiving prisoner squatted before his throne hoping for less damage than usual from the guard’s inspection. With effortless mischief the resentful guard would kick the torn boxes into position before vandalising the contents using a rusty knife.

For the Thais their soap bars would be chopped to flakes, their honey left speckled with rust and clothing soaked in dirty water in pursuit of imagined narcotics. By contrast foreigners’ parcels were presumed free of drugs (pointless sending drugs
to
Thailand) and so ransacked sparingly. To save the Thai prisoners the humiliation of this disparity we foreigners waited for the local carnage to end before presenting our goods for inspection.

Despite this distinction the
passadook
guard, Satrakorn, would make a masterful inspection by holding our finery up to the light, maybe tapping our low-pH soap bars to listen for their acoustic properties or scrutinising the labels of our condiments with feigned comprehension. Face was saved.

All this pretence was particularly good for me that day as I saw that my parcel was from Michael, although he’d used a false name. This meant that almost certainly it contained—somewhere inside—the four tungsten and steel hacksaw blades I’d asked for. Michael had sent parcels before although usually in his own name and always containing money and messages rolled tight and then sealed in small tins. We had a portable canning machine into which, for years, we’d packed our banknotes and frankincense. Applying labels such as Vitapooch and Pusschow, they’d take some spray-on dust before being stored in a deep corner cupboard away from seizing hands.

The sender’s name on this package was Maurice Binder yet displayed Michael’s distinctive penmanship so I should watch for more than the usual tins with outlandish brands. The hacksaw blades would each be over a foot long. Sten and I had abandoned the cell-door key project. The new-and-improved plan was straightforward in approach: cut through the window after midnight and scale the walls.

Waiting with the other foreigners beneath the shade of a tree I was pleased to see Calvin amble forward from Building Two.

‘Calvin! Good to see you.’ I stepped into the sun. ‘Another
passadook
from Hawaii?’

‘Hiya, Dave. I dunno. A care package from my sister, I think.’ Calvin had never taken to using even the most familiar Thai words. ‘Dave, the chief’s okayed my move this week. I’ve got to get out of Building Two. It’s too much.’

‘You’re welcome anytime. Remember, though, I did warn you that there might be some changes coming in Six. No details but you won’t like them.’ I looked at Calvin’s tattered shirt with its rows of holes from cigarettes dropped during great noddings. His face was gaunt and grey, his shorts stained.

‘Say, Cal, no need to dress up just to visit the mail office. No formalities here.’

Calvin lit a cigarette and smiled. ‘Yeah, I know. I haven’t worn my tails since Jack’s inauguration.’

‘How’s things in the American hut?’ I was keeping watch on the
passadook
guard. He was tiring.

‘Ah, Dave. It’s all fucked. The stuff’s everywhere, I can’t get away from it. That’s why I’ve got to get over to your place.’

‘Where’s your dedication, Calvin?’ I chided absently. ‘The dope’s no fun without a raging habit. Anyway you know it’s to be found in Six.’

Calvin believed that the healthy atmosphere and calm inclinations of #57 would keep him from poverty and ruin. In the past decade a quarter of the Western prisoners had died from infections contracted through sharing needles. Calvin wasn’t using the needle—well, hardly. Even if I’d told him of our proposed escape Calvin would have moved in anyway. Many foreigners spoke of escape. The image of such a night would never hold reality.

The Thai prisoners had now left with their goods: new leather sandals, dried fish and banana strips, strings of tamarind and copies of the gorefest police slaughter magazine,
191.
The foreigners’ parcels were dragged forward and I stood back from others to let the guard set his pace.

Calvin squatted before Satrakorn, cloth sack in hand, scooping packets of American Marlboro as they tumbled from their torn cartons. He wadded the cigarettes down with new T-shirts and baggy shorts as the guard flicked them aside. Satrakorn then halted the spill of goods from the ruptured package to spread the pages of a fishing magazine, hoping to find pictures of bikinied women on beaches. Magazines revealing women were banned from entry. Seeing only bass and perch the guard let the magazine drop from his fingers and Kelvin gathered the last of his winnings.

My large box was pushed forward. It was heavy and the trusty gave a grunt to show irritation. I saw that through mishandling a twelve-centimetre gash was torn from the side. I wondered at any damage inside for I knew not where the hacksaw blades might be hidden.

‘That’s a big one.’ Calvin stood looking at the box. ‘Must have cost a packet to send.’

‘Mmm. Look’s like it. Over a hundred on the stamps.’ I then knelt and half turned, keeping up a conversation with Calvin, hoping to give the guard a sense of free rein.

Packed for variety and distraction Michael had spared little that gave colour or novelty. The now sluggish guard squinted at each item before pushing it clear with his short stick. Foods decorated the top layer, caught in glimpses as I looked for the blades. Duck-liver pâté, tinned camembert, bubble-wrapped jars of marmalades, two stollen cakes (too short to hide a file), larks’ tongues in aspic, canned beef and ham, bags of dried fruit; spices: cumin seed, oregano, tannis root, basil and food acid 260 for pickling in a dark bottle. Then three rolls of matt black gaffer tape lay curled among marshmallows, nougat, gummy bears and Callard & Bowser’s liquorice toffee. Bunches of heavy nylon cable ties sprouted from the gaps between vacuum-packed plums and dates. A Rubik’s cube nestled in the confectionary.

I skimmed a bunch of cable ties with my thumb.
‘Good to keep the food bags fresh,’
I said in Thai to Calvin who had the sense simply to nod.

The next layer in the parcel revealed boxes of muesli and Honey Smacks covering tubes of epoxy resin and wood fillers nestling against bags of almonds, pecans and macadamia nuts. Underneath sets of socks, jocks, shirts and a silk bathrobe with a red Chinese dragon there fanned a quintet of glossy-but-filthy magazines—guaranteed to be confiscated after a most thorough inspection.

Calvin gave me an arched what-are-you-up-to look as the guard rose to the task of wide-eyed examination with a leering trusty looped over each of his shoulders.

‘No, no—no!’ the guard announced without taking his eyes from the first image of something about which he’d only heard whispers.

Satrakorn barely glanced at a rolled parchment amid a scattering of toiletries and pushed it aside with some books—an atlas, maps and travel guides. The hand-made scroll was held by gold-lacquered rods tipped by teardrop knobs, one of which had broken in transit. Even though all the remains were safely in my hands I unrolled the poster, for the guard was, by then, sliding some of the pornography under his chair. On the chart I recognised Michael’s fine hand within the calligraphy, scripting a parody of
Desiderata.
‘Go silently amid the boys in haste ...’

As Satrakorn had been tut-tutting with spittled clicks at some obscene act he had not sensed the added weight of the scroll’s supporting rods. He would never know that they contained four hacksaw blades concealed in carefully cut and refilled channels along the wooden staves.

Waddling away with my treasure in two denim bags I believed then that I could have plucked a grappling hook and a stun gun from that box without discovery while Satrakorn was so diligently applying local standards to the 240gsm four-colour porn.

The new plan was direct but needed three rather than just the two of us. Sten and I might be able to assemble and carry the twenty-four-foot ladders over five walls but not to keep watch too. Our last best chance for a third man was someone who did not meet Sten’s approval. I thought otherwise so spoke directly to Luke who that afternoon sat alone outside the umbrella factory.

‘Luke, want to escape?’ I dropped to my haunches and leaned against the brick wall of the factory, still hot from the afternoon sun.

‘Say what?’ Luke continued to roll his cigarette, taking unnecessary pains.

‘Let’s imagine everything’s just fine,’ I said smiling with enough irony to back the whole thing into a joke. Not that serious caution was needed. Luke spoke to very few people and I’d never heard him drop a name, place or date, even though we’d swapped some droll stories. ‘Let’s imagine we’re all ready to go—the tunnel or the rope or the dynamite at the wall, whatever. All’s ready. Would you want in?’

Luke lit his cigarette with a match. He was old-fashioned. And he was old; near sixty, I was sure. His hair was a fine, grey fleece and his eyes a hard glass. A black American from Philly, Luke had kept thin in the navy, even though he’d been a cook. He had a second wife in Charleston. They kept in touch although his grown sons never wrote. Luke had trouble holding a name, too. In the Cure, he’d introduced himself as Jake, but was known in Klong Prem now as Yahya. ‘When a black man’s in trouble in a foreign country, he can forget about being an American. He can do worse than take one of those names.’ Luke-Yahya had meant names with an Arabic tone.

Luke had been raised among crooks and knew their ways so well that they’d accepted him easily. He’d held jobs as a driver, a paint mixer and a cinema usher before working nights as a barman. The world of gamblers and dealers was spread before him, available anytime for they all respected Luke. Yet he never forced himself in; he was too cool for that. He might tip everyone to some thin sounds or some fat weed but he never overstepped. Luke was just too hip to step forward and as flared trousers gave way to long coats he stayed on the fringe. Too laid-back to jump in the car as they waved invitations those friends finally departed, soon to exchange their leather coats for heavy jackets. Luke slipped into the US navy in the coolest way too; hardly a word and acting as a small stabiliser below decks. Still surrounded, though, by light crookery and a sense that everyone was getting away with it. Luke was shocked when the navy brass weren’t cool enough to accept the casual theft of two gross of five-gallon tins of peas. A dishonourable discharge followed and, by then, the brothers from his home town were either dead or inside for life. Luke had been just too cool and had missed it.

Luke then took work in the merchant navy. Lived port to port. A little hash from North Africa or a few sheets of acid from Amsterdam. Then the big move. Not to get too close Luke took on two grown waifs from Ghana, then stranded in Yemen. He flew them to Bangkok and spent some time getting them plausible documents.

‘But these guys were idiots, Dave. More than idiots!’ Luke had told me even though everyone could see at a glance. ‘Morons. I couldn’t even let them loose at the airport by themselves. They didn’t even know what country they were in.’

All three were arrested in their taxi on the way to the airport by Sukhumvit city police who had fallen over the operation. Luke had been crippled by his brace of albatrosses from that day to this. His boys followed him everywhere, trailing a few metres behind, carrying Luke’s boxes and chatting happily to each other. As I spoke to Luke the pair halfwittedly prepared Luke’s evening food at the nearby charcoal-burner patch.

‘Don’t use plastic!’ Luke called from his deck chair. ‘It’ll stink up the fish. Use wood if there’s no charcoal left!’ He sank deeper into his already sagging chair.

‘You see, Dave. They can’t even feed themselves. Eighteen months here and they think this is all part of the plan. I can’t leave them. They’re fucked as it is.’

‘I don’t know how you thought Yahya would be any good,’ Sten said later. ‘What were you thinking?’

I’d thought Luke might finally want to lift himself above all he’d seen for he had the strength. Instead he’d stepped back into this macabre adoption wearing some battered noble hat.

‘He’s making peace with his makers, Sten. Nothing we can do about that. It’d be a mistake to try.’

Sten was not surprised. ‘I told you.’

To give Sten some cheer I announced that I’d thought of a way to use our bookshelf plank to overcome the crumbling tiles beneath our window. So far we hadn’t found a way to hold the plank in place so that we could clear the two-metre awning.

‘We don’t need to build some massive siege-engine contraption inside the cell,’ I explained. ‘We’ve already got the strongest thing in the prison.’

‘And what’s that?’ Sten leaned forward and looked around for something big yet in some way concealed in the office.

‘The bars, of course. The strongest steel around. You could hang an elephant from any one of them.’

Sten sat back and held his chin. ‘You mean the bars we’re supposed to cut. Those bars.’

‘Okay.’ I stood and opened a drawer, peeling a small sheet of paper from beneath. ‘Look at this.’ I pointed to the diagram I’d sketched—the window bars with two missing and three intact. ‘The plank is two metres. We need one and three-quarters out the window. I can make a special block, out of wood, that’ll hold the plank tight in place between two bars and that flat bit in the middle, the strut, the spar, whatever you call it.’

Sten squinted at the paper. ‘So, fifteen centimetres or less of the plank between the bars with us dangling fifteen-and-a-quarter metres off the ground, all held by a little block of wood—’

‘Actually the middle brace of the steel but—’

‘With nothing to stop it sliding right out?’

‘No.’ I tapped my diagram for support. ‘That little—ah, strong—pin there, at the end? That stops it sliding right out. And the plank is sideways, upended, you can see. That means it has the strength of a twenty-centimetre-thick log, not just a flat plank. It shouldn’t bounce about.’