Suriyawong, who had been in the middle of a story about Major Anderson's penchant for nose-picking when he thought nobody was watching, looked at him like he was crazy. "What, you want to play hide-and-seek?"
Bean continued to whisper. "A way out."
Suriyawong took the hint and whispered back. "I don't know. I always use the doors. Like most doors, they're visible from both sides."
"A sewer line? A heating duct?"
"This is Bangkok. We don't have heating ducts."
"Any way out."
Suriyawong's whisper changed back to voice. "I'll look at the blueprints. But tomorrow, man, tomorrow. It's getting late and we talked right throu
gh dinner."
Bean grabbed his shoulder, forced him to look into his eyes. "Suriyawong," he whispered, even more softly, "I'm not joking. Right now, out of this building unobserved."
Finally Suriyawong got it: Bean was genuinely afraid. His whisper was quiet again. "Why, what's happening?"
"Just tell me how."
Suriyawong closed his eyes. "Flood drainage," he whispered. "Old ditches. They just laid these temporary buildings down on top of the old parade ground. There's a shallow ditch that runs right under the building. You can hardly tell it's there, but there's a gap."
"Where can we get under the building from inside?"
Suriyawang rolled his eyes. "These temporary buildings are made of lint." To prove his point, he pulled away the corner of the large rug in the middle of the room, rolled it back, and then, quite easily, pried up a floor section.
Underneath it was sod that had died from lack of sunlight. There were no gaps between floor and sod.
"Where's the ditch?" asked Bean.
Suriyawong thought again. "I think it crosses the hall. But the carpet is tacked down there."
Bean turned up the volume of the vid and went out the door of Suriyawong's office and through the anteroom to the hall. He pried up a corner of the carpet and ripped. Carpet fluff flew, and Bean kept pulling until Suriyawong stopped him. "I think about here," he said.
They pulled up another floor section. This time there was a depression in the yellowed sod.
"Can you get through that?" asked Bean.
"Hey, you're the one with the big head," said Suriyawong.
Bean threw himself down. The ground was damp--this was Bangkok--and he was clammy and filthy in moments as he wriggled along. Every floor joist was a challenge, and a couple of times he had to dig with his army-issue knife to make way for his head. But he made good progress anyway, and wriggled out into the darkness only a few minutes later. He stayed down, though, and saw that Suriyawong, despite not knowing what was going on, did not raise his head when he emerged from under the building, but continued to creep along just as Bean was doing.
They kept going until they reached the next point where the old eroded ditch went under another temporary building.
"Please tell me we're not going under another building."
Bean looked at the pattern of lights from the moon, from nearby porches and area lights. He had to count on his enemies being at least a little careless. If they were using infrared, this escape was meaningless. But if they were just eyeballing the place, watching the doors, he and Surly were already where slow, easy movement wouldn't be seen.
Bean started to roll himself up the incline.
Suriyawong grabbed him by the boot. Bean looked at him. Suriyawong pantomimed rubbing his cheeks, his forehead, his ears.
Bean had forgotten. His Greek skin was lighter than Suriyawong's. He would catch more light.
He rubbed his face, his ears, his hands with damp soil from under the grass. Suriyawong nodded.
They rolled--at a deliberate pace--up out of the ditch and wriggled slowly along the base of the building until they were around the corner. Here there were bushes to offer some shelter. They stood in the shadows for a moment, then walked, casually, away from the building as if they had just emerged from the door. Bean hoped not to be visible to anyone watching Suriyawong's building, but even if they could be seen, they shouldn't attract any attention, as long as no one noticed that they seemed to be just a little undersized.