Bangkok File

Bangkok, Thailand

Bangkok, Thailand

M

ike Stokey strolled down Surawong Road with a devilish smile on his sunburned face. There were lots of superficial changes in Bangkok, but certain things, exotic, intangible things that fed his imagination and fired secret memories, were still here. The essence of the place floated on fetid air and drew him like a magnet to his destination on a muggy summer day.

It was the next to last day of a two-week vacation he’d taken with his wife, and they’d spent most of that time southeast of the capitol doing tourist things at Pattaya Beach. Linda had never been to Thailand, so it was all new to her. Mike, on the other hand, had been all over the country during his time in uniform or afterward when he’d been knee-deep in the clandestine intel game, so he mostly sat on the beach soaking sun and Singha Beer. Planning their itinerary to the second like a travel agent with advanced OCD, Linda insisted on at least one full day of shopping in Bangkok before they caught a plane back stateside. She was hard at it, burning plastic at one of the city’s multi-level bazaars, which gave Mike his one and only chance to look up an old friend from Vietnam days.

He walked slowly toward the Patpong district, inhaling the atmosphere, rank with a mixture of engine exhaust and fumes from charcoal braziers, letting the familiar bustle of Bangkok’s human swarm wash over him. He was inured through long first-hand experience to the tourist-magnet carnality of Patpong’s rowdy bars and lurid fleshpots, but he was willing to brave the throngs to see if his old friend was still in the middle of it all, running a seedy ex-pat hangout. Mike and Shake Davis had both been close to Steve Berntson in their time as combat Marines in Vietnam. After the war they stayed in touch irregularly, saw each other occasionally on cross-country trips, and provided what long-distance support they could to a brother who had been badly wounded, nearly crippled by a B-40 rocket during the Tet 68 fighting in Hue.

And then there was a scrawled note that said their friend was divorced, depressed, and heading back to Southeast Asia. He was gone before they could reach him by phone. A six-month period of silence ensued until they finally got matching postcards from Bangkok announcing the grand opening of “Bernie’s Bar” in Patpong and inviting them to drop by for free drinks when they were in the neighborhood. That was two years ago, and neither Mike nor Shake had managed to be in the neighborhood to check on their friend. A few old Asia Hands had reported that the bar was a watering hole for shady ex-military types and mercenary wannabes still riding the bench after the Greater Southeast Asia War Games, but none of them could provide a reliable report on the proprietor. That had them worried given the cutthroat business ethics and mafia-style muscle that controlled most of the commerce in and around Bangkok tourist-traps like Patpong. When Mike announced his vacation destination was Thailand, Shake made him promise to do a welfare check on Steve Berntson.

Stokey felt the throbbing heart of Patpong’s bar district before he turned the corner and saw it. The techno-pop music hit him like a jackhammer as it blared from street-side speakers bigger than most domestic refrigerators. It was as if the bar owners believed nerve-jangling sound blasted at ear-shattering levels drew customers who would expect what waited inside was just as raucous and uninhibited as the music blaring outside. Swimming through waves of gawking tourists, Stokey had to admit the proprietors had a hook. Crowds milled outside some of the rowdier joints with their pale faces washed by garish neon and their t-shirts pinned to sweaty torsos by the percussive blast from the speakers. He checked the address on the postcard in his hand and decided his destination—if it still existed—was another two blocks down the street.

Compared to the bustling dives on either side of it, Bernie’s Bar was decidedly low-key and relatively placid. There was no neon announcing the establishment, and it might have gone unnoticed except for a peculiar sign that hung over the entrance. It looked like the nose bubble from an old Huey helicopter and bore an intricately carved wooden placard that said “Bernie’s Bar—Best Beer in Bangkok.”

Nice alliteration, Stokey thought as he ducked under the sign and stared around the dark interior waiting for his eyes to adjust. Before he could take more than a breath or two of the tobacco smoke and stale beer miasma, he had two bouncy little females at his elbow guiding him toward the main bar and asking him to buy them drinks. No hustle, they insisted. The girls just wanted to ensure he wouldn’t be lonely while he was drinking the Best Beer in Bangkok.

The bartender looked like Queequeg from Melville’s Moby d**k, covered with Polynesian tats and multiple piercings. The minute he leaned across the bar to ask about a drink order, Stokey pegged him as a Kiwi. He ordered a Singha which arrived in a dusty bottle accompanied by a frosted mug. As he poured, Mike assured the two lovelies at his elbows that he wasn’t lonely, and he wasn’t about to buy them drinks. They faded immediately wearing petulant expressions and headed off to harass the few other drinkers scattered around the joint. Scanning the interior, Stokey looked for Steve Berntson. All he saw was three little clutches of roundeye boozers, most of whom were wearing remnants of one combat uniform or another. None of them looked like they’d be much good in the bush at this point, but several eyed him curiously as if he might be a spook looking to hire military muscle. They went back to trading war stories when Mike ignored them and caught the eye of the Kiwi barkeep.

“Nice place…” Mike signaled for a refill hoping to start a conversation, but the ink-riddled Kiwi just shrugged and stood waiting for his money. Mike put a 50-baht bill on the bar and kept it pinned with his index finger. “I’m looking for a friend of mine,” he said. “I’m told he owns this place…name is Steve Berntson. Know where I might find him?”

“He’s the boss-man, mate. He don’t check in with me until closing time.”

“So, he still owns this establishment?”

“That’s his name out front, ain’t it? If you’re looking for work, I can tell you the man ain’t hiring.”

“It’s nothing like that, my friend. I served with him in Vietnam. I’m just here to say hello and see how he’s doing these days.”

“Might be I could find him for you.” The Kiwi glanced at a wall phone behind the bar and then back at the money on the bar. Stokey lifted his finger and slid the bill across the scarred surface. “That’s yours if you can get him on the horn. Just tell him The ARVN is here to see him.”

“The ARVN?” The bartender deftly pocketed the money and reached for the phone.

“Yeah. He’ll know who you mean.” It was Berntson who tagged him with the nickname after the third time Stokey extended his tour in Vietnam. Nobody’s got more time in the Nam than Stokey, Bernie announced, except maybe the ARVN. And that was that. Mike Stokey became The ARVN to all who served with him from that moment.

It was 20 minutes later when the bartender finished a series of phone calls and returned. “Took a bit of searching,” he said, “but I found him. He’s up the street watching a kick-boxing match.”

“Is he coming here?”

“Said he’d be right down…maybe fifteen minutes. He said I should tell The ARVN to stand-fast.”

“I’ll do that. Get us a couple of beers.”

“Bernie don’t drink beer,” the Kiwi said and reached under the bar for a bottle of Bombardier Military dry gin. “This here’s his poison.” He placed a battered tin cup alongside the bottle. “Always drinks it from this old cup.”

Stokey looked at the dented relic and recognized it immediately. Shake Davis had a matching cup emblazoned with the logo of Smirnoff Vodka. Shake and Steve Berntson had looted them from a liquor store during the Tet 68 fighting in Hue, and both had promised to preserve the Moscow Mule cups as souvenirs if they survived. Stokey had heard the story and seen Shake’s old cup which he used for a commemorative jolt of liquor every February. And here on the bar in Bangkok was the matching cup of the set. He grinned, checked his watch, and reached for his phone to give Shake a call. He’d probably be waking him, but the confluences were too good to wait for a convenient hour stateside.

He got a sleepy Chan Dwyer Davis on the line after the phone in Texas rang twice. “You missed him, Mike.” Chan didn’t sound very happy about that, but maybe it was just the early reveille. “He’s in DC consulting with a mutual friend of ours.” As a former professional always conscious of communications security, she didn’t say it was the man who calls himself Bayer, but she didn’t need to specify. “I know he’ll want to talk to you. Call his mobile number.”

There was a few more seconds of back-and-forth about his vacation and his plans, but Chan didn’t seem really interested beyond being civil, so Stokey punched off the call. He was about to call Shake’s mobile number when Steve Berntson charged into the gloom and hobbled toward him with that odd swinging gait, leaning on the cane that he’d been forced to use after his wounds left one shrapnel-blasted leg shorter than the other.

“The ARVN lives!” he shouted and wrapped Stokey in a huge hug. “Damn, I’m glad to see you, man! What are you doing in the world’s most appropriately named city?”

Stokey filled him in on the vacation as Berntson splashed a generous dollop of gin into Stokey’s beer mug. “Nice place you’ve got here, Berrnie. How’s it going?”

“It’s a living, Mike. Pays the bills and leaves me a little to bet on the kick-boxers. I’m up about a grand so far this year.”

“So, you’re happy running a sleazy joint in the armpit of Bangkok?”

“What’s not to like, right? The bad-asses mostly leave me alone since I ain’t a big money tourist trap. I get along with the locals. Got a nice place outside of town. My pension mostly covers the nut.” He sipped gin and took a deep breath. “And there’s just something about this place, you know? It’s almost like…”

“I get it,” Stokey said. “I could feel it on the way down here. We’re still a couple of old Asia Hands.” He pointed up at the bamboo paddles on the ceiling fan slowly revolving overhead. “No matter what the reality is, we still get the old colonial vibe…”

Berntson toasted with his tin cup and grinned. “Action, skullduggery, and intrigue in every shadow that looms in the alleyways, the promise of exotic pleasures that blows on every breeze from the South China Sea.”

“You still got it, Bernie. Same old poetic bullshit…”

“Speaking of poetic bullshit, how’s Shake? You still working with him?”

“I guess you could call it work. Mostly, he calls when he’s got some gig that threatens to get us both killed. Last time I saw him was down at his new place in Texas. Wound up in Mexico chasing smugglers and caught a round in my ass. Shake has some weird ideas when it comes to work.”

Berntson eyed Mike’s cell phone on the bar as he poured more gin. “Let’s get his dumb ass on the phone.