Big Mango (9786167611037) (28 page)

“That part I got worked out. We’ll just do
something so boring they will all lose interest for a while.”

“What could we possibly do in Bangkok that’s
boring?” Bar looked stumped.

“That’s easy,” Eddie smiled. “Go to
Singapore.”

***

THEY
left Bangkok a little
after noon the next day on a Thai International Airways flight,
each of them having bought a ticket to Singapore from a different
travel agent and paid for it in cash. No one checked in any
luggage. Eddie and Winnebago left everything in their suite, other
than what they packed into two small carry-ons, and slipped out the
back of the Oriental to the river landing. They took the ferry to
Silapakorn University, lost themselves in the crowds of students,
and found a taxi to the airport. Bar and Lek each made their own
way to the airport; Lek using the Thai International limousine
service, and Bar on a bus.

Once at the airport, they all checked in
separately without speaking and then scattered themselves around
the three cabins of the big airbus. Four apparently individual
passengers would be far harder for anyone to remember later, Eddie
thought, and certainly a lot less conspicuous than three American
men and an Asian woman traveling in a group.

Eddie had no illusions about his ability to
keep them hidden for very long. He was an amateur and they were up
against professionals. Neither Vietnamese Intelligence nor the
Secret Service were stupid. Both would trace them relatively
quickly in spite of anything he could do. When they all disappeared
from Bangkok, airport departures would be the first thing everyone
thought of and it wouldn’t be particularly difficult to find out
where they had gone.

Every passenger leaving Bangkok filled out a
departure card and, at the immigration check just before the gates,
the cards were marked with both a flight number and a destination.
Within twelve hours after they dropped out of sight, those cards
would be retrieved—either officially, or more likely,
unofficially—and it would be simple enough for anyone to find out
that they were in Singapore.

Except, of course, they wouldn’t be.

At the concierge desk the night before, Eddie
had gone through the schedules and learned that fifty-two minutes
after the noon flight from Bangkok landed at Singapore’s Changi
Airport, there was a Silk Air flight leaving for Phuket, the Thai
resort island in the Andaman Sea. Forty-one minutes after the Silk
Air flight arrived in Phuket, a Thai Airways domestic flight left
there for the short hop back to Bangkok. They could all be tucked
away back in the city, almost before anyone had worked out that
they’d left in the first place. The gambit had flare, if Eddie did
say so himself. Since they’d never leave the international transit
lounge at Changi and never enter Singapore, there would be no
record left behind there. No trail at all.

That wouldn’t stop anyone for very long, of
course. When no entry record was found in Singapore, it would
become obvious what they had done and all the outbound flights from
Changi following their time of arrival would be checked. But there
were a lot of them, and that would take quite a while. Even when
they were finally traced to Phuket, the whole process would have to
be repeated there again before anyone figured out that they were
actually back in Bangkok.

Eddie hoped his little subterfuge might get
them two or three days to poke around discreetly about Harry Austin
before they started drawing a crowd again. It might if they stayed
lucky.

It wasn’t much. Maybe it was nothing at all.
Right then, however, it felt like a pretty good start.

THE
loading bridge nestled
snugly up against the airbus and Eddie, Bar, Winnebago and Lek all
filed out, each separately losing himself in the crush of
passengers thronging Terminal One at Changi. Ten minutes later,
they assembled at a spot in the terminal next to a goldfish pond
with a wooden bridge which looked vaguely Japanese and led to a
Planet Hollywood gift shop.

Stores of all sorts stretched as far as they
could see inside the huge complex. Overhead signs pointed to a
movie theater showing four recent Hollywood films, a gym with two
jogging tracks and a swimming pool, a 24-hour children’s play
center, a desk providing hourly city tours of Singapore, and a
nondenominational chapel with a meditation area. Eddie glanced in
the direction of the chapel and wondered what kind of crowd it
drew.

“Okay, listen up. There are Silk Air desks
over there,” Eddie said, pointing past a computer shop and a
florist to a few airline signs were barely visible in the distance,
“ and down there.” He pointed in the opposite direction toward
where a storefront displayed exercise equipment. “Split up and buy
your tickets one by one. Everyone got money?”

They all nodded.

“Okay. There’s supposed to be something
called the Traveler’s Bar right the middle of this building. We’ll
meet there.”

After they had all bought their tickets,
found the bar, and settled in, they ordered beers all around and
Winnebago reached for his Camels. Almost before the pack had
cleared his pocket, a young Singaporean in a brown blazer with a
gold patch of some kind over the pocket materialized next to their
table. He beamed down at Winnebago with a beatific smile.

“My apologies, sir, but smoking is not
permitted here. Only over there, “ the man said, gesturing toward
the opposite side of the terminal building, “in the smoking
booth.”

Winnebago turned and looked in the direction
the young man was pointing, but he saw nothing except milling
passengers and more stores. He looked back at the guy, who was
still smiling maniacally, like a Mormon on speed.

“What the hell’s a smoking booth?”

The man gestured again in the same direction,
nodding encouragingly.

Winnebago looked again and this time he saw
it. In a distant corner of the terminal was a glass room the size
of a small office. It had a sort of airlock for a door and inside a
dozen people sat and puffed energetically on cigarettes, their
bodies dim outlines through a smoky haze.

Eddie looked where Winnebago’s eyes were
pointing. “I wonder if there’s a please-don’t-feed-the-animals sign
on it?”

Winnebago returned the Camels to his pocket
and tossed the young man a salute. “Up yours, captain.”

The man looked bewildered as he flipped
quickly through his mental dictionary of English idioms.
‘Up
yours?’ What means ‘up yours’?
Eventually, still baffled, he
returned the salute with a military snap and walked away.

Winnebago watched him go. “Fuck, man. That’s
un-American, treat people like that.”

“This is Singapore,” Eddie reminded him.
“They like rules. You can’t chew gum either.”

Winnebago just shook his head some more.

They all sat in silence for a while and
watched a man in white tie and tails play a silver grand piano. He
rippled through Some Enchanted Evening and You’ll Never Walk Alone,
and he was just launching into The Impossible Dream when Winnebago
quickly drained the rest of his beer and stood up. “I’m going to
the gate. If I have to listen to any more of this shit without
smoking, I’m going to puke.”

“I’m with you,” Bar chimed in, chugging the
rest of his own beer.

The corridor that led out to their boarding
gate was decked out in pink and blue pastels and it stretched into
the distance until it seemed to disappear from sight over the
horizon. It was crowded with passengers heading in both directions,
but the moving walkways allowed them to make rapid progress. Eddie
and Lek fell behind the others, cut off by a troop of elderly
Japanese tourists led by an earnest-looking young woman waving a
small flag but, when they stepped off the section of walkway that
ended in front of Gate F54, Bar reached out of the crowd with one
hand and caught Eddie by the elbow. He pointed ahead.

It was still at least fifty yards to Gate F58
where the Phuket flight was loading, and making out exactly what
was happening there was difficult, but one thing was unmistakable.
A cordon of Singapore police was blocking the entry to the gate
lobby and they were carefully checking each passenger who
entered.

“That’s impossible,” Eddie shook his head for
emphasis. “No way anyone could have traced us that fast. No goddamn
way. Stay here. I’ll check it out.”

Working himself into the crowd, he drifted
with it to the line waiting to enter F58. At the head of the line,
two stony-faced policemen in starched, khaki uniforms were
questioning each passenger individually, meticulously examining
their passports before another pair of cops behind a table
completely unpacked every piece of carry-on luggage and searched
painstakingly through its contents.

Eddie eased up next to a boy in the line who
looked like a good bet for striking up a conversation. The boy was
in his early twenties, tall, with the deep tan and the long,
stringy hair of a traveler. Eddie guessed the boy had to be a
fellow American. He would have guessed that anyway because of the
boy’s clothes and his cocky slouch, but what sealed the deal was
the big sticker across the worn backpack lying at his feet. It
unapologetically proclaimed the boy’s personal policy on foreign
relations: NO FAT CHICKS.

Eddie swapped the San Francisco in his voice
for something that might sound a little more down home. He tried
for Texas, and made it as far as Oklahoma.

“What’s going on up there?”

“You English?” The boy looked Eddie over
neutrally.

“No, buddy. American.”

“Oh.” The kid didn’t bother to hide his
disappointment. “I’m from London.”

Eddie was just working on a quick change of
tack when the boy took him off the hook. He pointed to the front of
the line where the cops were grilling a short, dark man and
examining his passport with evident skepticism.

“Looks like the local stormtroopers want
somebody pretty bad.”

“Do you know who they’re looking for?” Eddie
kept his voice casual.

The kid was just starting to shake his head
when an elderly woman in the line behind him leaned forward.

“They’re not looking for anyone,” she
volunteered in a voice that immediately reminded Eddie of his third
grade teacher. “This is a special security flight because of the
Prime Minister.”

Eddie and the kid glanced at each other in
puzzlement.

“The Prime Minister and his family are on the
plane today,” the woman went on in the same pedantic tone when it
became obvious that neither of them understood what she was talking
about.

“Tony Blair?” the boy asked, obviously
confused. “Tony Blair’s on this flight?”

The woman looked scandalized. “I meant
our
Prime Minister. Prime Minister Goh of Singapore.” She
narrowed her eyes at the boy. “Everyone isn’t English, you know,
young man.”

“And I for one thank Christ for it,” Eddie
said as he turned and walked away.

***

“THE
Prime Minister of
Singapore apparently picked our flight for a little jaunt of his
own today,” Eddie said when he got back to the others. “That’s why
the cops are double-checking everything. It’s got nothing to do
with us.”

“Oh, man.” Winnebago loosed a long sigh. “I
guess I can start breathing again.”

“Wait a minute,” Lek said. “Maybe we should
still take another flight.”

“What’s the problem?” Eddie glanced at her
and saw that she was obviously concerned about something. “They’re
not interested in us.”

“It still makes us conspicuous. We should
wait.”

“Look, we can’t wait.” Eddie’s voice was
firm. “There’s no problem. Let’s go.”

“I say we wait.” There was an edge to Lek’s
voice and her bag remained on the floor.

“This is Eddie’s show,” Bar said keeping his
voice level. “He says we go, we go. We all go. That’s the way it
works.”

Lek glanced first at Bar, then at Eddie who
was watching her curiously. She lowered her head. “Sorry. I guess
I’m a little edgy.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Eddie said as he
moved off toward the gate. “We’re all edgy.”

After they all went through the passport
checks and had their boarding passes collected, they were each
passed along separately for inspection of their carry-on bags. Bar
and Eddie got through first and stood together inside the boarding
lounge waiting for the others.

“Ever been to Phuket before?” Eddie asked
Bar.

“Once.”

“Liked it?”

“I liked everywhere once.”

Winnebago was straggling across the lounge
toward them when the doors to the loading bridge opened and the
rush to board the aircraft started. Over Winnebago’s shoulder,
Eddie could see that Lek was still in front of one of the security
tables, the contents of her carry-on bag having been fastidiously
distributed into piles by a khaki-uniformed security man.

“Ready?” Winnebago asked when he reached
them, shifting his bag from one hand to the other.

Eddie pointed back to where Lek appeared to
be having an angry conversation with the security man and they all
turned to watch. They were too far away to hear what was being
said, but the man was holding up what looked like two small books
he had taken from Lek’s bag and was waving them at one of the
cops.

“What the hell’s going on?” Bar murmured.

“You guys go ahead,” Eddie said, handing his
carry-on to Winnebago. “I’ll see what I can find out.”

With a shrug, Winnebago turned to join the
crowd jostling through the narrow gate to the plane, but Bar was
still watching Lek. “I’ll catch up,” he said.

When Bar walked up behind Eddie, he could see
that three policemen had Lek and her carry-on bag surrounded. A
security officer was blocking Eddie from approaching her.