Anna was busy in the tiny apartment she had not been in since
she’d flown with me to Singapore.
She swept it, mopped it and folded clothes she’d left to dry. But she didn’t touch the suitcase she had rushed to pack at the hotel, thinking that, when I returned, we’d move into another hotel.
By early afternoon, feeling hungry and knowing that I would not be in Bangkok until the evening, she ventured outside to buy something to eat on the street. Wearing just the pair of shorts and tee shirt she had been wearing to clean the stiflingly hot apartment, she picked up the handbag that contained little more than her purse, passport and ID
card, put on a pair of cheap rubber flip-flops, shut the door, pocketed the key and went down the double flight of stairs to the ground floor.
It was a shadowy movement by the main entrance that stopped her.
The stairwell was dark but the main entrance was bathed in bright sun. At the bottom was an office and storeroom for brushes, mops, and buckets and she had just taken the bottom step when she saw the man looking through the open doorway. Just as Anna appeared from the darkness, he vanished. Anna stopped, her heart pounding.
Then she turned and started to run back up the stairs. As she reached the first landing, she heard someone coming up the stairs behind her.
She ran up the next flight to the top corridor, the man now on the first landing. She ran past her own apartment door to the far end of the corridor and the fire escape, pushed open the metal door and slammed it shut behind her. She ran down the steep iron steps, jumped the iron gate at the bottom, and raced around the side of the apartment block.
Then, still clutching her handbag, she ran along an alleyway lined with trash bins that led onto the main road and stopped to look behind her. A man in jeans and tee shirt was already at the bottom of the steps, over the gate and standing on the corner of the apartment block.
Seeing Anna at the end of the alleyway, he started running towards her.
Anna turned and ran onto the main road. Without checking for traffic, she crossed it, jumped the central traffic barrier and kept running.
Breathing heavily, she stopped again and looked back. The man was waiting to cross the road, but had clearly seen her. He ran between a taxi and a truck and jumped the barrier but Anna didn’t stop or wait any longer. She headed for a busy junction, ran across and totally out of breath, stopped in a shop doorway. There was no sign of the man but that was not enough for Anna. She was now very frightened. She waited for the next free taxi to arrive, beckoned it to stop, and jumped in. An hour later, she was at the bus terminal. With only her handbag and some money and still wearing the shorts, tee shirt, and flip flops, she was in a dilemma. Should she just head home to be with her father or should she wait to see me?
***
I know all this now but while Anna was running, I was in the air somewhere over Malaysia, heading north towards Bangkok. When I landed, the first thing I did was call her. I tried twice before it was answered by a man. More men’s voices were in the background.Sweat poured from me. “Anna?” I shouted. “Answer me. Where are you?”
I could still hear men’s voices, but when, at last, she spoke, her voice was surprisingly calm. “Hello?” she said.
“Where are you?” I repeated.
“I am in the police office.”
“Police? Where?”
“It is the big office, the headquarters.”
“Anna,” I said. “What’s going on?”
“Come here,” she said.
“What happened?”
“Come here. Don’t talk.”
I did as I’d been instructed. I took a taxi, one that seemed to find every traffic jam in Bangkok, and apart from Anna, all I could think of was the worst ticking off I’d had since I was a kid. Colin was right, of course, but I suppose that’s what friends are for.
I found her in a room several floors up, sitting on one side of a long table and facing a senior policeman in uniform with two other officers sitting to his left and to his right. On the table in front of them was a small pile of official-looking paper.
As I was ushered in, Anna turned in her chair but didn’t stand up, so I did what I thought I should do and rushed to put my arms around her shoulders but the officers looked serious and were beckoning me as if I needed to calm down. A chair was provided next to Anna, and then I noticed what she was wearing - tiny shorts and a sweaty tee shirt.
I still didn’t know what had happened or why she was there. No longer was I in control of the situation. The senior office removed a pair of glasses, placed them on the table, and looked at me. “You speak Thai?”
“Nid noy,” I said. A little bit wasn’t going to be enough.
“Your name?”
Ah. Tricky. Be honest. Come clean. “Mark Dobson.”
“Passport?”
My foresight was spot on. I’d just used my Dobson passport and was sitting there as a tourist on a twenty-eight-day visa. I handed it over, and the officer flipped through pages and pages of immigration stamps as Anna, at last, gave me a faint smile, perhaps grateful that more questions about who I was had been avoided.
I didn’t get my passport back, though. It was handed to one of the others who also flipped pages. “Can I ask what’s going on?” I said.
It was Anna who answered that. She spoke to the officer in Thai, as if she needed his permission. He nodded, and then she turned to me. It was not a long explanation but long enough to explain her flimsy shorts and dirty tee shirt. My response? Silence, a nodding of my head, an apology and an almost uncontrollable desire to comfort her.
She again turned to the officer, spoke in Thai and then turned back to me. “Police Colonel Somyot says I am to be the interpreter,” she said.
“He speaks some English but not so well as me.”
I nodded.
“I have explained something about you and what this is about. That is why I came to top police office and not to the small police office at the bus station. Understand?”
I nodded.
“I was then moved from the office downstairs to here. Colonel Somyot is in charge. Afterwards, we might go to another office even higher up. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“You must now explain your job, who you work for and why you are here. Not too complicated, OK?”
I looked at the officer sitting opposite who nodded and, I think, stifled a smile. So, I began as short an explanation as I could. When I’d finished, he turned to Anna again, presumably satisfied with what I’d just said.
“Good,” Ana said. “What you have said agrees with what I have said.
Have you any questions?”
“Have the Thai police received requests from Interpol for the detention and arrest of Greg O’Brian, an American citizen, on charges of fraud, embezzlement, and money laundering.”
“Yes,” Anna said. “Next question.”
“What about Mohamed Kader, an Egyptian citizen and David Solomon, a British citizen?”
“No.”
“Do they know that all three were in Bangkok earlier today?”
“Yes, I told them,” Anna said. “They were in our hotel, Mark. Do you not understand? While you were in Singapore and flying around everywhere, I have been trying to explain everything, Mark. Do you not understand? I have even given them Solomon’s address and told them to investigate.”
“Have they?”
“I don’t know,” she snapped. “Maybe not yet”
I was now struggling to understand exactly what the police were doing or how much they knew. The fact that Colonel Somyot and his two assistants were tapping pencils and looking at one another as if they were enjoying listening to an amusing domestic confrontation was disturbing. “I called Colin,” Anna said. “He is very cross with you.”
“I know.”
“Colin then emailed the report he’d written. It arrived here two hours ago. It is somewhere here,” she said, waving her arms around. “But they will not show it to me. They say it is confidential, and that people are still reading it and that it is very technical. Then they said they needed to talk to you. It seems to me that their job is to find GOB, and that’s it. They do not believe everything about this virus, and I have been getting very mad with them.”
Poor guys, I thought.
“And what did you do in Singapore? Did you see that woman again?”
“Caroline? I spoke to her on the phone.”
“And what is she doing? They are all very hopeless. I am so mad.”
“She will intercept the boxes of virus before they reach Shah Medicals in Singapore.”
“Did you have lunch with her?”
“No.”
“Do you have Colin’s report?”
“Yes.”
“Then give it to me. I know it is in English, but I am so fed up with people not listening to me.”
I produced it from my bag, and Anna grabbed it. I could tell from her face that she was warming up to a full-blown tirade. Now she looked straight at Police Colonel Somyot and flapped Colin’s report at him.
As he backed away, she stood up, her chair almost falling over. Then I listened. What more could I do?
It was all said in super-fast Thai as she continued to flap Colin’s report and all I could do was pick out words and phrases as she threw in names and stabbed at parts of Colin’s report with all its arrows and circles. I heard Interpol, American president, Senator Mary Collis, British government, biological warfare, SARS, viruses, many people dying, Solomon, terrorism, laboratory, Dr Vichai, Mohamed Kader, El Badry, Shah Pharmacy, Egypt, Singapore, Nigeria, Kenya and Jimmy Banda.
It was at that point that I grabbed her hand to make her stop for a moment. “Anna,” I said. “Jimmy’s dead. He was shot. Colin told me this morning.”
Anna had never met Jimmy.
All she had to go on was my description of him as a man who had helped me in Nairobi and who I was deeply worried about. But it was as if she’d known him as a close friend. Her hand went to her mouth to stifle something, and tears overflowed from her eyes. What else could I do? I put my arms around her, pulled her towards me, and embedded my entire face in her long hair and sweaty tee shirt. But I was only allowed a few seconds.
She broke free, her eyes red with tears and anger.
“Do you see?” she said angrily in English, pointing a finger straight at Police Colonel Somyot and his two supporters. “Somebody is dead.
With gun. By this man O’Brian, this man Kader, and this man Solomon. You want me to die? Everyone to die? You want to die?
You want your family to get sick and die? Why does no one listen?
Why all this paper? Why?”
She stopped suddenly, looked back at me, and I took it as my cue.
“Sir,” I said to Colonel Somyot. “Anna is right. That report has gone as high as it can go. We can translate it into Thai if you wish. I can have it ready by tomorrow, but the man David Solomon is a scientist.
He is a world expert on viruses. This virus is his invention. He created it. It is designed to kill people. I saw him last night. Anna saw him this morning. He was with Greg O’Brian and Mohamed Kader. The least you can do is raid Solomon’s apartment and check it out because I believe that is where Solomon works. If it was thought to be a bomb factory or full of narcotics, you would raid it. You would act now. But it is not a bomb factory, and there are no narcotics. What is inside is more dangerous. Your officers need to be very careful.”
As I was speaking, another police officer came in, and I waited for him to hand another sheet of paper to Somyot. Somyot glanced at it, dismissed the messenger, and then stood up. The other two joined him.
“OK, sir,” he said in surprisingly good English. “We now have the report. Senior officers and other people have also seen it. The government has seen it. We have arrest warrants.”
He paused as I marvelled at his English. Colonel Somyot had heard and understood everything so far. He’d even witnessed an accusation that, amongst the rest of the day’s events, I’d also found time to have lunch with another woman in Singapore.
“Unfortunately,” Somyot continued, “the one called Solomon took a flight to Kuala Lumpur. We are working with the Malaysian police on this and have officers preparing to enter his apartment. If you would like to stay here for a few moments,” he continued, “I can confirm everything. We will also provide any security you feel you might need until this process is complete. Please excuse me while I report what you and your wife have just told me.”
I looked at Anna. Wife? What had she told him?
Anna and I waited patiently but barely talked. I had so much to discuss with her, but I supposed it was because we both expected Somyot to return at any moment.
When he did return, I had another question for him. It was one I should have asked earlier but I’d been too distracted by Anna being referred to as my wife.
“You said that Solomon had flown to Kuala Lumpur,” I said. “And that you are liaising with Malaysian police.”
“Yes,” Somyot replied.
“And you mentioned you have arrest warrants.”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me the names?”
He checked some papers. “Mr Gregory O’Brian and Mr Mohamed Kader.”
“Thank you. Do you know where these men are?”
“No. We are now checking.”
That bothered me. If Solomon had already left Thailand for Kuala Lumpur, then why not O’Brian and Kader?”
Two hours later, we checked into a nearby hotel with a police guard. I thought it unnecessary, but Anna insisted. “What if Solomon comes back?” she asked.
I didn’t tell her, but I knew from Colin’s flight tracking that he’d arrived in Kuala Lumpur but then flown on to Cairo.