Gamehouse 02 - The Thief Page 8

  “He’s just a monk, darling,” whispers the man.

  “Can’t we go to another compartment?”

  “Darling, you’re making a fuss – we can’t always avoid the natives.”

  With a grunt, the wife settles down in the seat as far away from Remy as she can, while her husband positions himself between them as a form of shield. He looks at Remy and smiles, proclaiming in extraordinarily accented Thai, “Good morning.”

  “Good morning,” Remy replies in the same language, pressing his palms together, and turning away to look out of the window before they can see his own smile.

  A world outside. Motion without movement. Workers resting beneath the shade of a banana tree. Mangos rotting on the earth. Nets thrown into a river by stick-skinny girls. The banging of the gong from temple. Many stops, waiting for another train to clear the narrowest point in the track ahead. Sometimes the rain falls; sometimes the skies clear, brilliant blue flecked with white that turns black again as quickly as the clouds parted, and turns the distant hills and fields to dusty grey.

  The British man says:

  “Can’t trust these people, these Siamese, to do anything. Can’t trust them to get a job done. ‘Tomorrow,’ they say, and then the next day: ‘Tomorrow.’ You ask what the hold-up is and they say, ‘I’ll do it tomorrow,’ and when you insist they say, ‘I need to order a part.’ Why didn’t they order it yesterday? ‘I’ll do it tomorrow,’ they reply, and that is the end of the argument! No, better off with a Chink. Hard worker, your average Chink, but wily too, will rob you if you blink but if you show him who’s master, make it clear you’re not having any funny business, they’ll do all right by you. Your Malay is the laziest of the lot, but responds well to the rod, but your Jap! Gotta admire a Jap, you have. Damn me if the blighters aren’t almost like us!”

  Remy listens, his face turned away, and says nothing at all.

  He is still as the train moves.

  He is motion.

  He is a fixed point on the earth.

  He is the earth as it turns.

  He is here.

  He is everywhere.

  He is nothing at all.

  As they pull into Bangkok, the rain is falling from black skies, the drops so fat and hard they bounce off the skin, exploding off the heads of people running for shelter. Remy leans out of the compartment window and sees a queue stretching away from the platform’s edge.

  Soldiers, two dozen or more, stopping every man and woman who try to pass them by. Remy looks up the other end of the platform, but there are more men, armed, watched over by the great benevolent portrait of the king which hangs high above; all eyes turn to the train from Chiang Mai.

  With a little intake of breath, he pulls himself back into the compartment, while the Englishman and his wife mutter together.

  “He looks funny…” whispers the wife.

  “Darling, you can’t say that.”

  “But he does…”

  …as they climb off the train.

  Terror now in Remy’s breast. He has walked across half of Thailand only to return to Bangkok but his movements, it seems, have been predicted, his presence marked. How did Abhik know? How did Abhik come to monitor this station?

  He sits breathless in the compartment of the slowly emptying train and realises he doesn’t know what to do. Stay on the train a while longer, see if it will carry him north again? Run and hide? Make a break for it? If he makes a break for it and is seen, his plan will be ruined, the whole purpose of this dangerous exercise destroyed. Getting on the trains was an operation in opportunities, an expansion of options, no longer this section of wilderness or that area of farmland could he be in, but wherever the trains roamed, Padang to Nong Khai. Yet here were soldiers, waiting in Bangkok, and it can only be that his ruse has not worked!

  The conductor came along the carriage, checking each compartment, calling for the last stop. At his approach, Remy pretended to doze, an instinctive move, and the conductor called him briskly awake, telling him to get off the train. He nodded and smiled and made to gather his things as the conductor walked by, shuffling into the corridor with no idea where to go.

  Blend into the crowd? Hope that the soldiers guarding the platform were working to an old description: a bearded foreigner, a man in tattered clothes, a wounded stranger?

  A great danger, but what alternative did he have? He pulled his hat down lower upon his head, put his hand upon the door, took a deep breath and heard a voice call his name.

  “I say, Remy,” it said, “you do look extraordinary.”

  Chapter 32

  A moment to pity – shall we pity – Abhik Lee?

  Poor old Abhik, you thought victory would be so easy! Remy Burke, an indulged, pampered player, who drinks too much and talks too easily. You had him chalked up as an armchair general, a great player of games of risk and the stock exchange, a wily gambler who knows how to deploy his troops and diplomats by telegram and hastily scrawled letter, but not a runner. Not a man who could run, who could hide, who could stay hidden. You misread your opponent, Abhik Lee, and we are glad.

  What a merry runaround you have been given! You scoured Nakhon Sawan, tore through the forests to the north, sent scouts into farms and villages, boats onto lakes, soldiers onto trains. You pestered the police chief of Phrae so much the man started crying at you down the telephone, only for word to come from Lampang – Lampang of all places! – that a man matching your quarry’s description was seen buying train tickets to both Bangkok and Chiang Mai!

  Then you had to reposition in a terrible hurry, soldiers to one end of the line, policemen to the others, spies in all the trains in between. You raced across the country to Lampang, but by the time you were there, your quarry was in Chiang Mai, and by the time you reached Chiang Mai, your target was gone. Yet close: so close! So close you have come, you can feel it, you know you have been almost close enough to touch (at your best moment since he fled Bangkok, you have only been three miles away) yet somehow still Remy, indolent, indulged Remy, has slipped through your net.

  Where is he now?

  Over three hundred miles between Chiang Mai and Bangkok, who knows where he jumped from the train?

  But you are persistent, Abhik Lee; you have a plan.

  That must be why you left the troops in place at either end of the line.

  Chapter 33

  “Won’t you come in?”

  Remy turned to see the source of the voice which called his name, speaking confident French, from the open door of the compartment next to his.

  The owner of the voice was neither young nor old, neither remarkable nor plain, but rather of that middling sort that is nothing at all, of no country, no time, no place. We have seen him before, you and I, right when the game began, and can give him a name, and call him Silver.

  “The conductor won’t bother us for a little while,” he added with a smile as Remy hesitated in the corridor. “He’s not as interested in his job as he pretends.”

  Slowly, head still half turned towards the teeming platform, Remy slipped into the compartment, and Silver pulled the door shut behind him, settling down in a seat away from the window.

  For a while, the two men regarded each other, and said not a word.

  “There’s a price I’m going to ask,” said Silver at last.

  “A price?”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of price, and for what service?”

  “I would have thought the service was obvious,” replied Silver, hands resting across his folded legs. “I will get you out of this station, and in Wiang Sa district in three days’ time, a man will see a foreigner who matches your description walking through the woods. That should buy you a little time to do those things that you have come here to do.”

  “And what things have I come here to do?” he asked.

  Silver shrugged. “None of my business, old thing.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “I have some resources.”
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  “Why would you help me?”

  “I am not interested in seeing you lose.”

  “That is…unusual for a player. The Gameshouse promotes the victory of the strongest: that is its very purpose. The weak fall and new challengers arise; the games grow more complicated, the stakes evolving with time. If it is my time…”

  “It is not,” replied Silver quickly. “That is…I do not consider this game you are playing to be balanced. Hide-and-seek is an ancient game with a fine tradition, but the context of this match is not fairly suited. The lesser player is going to defeat the stronger one because the board was skewed to this effect.”

  “I took the bet, Silver; no one forced me.”

  “Indeed, that was reckless of you, and only you can carry the responsibility of that particular indiscretion. But the very wager you made is telling. If you win, you get some snippets of life; not as much in the grand scheme of what I know you have already won. If Abhik wins, he takes your memories, and such memories they are, Remy! With his ambition and your experience, Abhik Lee could be a phenomenal player, stronger than almost any other in the higher league. And the game – hide-and-seek in a country where everything about you, your present fashionable attire apart, makes it nearly impossible for you to hide? You are a good player, Remy, no one would deny it, but I have some sense of the cards Abhik Lee has been dealt, and I would wager that when you receive your cards, they are of a lesser sort. That is not in keeping with the spirit of the Gameshouse, and things which are not in keeping interest me. Do you know why Abhik is so interested in beating you?”

  “I cannot imagine.”

  “Have you played him before?”

  “Not at a higher league game, no.”

  “But at a lower one?”

  “We played poker once.”

  “Who won? You?”

  “I had a lucky hand.”

  Silver’s smile briefly withered into a scowl. “‘Luck’ is a dangerous concept in the Gameshouse.”

  “Nevertheless. I needed a straight and got one against the laws of probability.”

  “I cannot imagine the game swung on this one moment.”

  “It did not but it was a big bet towards the latter parts of the game and the hand which, I think, broke Abhik’s will to victory.”

  “What did he lose?”

  “Money, nothing more.”

  “No life, no sense, no memory, no emotion, no…?”

  “It was a lower league game, Silver,” Remy barked harder than he’d meant, eyes flickering again to the rapidly emptying platform outside. “We didn’t play for anything that mattered.”

  Silence in the carriage. Outside, the rain hammered on the roof of the station and the last of the train’s passengers were shuffled through the cordon of men. A captain, looking to have a bright idea, gestured a few of his men onto the train, starting at the engine, moving down the carriages, checking each door, every nook, just to be secure.

  Remy shifted uneasily in his chair. “You mentioned a price,” he murmured.

  “Yes, so I did.”

  “You can get me through the station undetected?”

  “I can, and spread a little of a false trail for you – not much, not so much that anyone could say it was cheating.”

  “And in return?”

  “I will need you to show mercy to someone, when the day comes.”

  “That doesn’t sound so hard – what’s the catch?”

  “You’ll be very afraid when you have to do it.”

  Silence. A leak in the roof of the station let a thin trickle of water fall, like a rattling string, into a growing puddle. A seller of bananas was hustled on by a soldier who hadn’t received a bribe. A child cried, frightened of the engine. Silver waited; Remy stared at nothing until at last a little smile spreads across his face.

  “You’re afraid of Abhik Lee,” he murmured.

  Silver raised his eyebrows and said nothing.

  “You already admitted it. His ambition, my memories – he would indeed be a deadly player. Perhaps good enough to challenge you.”

  “He would lose if he challenged me,” replied the other, a sharpness breaking through the good-humour in his voice. “But as a piece in someone else’s hand, he could present…an inconvenience…in larger games.”

  “To prevent him, you help the lesser player?”

  “You are not the lesser player, Remy.”

  “Am I not? As I said: I chose this game. That already makes me weak.”

  “Weak in Abhik’s mind, perhaps,” he replied. “Abhik thinks that a game can only be won with ruthlessness and calculation. Were this chess, he would be right, but you, Remy, you have the greatest gift of a higher league player – you remember that your pieces are human. At a superficial level, some might say that makes you kind, but I would suggest it makes you beautiful. To play people is a vastly more elegant skill than mere number-counting.”

  Silence. Remy lent back in his chair, fingers folded together, lips pursed. Outside, a soldier called to another, “On me – come, come, let’s look.”

  Silver spoke a little faster, eyes flickering to the compartment door. “There are…anomalies…in the Gameshouse. We tell ourselves that the games we play are fun, sport, selfish, merriment. But we play with countries. We command armies. We toy with economic goods, with ideas and men. We have crowned kings, toppled tyrants, guided generals to a victory that would not otherwise have been their own. We have, through our merriment, shaped human history, altered it, changed the fate of men. The structure of our activities as a game, a sport, gives us great advantages. We have a ruthlessness, an intellectual vigour, which might be denied from a queen who was fearful for the welfare of her son, or a captain who had grown to love his men. To us, these things are merely pieces, resources to be moved to the greatest effect, and from this brutal mathematics, we pluck victory where there might otherwise have been defeat. All for the game. And where does that game come from? Who puts the pieces in our hands, shows the board, umpires the event? Why, she does. The Gamesmaster. She controls us because she controls the board, and though the Gameshouse claims that all its games are even, sometimes you can find a flaw. A competition to crown a king where the players are not evenly matched, or the pieces are handicapped without this disadvantage being declared. A player who is dealt a general where you only received a major. She drew Russia; you only found Belgium in your hand. A challenge which should not have been accepted – terms struck which should not have been agreed to, and sometimes the Gameshouse intervenes and sometimes it does not, and for a house that lives by rules, I have yet to see reasons given as to why. Why did the house let you bet your mind, Remy? It is not an even wager. Why did it let you take a bet in a country where your very face was a handicap of almost insurmountable difficulties? Umpires have intervened to prevent lesser imbalances; why not now?”

  A sound at the end of the carriage – soldiers voices, boots, the opening of compartment doors.

  Remy said, his eyes not leaving Silver’s face, “I chose this. This was my mistake.”

  “Perhaps it was. Perhaps I am wrong. Or perhaps we are merely pieces in the Gamesmaster’s hand, and she has decided to discard you for someone new.”

  Voices in the carriage, nearer. Remy didn’t move, hands together, breath soft. “So you are going to challenge her. You are going to play the great game.”

  A moment in which Silver didn’t answer, his eyes darting upwards in search of thought. Then he looked back at Remy and smiled, and said simply, “Yes. Do we have an accord?”

  The door to the compartment opened. Two soldiers stood framed in it. “Who are you? Why you are here?” they barked,. “What are you doing?”

  And then, seeing Silver’s pale face and Remy’s too:

  “You are the foreigners! Put your hands up now! Get up! Get off the train!”

  The two of them moved slowly off the train, hands on their heads, the soldiers poking them from behind. They stood on the platform and waited while
one man fetched the captain, and then two men returned.

  The captain looked into Remy’s face and nodded in understanding. Then his gaze turned and he looked into Silver’s eyes, and his expression froze.

  “Well?” asked Silver, his eyes not leaving the soldier’s face. “A bargain?”

  Remy smiled and found that as he smiled, he began to laugh. He lowered his hands from his head, pressed them against his sides and laughed. “Yes!” he exclaimed. “To hell with it, yes; I’ll play your game.”

  The soldiers watched, wordless, silent. What terror was in the captain’s eyes as he looked on Silver’s face? (The terror of a man who played to enter the higher league and lost, lost his wife, his home, his child, until a stranger with silver hair came in the night and offered to give them back in exchange for a favour not yet disclosed. He who giveth, so they say, can taketh away.)

  “This is not the man you are looking for,” Silver explained to the captain, indicating Remy. “Please inform your men of this fact.”

  The captain nodded again, then turned to his soldiers, wrenching his eyes from Silver’s face as if from the leering gaze of a corpse, and barked, “Wrong! Wrong – didn’t you pay attention? These are not the men – wrong! Go back to your posts!”

  The soldiers obeyed.

  Silver walked Remy out of the doors of the station and together they stood for a moment in the porch, looking at the pouring rain. Silver’s eyes wandered upwards as if trying to read the motion of every drop that fell. Remy watched him a while, then held out his hand and said, “A bargain, then.”

  Silver’s eyes drifted down from the grey sky overhead. He smiled, shook Remy by the hand. “A bargain,” he agreed; then, as an afterthought, “Good luck.”

  He turned to walk away.

  Remy called after him. “Silver!” he said.