I HAD BEEN waiting and waiting at the little dock just south of Arthit Pier. The palazzo was just across the way, but hidden by the trees along the banks of the Chao Phraya. I hoped my speedboat was equally concealed among the branches in this obscure spot. Leaves quivered against my face when the ocean breathed up the river from the Gulf of Siam. Bats swooped low over the water, hunting insects, though there were fewer of them now. It was getting late. I’d expected Lena and Hughes at eleven o’clock, and it was now long past the hour, but I would never leave my post, no matter what. Either Lena returned or I would die here waiting, whether living to the end of my natural days as a lunatic boatman who begged alms from passing waterfolk, or shot as an accomplice by palace guards. My devoted skeleton would bleach under the tropical sun. I had not welcomed such visions, but did not shirk them either. They were a distraction, at least, from looking at my watch every few seconds. Now it was closer to midnight.
A faint splashing sound made me stand up and stare into the water once more. I made out three forms in the river, approaching slowly, two of them together and the third trailing behind. Soon I knew for certain that Lena was the first of them. She was identifiable to me always, her head sleek as an otter like in those happier days, when the world was at our feet before the Nanaimo payroll robbery, and she had jumped overboard from our gang’s speedboat as a lark. Tonight, everything was different. We were on the other side of the world, and she was grim-faced and struggling. As she approached, I reached out to her with an oar, which she grabbed desperately, and I saw she was dragging Hughes. With a shiver I realized that the third form was one of those monitor lizards, perhaps fifteen feet behind them, cutting patiently and silently through the water like a crocodile.
“Take him,” she gasped. I hesitated, thinking to haul her up first, but she pushed Hughes toward me. They don’t eat people, I remembered Dass saying. Only corpses.
I grabbed him by the strap on the collar of his lifejacket, and she dragged herself up and over the side of the boat. I struggled with Hughes’ weight, at one point nearly dropping him. He gave me no aid.
Lena had drawn herself away from the body, and lay panting on the floor of the boat.
“You’re okay now,” I said to Lena. I felt for Hughes’ pulse, but I already knew what I would find. At least his body looked whole. I shivered at the thought of Lena in the dark water, dragging him, that dismal lizard trailing behind.
“He didn’t make it,” Lena said. She put her hands over her eyes and shuddered, which I took to be weeping, but was all the more dreadful for its soundlessness.
I didn’t know what else to do, so I started up the engine, and the night was obliterated by the roar as the boat cut through the wide, black river.
Bill was waiting in the darkened grounds of the palazzo. He must have been there all evening. It was cool now, but he still wore a short-sleeved shirt and British jungle shorts as he hurried past the hurricane lanterns that lined the pool to meet us. As I walked Lena up from the dock, she leaned against me—when we debarked her knees had buckled and she staggered once, until I caught her. Bill stopped short at the sight of us.
“You okay?” he asked, but Lena did not answer, so he looked to me.
“She needs rest.”
“Von Roth?”
Again she did not answer. I myself hadn’t had the nerve yet to ask about this, or anything else about the mission.
“Did you get von Roth?” Bill asked again.
“He’s dead,” Lena said.
She was shivering in her wet clothes, so I walked her past Bill on the sidewalk to get her inside and away from the night air. “There’s something in the boat that must be brought in,” I said. He nodded and went to see to it. This was the first time he’d ever done a thing I said.
TEN O’CLOCK THE next morning, Lena sat in the library, looking subdued in a grey silk robe wrapped up to her neck. Her eyes were puffy. The shutters were closed to keep out the light, though it was already dim, threatening rain. The heat was unbearable. I felt oppressed by these heavy tropical storms, which held back and held back until they finally exploded. Back in Washington State, it was calm, because it was always raining. I missed the feeling of knowing what was going to happen because it was always the same.
Today was a complete mystery. Would Lena leave now that Hughes was dead?
“You knew he wouldn’t make it, didn’t you,” she said flatly. Her eyes would not meet Bill’s, but drifted across the dim gold book spines where they were trapped on crowded shelves in the order the previous owner had chosen.
Bill crossed his arms. “You damn well know there was no talking him out of it. And he got what he wanted. He fixed up his name. He’ll get buried with military honours. I’ll see to that.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better? He’s dead.”
“How about this? You chased an assassin out of the palace. Miss Maggie will reward you for ruining Gaige’s operation. It proves that Nazis don’t work, so why take the extra risk? Gaige’s program will be cut, and the funding will go to Miss Maggie.”
I looked at Lena. She was tired and worried. I wished there was something I could do for her, but could not think of anything. There wasn’t even a pot of tea to pour.
Bill cleared his throat. “I heard from my lock-keeper. So I know you were the one that killed the Nazi. Not Link Hughes like you said.”
Lena remained silent.
Bill walked over to his bookshelf and paused in front of the antique black marble clock. If you believed that time was heavy, or unyielding, or cruel, this was the object to embody it. He pushed forward the hands to reset it, though now that I thought of it, I’d never heard it tick. His back still turned, he wound the clock for the first time since he owned it. “Miss Maggie will be pleased,” he said.
I stood there, wishing I could be anywhere else, while also hanging on every word. Bill walked over to sit in the chair across from hers, and leaned his elbows on his knees. “Lena, there’s no use regretting. That Nazi was evil. You got to be a wolf to survive.”
True enough, I thought. Bill was a wolf, and so was Lena, which explained why they could never quite get on. There was only one head of every pack. And I was just a lamb. Where was my flock? These wolves were it, I thought uneasily. I would have to be careful not to go the way of Link Hughes. But I had no plans to sacrifice myself. The name Byron Godfrey was nothing special, but it needed no redeeming either.
Bill walked over to where I stood at the window. “Why so glum, chum? You want a cigar, By God? You did good.” He clapped me on the back.
“Thanks.”
Bill took a cigar from a dark wood humidor and trimmed it with his silver scissors, just for me.
LENA STUCK AROUND after the von Roth job, drifting through the palazzo and avoiding Bill when he happened to be around, which wasn’t often. She couldn’t leave because Miss Maggie had ordered her to stay and “await developments.” Lena was in a rage about it, but she was under Miss Maggie’s thumb as much as Bill. I was curious what my place was in all this, so I’d asked Bill about it. Was I a crab in a trap, who walked in of his own innocence and then, when he turns around, can’t figure the way out?
“I brung you here without Miss Maggie knowing,” he had assured me. “One of my rebellions against her. I wanted you in my business. I trust you.”
I felt happy when he said that. I had to admit, being a spy who only pretended to be a crook was more soothing to my conscience—what I had left of it anyhow, after all I’d done with Bill. Of course our “pretending” was pretty convincing, since Bill actually ran an opium ring.
Practising my new profession, I snuck around the palazzo and tried to overhear when Lena spoke to Bill, which seemed to be almost never. But one time I paused by the library door when I felt a silence heavier than silence, and knew somehow that both of them were there. I put my eye to the crack, and saw Bill kneeling on the floor and gripping her hand.
“I won’t ever give up,” he said finally. “I’ll love you till I’m dead.”
“You ruined everything a long time ago.”
“You only have a love like this once in a life. That goes for you too, Lena. I’m it and you know it.”
She tore her hand from his, and I ran ignobly into a hall closet because I could see she was going to flee. She did so, and her steps echoed on the tile floor, receding from me.
Bill went to Burma shortly after that, and stayed away for a month to tend to his opium business. And his wounds, I supposed. It would not help his case that Lena knew about the wife he had there. Well, he’d made his own bed. Maybe he’d figure out how divorce worked in that tribe.
I asked Lena if she wanted to go for a drink at the Oriental Hotel, and she said yes. I put on a tie.
I will always remember that day, June 10, because on that day we sat in the bar together, drinking a Scotch cocktail called Blood and Sand. There are not many things that mix well with Scotch, since it’s usually best sipped alone. But I was not alone, and I did not want my liquor to face that fate either. So it is shaken with orange juice, cherry brandy, and sweet vermouth, and it was very nice, I thought. Lena seemed to enjoy it also.
But our repose was disturbed. Word rippled through the bar that King Ananda had died yesterday in the Royal Palace. The Siamese police proclaimed it an accidental death, but the foreign news reported that the bullet went through the centre of his forehead. By whose hand was such an “accident”? Lena and I looked at each other with wide eyes. The only certainty was that the constitution was in danger, and democracy in Siam was probably over. The Communists would be outlawed in the new regime. Many people in the bar were predicting that, and were happy about that part. Amidst the hubbub, Lena traced her finger slowly around the rim of her glass. I wondered what she was thinking but did not ask.
It wasn’t long before I noticed a man lurking at the entrance to the bar. It was Smile, and I knew instantly that Bill was home from Burma. Goddamn it, it was hard to keep one’s affairs private around here. I guessed he knew where we were from the boat driver, who had dropped us off at the Oriental Pier. I downed the last of my drink and helped Lena with her chair. I didn’t remember about my umbrella until we stepped outside and a heavy rain was falling, so I went back to retrieve it from the holder, which was shaped like an elephant’s leg. A scruffy man at the bar was watching me with interest, and I left feeling his eyes on my back. How many people are in this spy business, I wondered.
Outside, I gave the umbrella a shake before raising it to cover myself and Lena. Smile, who had so rudely interrupted our cocktail hour, could figure out his own shelter. In any case he seemed oblivious to the rain. It poured down his shaved head in streams and he did not try to wipe it back. It was kind of eerie, like he was more machine than man.
I was tempted to cut across the manicured lawn, but deep puddles were forming already, and I did not want Lena to ruin her shoes. We stayed to the sidewalk, hanging back a few feet from Smile as he led us to the pier. Lena sat down on the wooden bench underneath the roof of the longtail, quickly shifting to the box in the middle to retreat further from the driving rain. She squeezed water from the ends of her blond hair, and I watched her with a sense of nostalgia. The death of King Ananda signalled the end of something, I thought. Both the old Siam and the future he had promised. History did not always mean progress. Chief Phao had been building his army of police, and now was his chance to come forward. He had no love of democracy. Despite his perfumed pomade, he was just a thug. Meanwhile, we had risked our necks trying to save the king, who had not in the end been saved.
I shook my head—what times we lived in, when crooks were more moral than cops.