Escape (37 page)

I looked back to Klong Prem from relatively safety. My first viewing other than as a chained prisoner in a steel bus. Looking at the vast expanse of huts and hovels spread across the parkland around the prison, I saw that to have passed this way at night might have been hazardous or ‘fraught with no danger’.

I moved back and up a few steps of a pedestrian road bridge to look for a taxi. Several minutes passed. It was now late but I would not stay in Thailand. Yet I hesitated, looking at the prison. Behind those walls remained the chained and the phantoms of the dead. I put away my umbrella. Now in the clothes of an outsider I felt different: myself again. This was the world I had left, the place where I could take things in hand. Nearby shops offered devices and objects never seen within the prison. Behind me a building site held strong machines and steel tools, ready for work. And within reach a big city with all its wiles and magic. I thought of those inside cell #57.I thought of Sharon.

I took the few steps down from the bridge in time to flag the yellow taxi that was approaching.

‘Lat Phrao,’ I told the driver before he could ask. As the cab moved forward I sat in the back seat and broke open the seal that held the key to Charlie Lao’s apartment.

The first taxi took me to the small hotel near Charlie’s apartment. I dodged the entrance to look for an isolated place to dump the cable ties, tape and phoney gun from my bag. The balsa-wood gun had already fallen to bits. Cheap stagecraft would not play in the greater world. A second taxi took me the few streets to the apartment. The traffic was thickening. Seven-fifteen.

After sliding the key into the lock, I was pleased to see it turn. Easing the door open, I saw a dark room. The door stopped on a chain and I smelled human occupancy.

‘Yo! Good morning. You awake?’ Whoever you are.

Then the sound of a couple of choking gulps, two or three uncoordinated foot thumps and then a sleep-creased Chinese face at the crack.

‘Who dat?’

‘Me. David, Daniel. Charlie’s friend.’

‘Oh—ah, yeah,’ followed by the boy’s fumbling as he unchained the door. He then stepped backwards to plop on the bed. The flat was small.

‘Sorry for calling so early,’ I began and kept talking. ‘The door was locked so I used the key. When that worked, I opened the door. Sensible of you to use the door chain, yes. Friend of Charlie are you?’

‘Yeah. Charlie say. Wha?’

‘Oh, you’re too kind.’ I dropped my near-empty bag on the floor. ‘May I use your bathroom? Through here?’ There was only one other door.

Inside I closed the door. Turned the lock. A cubicle: toilet facing the shower stall, a small washbasin with a mirrored cabinet above and a second mirror mounted on the wall above the toilet. This was it. Charlie had described the mirror behind which he said would be the doctored passport. Complete with an entry stamp and immigration card. If it were not there, I would have to stay in Thailand.

About this time at Klong Prem, Building-Ten guards would be wondering at the two taped ladders rising against the wall and in Six, trusties would be staring at the twisted bars of #57 where, inside, Jet would be hiding under Sten’s wing as Calvin paced in a tight circle. Miraj would be prostrate in the chief’s office, in full lava flow.

I looked at my face in the mirror.

‘Charlie, old chum,’ I said to myself. ‘Are you the genuine article?’

Picking out the file tool from the pocketknife I slid it behind the mirror. It halted at a paper something. A brown envelope. Quickly tapped and torn, I removed the British passport. Its original holder had crossed many borders and according to a triangular stamp had entered Thailand three-and-a-half weeks ago. And there was I, smiling from the inside cover. I touched the passport to my head in salute.

I stepped from the bathroom to find the young man still in his underwear, poking at a jar of compacted coffee granules with a spoon.

‘Sorry I can’t stay for breakfast,’ I put the key on the dresser by the door. ‘Give this to Charlie and say hello for me.’

‘You want coffee?’

‘I’d like to but I’ve got to take the bus to Pattaya this morning.’

Before questions could begin I stepped out into a day that was warming rapidly. The next taxi took longer to find and as I should have known, it took me straight back to Klong Prem. The V Rangsit Highway passes in front of the prison on the way to Don Muang Airport.

As we passed, I touched the belt I wore from the dead Frenchman and sank low in my seat. This was the third taxi with unnaturally soft seats. From the ledge of the taxi’s side window, I looked to KP. The prison had not vaporised from the earth. I had merely left it.

At Don Muang my driver finally accepted that, although I’d insisted on getting out at arrivals, I did not want him to wait. I burrowed in to the stairways and then emerged at departures. No special atmosphere. Just a working Monday morning. I could see no bad people waiting.

I took out a receipt from my pocket and walked to the long-term luggage depot. Presumably this pick-up would be uneventful. Oh yes—did someone notice—I still had the receipt for my clothes that Dean Reed had left at the Moh Chit bus terminal. There’d be a warm welcome there for me if I stayed in town. Instead I carried a receipt for parcel C589 in the name Cisco Pike for a bag deposited two months earlier by a Mr Walker. After collecting the in-cabin sized bag, I found it contained two sets of clothes (labels removed), a bag of toiletries and a paperback. No frills travel.

Staring up at the electronic departures board, I searched for a temporary home. A long-haul flight would give me too many hours imagining incredible feats of detection. There were three flights on offer, each with a full compass of onward connections: Manila, FINAL CALL; Hong Kong, leaving at ten o’clock; Singapore, flipping to NOW BOARDING as I watched. Over-the-counter tickets for immediate departure are not cheap so I moved quickly to a bank of ATMs.

Having dispensed most of my cash in #57, I was now dependent on two Visa cards, neither of which matched the name in my passport. The first card—the one that had kept Pornvid relaxed for over a year—was declined. The previously blank-faced ATMs took on ugly personalities but using the second card, the third ATM rewarded me with a gurgling shuffle from its heart. Even so I was lucky the flight to Singapore was an unpromoted Lufthansa hop that had originated in Frankfurt, otherwise I would have boarded penniless.

‘You’ll have to hurry,’ said the clerk. ‘I’ve one window seat left. Is that okay?’

‘A window’s fine.’ I picked up the boarding pass and moved on to the immigration desks.

All of the immigration officers appeared alert and intelligent. The cross-eyed moron I’d hoped for must’ve missed his bus. I forged a passable facsimile of Gerald Griffin’s signature on the departure card and then queued. I put myself in a line behind two girls who were digging into narrow handbags for documents before a full-faced and tall immigration officer. They were giggling as though only they’d just realised what the queue was for. Fullface found this charming and fooled around for an extra minute. As they angled off I stepped forward, shrugging my shoulders down as fits a tired businessman defeated by wily Thais. I let him take the passport from limp fingers.

If Fullface’s mind was still occupied with the vixens, he was not slowed at his terminal. He pawed the keyboard with one large hand and held the passport pinned to his desk with the other. Just a minute—

Did I really expect that the Chinese friends of my Chinese friend would do any more than bang a stamp in this stolen passport? That they’d meet with Thai contacts at the airport and find a quiet moment to enter the name, number and incoming flight details into the computer for a passenger who didn’t exist? I wondered if immigration clerks had a silent alarm button at their desks or if they used a signal. A sound broke this unwholesome reflection. The thunk of an exit stamp onto paper before Fullface returned my passport and nodded farewell.

On board the Airbus I downed a couple of glasses of too-cold water and waited in my seat. It was twenty past ten and we were already late departing. I would later come to know that guards from Klong Prem had driven to Don Muang, arriving just after ten to look for their missing
farang.
On board my plane, a Captain von Slagian announced, ‘Ah, there will be a slight delay, I’m sorry. We are waiting for one passenger.’ As we waited I entertained myself by staring rigidly at the back of the seat in front of me. Eventually I heard the sound that is an angel’s kiss to every smuggler, the
fwump
of sealing aircraft doors. The guards of Klong Prem were at the airport but too shy to state their business.

As the ascending jet banked into the clouds, I cast a final look to Bangkok through the port windows. I said nothing to myself, allowing the roar of the turbofans to do the talking.

At Singapore’s Changi Airport the previously reluctant Visa card consented to whatever figures I keyed. I did this before passing through immigration. At the transit-lounge shops I bought sunglasses, a radio and a pair of bathing trunks.

A floppy-haired immigration officer stamped my passport almost immediately before casually flipping to the photo page. He didn’t like something about my photograph. It was grainy. In a frozen moment, he held it before the UV tubelight and I was back in Chinatown. British passports then included three invisible crowns edging the holder’s photograph that only became pinkly visible under ultraviolet light.

The friends of Charlie Lao had been meticulous. After a moment I had the passport and was seeking a taxi outside the terminal.

As customary, two taxis broke the connection to a hotel of choice before I checked-in, making many factual errors when completing the registration card.

Following a brief shower I took a towel and left my room for the rooftop swimming pool. As it was noon on a workday, the small pool was deserted. Less than twelve hours had passed since I’d turned off the light for the last time in #57. There, another country, another name abandoned. In silence, I took three rapid steps to make a low dive into this so transparent pool, spearing underwater from end to end. From the deep end I expelled air before surfacing and lifting myself to the tiled edge in one movement. Still draining water, I stepped to the railing and rested, looking to the Panjang hills. There I remained for some time watching a row of blackthorn shrubs straining inland with the wind before turning and taking to the pool again.

[To Connie Stanford, wife of Chas]

Friday 23rd August 1996, Singapore

Dear Connie

This might have taken a week or so to reach you—a friend in London mailed it for me, as you can see from the envelope. I’m at the beginning of a long journey north. From here to central Asia where I plan to stay with an old pirate friend.

After years of transit travel this is the first time I’ve spent more than one day in this tiny state. And not just because a fellow can get strung up here for littering. Despite being one of the world’s smallest countries, SQ tenders the world’s largest-value currency notes, the S$ 10,000—worth about US$6,000! Making up for small size, I suppose.

After a long, dreamless sleep on my first night in town, I had my first meal among strangers for quite some time. I found the waitress at the hotel as soulless as the city itself.

‘
Most girls in Singapore work to have the five Cs,’ she said when serving me a bowl of tiger prawns. ‘Cash, career, credit card, condominium.’ That contrasts Confucian contemplations considered contentment in earlier times, eh?

I shouldn’t have eaten that public food. I paid for it later. Made me ill. After lunch I walked through the wide suburbs surrounding the hotel and didn’t stop. I became a passenger on board my legs, ignoring taxis and buses, counting hills till I stopped at some docklands. Point covered, I launched back toward the city centre in time to send some faxes, rent a postbox and send a message to the Ghost
[Michael Sullivan].
I’ll chance a brief call tomorrow.

Connie, I’ve found a little-known note in the basket of world currencies. Called International Floral Units, the exchange is ultimately to flowers. Interflora invented this borderless currency. I sent 1,500 IFUs. I know it’s utterly wet but there you are! However, I won’t call her until it’s safe. Mr Plod will probably be all over Sharon’s phones until he loses interest.

By the time I got down to Orchard Road the cooler evening breeze had drawn people into this bright shopping street. Silver dials and coated lenses sparkled from the electronics shops and the sounds of countless radios created strong machine froth. I see that the slinking kids have adopted the European fashion for T-shirts the colour of
bain-marie
peas. Smells of burning peanuts still mingle with the cat spray but some things have changed. Chinatown’s been razed and even Raffles is no more than a shell of depleted mystery. Foolishly I ate at a busy chowhouse on the main drag, hoping its brisk supply chain might limit the bacteria. (Funny, I can’t remember being this phobic about food before.) Then walked two miles into exhaustion and back to the hotel.

Not too exhausted though to forget the precaution of taping my passports and money underneath a plastic chair on the balcony.

At breakfast I saw a small piece in
The Straits Times.
No pictures but it started me thinking about how some pestiferous investigators might get a lead. And if they did, I’d be stuck. Yet there’s still one way to get tickets in names just different enough from a passport. So I went out in search of a particular type of travel agency. The kind of place where they write tickets by hand. A place where the staff aren’t too fussy. I found one within the cramped offices of some huge commercial block.

As I sat in the owner–manager’s cubicle I had a chance to take in the adornments. Behind his paper-strewn desk this blubbery agent leaned in a weight-skewed black-vinyl recliner erupting with patches of pink foam. While one bunch of his ringed fingers gripped the handset of a blistered green phone with big buttons, those of his other hand kneaded the folds of his chins. There’d been several stillborn tries at a beard. He sweated under two layers of stretch wool, maybe to support the fantasy about working air conditioners. On his desk a Scotch-taped model Pan American stratocruiser nosed toward coffee-stained Venetian blinds, and a paper poppy drooped from a dusty Shalimar bottle. Behind his chair the yellowing laminate of a world map had countries with names that are history. Ceylon, New Hebrides, even British Honduras. He was speaking to a client with chipper assurance, although his pauses became instant frowns as his eyes flew from a miniature, sun-browned Turkish flag to his overflowing trays for in, out, stuck, incontestable and irredeemable. The place was perfect.