She sat down, then hopped up again and did a fast two-step. “This State Department cat mentioned something about going to Vietnam to entertain the troops, and Jimmy wanted to know which side. He said he’d rather entertain the Vietcong. Then the little State Department cat got very much up tight about things, like his face was bleached, and Kendall told him Jimmy was just joking, that it was his sense of humor. Mr. State Department gave the kind of laugh that means he didn’t think it was funny, but everything stayed cool. After he split, Kendall was about ready to kill Jimmy for almost queering the whole arrangement. Jimmy said he didn’t like to compromise his political beliefs, and Kendall said that for a tour of the Far East he’d paint himself red, white, and blue if they wanted. Do you think it’s true what they say about Oriental men?”
“I thought it was Oriental girls that they say it about and I don’t think it’s true anyway.”
“Well, I suspect I’ll find out.”
“Oh, I’m sure you will.”
She sat down again. “Now you know I’ll always be true to you, Bwana Evan.”
“Oh, will you?”
“Mmmm.”
I saw her plane off at Kennedy Airport. There was a postcard from Manila, another from Tokyo, and a third from Hong Kong. I finished up the doctoral thesis, went to more meetings, and did a lot of reading. Then I got an odd letter from Bangkok:
Bwana Evan:
Bangkok is a gas but the bread is running low. It looks as though I’ll maybe have to sell my jewelry. As you know I have a very valuable collection. Do you have contacts that will prove helpful? Please let me know.
My first reaction – that Tuppence had lost her mind somewhere between New York and Bangkok – gave way to a feeling of general bewilderment. When one lives in a world of secret societies and underground political movements, and does odd jobs for a nameless U.S. undercover agency, one becomes accustomed to finding meanings in apparently meaningless messages. I read her letter over and over and decided that, if there was any hidden kernel of sense to it, I couldn’t spot it for the time being. Tuppence had a pair of long gold hoop earrings, and as far as I knew, that was the extent of her jewelry. Obviously jewelry was a euphemism for something, but I didn’t know what, and in the meantime there was nothing to do about it. We had joked about getting her a ruby to wear in her navel. Maybe that was what she was referring to. I didn’t know, and I stopped thinking about it.
Until two days later The Times ran a story on page five that stated that the Royal Gem Collection of Thailand had been stolen in its entirety, that the thief or thieves had made good their escape, that it may or may not have been an inside job, and that preliminary estimates placed the value of the gems in excess of a quarter of a million dollars.
And a day after that, while I was still recovering from that one, Tuppence and the quartet made the front page of The Times. Thai Communists Kidnap American Jazz Quartet, Kenyan Singer, said the headline, and the body copy went on to elaborate. The Kendall Bayard Quartet and Miss T’pani Ngawa, in Bangkok for a command performance before His Majesty the King of Thailand, had been snatched from their accommodations at the Hotel Orient. The kidnapping appeared to be the work of Communist guerrillas based in Northern Thailand, and it was suspected that the five kidnap victims had been spirited away to the north.
The Times made no connection between the disappearance of Tuppence and the quartet and the theft of the royal gem collection.
But I did.
Chapter 3
“This is for plague,” the doctor said. “Wouldn’t care to get that, would you, now? Little red blotches, black boils under your arms, altogether most unpleasant. Never had a case of plague myself. Think everyone ought to get inoculated against it, whether traveling or not. Suppose the enemy used germ warfare, eh? Wouldn’t be enough serum to go around. But an ounce of prevention…”
He stuck an ounce of prevention into my left arm. It hurt but seemed a healthy alternative to bubonic plague. He extracted the needle and dabbed at me with a cotton swab.
“Now the other arm. That’s right, good. Rather give you the shots a week apart so as to leave you with one workable arm, but time is of the essence, isn’t that what they say? This one’s for cholera, and it’s rather a massive inoculation, isn’t it? Now, all that serum has to go into your arm. Size of the needle worries a good many people. It doesn’t bother you, now, does it?”
“Uh,” I said.
“Nasty business, cholera. Dreary thing. With a decent public health program, every man, woman, and child in America would be inoculated against it. Imagine what a little flask of cholera bacilli in a reservoir would do. Eh? Thousands of people burning up with fever, dying like flies in the city streets. Makes you think, doesn’t it?”
He emptied the syringe into my right arm. It was worse than the plague shot. After he removed the needle and swabbed the puncture, I concentrated very hard and managed to wiggle my fingers. I felt very proud of myself.
“Let’s see, now,” he said. “How long since your last rabies shot?”
“Pardon?”
“Rabies. Hydrophobia. Hellish proposition, that. Get yourself bitten by a dog, and you have to take the Pasteur series. Dreadfully painful. Some fourteen injections into the stomach, and if you happen to be allergic to the Pasteur shots, why, they kill you. And if you wait for symptoms of rabies to develop, by the time they appear, then death is inevitable. And one simple injection every two or three years provides complete immunity.”
“Somehow I don’t think-”
“One shot does the trick. Of course no one expects to get bitten by a dog. Doesn’t have to be a dog. Squirrels, foxes, raccoons – anything. Rabies is endemic in skunks, for example. Bet you never knew that.”
I hadn’t.
“Don’t even have to get bitten. Take a walk through a bat-infested cave and you can pick up the disease from bat droppings. Just breathe it in, never even know you’re exposed until it’s too late. Grisly.”
“I don’t have an arm left.”
“Don’t give the shot in the arm. Base of the brain, same as with a dog. Good protection.”
“I don’t think-”
“Every dog gets it, and they don’t complain. Only take a minute.”
I managed to get out of there without his sticking a needle into my head. Both arms ached, and his conversation had very nearly turned my stomach. I walked quickly home. I passed half a dozen dogs en route, ranging in size from a miniature poodle who yipped nervously to a Doberman who maintained a watchful silence. I gave them all a wide berth and didn’t get bitten once.
Basic arrangements were simple enough. My greatest problem was Minna, who of course wanted to come along. Tuppence was her friend, she insisted. She liked Tuppence and wanted to help her. Besides, I might get into trouble without her assistance. I would never be able to visit the Bangkok children’s zoo.
Once she realized that nothing would persuade me to take her, she decided she could manage in the apartment by herself. She had friends in the building, she assured me, and her presence would facilitate such matters as the proper reception of mail and phone messages. I packed a suitcase for her and bundled her onto the subway, and we rode to Brooklyn, where a girl named Kitty Bazerian lives with her mother and grandmother. Kitty bellydances in Chelsea nightclubs as Alexandra the Great, and had already met and liked Minna. She was generally at home during the daytime, she told me, and her mother, a waitress, was home nights, and her grandmother, confined to a wheelchair, was home all the time.
Minna endured the subway ride stoically, walked through the streets of Brooklyn with the contempt of a native-born Manhattanite, and then became quite enchanted with the notion of spending a few weeks with Kitty and her family. The grandmother would teach her Armenian, she announced, and the mother would teach her to make Armenian coffee, and Kitty would teach her to dance.