'You know this colonel guy?' Mickey asked.

'No,' said Jerry.

Mickey laughed in delight. 'Why you want?'

Jerry didn't bother to answer.

The second roadblock came twenty miles later, in the centre of a small village given over to police. A cluster of grey trucks stood in the courtyard of the wat, four jeeps were parked beside the roadblock. The village lay at a junction. At right-angles to their road, a yellow dust-path crossed the plain and snaked into the hills to either side. This time Jerry took the initiative, leaping from the car immediately with a merry cry of 'Take me to your leader!' Their leader turned out to be a nervous young captain with the anxious frown of a man trying to keep abreast of matters beyond his learning. He sat in the police station with his pistol on the desk. The police station was temporary, Jerry noticed. Out of the window, he saw the bombed ruins of what he took to be the last one.

'My colonel is a busy man,' the captain said, through Mickey the driver.

'He is also a very brave man,' Jerry said.

There was dumb show till they had established 'brave'.

'He has shot many Communists,' Jerry said. 'My paper wishes to write about this brave Thai colonel.'

The captain spoke for quite a while and suddenly Mickey began hooting with laughter.

'The captain say we don't got no Commies! We only got Bangkok! Poor people up here don't know nothing, because Bangkok don't give them no schools so the Commies come talk to them in the night and the Commies tell them all their sons all go Moscow, learn be big doctors, so they blow up the police station.'

'Where can I find the colonel?'

'Captain say we stay here.'

'Will he ask the colonel to come to us?'

'Colonel very busy man.'

'Where is the colonel?'

'He next village.'

'What is the name of the next village?'

The driver once more collapsed with laughter.

'It don't got no name. That village all dead.'

'What was the village called before it died?'

Mickey said a name.

'Is the road open as far as this dead village?'

'Captain say military secret. That mean he don't know.'

'Will the captain let us through to take a look?'

A long exchange followed.

'Sure,' said Mickey finally. 'He say we go.'

'Will the captain radio the colonel and tell him we are coming?'

'Colonel very busy man.'

'Will he radio him?'

'Sure,' said the driver, as if only a hideous farang could have made a meal of such a patently obvious detail.

They climbed back into the car. The boom lifted and they continued along the perfect tarmac road with its cleared shoulders and occasional landing marks. For twenty minutes they drove without seeing another living thing but Jerry wasn't consoled by the emptiness. He had heard that for every Communist guerrilla fighting with a gun in the hills, it took five in the plains to produce the rice, the ammunition and the infra-structure, and these were the plains. They came to a dust-path on their right, and the dust of it was smeared across the tarmac from recent use. Mickey swung down it, following the heavy tyre tracks, playing 'The lights are always out in Massachusetts' very loud, Jerry notwithstanding.

'This way the Commies think we plenty people,' he explained amid more laughter, thus making it impossible for him to object. To Jerry's surprise he also produced a huge, long-barrelled.45 target pistol from the bag beneath his seat. Jerry ordered him sharply to shove it back where it came from. Minutes later, they smelt burning, then they drove through wood-smoke, then they reached what was left of the village: clusters of cowed people, a couple of acres of burnt teak trees like a petrified forest, three jeeps, twenty-odd police, and a stocky lieutenant-colonel at their centre. Villagers and police alike were gazing at a patch of smouldering ash sixty yards across, in which a few charred beams sketched the outline of the burned houses. The colonel watched them park and he watched them walk over. He was a fighting man. Jerry saw it immediately. He was squat and strong and he neither smiled nor scowled. He was swarthy and greying and he could have been Malay, except that he was thicker in the trunk. He wore parachute wings and flying wings and a couple of rows of medal ribbons. He wore battle drill and a regulation automatic in a leather holster on his right thigh, and the restraining straps hung open.

'You the newsman?' he asked Jerry, in flat, military American.

'That's right.'

The colonel's eye turned to the driver. He said something, and Mickey walked hastily back to his car, got into it and stayed there.

'What do you want?'

'Anybody die here?'

'Three people. I just shot them. We got thirty-eight million.' His functional American-English, all but perfect, came as a growing surprise.

'Why did you shoot them?'

'At night the CTs held classes here. People come from all around to hear the CTs.'

Communist Terrorists, thought Jerry. He had an inkling it was originally a British phrase. A string of lorries was nosing down the dust-path. Seeing them, the villagers began picking up their bedrolls and children. The colonel gave an order and his men formed them into a rough file while the lorries turned round.

'We find them a better place,' the colonel said. 'They start again.'

'Who did you shoot?'

'Last week two of my men got bombed. The CTs operated from this village.' He picked out a sullen woman at that moment clambering on the lorry and called her back so that Jerry could take a look at her. She stood with her head bowed.

'They stay in her house,' he said. 'This time I shoot her husband. Next time I shoot her.'

'And the other two?' Jerry asked.

He asked because to keep asking is to stay punching, but it was Jerry, not the colonel, who was under interrogation: The colonel's brown eyes were hard and appraising and held a lot in reserve. They looked at Jerry enquiringly but without anxiety.

'One of the CTs sleep with a girl here,' he said simply. 'We're not only the police. We're the judge and courts as well. There's no one else. Bangkok don't care for a lot of public trials up here.'

The villagers had boarded the lorries. They drove away without looking back. Only the children waved over the tailboards. The jeeps followed, leaving the three of them, and the two cars, and a boy, perhaps fifteen.

'Who's he?' said Jerry.

'He comes with us. Next year, year after maybe, I shoot him too.'

Jerry rode in the jeep beside the colonel, who drove. The boy sat impassively in the back murmuring yes and no while the colonel lectured him in a firm, mechanical tone. Mickey followed in the taxi. On the floor of the jeep, between the seat and the pedals, the colonel kept four grenades in a cardboard carton. A small machine gun lay along the rear seat, and the colonel didn't bother to move it for the boy. Above the driving mirror beside the votive pictures hung a postcard portrait of John Kennedy with the legend 'Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask rather what you can do for your country.' Jerry had taken his notebook out. The lecture to the boy continued.

'What are you saying to him?'

'I am explaining the principles of democracy.'

'What are they?'

'No Communism and no generals,' he replied and laughed.

At the main road they turned right, further into the interior, Mickey following in the red Ford.

'Dealing with Bangkok is like climbing that big tree,' the colonel said to Jerry, interrupting himself to point at the forest. 'You climb one branch, go up a bit, change branches, the branch breaks, you go up again. Maybe one day, you get to the top general. Maybe never.'

Two small kids flagged them down and the colonel stopped to let them squeeze in beside the boy.

'I don't do that too often,' he said with another sudden smile. 'I do that to show you I'm a nice guy. The CTs get to know you stop for kids, they put out kids to stop you. You got to vary yourself. That way you stay alive.'

He had turned into the forest again. They drove a few miles and let the small children out, but not the sullen boy. The trees stopped and gave way to desolate scrubland. The sky grew white, with the shadows of the hills just breaking through the mist.

'What's he done?' Jerry asked.

'Him? He's a CT,' the colonel said. 'We catch him.' In the forest Jerry saw a flash of gold, but it was only a wat. 'Last week one of my police turns informer to CT. I send him on patrol, shoot him, make him a big hero. I fix the wife a pension, I buy a big flag for the body, I make a great funeral and the village gets a bit richer. That guy's not an informer any more. He's a folk hero. You got to win the hearts and minds of the people.'

'No question,' Jerry agreed.

They had reached a wide dry paddy field, with two women hoeing at the centre, and otherwise nothing in sight but a far hedge, and rocky duneland fading into the white sky. Leaving Mickey in the Ford, Jerry and the colonel began walking across the field, the sullen boy trailing behind them.

'You British?'

'Yes.'

'I was at Washington International Police Academy,' said the colonel. 'Very nice place. I read law enforcement at Michigan State. They showed us a good time. You want to keep clear of me a little?' he asked politely, as they trod meticulously over a plough. 'They shoot me, not you. They shoot a farang, they get too much trouble here. They don't want that. Nobody shoots a farang in my territory.'

They had reached the women. The colonel spoke to them, walked a distance, stopped, looked back at the sullen boy and returned to the women and spoke to them a second time.

'What's that about?' said Jerry.

'I ask them if there's any CTs around. They tell me no. Then I think: maybe the CTs want this boy back. So I go back and tell them: If anything goes wrong, we shoot you women first. ' They had reached the hedge. The dunes lay ahead of them, overgrown with high bushes and palms like sword blades. The colonel cupped his hands and yelled until an answering call came.

'I learn that in the jungle,' he explained with another smile. 'When you're in the jungle, always call first.'

'What jungle was that?' said Jerry.

'Stand near to me now please. Smile when you speak to me. They like to see you very clear.'

They had reached a small river. Around it, a hundred or more men and boys picked indifferently at the rocks with picks and spades, or humped bags of cement from one vast pile to another. A handful of armed police looked negligently on. The colonel called up the boy and spoke to him, and the boy bowed his head and the colonel boxed him sharply on the ears. The boy muttered something and the colonel hit him again, then patted him on the shoulder, whereupon like a freed but crippled bird he scuffled away to join the labour force.

'You write about CTs, you write about my dam too,' the colonel ordered, as they started their return walk. 'We're going to make this fine pasture here. They will name it after me.'

'What jungle did you fight in?' Jerry repeated, as they started back.

'Laos. Very hard fighting.'

'You volunteered?'

'Sure. I got kids, need the money. I join PARU. Heard of PARU? The Americans ran it. They got it made. I write a letter resigning from the Thai police. They put it in a drawer. If I get killed, they pull out the letter to prove I resigned before I joined PARU.'

'That where you met Ricardo?'

'Sure. Ricardo my friend. We fought together, shoot a lot of bad guys.'

'I want to see him,' said Jerry. 'I met a girl of his in Saigon. She told me he had a place up here. I want to make him a business proposition.'

They passed the women again. The colonel waved at them but they ignored him. Jerry was watching his face but he could as soon have watched a boulder back on the dunes. The colonel climbed into the jeep. Jerry jumped in after him.

'I thought maybe you could take me to him. I could even make him rich for a few days.'

'This for your paper?'

'It's private.'

'A private business proposition?' the colonel asked.

'That's right.'

As they drove back to the road, two yellow cement-mixer lorries came toward them and the colonel had to back to let them pass. Automatically, Jerry noticed the name painted on the yellow sides. As he did so, he caught the colonel's eye watching him. They continued toward the interior, driving as fast as the jeep would go, in order to beat anybody's bad intentions along the way. Faithfully, Mickey followed behind.

'Ricardo is my friend and this is my territory,' the colonel repeated in his excellent American. The statement, though familiar, was this time an entirely explicit warning. 'He lives here under my protection, according to an arrangement we have. Everybody here know that. The villagers know it, CT knows it. Nobody hurts Ricardo or I'll shoot every CT on the dam.'

As they turned off the main road into the dust-path, Jerry saw the light skidmarks of a small plane written on the tarmac.

'This where he lands?'

'Only in the rainy season.' The colonel continued outlining his ethical position in the matter. 'If Ricardo kills you, that's his business. One farang shoots another on my territory, that's natural.' He could have been explaining basic arithmetic to a child. 'Ricardo is my friend,' he repeated without embarrassment. 'My comrade.'

'He expecting me?'

'Please pay attention to him. Captain Ricardo is sometimes a sick man.'

Tiu make a special place for him, Charlie Marshall had said, a place where only crazy people go. Tiu say to him, 'you stay alive, you keep the plane, you ride shotgun for Charlie Marshall any time you like, carry money for him, watch his back for him, if that's the way Charlie wants it. That's the deal and Drake Ko don't never break a deal,' he say. But if Ric make trouble, or if Ric louses up, or if Ric shoot his big mouth off about certain matters, Tiu and his people kill that crazy bastard so completely he don't never know who he is.

'Why doesn't Ric just take the plane and run for it?' Jerry had asked.

Tiu got Ric's passport, Voltaire. Tiu buy Ric's debts and his business enteprises and his police record. Tiu pinned about fifty tons of opium on him and Tiu got the proof all ready for the narcs for if ever he need it. Ric, he's free to walk out any damn time he wants. They got prisons waiting for him all over the damn world.