yeah, I crossed paths with Peterman once, in the bar of a Bangkok whore house filled with American serviceman on leave from Subic Naval Base. They were buying him drinks as he regaled them with stories of the good old days on the Silk Road. I never quite figured whether he was crazier than me, or just more courageous.

No, wait, that was Cartwright, the British mercenary. I remember now. We got off the overnight train in Nong Khai early one morning, from Khon Kaen, and hungry as anything, walked into a restaurant courtyard, covered in tropical foliage, with birds and monkeys vying for attention. Peterman was at a table with what turned out to be the local Agency guy, and a pair of Laotian girls, still drinking from the night before. Peterman's friend was extra curious about us, I suppose because Laos was still held by the Communists, with whom the U.S. was still at war, and Nong Khai was a major crossing point. He invited us to join them, and we breakfasted on Bami with sweet onions and river shrimp, while Peterman's friend interrogated us, and the Laotian girls, teenagers really, spoke softly to each other and otherwise seemed oblivious to everything else. On discovering that we intended to slip across the bridge over the Mekong to get to Vientiane, the Agency guy laughed and shook his head, telling us that it was impossible to get a visa, that we would instead have to cross in the shallows after dark; go under the wire guided by whatever passed as the local version of a coyote, illegally into the last vestige of Chicom imperialism in Asia. We took his point. But Vientiane had, before the rise of the Viet Cong, been a gorgeous, far-flung outpost of the French Empire, where European men could live a life of sybaritic opulence and pleasure few can nowadays imagine, and our disappointment was acute and visceral. Peterman - and this was the measure of the man - on seeing our deep anguish, began to tell us in exquisite detail, with vigour and animation, as only a man who knew it's every intimate detail could, of old Vientiane, in its glory days under the French, before the war, as we drank Sang Som whiskey with Singha chasers late into the day.

Or maybe not. Perhaps that was LeRoux, the French pimp. But that one time, far, far North of Chiang Rai, deep into the Golden Triangle, we ran into Peterman for sure. We got off this piece of shit bus in the middle of nowhere, the stink of goats and chickens one straw too many, and just started walking. This far into the Security Zone as we were, between the Laotian Communists across one border, and the opium growing Burmese Karen Tribesman across the other, it didn't take long to come across a checkpoint, manned by Thai conscripts. Their sergeant was understandably perplexed to see two gringos in this godforsaken spot between nowhere... and nowhere else. They put us into a truck and drove us down the highway into a small town, where we stopped at what turned out to be the jail and police barracks. The sergeant fetched his Colonel, who looked at us, piercingly, and then apparently issued orders, whereupon he turned around and left. We were escorted to a concrete cell and invited to sit, and to refresh ourselves from a dripping water tap by the sergeant, who then left, leaving open the cell door. As our eyes accustomed to the darkness of the windowless cell, we noticed a man apparently asleep on a concrete bench, manacled to the wall. He stirred and came awake, blinked and wished us Good Morning. It was by now evening. "John Peterman" he said, "welcome!", offering his left hand, the right being in chains. We introduced ourselves and chatted politely, as one does, when, for example, obliged to share a train cabin. But the Thai elephant in the cell could not be ignored, and it was was not long before we voiced the obvious. "Mr. Peterman", we asked, "please explain how it is that you are chained to the wall, in this, the most grubby and remote outpost in Siam?". He laughed at this with a gusto that only a man like Peterman could, in these seemingly dubious circumstances. "This?", he said with a chuckle, " this is just Colonel Sarthoon negotiating", whereupon he told us a tale, in minute detail, of the illegal trade in sapphires and rubies between the closed state of Burma and international buyers in Thailand. Rubies, he said, of a colour as rich as dried blood, sapphires as bright as a star. They brought us stewed water buffalo meat for dinner, and a steel can of the smoothest, clearest moonshine whiskey we'd ever tasted. We ate and drank and talked and listened and then slept, deeply. The next morning we were awoken abruptly by the sergeant, and ushered quickly out of the barracks to the street, and a waiting bus. The last time we saw Peterman, was in passing, through a doorway, as he breakfasted from a laden table with the Colonel, their good natured laughter ringing from our ears.

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