Harlan Wolff - Bangkok Rules

“Sorry George. Don’t ask the question if you think you won’t like the answer.”

Pretty Boy Floyd could be expected to deliver his morning diatribe outside Carl’s bedroom window again so an early night suddenly seemed like a very good idea. Carl stood up and went to the rail where he stood like a latter day Alexander surveying his kingdom. Having committed it to memory he slurred a goodnight to George and left the deck.

Carl went to bed dreaming nostalgic thoughts about spending his future playing a country squire in old Siam. Nostalgic thoughts do not live in a vacuum though so the idyllic country lane became memory lane. Thanks to the vast quantities of wine he had consumed he fell asleep anyway.

The rising of the sun and arrival of the new day was screeched into Carl’s bedroom by Pretty Boy Floyd. He was perched on the rail of the deck near the bedroom window again, angrily bouncing up and down from the knees with his plumage fully fanned out. Carl was getting rather fond of him and his funny habits.

Carl’s head was fuzzy but he was not unhappy with the early alarm call. The fresh air was having a positive effect on his sense of well-being. It had rained during the night and the air was cool and fresh. Carl went for a walk through the grounds, barefoot on the wet grass. There was life everywhere he looked: small birds, large birds, squirrels, butterflies and bugs. It was good.

Carl returned to the house for an early breakfast with George. He went to the kitchen and made them both what he claimed was a nice health-conscious fry-up. In reality it was a good old-fashioned greasy spoon special. Even the bread was fried. He pointed proudly at a grilled tomato on George’s plate amongst the bacon, sausages, greasy eggs, fried white bread and deep fried potatoes and said, “Vitamin C. That will sort you out.”

After they had finished what was on their plates he asked George if he could check in with the old man sometime in the mid-afternoon, to make sure everybody was doing whatever they were supposed to be doing. There was no room for errors or delays. Everything had to be perfectly synchronized like a circle of white bathing capped Nazi frauleins in a swimming pool. George would supervise all of the teams and technicians personally, so he would be away until the following afternoon.

Carl was planning a lazy day hanging out at his temporary summer palace and doing as little as possible. That would make the day even better. As big as the house was Carl liked it best when it was just occupied by him and the birds. He was still very much a lone wolf.

Carl had two phone calls to make before he took the rest of the day off. The first was to his favourite journalist, Kenny Burns. He used to be Carl’s second favourite but with Mad Mike’s demise he had been promoted. Kenny Burns was from the school of the Cambodian Killing Fields and was totally fearless. Some of his friends had died in Cambodia back in the 1970s and he had survivor’s guilt that manifested itself in blindly walking into danger as long as he felt it newsworthy. He had a partner, Heinz Fogel, a German cameraman with an extremely large newsman’s camera that he had received in 1975 in payment for a debt from a Russian in Phnom Penn. It was the camera Carl wanted most. It would get plenty of attention.

Carl had not told George that he was planning to break their agreement of not switching any phones on at the house. There were things that George didn’t need to know about. He had seen a couple of new SIM cards in the shopping bags in the kitchen the previous night and he had put them on top of the fridge. Now he went and got one. Having inserted it into his phone he made the call. Carl was beginning to be careless but he knew it wasn’t going to be a problem. Things were moving fast enough now for Carl not to care about leaving some tracks behind him.

Carl had a very difficult job convincing Kenny that he should take his money to run the sham news story he was asking for. Journalist’s ethics and all that. But he was a friend and he eventually agreed. All Carl was hoping was that someone would speak enough English to understand the show that Kenny and Heinz would be putting on.

The second phone call was to Bart Barrows.

“Bart, it’s me,” he said, not using his own name intentionally. Special Branch probably listened to every call Bart made.

“Yeah,” Bart said.

“Bart, remember our deal. I want you to call that bloke and say this and only this, ‘That motherfucker of a PI is making a stink and there’s going to be trouble’.”

“That’s all you want?”

“That’s it.”

“Sounds like a pretty good horse trade to me.”

“I will call you again tomorrow with details of a time and a place for a meeting. I have a solution that I think will work for everybody. After that I’ll keep my promise.”

“It’s a good idea to be sensible and negotiate. Everything is a compromise in Thailand. I was worried you had forgotten,” Bart said unusually intelligently. He would always have his CIA hat on for Carl from then on.

Carl disconnected and switched off the phone by removing the battery. Why was Bart so keen on a peaceful settlement? Perhaps turning a blind eye to the activities of a low life like Anthony Inman to keep the general happy was sticking in his craw. Could Bart be an ally?

At midday Kenny and Heinz arrived at the building on Phetchburi Road and set up the giant camera. Kenny stood with the building as a backdrop and spoke loudly into the microphone in his hand.

“In this ordinary building that you see behind me shocking events have been occurring. In the next few days, stories of CIA operatives, senior military officers, gun running, drug trafficking, and murder will be revealed. Remember the building behind me and remember who brought you the news first. This is Jack Kerouac reporting from Bangkok.”

Later Kenny told Carl that people came out onto the street to see what was going on. Kenny, sweating profusely, complained about the light and sometimes complained about the sound as he repeated the report in front of his growing audience seven times. If anybody in the audience had looked closely they would have seen that the camera wasn’t switched on and hadn’t been for decades. After the seventh take Kenny and Heinz packed up the camera and left the scene of the crime.

By the late afternoon Carl had finished Death in the Afternoon and his hangover had retreated to a safe distance. He took a shower and listened to some Mozart. Carl did a few mental checks and took the gun out from under the mattress where he’d been keeping it. There were five bullets in it and he had no extra ammunition. Five bullets would have to be enough and he would have to live without target practice. It had been many years since Carl had held a pistol.

Carl didn’t like guns. He never had. They are made for one purpose and worshipped by the sort of people that Carl didn’t want as his neighbours. Getting older is a long series of compromises and he had experienced his fair share. Carl tucked the gun in the back of his jeans so it sat in the small of his back where a loose hanging shirt would easily hide it.

He went to the kitchen and made himself an omelette and a very large cup of coffee. He sat at a table beside the pond and under the shade of the deck. It was shelter from the sun and he felt closer to the animals down there. The swans looked at him suspiciously and the ducks moved to the other side of the pond. Carl’s peaceful place as a child had been a duck pond on a local common in south London. He used to go there in all weathers to think. The wooden house made him feel like a child again. He was going to be sorry to leave it.

Carl had made his decision on the inevitable outcome of his case a couple of days earlier. It was dangerous to second guess himself after he had committed to a course of action, but Carl grew up in England and that was typically what English people did. Things were destined to run their course and whatever the outcome there was no going back. Instructions had been given and George would be arranging everybody’s payments.