The Afterglow of Cameron Highlands (US Edition)

Epilogue: Those Left Behind

The Search and the Forgetting (1967 - )

A few hours after Jim Thompson vanished from the Moonlight bungalow, his friends’ anxiety turned into a formal report, and then into chaos.

The largest search in Malaysian history began. Helicopters chopped the air above the highlands. Hundreds of soldiers and police swept through the jungle in long lines. The Orang Asli, the indigenous trackers who knew the forest intimately, searched the ground with their sharp eyes.

They found nothing.

Not a broken branch, not a scrap of torn clothing, not a single drop of blood. It was as if Jim Thompson had simply evaporated from the face of the earth.

Soon, newspapers around the world were splashing sensational headlines.

SILK KING VANISHES IN JUNGLE

EX-SPY’S MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE: A CIA CONSPIRACY?

KILLED BY A TIGER, OR A KIDNAPPING PLOT?

The world, which did not know the truth, consumed his life and death as a thrilling mystery, decorating it with endless speculation. Jim Thompson became a character in the kind of cheap gossip column he had despised in life.

And then, time moved on. The search was called off. The world found new headlines to chase, and eventually, it forgot about the strange event in the Cameron Highlands.

Their Respective Kingdoms (1970s - )

CIA Station, Bangkok.

Richard Noice sat at his typewriter, typing up his final report.

Subject: James H. W. Thompson. Disappeared in Malaysia. Circumstances indicate high probability of contact with hostile forces (Malayan Communist Party). Suggest reclassifying as MIA. No physical evidence recovered. Further investigation not recommended due to diplomatic risk.

He sighed. Jim Thompson had died in the game after all. But there was no way to prove it. He stamped the report TOP SECRET and sent it to Washington, where it was buried in the vast government archives, a single file in a lightless vault, destined to sleep forever.

Bangkok, Thailand.

The magnificent mansion on the canal.

Time seemed to have stopped at the Jim Thompson House. Prasart, his faithful butler, continued to sweep the teak floors and water the flowers in the garden every day, as if preparing for the master’s return.

But the master never came back.

Eventually, according to his will, the kingdom was opened to the public as a museum. Tourists from all over the world came to marvel at his collection of art and the beauty of the silk he had revived.

But it was only a beautiful specimen, with its soul removed.

The sense of one man’s glory, his loneliness, and his secrets that had once filled the house was gone forever.

The Last Witness (Present Day)

A quiet town in Malaysia.

The era of revolution is a distant memory. Highways now cut through the jungle. People live their busy lives, their faces illuminated by the glow of their smartphones.

In a small coffee shop down a back alley, an old man sits, quietly sipping his tea.

His name is Kamar. The young man who dreamed of revolution is now just a quiet old man, living out the rest of his peaceful days.

He never told anyone what happened that day. Not his wife. Not his children. Not his grandchildren.

It is the heavy secret he has carried alone his entire life.

Sometimes, he dreams.

He dreams of a misty jungle in the Cameron Highlands.

And he dreams of an American man, standing before an old well, looking at him with quiet eyes.

“So was I.”

Those last words still echo in his ears.

Was I really fighting for what I believed in? he wonders. Or was I just a pawn, moved by the great, indifferent currents of history?

He still doesn’t know the answer.

The legend of Jim Thompson is still told around the world. An unsolved mystery. A thrilling story.

But the real truth was returned to the earth of the Cameron Highlands, and now sleeps at the bottom of a cold, dark, moss-covered well.

And the last person who knows that truth is now an old man, watching the sunset paint the town in shades of orange and red.

His heart is the only place left where the kingdom of James Thompson now resides, in complete silence.

And no one in the world can ever touch that silence again.

(The End)

This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.