Her thoughts had so engrossed her en route to the pier closest to Thammasart University that she barely noticed the thunder and pelting rain which drove a hot scent off the asphalt and had soaked through her clothes in seconds. A three-wheeled gas-driven taxi known as a samlor pulled up alongside her.
“Need a ride, miss?” the rain-soaked driver asked her.
Natalya was about to beg off when she realized the man had addressed her in English.
“And might you offer a suggestion as to where I should go?” she answered in Russian.
He smiled, teeth full and white. “The floating market, miss, of course!” In Russian.
Natalya climbed into the back of the samlor. The driver started off, leaning on his horn to clear the muddied streets of the hordes spilling off the sidewalk.
No further words were exchanged. Natalya knew now that the route to Katlov would be long and intricate; the defector from Raskowski’s ranks was not about to take chances. The complexity was unnerving yet reassuring. Precautions had been taken. The chances of a run-in with the general’s people seemed substantially reduced.
The nameless samlor driver delivered her to Taa Phra Chan Pier. In the klong below sat endless rows of rickety boats with single drivers waiting for potential fares. They began beckoning to Natalya as soon as they saw her approach.
“I will handle everything, miss,” the driver whispered and led her to a boat near the end of the row. Its driver sat placidly in the stern with a straw hat tipped over his eyes.
“Aye!”
The boatman pushed his straw hat back, and Natalya saw he had no front teeth. The samlor driver helped her down into the bow.
“Thonburi Floating Market,” he told the boatman in Thai. “And be quick about it.”
The boatman started to ease out from the pier, and minutes later they were drifting slowly south, their boat hugging the side to keep the center clear for larger boat traffic. Much of the city of Bangkok is crisscrossed by canals known as klongs, some as wide as a street, others barely two meters, and many marked for extinction by the demand for more roadways. Many of the klongs are lined by shops where the tourist can dock his boat at a private jetty. The klongs recede deep into the Thonburi district, where they finally reach the floating market: a collection of narrow skiffs packed to the brim with fresh fruits and vegetables advertised with screams and shouts by the boat merchants seeking to sell them. Cheap jewelry and pottery are available as well.
In years past the floating market was a necessary element for survival in Bangkok. Locals did all their shopping there, and the ebb and flow of the economy was tied directly to the weather. But more recently it has become a tourist attraction more than anything else.
The Thonburi Market lies within a serpentine collection of narrower klongs in the northwest section of Bangkok. Natalya saw the first of the shops thirty minutes into the ride. If the weather had been better, boat traffic would have been as thick as a New York rush hour. The rain, though, had kept most tourists away, and Natalya’s boatman was able to easily negotiate through the waters.
The rain had slackened to barely a drizzle as Natalya’s boatman pulled to a halt next to an old woman selling an assorted collection of fresh vegetables. The boatman spoke with the old woman briefly, and she proceeded to pack one box full of her best merchandise.
“Baht 500,” her toothless driver called to Natalya.
She handed him the proper collection of bills and he exchanged them for the box of vegetables, stowing it just before Natalya as he swung his craft back around.
“Your next instructions are inside,” he said in English, not looking at her.
Natalya eased herself forward and removed the top of the box. When no note was immediately visible, she began to move the vegetables aside until a sheet of yellowed paper was revealed. She left it in the box as she read.
Dusit Hall of the Royal Palace.
Natalya sighed. The grounds of the Royal Palace were located back near Taa Phra Chan Pier, where she had embarked for the floating market. She was being run around in a circle, but she was in Katlov’s hands and subject totally to his whims.
The toothless boatman deposited her in almost the very spot he had picked her up, and Natalya walked the short distance to the Gate of Wonderful Victory from which a wide street led into the outer courtyard of the Royal Palace. There were more than a hundred individual buildings situated on the grounds, starting with a number of government-occupied ones. As she moved further into the complex, the buildings grew older and richer in history.
Dusit Hall was an art gallery located within Dusit Maham Prasad, an elegant white building. The hall was actually a large inner chamber, the only part of this building open to visitors. She walked about past the various paintings, murals, and statues, trying to keep herself patient. Suddenly a blue-suited Asian was at her side readying his camera before a massive painting.
“Your next stop is the Wat Phra Kaeo,” he said, regarding her briefly. “Go to the Chapel of the Emerald Buddha.”
The man snapped a series of pictures and moved on. Natalya turned and headed back for the door.
The Wat Phra Kaeo was the most sacred of all buildings in Thailand, accessible through a side gate from the palace courtyard. Natalya paid a separate admission and was immediately awed by what lay before her. The complex, with gold-layered domes and pillars of white marble, was like nothing else here. Its beauty lay in its simplicity, as if it had been built with humility but with great reverence to the spirit housed within.
Natalya passed down a long corridor lined with murals, at the end of which lay a staircase flanked by bronze lions. Visitors were requested to remove their shoes before proceeding up and Natalya complied. At the top, directly before the entrance to Buddha’s chamber, a larger pair of lions maintained their eternal vigil between golden pillars. Natalya walked between them and into the chamber.
Before her rose the pale-green jasper statue of Buddha. Beneath a nine-tier canopy, he was huge and breathtaking, garbed in his summer shoulder cloak and headpiece. The crowd in the chamber was small — just a few tourists circling about and a Buddhist monk kneeling on a cushion before the statue. Natalya paced leisurely around, finally drawing near the monk who turned his head toward her.
“Come closer.”
The words had been spoken in Russian! Katlov!
“Kneel on one of the cushions,” he continued. “Act as if you’re praying,” he added when she was kneeling. “No, better yet, pray for real. The world could use it.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Natalya said softly, glancing over at Katlov’s face, which was framed by his orange robes. She saw he wore a patch over his left eye.
“Don’t look at me,” he ordered. “Keep your eyes on the Buddha. Lean over. Pray. Do it!”
Again Natalya obeyed, but her impatience got the better of her. She whispered, “Enough precautions.”
“No! With Raskowski, there can never be enough.” Katlov silenced himself as an American woman with twin daughters passed just behind them. “The general is everywhere in this city. Everything I’ve put you through today reflects that. Believe me, it was for both our sakes.”
“You have been with him from the beginning?”
“Yes, under the auspices of the Scientific Bureau working on the Alpha project. I had a different name back then, a different identity. He insisted I become who I am now when I followed him in exile.”