CHAPTER 27
It was deep into the night when Cass heard car doors banging and men’s voices. Panic struck.
He peered through gaps in the dry timbers of the old hut and saw car headlights, two Toyota trucks and a group of police in caps and tight-fitting grey uniforms standing around. Two were on phones. It was the sort of police raid that if it hadn’t been a temple, it might perhaps have been accompanied by red and blue flashing lights and sirens. But to Cass, the reason for this sudden visit was obvious. And if just one of the monks said that a foreign stranger had been staying there, his problems would start all over again.
He didn’t wait to find out. He pulled his jeans on over his shorts; stuffed all he had, including Jon’s phone, into the shoulder bag Ajahn Lee had given him; pushed that into his backpack; switched off the fan; slipped out of the door; jumped over the side; and ran into the darkness of the trees behind the hut.
The first few metres were easy. The trees were saplings, the undergrowth thin and the ground flat, and there was some light from the temple grounds. But then the hill began and the trees became thicker and the undergrowth deeper and littered with unseen stones and rocks. With the light from the temple gone, he scrambled upwards, feeling his way on hands and knees with every muscle straining and his heart pounding.
After twenty minutes and unable to continue, he stopped and crouched down, panting, gathering his breath, and rubbing scratched hands and arms. He was just thankful he was wearing jeans. Ahead of him, though, just visible in the starlight above the top of the trees, was an almost sheer rocky cliff. There was no way he could climb that in daylight, let alone at night. His tee shirt had been torn by a branch; the laces on his trainers had come undone and one had snapped. What should he do?
The answer was easy. Nothing right now. He was too exhausted; it was too dark and too dangerous. All around him, insects, frogs, and other unseen creatures chirped and croaked and flies and mosquitoes whined in his ears. He clambered onto a boulder that might once have fallen from the cliff above and stared up at the night sky, listening to the sounds of the forest. He had a raging thirst, but there was nothing more he could do right now except wait until daybreak.
Was he frightened? Not of where he was. Under different circumstances, it might have been an adventure. What frightened him was what might be going on in the temple below. Would they realise he’d run off into the forest and come looking for him? Did they have police dogs in Thailand? Would they, too, wait until morning?
He dug into his backpack, pulled out his spare tee shirt, wrapped it around his head to protect it from the swarms of insects, and lay down. Then the bites started. He couldn’t see anything, but ants were everywhere—inside his jeans, his torn tee shirt, and inside the shirt he’d worn around his head. He stood, undressed, shook everything, re-dressed and found another spot away from the ant colony, and sat down again.
He thought about Kevin and worried about his mother. He thought about being caught, interrogated, and imprisoned and thought about Pa Ajahn Lee and what might be happening down below.
“Conquer fear, Cass,” Ajahn had said. “There are so many fears—fear of death, fear of separation from those we love, fear of losing control, fear of commitment, fear of failure, or fear of rejection. The list is never-ending. Fear of that which we cannot avoid, like death itself, is pointless, but fear of things you can overcome is good, so seek solutions from such fear.
“Be positive. When the deer sees the tiger, it does not think about its death. It is only humans who imagine pain, discomfort, and their ultimate death. The deer does not sit and scratch its head and ponder on how it might feel to be eaten alive. The deer has no concept of death as we do. The deer only knows about survival, and so it reacts by instinct.”
“By running away,” Cass had said, and the old monk had laughed.
“But you had planned to escape before you arrived in Malaysia.”
That was true, but Cass hadn’t planned what he’d done earlier. He’d panicked and run like the deer but with good reasons.
He was sure that someone, probably the Afghan, had said something or done something that meant the police were now looking for him. Did the Thai police mount raids just to catch someone who’d only just entered the country through an immigration point and been granted a thirty-day tourist visa? It seemed unlikely. So why?
An hour or so passed before he heard the distant boom of the temple gong.
Were things back to normal? Had the police left?
Another half hour past with the sky getting lighter when the phone in his bag rang. It was Jon. “Where are you?”
“Have the police gone?”
“Yes. Where are you?”
“On the hillside. Why did the police come?”
Jon explained that a bomb had exploded at a fuel station a few kilometres south. At first, the police had thought it was the Moslem separatist movement, but then someone had posted a photo on Facebook saying this was who had planted the bomb. The photo was of Cass.
“But we know it wasn’t you,” Jon said. “You were here and with me last night.”
“It was probably the man I saw, Jon. A set-up.”
Jon remembered. “The police came here to check if we’d seen you. They showed us the photo. It was of you before you shaved—a passport photo. Ajahn Lee told them you’d stayed a short while and left. Then, this morning, he talked to us about fear, about anger, about the cruelty and wrongdoing of others and how we must deal with it through patience, understanding, and determination.
“And he told a story about a small fish who lived in a sea surrounded by sharks who only wanted to live in peace and to understand the way of the world. We all knew who he was talking about.
“Ajahn will also leave us soon because that is his way, his life. He travels with nothing but his wisdom and his knowledge.”
And so, Cass set off back down the hillside, picking his way towards the main road north from Nakhon Si Thammarat to Surat Thani, which his map suggested was 150 kilometres away. With worn trainers, hardly any money, the police on his trail, and his photo on Facebook, the outlook didn’t look promising.