Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
nap, heard him taking a chair out onto the patio. Then they heard his footsteps briefly on
the gravel path. After that, runs the story, he was neither seen nor heard in this world. It
is all very appealing; a perfect mystery story. A man ascends a mountain and vanishes into
thin air. Thompson's background as a wartime spy and subsequent emergence as the Thai
Silk King add the glamour, and time has done the rest.
I don't know what happened any better than anyone else. But some while back I trav-
elled to the Cameron Highlands on an unrelated assignment, and took some time out to
do a little hunting around. I asked a taxi driver if he could find Moonlight Cottage, and
as the Cameron Highlands is little more than a collection of English-style villages, he got
me there easily enough. The cottage is slightly above the level of the road, hidden by trees.
There is a short driveway, and we arrived quite suddenly on the front lawn. There were
windows open, but no one seemed to be around. Feeling rather furtive, I took a few pic-
tures and then got back in the car. I was there for less than five minutes. During that time
I had the distinct impression that not even I could have got lost in the surrounding jungle.
The house stands alone, but it is not remote. Thompson had actually got lost while walking
with his host a day or so previously, but they had emerged soon enough onto the nearby
golf course.
By a stroke of luck I found the journalist who had been on the spot at the time, and
who had broken the story of the disappearance. A local man, he later gave up writing and
when I met him he was manager of the Smokehouse Hotel, a Tudor-style building straight
out of the Sussex Downs. He told me that while the search was underway they watched the
skies over the jungle for circling birds, a sure sign that something (or someone) was dead
amongst the trees. There were no birds. A psychic arrived on the scene and said he was
receiving images of the missing man, giving a very plausible name as being instrumental
in Thompson's sudden disappearance. The psychic was not taken very seriously, but be-
fore he left he had performed an impromptu reading on the young reporter that had been
so accurate that the middle-aged man now standing in the lobby of the Smokehouse was
still in awe. Somebody, somewhere, knows something. But nobody has ever gone public.
Maybe it is just as well—the truth might spoil a thundering good story.
Many years ago, I went with a photographer to write a feature story on the Thompson
House. We went in the evening so we could get some mood shots. The custodian in those
days was a man named Bill Riley, who had been one of Thompson's friends. With the day's
visitors gone, Riley went across the compound to fetch a couple of gins. The photograph-
er was out in the garden. I sat alone in the house, on the big couch in the living room.
Everything was very quiet. I felt the skin on the back of my neck tingling. This is not a good
