Then Porter had lucked out. A priest, a friend of Porter’s for many years, heard that Porter was looking for this man, Wol Pot.
‘It is probably nothing,’ he said, but a man, no longer a youth, has joined the Wat Sakhet, and has been seen to leave the grounds every night.’
Strange behavior, since the discipline at the monastery was quite rigid though purely voluntary.
‘When did he enter the monastery?’ Porter asked.
‘Only two days ago. That is why his conduct seems strange,’ the priest answered.
‘Khob khun krap,’ Porter said, thanking the priest. ‘May I ask you not to discipline him until I check him out?’
The priest agreed. It was a long shot, Porter thought, but certainly a clever deception if it was Wol Pot. Porter was familiar with the demands made upon neophyte monks of Theravada Buddhism. One of the most familiar sights in Thailand was the hundreds of saffron-robed Naen with their shaven heads wandering the streets and meditating in the city’s hundreds of wats, the monasteries or temples that were the most common structures in the country. When he first came to Bangkok, Porter had found the monks an annoyance; they reminded him of the Hare Krishnas who had turned most of the airports in the United States into a bizarre distortion of the wats. But while he did not pretend to understand the mysteries of Eastern religion, he had gradually come to accept and respect these dedicated men.
During the rainy season of late summer and early fall, the ranks of these monasteries were swelled by thousands of young men. It was a tradition for them to enter the wats, sometimes for two weeks, sometimes for six months, and learn the virtues of an ascetic life free of material possessions. While there, they were obligated to adhere to 227 strict rules, abstaining from lying, idle talk, and indulgence in sex, intoxicants, luxuries and frivolous amusements. Their only possessions were the familiar saffron robe and a brass alms bowl, with which they b egged the two meals a day allowed by the order. Their stay was a matter of personal dedication, nothing prevented them from leaving whenever they wished. But while they were pledged to the order, they had to adhere to its demands. At night they prayed in the wat and went to bed with the sunset, arising before dawn to go on the Street with their brass bowls to seek their first meal of the day.
Since the wats were open to everyone and monks were free to travel from one to another, it was an ingenious place to hide, particularly now when so many were in the order.
That night Porter had stationed himself across from the temple with its great golden dome and waited. Sure enough, just after sunset he saw the yellow-robed monk slip out of the temple. Porter followed the little man, who trotted about a mile to Hua Lamphong, the main train station, where he kept clothes in a locker. He changed in the rest room. When he emerged, dressed in a Western suit, Porter recognized him immediately as Wol Pot. The Thai took a cab and doubled back to Yawaraj, Chinese Town, where he ate dinner in a small nondescript restaurant in the old section. Having satisfied his hunger, he strolled down to Klong Phadung, one of the many canals that branch off the Mae Nam Chao Phraya, the main river that defines the western edge of the city, and there Pot negotiated a price with a tiny teenage prostitute, one of many ‘water babies’ who sold their wares from hang yao, long tail boats discreetly covered by bamboo sheds. Pot spent an hour with the young woman, then returned to the train station, switched back to his robe, and was back at the monastery by midnight.
It was a ritual with Pot, one that bored Porter, although he followed Pot every night, leaving only when the Thai was safely back in his hiding place.
Porter was a little irritated on this night, for he had hoped to turn over his nightly vigil to the new man, Hatcher. He wasn’t sure he could trust Hatcher. He was Sloan’s man, and Porter never liked Sloan, never liked the shadow wars he fought, breaking all the rules and operating outside what Porter felt were proper military parameters. But it was Sloan’s game now, and since Hatcher had not shown yet, Porter had to continue the loose surveillance himself, making sure Pot didn’t slip away into the night and vanish again, this time for good.
If Pot was coming out, he would leave the Buddhist monastery soon after the sun died. Porter lit a British 555 cigarette and waited.
The street was quiet. There was very little traffic, and the din of the city was a like a murder in Porter’s ears. An elderly woman scurried up to the spirit house adjacent to the Wat Sakhet, placed a wreath of jasmine in front of the prayer station, stuck several sticks of incense in the ground and lit them. Then she clasped her hands together and swayed back and forth for several minutes, invoking the generosity of the spirits. Porter wondered what she was asking for. A healthy new grandchild? A good crop of poppies? A winning lottery ticket?
His thoughts were interrupted by the appearance of Wol Pot. A door in the side of the temple opened just wide enough for Pot to slip through. Porter killed his cigarette and watched the little man as he huddled in the shadows, looking around nervously, then started off toward the station. Porter fell in behind him, keeping far enough back so Pot would not be suspicious. He was concentrating so hard on Pot, he did not notice the other two men who fell in behind the Thai.
They were Chinese, small and wiry, dressed in the stark black shirt and pants that many Chinese affect. They followed Pot to the train station, where he changed into civilian clothes, and from there to the edge of the Yawaraj. Pot got out of the cab and strolled down cluttered Worachak Road, one of Chinese Town’s main thoroughfares. As he turned and headed down into the noisy, cramped alleys of Chinese Town, the two Chinese split up, each taking one side of the street. Pot strolled down through the twisting, neon-lit alleys while the two worked both sides of the street behind him. It wasn’t until Pot entered a tiny restaurant in an alley off Bowrong Street that the pair realized that Porter also was tailing Wol Pot.
One of the Chinese was in his early twenties with long blow-dried hair and a trace of a mustache. The other was older, his face scarred and angry. A sharp cut separated his right eyebrow, and the eye below it was partially closed by the same old wound. He was the leader, and it was he who spotted Porter. He had seen the husky American in front of the train station and now he saw- him again, getting out of the cab just behind Pot. He nudged his partner and nodded toward the other side of the street, where Porter was checking the restaurant while mock window- shopping. When Pot was seated, Porter entered a small noodle shop across the street from the restaurant, found a seat near the front window, and ordered something to eat while he kept an eye on the Thai.
The two Chinese became as interested in Porter as they were in Pot. They decided to split up again, the younger one following the American while Split-eye stayed with the Thai. They had just begun following Wol Pot that day and were not familiar with his nightly habits. But Split-eye had little respect for him. Pot had successfully eluded them and found a perfect hiding place, then blown it all by going into Chinatown to eat, the most likely place in the city for him to be recognized. Now it looked as if the American had also blown Pot’s cover. The Thai was smart, but he also appeared to be stupidly reckless.