Daffodil

By Barry Arbiloff

Daffodil is a tale in the tradition of For Whom the Bell Tolls and Rains of Ranchipur. It is a story of courage and gallantry in a time of extreme peril. It is the story of two expatriates, Stavros Papadopoulos, an old timer from Ano Voutena, a remote village in Messinia in the Peloponnese of Southern Greece, and his unlikely sidekick, Danny, a young man of indeterminate youth and very excellent abilities, an all-American rascal from a rich family in Palm Beach, Florida.

Now, in the aftermath of a natural disaster in Southeast Asia, a journey of four days in the lives of these two extraordinary characters, through the best and worst of times, occurs against a backdrop of intrigue and high adventure in exotic lands seen by few men and women from the Western world. The characters in the novel represent the best and worst in society, and what happens, good and bad, is the stuff of legends.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 26, 2011
• ISBN: 9781450287869

Barry Arbiloff

BARRY ARBILOFF lives in Palm Beach and New York, and is currently working on his fi fth novel.

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Copyright © 2011 Barry Arbiloff

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4502-8785-2 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-8787-6 (cloth)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-8786-9 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 1/19/2011

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On the morning of May 2, 2008, at 0600 Zulu (Greenwich Mean) Time, a cyclone of singular ferocity roared out of the Bay of Bengal. Hurricane-force winds struck the coast of Burma. A wall of water followed and moved quickly inland, destroying everything in its path. Hundreds of thousands of people died; the damage to the infrastructure of the country was incalculable. The event was called Nargis. Nargis is an Urdu word. It means daffodil.

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On the twenty-seventh of April, in the year of the rat and four days before the end of days, rivers swelled and concrete began to melt. It was a time between two monsoons. Beyond Wat Chaiwatthanaram and the mountains, on the great alluvial plain and the Singu Plateau, in the land of the junta and disreputable options, the heat was oppressive. Some said it was like nothing anyone had experienced before. Still, hardly anyone complained, but that was not unusual because in Burma, an abysmal place where the quality of life was determined by the sharpest knife, where brutality was a metaphor for currency and every man was the target of another man with a bad attitude, nothing made sense.

Stavros Papadopoulos was drunk, and he was exhausted; every muscle in his body ached, and he was pissing blood. But he wasn’t complaining. It was Saturday night, and it was his birthday, and what a birthday it was. The pint-sized whores in the brothels in Bangkok, by far the best in the East, or anywhere else for that matter, had performed feats of magic. He’d had the time of his life, the best sex ever, anywhere, anytime. If there was a little pain and suffering, as far as he was concerned, it was a small price to pay for his pleasure.

He was asleep by the time his head hit the pillow. Ten minutes later, he was dreaming of upside-down houses and little women. Twenty minutes later, the phone rang. It was Chinn, his erstwhile patron. Chinn was the number-two man in the Royal Thai Tourist Police, the de facto bureaucracy that held sway over the illicit trade of goods and services within the three contiguous borders of the Golden Triangle. He was a friend who called from time to time with odd jobs. The big cop, whom Stavros hadn’t heard from in months, apologized for the inconvenience and said he needed a favor in a hurry. Stavros drifted in a warm place. Chinn mentioned the word money, adding there was lots of it for a few hours of work. Stavros reached for a cigarette.

Chinn said he had been given a blank check to find a donor organ and get it upriver as fast as possible. A person of importance had suffered a massive heart attack. Doctors were standing by to perform a transplant, but they had not been able to locate a suitable donor organ, one large enough to service the patient, a man bigger than most. Given the accepted heart-to-body-weight ratio (the normal heart weighing twelve ounces), the doctors figured the donor organ would have to be at least sixteen ounces to properly service the patient. Not a easy order to fill.

Stavros put the cigarette in his mouth and waited for the other shoe to drop. I have the heart, Chinn said. I put the word out and got lucky. An hour ago, the body of a Japanese tourist, an obese woman who had been run over by a bus in front of her hotel two hours earlier, was wheeled in to the medical examiner’s office. The heart weighs exactly sixteen ounces.

It was twelve o’clock, according to Chinn, when the night supervisor called with the good news. By two o’clock, he had a duly authorized document giving him possession of the body, but time was running out. The heart, which had a shelf life of between twenty-four and forty-eight hours, had to be in the hospital, in Chiang Mai, before midday. It had to be viable, and if the patient was going to survive, it had to be in his chest and working by no later than midnight the same day.

Stavros lit the cigarette. How much? he asked.

"Twenty-five thousand, including expenses. There’s also a bonus—maybe ten thousand, maybe more, depending on the generosity of the family. The bonus will kick in on the tenth day after the surgery, if the patient is still breathing. Oh, and there’s a caveat, Chinn hastened to add. The patient’s relatives are belligerent sons of bitches who are not going to take kindly if for any reason the goods are not delivered in timely fashion, so think twice before you take the job."

Stavros was out of bed before he hung the phone up. He didn’t like being predictable, but he didn’t have to be asked twice to take the job. Twenty-five thousand dollars for a few hours of flying time was an offer he could not refuse, caveat or otherwise. Discounting Chinn’s usual commission, the balance would more than cover his mounting debts, which had recently become a source of embarrassment in the gaming parlors and brothels, where his credit was on the verge of being denied. Since he was fully dressed when he got into bed, it took less than two minutes to pack a bag and get himself out of the house. Two hours later, he was in the helicopter sipping black coffee; half an hour later, his only cargo, a hermetically sealed box with a red cross painted on the cover, arrived by special messenger. Five minutes later, he was in the air, the big heart safely stashed in the well between seats in the cockpit.

Shortly after lifting off, Stavros received a distress call from a small hospital in Kanchanaburi, a village on the Thai side of the border in the Bilauktaung Mountains, near a place called Three-Pagoda Pass. A doctor he was acquainted with had put in a call to the EMS Command Center in Bangkok requesting medical evacuation for two Americans, who had been critically injured in a motor vehicle accident. The prognosis was grave. Both patients, mother and son, were going to die before the day was out without surgical intervention. The closest hospital by air with a trauma center was in Chiang Mai. The call was patched through to Stavros. Kanchanaburi was less than twenty minutes away from his current position. There was more than enough time. Stavros agreed to make the pickup, with the understanding that he would not be unnecessarily delayed.

In the fullness of the morning, visibility at altitude was unlimited. The sky was clear, and the natural beauty of the landscape was breathtaking. The color in the north of Thailand was all green. It would soon be red, and then brown, and there would be other colors, all shades and hues, but for the time being, an abundance of luxuriant foliage smothered the land for as far as the eye could see.

Jesus! It’s hot as hell in here. Stavros cursed in Greek and then in English, wiping his neck with the side of his collar and punching in revised coordinates for Chiang Mai.

What did you say? the young man in the second seat asked, pulling the plug connected to his iPod.

It’s hot, Stavros bawled, reaching over and rubbing Danny’s hair so hard it damn near took his ears off.

Hey! Cut it out, will you! the young man exclaimed, backing off and running his fingers through his hair.

What? I messed up your beautiful hairdo?

You know, if you keep doing that, I’m just going to have to put you down.

That’ll be the day.

Danny went for Stavros’s hair, but Stavros was too quick by half and rapped him good on the forearm.

You don’t like it, do you, big guy? the young man said, rubbing his arm, and both men burst out laughing.

Do me a favor, will you?

You’re not going to ask me to look at that thing on your hand again, are you? I told you, it’s nothing to worry about.

Stavros reached over and put the back of his hand in front of Danny’s face. It looks like cancer.

It’s not cancer.

It’s growing.

It’s not growing.

Stavros groaned and pulled his hand away.

Overhead, a few clouds drifted on a gentle northeasterly breeze. It was drizzling, and the ground was suffused with water and crawling with the inescapable movement of life. In the contiguous lowlands, in the valleys between the mountains, in the highlands below soft clouds, amid ridges with razor-sharp edges and overhanging mantles of loose rock with the consistency of shale, and again in the lowlands, a thick fog floated over the tree line and touched the sky. The jungle glistened with the stuff of life; it nourished itself, reproduced, grew, withered, and was reborn in another form in an endless cycle of fertilization.

Whump! A chorus of groans exploded as the helicopter hit a low-pressure area and dropped precipitously. Stavros reached out and placed his hand on the container stowed in the well in the cockpit between him and the young man in the copilot’s seat.

Is it still okay? Danny asked.

Yes.

Danny tapped the Plexiglas window with his finger, pointing to the dark clouds over the bay. The sky, barely visible over the Bilauktaung Mountains, now passing in slow motion in a panorama from the windshield to the Plexiglas window on the starboard side of the helicopter, had turned dark gray, and then black.

I see it. Reminds me of a dream I had the other night.

What’s that got to do with the weather?

We drowned.

"What do you mean we?"

You don’t want to know.

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For the two passengers in the aft cabin, it was not a good day, and it was going to get worse for one of them before it got better. A woman and a boy, mother and son, from a small town somewhere in the Badlands of South Dakota, were headed for the last round-up, and they would soon be traveling in good company. Both had been grievously injured. The woman was unconscious. Dried blood caked her face. Her brain was filling with blood. She was drowning in her own blood. The boy, who was wrapped in gauze, had been burned over 75 percent of his body. His spine had been fractured, and he was partially paralyzed, his legs having lost all function. His condition was critical, the baby-faced doctor telling Stavros for good measure that the prognosis was poor, as if he didn’t know what to expect.

The family had been vacationing in Thailand, traveling by automobile though the country. There was a collision on a hill near a road linking towns in Thailand and Burma. They were traveling on the wrong side of the road and hit by a truck, head on. The car went over a shallow embankment and burst into flames at the bottom of a ravine. The woman went through the window head first. Two other children in the car were killed on impact. The boy was pulled from the burning vehicle by other motorists. The woman’s husband, who was trapped in the twisted wreck and still alive, fried like a piece of chicken when the car exploded. Mother and son were taken by farmers to a hospital in a nearby village. Not much could be done for either of them.

Make sure they’re secure, Charlie, Stavros said, and check their belts.

The man called Charlie in the aft cabin of the helicopter was short and shirtless. He wore a bright red bandana around his head (the Burmese called the bandana a gaungbaung), and traditional longyis (the Burmese called the sarong pa-sos). A piece of wood was stuck through the end of his nose. A long knife was tucked in the sash around his waist. The little man vigorously chewed betel, licked his lips, and scratched himself. The expression on his face was one of indifference, although his actions seemed to suggest otherwise.

A wisp of a man, he appeared indescribably frail, but his appearance was deceptive. His scarred face and the tattoos that covered his thighs bore evidence of what he was: a headhunter. He tugged the woman’s restraining straps. She opened her eyes and ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth. He poured some water from a plastic bottle on a cloth and blotted her parched lips, and he gently puffed the cushion under her neck with his fingers. He did this not because it made her feel better or because he felt better doing it, but because he knew that was what Stavros wanted him to do. There was nothing he could do for the boy.

Did you get an update on the weather?

Five minutes ago, Danny answered.

And?

God is pissed off.

What?

There’s a low-pressure system developing in the bay.

Storm or cyclone?

Both. Oh, and they haven’t ruled out a tsunami. This one is called Nargis.

Which way is it going?

North by northwest.

Bangladesh or India? Come on, this is like pulling teeth.

Most likely Bangladesh, if it continues on its current course.

Who issued the report?

The Indian Meteorological Department.

Stavros made a curious reference to someone’s mother and tapped a gauge. The needle didn’t budge. They had been in the air less than twenty minutes, flying low and fast and close to the ground, using landmarks and the horizon to make up for lost time.

Flying by dead reckoning was always risky business for the uninitiated, but not for Stavros. He knew all the shortcuts. He preferred instruments, but he was running late. It had taken longer than expected to get in and out of Kanchanaburi. The container was heating up, and he was well aware that time was of the essence for the woman and the boy, although there was not much he could do for either of them.

A strong headwind bucked the helicopter as it entered the uplands. Wind shear and rogue air currents buffeted it from side to side as it blasted dust and rock, beating a path through one hill after another in the highlands, and then over never-ending valleys in the lowlands. The wipers swept condensation and drizzle from the windows, and for a moment, there was something to see, but no sooner had the glass been cleaned than droplets formed again.

You’re going to kill us one of these days.

Yes, but it’ll be in a good cause.

I’m not so sure of that.

Check the container, will you?

I just did.

Humor me. Do it again.

Danny ran his hand over the side of the container. I think we’re okay—for now.

Stavros grimaced. Danny had the annoying habit of tacking on a for now rejoinder with good news as well as bad news. How’s the weather, Danny? Lousy—for now. How do you feel, Danny? good—for now. Is everything all right, Danny? Yes—for now. Stavros loved the boy, but there were times when he felt like giving him a swift kick in the butt, not that he would have had it any other way.

Up the helicopter went with a twist of the wrist and a nudge of the forefinger. Stavros made a course correction and turned north. North will be faster, he thought. It will save time, possibly a few minutes, he thought. He had long since come to know that the difference between life and death could be measured in minutes and sometimes seconds.

Whump! The helicopter went deep into a pocket. Air was sucked out of the cockpit, and an old issue of Playboy Magazine shot up and stuck to the Plexiglas window overhead. It was spread-eagled to the center page with the Playgirl of the month spread-eagled on a queen-sized mattress, her private parts in full view and living color.

Stavros turned and looked at the woman and the boy over his shoulder. I don’t like the way she looks, Danny. Get back there. Check her pressure. Put that EMS training to good use.

The young man unbuckled his belt and climbed over the seat. He looked at the woman. The color had drained from her face. Her lips were blue. Her hands were cold, her breathing labored.

What’s her blood pressure?

I’m checking it now. Danny wrapped the cuff on her arm and pumped it up. He put the flat end of the stethoscope over her brachial artery and let the air out of the cuff, a little at a time. The needle came down slowly. It flickered at eighty-five and began to pulsate as blood seeped into the artery below the cuff.

What’s happening, kid? Talk to me.

Her pressure’s low, Papa: eighty-six over … forty-five. He opened the valve and let air out of the cuff.

What’s her pulse rate?

I can hardly feel it. I don’t think there’s much life left in her. Hold on, she stopped breathing.

Danny put a finger over the woman’s carotid artery. I can’t feel a pulse. I think she’s going into cardiac arrest.

Give her CPR! Stavros shouted, doing his best to keep the helicopter straight and level. Charlie, pump her chest!

The headhunter, who was sitting directly behind Stavros, straddled the woman. He knew exactly what to do without being told. With the palm of his hand over her breastbone, he started pumping her chest wall in a well-timed and rhythmic fashion.

Keep it constant, Charlie. Thirty and two! One hundred times a minute, and don’t stop!

Danny counted the compressions and blew two long breaths of air into her lungs for every thirty times Charlie compressed her chest. The young woman’s body convulsed. She coughed and then began breathing, but it didn’t last.

There she goes again! Danny shouted. Charlie! Give me the scissors—they’re over there, he said, pointing. And get the defibrillator ready—and get the hell off of her.

The headhunter was off the woman before Danny put a period on the sentence. He fished the scissors out of the locker behind the first seat and passed it to Danny. Then he found the defibrillator and put it on the deck next to the woman.

Pull the handle, Charlie, Danny yelled, yanking the woman’s blouse and cutting the straps connecting the cups of her brassiere, exposing all of her chest and most of her abdomen. She was young, younger then he realized when he first saw her, and she was beautiful. Even Charlie appeared slack-jawed by the sight of the woman lying half-naked on the deck of the helicopter, spread out as she was with her legs slightly separated, her breasts full and flowering, and her skin soft and white as the belly of a bird.

There was a tattoo on her abdomen just below her bellybutton. It appeared at first glance to be a diagram, possibly a religious mark, being elaborately decorated in primary colors. Embellished by a symbol of undetermined significance, it formed a link that coiled circuitously to a place below the Marginaux line of her panties, and there was a word written in script under the diagram. Danny couldn’t make it out or see where the line ended, but he was not inclined to look too closely, and he most certainly was not going to lower her panties, although he had the urge to pull them down.

Charlie pulled the handle on the defibrillator. He followed the interactive voice prompts and peeled the cover off the white adhesive pads; there were two. Then he peeled the backing off and placed the pads on the woman’s chest, exactly as shown on the schematic on the pad, and he applied pressure so the pads would stay in place.

Okay, Charlie. Now back off while this thing figures out what to do, and don’t touch her.

The defibrillator repeated the word Analyzing several times. The button with the lightning bolt on it flashed intermittently. The defibrillator prompted, Shock advised. No one should touch the patient! Shock advised. Press the orange button now! Deliver shock!

Danny looked at Charlie and motioned with his hand; then he pressed the button. The woman’s body jerked violently, and she started breathing.

What’s happening? Stavros poked his head over the seat. Is she still alive?

Yes, but not by much, Danny replied.

How’s the boy?

He’s gone.

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They were an odd couple, Stavros and Danny. Two men: one old, the other young, like father and son and the best of friends. Stavros loved the boy, and the boy worshiped Stavros. How and why they came to be together was a mystery that neither man cared to talk about. They were two lonely guys with deep-seated problems who found each other on the other side of the world and made the most of a cockeyed relationship. Stavros, the man in the aviator glasses with a magnificent shock of white hair that looked like the business end of a broom, with a handlebar mustache to match, an old man by youthful standards, but young by any reasonable assessment of the measure of a man; the Greek patriarch, an old timer from Ano Voutena, a village in Messinia, in the Peloponnese in Southern Greece; and Danny, a handsome young man of indeterminate youth and very excellent abilities, the prototypical all-American kid from Ocean Ridge, a highfalutin’ town in Palm Beach County, in the great state of Florida, with an inclination to walk a skewed line and keep his opinions to himself.

About five minutes and counting, Stavros said.

More or less, Danny muttered under his breath, making course corrections, his eyes never far from the controls or the gyrating landscape.

The headhunter sitting in the aft cabin tapped Stavros on the shoulder. He pointed to the clouds on the horizon and made a face. Stavros looked out the window. The vapor from his breath fogged the glass. He made a circle with his finger and then put a line through it. He saw nothing out of the ordinary, but Charlie had an uncanny knack for predicting trouble. He saw things, and Stavros had long since learned to rely on his predictions, symbolic or otherwise.

What is it? Danny asked.

Charlie’s having a premonition.

About what?

The weather?

I think I’m having the same premonition. He’s probably right, you know. I checked the report a few minutes ago. It looks as if it’s going to be a hellacious storm. Bangladesh is still the target, but there’s always the chance that it could double back on us.

Is that what they’re saying?

No. It’s just a feeling.

"Maybe we’ll get lucky and it’ll blow over.

And if it doesn’t …

We’ll die.

Like most young men, after Vietnam, Stavros was damaged goods. He had come out of the war with scars, inside and out. He was confused and disillusioned. Settling down seemed to be the right thing to do, but he wasn’t sure what to do. Like his two older brothers, he was expected to get married to a nice Greek girl, have three or four healthy kids, and become a short-order cook in the family diner on the south side of Chicago. Both of his elder brothers worked in the diner; his younger brother worked in another diner an uncle had opened on the other side of town. There was the usual complement of fat wives, angry children, garden apartments in the suburbs, stocks and bonds, an oversized sport utility vehicle, and season tickets to choice seats in the outfield in the new home of the Chicago White Sox. Who could ask for anything more?

After his discharge, Stavros went home. He went to work in the family business and became a short-order cook. Seven days a week, he flipped pancakes and made hamburgers, fries, buffalo burgers, Jell-O, pudding, and the rest of the fast-food crap cherished by so many Americans. It drove him crazy, but he had only himself to blame. He should have known better. You don’t go from flying an airplane to flipping burgers and wake up every morning with a smile on your face.

One day, during the breakfast hour, when the restaurant was bustling with customers and he was working the griddle, an order was placed for ham and eggs. Two over with a side of ham, his uncle shouted over the commotion at the counter. Stavros took two eggs from the basket on the shelf beneath the griddle, one in each hand. He held his hands over the griddle and squeezed the shells. He flipped his wrists in a downward motion, as he had seen his uncle do effortlessly so many times, but his hands froze before he could release the eggs. The shells cracked; the eggs splattered. The dishwasher looked at Stavros’s uncle, who had one hand in the cash register and the other over his forehead. The customers watched, waiting to see what would happen. Stavros picked up another two eggs, one in each hand. This time, he squeezed harder and used more force when he flipped his wrists. Both eggs flew out of his hands and hit the griddle. There was an explosion: everything within three feet was covered with egg. Without saying a word, he removed his apron, folded it, placed it on the griddle,