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.

Daffodil

By Barry Arbiloff

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Barry Arbiloff
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-8785-2

Chapter One

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...