COCKTAIL HOUR WENT on and on, just like at my bar back in Sequim. The chamber of commerce had convinced me to delay opening until 12:01 p.m., so they could truthfully say no bars opened in the morning in our upstanding town. Of course, after the Ponderosa locked its doors at night, I let anybody stay in and drink past sunrise if they wanted, leaving the bar in business most of the twenty-four hours in a day. It was a technicality but it kept everybody happy.
“So there’s this fellow called Lieutenant Link Hughes.” Bill said the name with no great relish while he patted the table dry with a napkin. He’d spilled some of his drink. “Let me back up a bit.”
I sighed a little to myself. Bill had taken to speaking in fragments. This was not like the old Bill who was chatty and confiding with his friends. Perhaps he did not trust me yet. After all that happened back in Washington State, I understood that I might have to prove myself again.
As I waited for Bill to explain, Dass made the long approach across the lawn carrying a silver tray that seared my eyes with the midday sun reflecting off it. Bill watched him as though it was the most interesting thing in the world right now. I was pretty hungry, I realized. It had been a long trip and a strange day. At least I was rid of that Shively fellow. I wondered where he hid himself while in Bangkok if he did not live with Bill. I imagined there was no shortage of dens of iniquity here.
Dass put the tray down beside us and Bill gestured at me to take a sandwich. I thought it tasted a little gamey but did not say so.
“How do you like it? It’s water buffalo,” he said, and I almost spit it out. But on second thought, when I recalled the monkey he mentioned earlier, this didn’t seem so bad. I wasn’t entirely sure what a water buffalo was anyway.
“Great,” I said, giving him a thumbs up.
“I’ve had to adjust myself to the strange ways of this country,” he said, taking a sandwich for himself. “But it’s better than Europe during the war. Couldn’t get meat of any kind.”
“Were you a soldier?”
Bill ate all the crusts off first, which was not something I remembered him ever doing before. He seemed to have grown more particular. “Not exactly,” he said. He chewed for a very long time, longer than even the stringy meat would warrant. I took it the subject was closed.
“I arrived here a few weeks after the Japs surrendered,” Bill said, brushing some crumbs off his pants. “In August.”
From where he came or why he did not say. In any case, he had imported jeeps and covered trucks for his business, and the ownership of these vehicles had thrown him in with the British against his will.
When the British liberated Siam they learned about the prisoner of war camps along the Burma–Siam railway, which the Japanese had built to shorten their supply lines. Around twenty thousand Allied prisoners had been conscripted at appalling loss of life. The British had the job of finding the remaining camps and recording as many of the graves along the way as they could. Long story short, Bill said, was that there weren’t many vehicles in the country that could handle rough roads, so they requisitioned all of his.
“I travelled with the Limeys because I wanted to keep an eye on my jeeps. But I wish I’d never seen what I seen. Prisoners still alive were just sacks of bones. The dead ones, some were piled in pits, others the Japs just let rot where they fell.” He slumped in his chair and pulled the brim of his Panama hat down lower. “Don’t think I’ll ever get used to the sun here,” he said.
He had followed the British convoys to a field hospital at Nakom Paton, just outside Bangkok, where the British sent the prisoners for treatment. He talked to some of the men—those who were at least capable of speech. There he met a Canadian who said he had served at the Esquimalt naval base before being transferred overseas. “That word Esquimalt is a strange one, sticks in your head. As soon as he said that, I thought to myself, does he know Lena somehow?”
“She was there?”
“Yes.”
“How’d you find her?”
Bill held up a finger for silence, and I followed his gaze to a man on the riverside path just outside the palazzo’s iron fence. Bill had told me he’d like to block it off, but such a move would incite outrage because it was part of a public access route along the river from ancient times, and as a foreigner in Siam he could not afford bad feelings. Somehow the grumblings would get back to the chief of police, whom he needed to keep jolly. In any case, the man walking by looked harmless, a bare-chested local in a faded blue sarong. He led a goat on a string, which shook its grey and white head, a bronze bell jangling.
“Shively came across her,” Bill said, once the man had disappeared. “He has his uses, hey? He was an old ship hand, so he volunteered for the navy in the war. They took him on at Esquimalt to free up the young ones to fight. Anyhoo, Lena was there. Shively saw her sometimes talking to a lieutenant. Link Hughes.” He took another slug of his drink. “Lena thought I was never gonna get out of jail.”
I felt sorry for Bill, and tried not to look at him. It would just make him mad. Even after all these years, Lena was still in the front of his mind. It seemed more like a fixation than love, but maybe those were nearly the same thing.
The drongo cackled from its perch. “Shut the fuck up,” Bill yelled. He was certainly drunk now. He wiped the sweat from his brow with a silk handkerchief.
“She wasn’t the only one who had people wanting them,” he said. “I got outfoxed by a mountain girl when I was up in Burma.”
“A mountain girl?”
“They’re wild ones. Ride a horse like nobody’s business. Anyhoo, her parents made a ruckus about her soiled honour. They saw I was rich and made me pay her bride price.” He looked at me sidewise. “We’re not really married. No paper, no priest. But I don’t have the heart to throw her out of my house in Kengtung. It would ruin her.” He kicked his feet against the chair legs, an angry drumbeat.
“The family doesn’t bother you when you’re away?”
“Men can go off as they please.”
I guess I couldn’t expect him to live like a priest all the time he waited for Lena, though it made me wonder if he loved her enough. I stared up at the clouds, frail things being frizzled up by the white hot sun. Of course Bill’s problem was getting rid of a girl. Maybe I should go to Burma, I thought, and see if one might latch onto me.
“By the boo, if Lena hears about this, I’ll know who told her,” he said, leaning forward to poke me in the chest.
“Don’t worry,” I said, smiling in what I hoped was a trustworthy way. It made me nervous to hear him use that cute expression because he used to talk like that when he was at his most crazy.
“Dass, we need some more goddamn ice,” he bellowed. He sat brooding until Dass returned from the pool house, the glass bowl he set down frosted with the blessed coolness.
“Back to business,” Bill said, dropping some cubes into our empty glasses. “The British made lists of these POWs we found, and Lieutenant Hughes’s name was on it.”
I stared at Bill, uncomprehending.
“You’re making this a goddamn trial.” He took a deep breath and poured us each another drink from the side table. He gazed at the pale blue water in the pool, which earlier had been smooth and taut as a sheet. Now the rising wind mussed the surface. “Lena will want to see him. I’m not the only one who needs to do a patch job. And that’s when I make my case,” he said. “She’ll see how I’ve changed. She thought well of you, By God. So you’ll be there to greet her when she gets to Siam. To smooth things over.”
“Me?” I kept my voice even, but did not trust myself to say more. The ice clattered in my glass and I saw my hand was shaking. Carefully, I put my drink down on the table. I wanted to be the first one to see her, very much. And wouldn’t she be glad to see an old friend? I didn’t have to follow Bill’s instructions to the letter. I’d be on my own, at first. I could say whatever I wanted.
As always, he appeared to know my thoughts and cocked an eyebrow at me. “I trust you,” he said, making me ashamed of my internal treacheries. “Anyways, that won’t be the hard part. First we got to extract this Link Hughes from a certain situation. The Russians know where he is, and they’ll move on him soon, most likely.”
“Russians? Aren’t they our allies?”
“Six months ago they hated Hitler as much as we did, but that’s about it. Now that the war is over, the whole world’s a chessboard. Except the game’s gone underground.”
This sounded far more dangerous than robbing banks. “I don’t know this Link Hughes from Adam. Why do we have to play chess with the world?”
Bill laughed and laughed, until I became concerned he might choke, and then he wiped the tears from his eyes. “That’s a fucking good question. Turns out it’s good fun though.”
Dass must have heard his cue, because he approached to hand Bill a scroll. Bill smoothed it out on the table, using our glasses to hold down two corners. It was a map with hatches of railway lines leading out of Bangkok. Bill drew a finger to the west. “That’s Nakom Paton. It’s not far.” He tapped the spot with a satisfied air. He’d always loved maps, whether the close-up of a vault’s innards or the byways of Washington State. The boys in the gang used to say he had every road in the Pacific Northwest stored in his brain.
He leaned back and smiled. “This is going to be easy-peasy. I got some friends in high places who can keep everybody occupied while we get Hughes. The police, no less.”
He saw my doubtful look and laughed. “Don’t worry, all the police are crooked. You just got to pay the right price. Why do you think I love Siam so much?” He handed me my glass, and the map rolled itself up with a thwap and fell on the paving stones. Dass picked it up silently and tucked it under his arm. “Your ice is melting already,” Bill said. “Drink up before it gets warm. Enjoy life. Tomorrow we’ll have work to do. You’re going to help me capture Lieutenant Hughes.”
“Capture?”
“Let’s call it a rescue. Except the man being rescued maybe won’t come willingly.”