The man looked up as Nick approached and grinned widely. Nick could see that the hair under his cap was snow-white, and though he must have been in his early nineties, his face still retained its handsome features. He put down the camera and got up with an agility that surprised Nick.
"Nicholas Young, what a pleasure! Did you have a good journey?" the man said in English tinged with the slightest British accent.
"Yes, Your Highness, thank you."
"Please call me Jirasit. I hope I didn't rouse you too early?"
"Not at all-it was great to get an early start, and your plane landed just as the sun was rising."
"I had your aunt Catherine arrange it for you this way. I think the mountains are at their most beautiful right at dawn, and I must confess, I am a very early bird. At my age, I'm up by five and quite useless by midafternoon."
Nick simply smiled, and Jirasit clasped Nick's hands in his own. "I am glad we are meeting. I've heard so much about you over the years!"
"Really?"
"Yes, your grandmother was inordinately proud of you. She talked about you all the time. Come, sit, sit. Do you take tea or coffee?" Jirasit asked as a flurry of servants appeared with trays of refreshments and food.
"Coffee would be great."
Jirasit uttered a few words in Thai as the servants began setting up an elaborate breakfast on the wide stone ledge of the pavilion. "You'll have to excuse the mess, I have been indulging in my favorite pastime," Jirasit said, as he moved his cameras to one side of the table to make room for the coffee service.
"That's quite a collection you have there," Nick said.
"Oh, they're all rather obsolete at this point. I prefer shooting with my digital Canon EOS these days, but I do enjoy cleaning these old cameras. It's very meditative."
"So you were in quite frequent contact with my grandmother, then?" Nick asked.
"Off and on, over the years. You know how old friends are … we would skip a year here and there, but we did try to stay in touch." Jirasit paused for a moment, staring at an old Rolleiflex twin lens on the table. "That Su Yi … I shall miss her."
Nick took a sip of his coffee. "How did you two become acquainted?"
"We met in Bombay in 1941, when we both worked at the British India Office."
Nick sat forward in his chair, surprised. "Wait a minute, is this the Indian branch of the War Office? My grandmother worked there?"
"Oh yes. She never told you? Your grandmother started out in the code-breaking office, and I was in the cartography department, helping to create a detailed map of Thailand. The cartographers didn't really know Thailand well, especially in these remote northern parts near the border, and we needed accurate maps in the event of an invasion."
"How fascinating. I always pictured her luxuriating away in some maharaja's palace during the Japanese occupation."
"Well, she did that too, but the British, you see, enlisted her to do some … sensitive diplomatic work as soon as they realized what she was capable of."
"I had no idea … "
"Your grandmother had a certain allure that's hard to put your finger on. She was never one of those typical beauties, but men just fell at her feet. It came in very useful during the war. She was good at influencing those rajahs in certain directions."
Nick reached into his satchel and took out the leather box that Su Yi had entrusted to him, placing it on the table. "Well, the reason I'm here is because my grandmother wanted me to return these to you."
"Ah, my old Dunhill case! I never thought I'd be reunited with it after all these years," Jirasit said like an excited child. "You know, your grandmother was a very stubborn woman. When she insisted on returning to Singapore during the height of the war-complete madness, I tell you-I gave her a few of my most valuable possessions. My father's Patek and these gold sovereigns, and a few other things, I can't remember what. I thought she would need them to bribe her way into Singapore. But see, she hardly needed them after all." Jirasit began winding the pocket watch, and then he held it up to his ear. "Listen? Still ticking perfectly after all these years! I'm going to have to tell my friend Philippe Stern about this!" Jirasit picked up the packet of old envelopes tied in ribbon and studied them for a moment. "What's this?"
"I have no idea. I assumed they were yours, so I didn't open them," Nick said.
Jirasit untied the ribbon and began sifting through the letters. "My goodness! These were my letters to her after the war. She saved every last one of them!" His pale gray eyes clouded over with tears, which he flicked away quickly.