CHAPTER 32
Cass had followed a sign that said Tha Sala until he found the main highway north to Surat Thani. Hot, tired, thirsty, and already exhausted, he bought water and a bag of barbequed meat balls at the side of the road and then lay beneath some trees to rest and think.
A bus to Bangkok was the obvious answer, but it was the thought of his photo going viral that worried him. What he needed was somewhere with internet and a computer.
With the hot mid-afternoon sun behind him, he turned right off the main road, through a maze of narrow side roads and quiet, sleepy houses shaded by banana trees and flowering shrubs. According to his map, the sea was close by, and quite suddenly, there it was—a calm expanse of blue water and a white sandy beach with palm trees. It looked idyllic but only brought back memories of the brochure Sand and Sea he’d been flicking through in Faisal World Travel when Khan appeared from his back office.
He removed his trainers, socks, and tee shirt and took to the beach with the sea on his right. It was quiet and deserted with a hot but gentle sea breeze and small boats pulled up onto the beach. A fisherman was sorting nets, and a few foreign-looking white couples who, he guessed, must have been staying somewhere lay beneath palm trees and umbrellas.
Backing onto the beach, amongst the trees, were rows of tiny wooden huts built on stilts and signs in English—Blue Sea Resort, Pritty Place, and Sandy Shore Resort. The sun was going down when Cass found what he was looking for.
Nong’s Homestay was three hundred baht a night, and Mrs. Nong, the owner with a toddler hanging onto her sarong, claimed to have free Wi-Fi. Cass paid his three hundred baht, was given the key to Hut 2, and was amazed at the luxury. With his own shower, a toilet, and even a clean towel, he took advantage. He washed and shaved, dabbed at insect bites, and then lay on the bed with a ceiling fan wafting cool air over him. Then he slept.
At daybreak, he sat on the steps of Hut 2 to watch the most spectacular sunrise over the sea and then went in search of Mrs. Nong. “Mrs. Nong,” he said. “I have a problem.”
“The room is no good?”
“No, no, everything is very good, but someone stole my laptop.”
“You call tam-loo-at?”
“The police?” Cass interpreted correctly. “Yes, but I need to send some urgent emails.”
“Mai pen rai. Never mind. You can use mine. I go out now. Come back soon.”
Half an hour later, Cass found her sitting on a plastic stool, washing clothes in a tub. She waved a soapy arm in the direction of the house and returned to hanging her washing on a tree.
The laptop was already switched on. Cass touched the pad, and it lit up. In seconds, he was on the internet, but everything, including the keyboard, was in Thai. He clicked on a tiny American flag in the corner and could now type in English by remembering the position of letters on a QWERTY keyboard.
Then, from his back pocket, Cass took out the most precious thing he’d managed to carry with him, unseen for two years.
It had travelled with him in a slot in the waist band of the now threadbare underpants he’d worn almost every day since he left home. It had been to Şirnak, to the Abdel Aziz mountains in Syria, and back to Turkey and all the way to Mrs. Nong’s Homestay in Thailand.
He had found the unused memory stick in a drawer during his first few days in Turkey. There was only one thing he’d prayed for each day since then—that one day, he’d have access to the internet to upload its contents. He plugged it in, clicked, and slowly two hundred and eighty-six passport photos with passport numbers and country of issue that he’d meticulously collected over two years of forging documents appeared on the screen.
He checked over his shoulder into the bright sunlight of the garden. Mrs. Nong was still busy with her washing.
He found the cloud storage site he’d once used at Woodlands School for saving homework. It opened. He entered the username Woodlands18 and then the password and then shut his eyes, hoping that the next time he opened them, he’d be logged in. When he opened them, there, right in front of him was all his old schoolwork listed by title. He opened a new file, went back to the memory stick, and started to upload the contents. It was slow—too slow. At this rate, it would take an hour or more, and he wanted to check each image as he went.
Mrs. Nong was still outside.
For some reason, the face stared back at him—a man with thick black hair, a moustache, and shoulders showing a white shalwar kameez. The passport had been Pakistani. He stopped again at image 48—a photo from a Lebanese passport of a man with a long nose and intense black eyes. It reminded him of Kett, but then so many passport photos looked like him. He dismissed it because he’d seen too many passport photos. He’d also seen some of the passport holders themselves and often thought how different they looked in real life. What value were photos as identification for immigration people and anyone else? What had happened to claims of photos one day being replaced by facial recognition software?
Image 198. There it was. A Turkish passport for a young man called Cemil Demir. It looked only vaguely similar to himself, but it had been enough for the yawning immigration officer who’d asked him to stand a bit to the right and look at the camera. He’d not compared it with any other stored image, as far as Cass knew, but he’d stamped his passport. “Have a nice holiday.”
He hadn’t heard her, but Mrs. Nong had returned, carrying her empty washing bowl. “Is OK?” she asked. Cass, engrossed in what he was seeing, jumped but nodded. “Ooh. Many photos,” Mrs. Nong said.
Perhaps it was just bad luck, but image 198 was still there. “He look like you. I see on Facebook.”
Under his breath, Cass cursed, but Mrs. Nong just stood and watched until image 199, a Tunisian, appear.
“They not Thai. You not Thai.”
“I am . . .” Cass hesitated. “I’m British.”
Mrs. Nong wiped her hands on her sarong and sauntered away, still muttering something about Facebook.
Cass took a deep breath and continued to upload the rest. It took another ten minutes to complete, but before he shut down, he went to the search history section and deleted the site he’d just used. He went to look for Mrs. Nong to thank her, but she was nowhere to be seen. Neither was her toddler who’d been sleeping in a hammock.
Cass returned to his hut, pushed the memory stick back into his waist band, hurriedly repacked his bag, left another three hundred baht on the bed for reasons he couldn’t explain, shut the rickety door, and headed north again along the beach.
It was midday when he made it back onto the main highway, and by then, he was on high alert. Every passing car seemed to slow down as it approached him.
If Mrs. Nong had linked him with the roadside bomb and then found he’d disappeared, had she already called the police? The further Cass walked, the more likely it seemed. He stopped at a roadside shop to buy a bottle of water, a bag of peanuts, and some barbequed chicken, and he sat beneath a tree. And as he ate, he tried to call Kevin again.