Chanya.
The attachment, on the other hand, is more than five hundred kilobytes, nearly as long as a novel, and of course it is in Thai script. As I start to read, I’m impressed by the clarity and simplicity of the writing. Only a noble soul writes like that. I am also totally absorbed. When the clerk starts to get restless, I have to bribe him again to let me print out the whole of her diary, which I take upstairs to my room and spend the rest of the night reading. I’m hollow-eyed by the time I meet Mustafa in the hotel lobby in the morning.
Out in the street, on the way to Turner’s apartment, Mustafa’s cell phone rings; well, actually, it makes no sound, merely vibrates in his pocket, and he fishes it out in an instant. A few words in the local dialect, and he closes it again and slides it back in his pocket. “They’re here already.”
“Who?”
“Who do you think?”
As we turn a corner into the street where Turner’s apartment is located, he nods toward the building. Two farang in tropical cream business suits, white shirts, and ties are on the point of entering the building.
“You see what I mean?” Mustafa says. “It is more arrogance than stupidity. They might as well have ‘CIA’ stamped on their jackets, but they cannot believe we’re smart enough to work out what they are.”
Maybe he has a point, but we’ll have to abort our examination of the apartment. Not at all sure what to do next, we stroll a little closer to the building and find a café with a view of the street. I order a 7-Up, and Mustafa orders water. We’re both wondering how two farang in business suits are going to negotiate their way past the concierge.
Not easily, it seems. Within minutes they’re leaving the building with frowns on their faces. Worried frowns, it seems to me. Mustafa looks at me with a touch of insolence: Okay, cop, now what d’you want to do?
“Watch,” I say. I go to the door of the café and call out in English, “Can I help you?” as the two men pass. They stop in their tracks, a little surprised but pleased to find a fluent English speaker in this remote town.
“You guys look a little lost,” I say, using the kind of smile that’s supposed to go with words like that. (I can’t decide on my accent—I can do British or American. Generally one uses Brit when talking to an American and vice versa: the two cultures seem to intimidate each other quite well. On instinct, though, I use American with Enthusiastic Immigrant coloring, and in a flash they decide I have Green Card written all over me; obviously, I’m the best they can hope for down here.)
They start to talk. Now we are all doing Sympathetic American Abroad, a specialized genre in which the superiority of farang culture, the stupidity of the native population, and the poor health standards and the appalling state of the plumbing are all expressed subliminally, without a single politically incorrect word passing anyone’s lips. Using basic cues, I give the impression of a native son—Buddhist, not Muslim—who has returned from the United States on vacation and despises his hometown. Mustafa has retreated into a psychological shadow and throws me hostile glances from time to time.
While we’re talking banalities, I take in the two Americans. The older is in his mid-fifties, slim and wiry, a military fitness about him, a short spiky haircut, and intelligence of the ruthless variety about those thin lips. And something else that I cannot put my finger on. Something not quite American. Or human. Does it surprise you, farang, that a good ten percent of the entities you see walking around in human form are not human at all? It’s been going on for a few hundred years now: immigrants from the Outer Limits, with their own agendas. Call them Special Forces from the Other Side. The final conflict won’t be long now.
The other is young, perhaps not as young as he looks. To a tropical type like me, that blond hair and simplified Nordic
The attachment, on the other hand, is more than five hundred kilobytes, nearly as long as a novel, and of course it is in Thai script. As I start to read, I’m impressed by the clarity and simplicity of the writing. Only a noble soul writes like that. I am also totally absorbed. When the clerk starts to get restless, I have to bribe him again to let me print out the whole of her diary, which I take upstairs to my room and spend the rest of the night reading. I’m hollow-eyed by the time I meet Mustafa in the hotel lobby in the morning.
Out in the street, on the way to Turner’s apartment, Mustafa’s cell phone rings; well, actually, it makes no sound, merely vibrates in his pocket, and he fishes it out in an instant. A few words in the local dialect, and he closes it again and slides it back in his pocket. “They’re here already.”
“Who?”
“Who do you think?”
As we turn a corner into the street where Turner’s apartment is located, he nods toward the building. Two farang in tropical cream business suits, white shirts, and ties are on the point of entering the building.
“You see what I mean?” Mustafa says. “It is more arrogance than stupidity. They might as well have ‘CIA’ stamped on their jackets, but they cannot believe we’re smart enough to work out what they are.”
Maybe he has a point, but we’ll have to abort our examination of the apartment. Not at all sure what to do next, we stroll a little closer to the building and find a café with a view of the street. I order a 7-Up, and Mustafa orders water. We’re both wondering how two farang in business suits are going to negotiate their way past the concierge.
Not easily, it seems. Within minutes they’re leaving the building with frowns on their faces. Worried frowns, it seems to me. Mustafa looks at me with a touch of insolence: Okay, cop, now what d’you want to do?
“Watch,” I say. I go to the door of the café and call out in English, “Can I help you?” as the two men pass. They stop in their tracks, a little surprised but pleased to find a fluent English speaker in this remote town.
“You guys look a little lost,” I say, using the kind of smile that’s supposed to go with words like that. (I can’t decide on my accent—I can do British or American. Generally one uses Brit when talking to an American and vice versa: the two cultures seem to intimidate each other quite well. On instinct, though, I use American with Enthusiastic Immigrant coloring, and in a flash they decide I have Green Card written all over me; obviously, I’m the best they can hope for down here.)
They start to talk. Now we are all doing Sympathetic American Abroad, a specialized genre in which the superiority of farang culture, the stupidity of the native population, and the poor health standards and the appalling state of the plumbing are all expressed subliminally, without a single politically incorrect word passing anyone’s lips. Using basic cues, I give the impression of a native son—Buddhist, not Muslim—who has returned from the United States on vacation and despises his hometown. Mustafa has retreated into a psychological shadow and throws me hostile glances from time to time.
While we’re talking banalities, I take in the two Americans. The older is in his mid-fifties, slim and wiry, a military fitness about him, a short spiky haircut, and intelligence of the ruthless variety about those thin lips. And something else that I cannot put my finger on. Something not quite American. Or human. Does it surprise you, farang, that a good ten percent of the entities you see walking around in human form are not human at all? It’s been going on for a few hundred years now: immigrants from the Outer Limits, with their own agendas. Call them Special Forces from the Other Side. The final conflict won’t be long now.
The other is young, perhaps not as young as he looks. To a tropical type like me, that blond hair and simplified Nordic
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