by John Burdett
Unable to resist this patriotic call, the younger one gives a sincere smile, while the older one simply nods.
They order Cokes. Their body language indicates they’re quite ready to lose Mustafa, who remains silent as if enveloped in an invisible chador and clearly makes them nervous.
Making it up as I go: “I’m thinking of doing a trip down south myself, planning to take that jungle train the books talk about. Supposed to be quite something.”
“Is that right?” Politely, but sharing glances with each other.
“Yeah. What are you two guys doing here? Going south yourselves, or have you just come up from there?”
Sharing that glance again: “Oh, well, we’re here on business, actually.”
“You are? In a town like this? Well, I’m not going to ask, but I can’t imagine what kind of business an American could have here. Hell, it’s all Muslim, you know. Except at night when it’s all sex, ha-ha.”
Sheepish grins. “Yes, well, we only got here last night. Took the plane to Hat Yai from Bangkok, then a four-hour taxi ride. We didn’t really know what to expect. Neither of us has been here before. Actually, we’re looking for a colleague of ours.”
“Oh yeah? An American?”
“That’s right. I wonder if we could, ahm . . .” The hint is for Mustafa to lose himself, but he doesn’t take it. One more glance, and a nod is exchanged. “Look—ah, frankly we’re a little worried about our friend. We haven’t heard from him in a week now, and well, to look at he’s pretty obviously an American, and this is a very Islamic town.”
“Oh, that’s too bad.” I give them a big worried shake of the head. “How awful.”
“Yes, well, we don’t know if it’s awful or not, but we were wondering . . .” It seems it’s hard for them to say exactly what they were wondering with Mustafa sitting at the table.
“Would I be right in thinking your colleague lives in that apartment building over there? The one I just saw you come out of?”
“Correct. That’s what we were wondering, if there might be an informal way of taking a look at the apartment, without necessarily getting the police involved, just to check that there’s been no foul play.”
“Informal?” I’m frowning with my head to one side.
Coughs. “Yes, look, we’re not all that familiar with your country, and the last thing we want to do is to cause offense, but if there were some way in which a person of influence could talk with that concierge . . . You’re from around here, you speak the language. Maybe he has a key? We just want to make sure our friend’s okay.”
I’m still frowning uncomprehendingly, but I’ve added that special gleam of Third World Greed.
“Oh, we’d be willing to pay for your time, wouldn’t we?”
“More than willing. A quick glance into that apartment would be worth quite a lot to us, I’d say.” I raise my eyebrows. “Oh, we’d make it worth your while.”
“Keep your money,” I say with a smile. “Let’s just wander over and see what we can do, shall we?” I frown in concentration. “But just in case the authorities get involved, I ought to know exactly who you are. Do you have your passports with you?”
“Passports? Sure.”
“Could I take just a quick peek at your visas?”
Two blue passports with eagles on the front appear. I see they are both holding business visas. The older one is named Hudson, and the young blond is Bright. I hand the passports back. “What is your business? Are you working in Thailand?”
Their command of their mutual cover story is really quite smooth. It seems they are executives in the telecommunications industry, more on the infrastructure side than marketing. Mitch Turner is stationed down here to get a general impression of the political situation right on the border. Nobody wants to invest in heavy engineering costs only to find that civil strife or terrorism has ruined the project.
“So he’s a kind of industrial spy?” I ask.
The word does not faze them at all. No, not a spy, that would be overstating it, let’s say the advance guard of a feasibility study.
“I see,” I say. “And you think our local Muslims might have taken a dislike to him?”
Deep frowns. I seem to have hit a nerve. “That would be the worst case. It could be anything. He could be in his bed right now suffering some kind of seizure. He could have gotten hit by a truck. Until we get inside his apartment, it’s going to be hard even to hypothesize.”
The four of us cross the street together. Mustafa finds a way of guiding me into the concierge’s office, then out again triumphantly holding the key. “Money talks around here,” I explain.
Up three flights of stairs with everyone sweating in the tropical heat, then we’re in Turner’s apartment. A quick look, and it is obvious that Mitch Turner is not here. They seem to be on the lookout for something specific, which I would guess to be Turner’s laptop, and don’t take much interest in anything else. Mustafa and I watch them rummage around in a wardrobe. They pay some attention to the empty silver picture frame but soon give it a shrug. Finally the older one, Hudson, gives me a brief smile. “Well, he’s not here, and there are no signs that he left in a hurry.”
Mustafa, though, has stationed himself by the front door, blocking it with his big shoulders. A mean look has come over his features. “They palmed something,” he snaps at me in Thai. “Something they found in that wardrobe in the bedroom.”
I’m doing Disappointment and Consternation when I take up a position next to Mustafa and engage Hudson’s eyes. “Come on, guys, we saw you palm it.”
An exchange of glances between the two. “I’m afraid we can’t do that,” says Bright, the younger one. He makes a face of muffled triumph: Clark Kent has disrobed. Hudson seems less sure. I think he’s seen through me, at least to the extent of not making any assumptions.
“I brought you here in good faith,” I say. “I can’t let you steal anything.”
“Well, you see,” Bright begins, but is silenced by a gesture from Hudson.
“We’re here on government business,” Hudson says in a reasonable tone. “U.S. government.”
Bright checks my face: isn’t that enough?
“How do I know that?”
“You don’t,” says Bright. “You’ll just have to take our word for it.”
“Oh? Well, the Royal Thai Police might have a different view.” I take out my police ID to show them. Bright is nonplussed in the way of Caucasians: he turns crimson, his mouth makes strange shapes, and he throws repetitive glances at Hudson, who is carefully studying my ID. “Nothing will be removed from this room.”
Hudson and Bright do an eye-shift, which means I don’t know who I’m dealing with (i.e., the most powerful blah blah blah . . .), so I go into Thai Malicious. My suddenly cynical expression says that Third World Revenge starts here: sure you can invade, but then whatchagonnado? This tar baby just gets stickier and stickier, and you really don’t want to spend even a week in a Thai jail, much less the year or so I have in mind. The threat of quagmire focuses Hudson, who nudges Bright, who takes the cue and fishes something out of his pocket and hands it to me. (We’ll get it back once we have your ass kicked by someone who understands who we really are.) I still don’t know what the hell it is. It’s a kind of slim oval about two and a half inches long, three-quarters of an inch wide, half an inch deep in smooth gray plastic, with the words SONY MICRO VAULT stamped on the end.
The atmosphere is strained as I lead the CIA out of the apartment and let them watch while Mustafa the dark-skinned Muslim locks the door to Turner’s apartment and pockets the key with a proprietary air. It occurs to me that this incriminating move is the last thing his father would have wanted, but it has discomfited the two spies. We find ouselves out in the street, where the vehement heat and Islamic costumes further disorient them. They walk away without saying goodbye.
15
It’s lunchtime, but Mustafa and I have different tastes. He leaves me to go off to a Muslim r
estaurant, while I seek out a Thai canteen that is famous for the heat of its grataa rawn, a sizzling variety show of marine life. Actually, I could just as well have eaten some lamb with Mustafa, but I wanted to be alone for a moment. I pull out the picture of Chanya while I’m waiting for the grataa rawn. I would almost have preferred the simple case I first assumed it to be: an irrational outbreak of violence from an overstressed whore. Now the complexity seems infinite and infinitely impenetrable. I really have no idea what’s going on or where it all will lead.
I’m in a pretty somber state of mind when Mustafa arrives at the restaurant in a pickup truck. It’s a Toyota four-by-four with three young men in the back. I guess from the bulges they are armed guards. Mustafa and I sit in the front of the truck with the driver while the guards, scarves covering their heads and faces against the dust, bump up and down on a bench in the open back.
The road out of town leads northeast, and we soon leave the paved highway for a rutted track. There is no air-con in the cab, so we drive with the windows open. The heat down here is always a few degrees higher than in Bangkok; it doesn’t sound like much, but when you live at the upper limit of what the human frame can tolerate, it makes a difference. When we slow down to accommodate the rutted terrain, I feel like we’re in a mobile oven. The terrain is lush, though, even for Thailand, because they have a lot more rain down here. When the driver finally stops the truck and we get out, the intensity of the silence hits us all between the eyes. We’ve been rattling up and down in a noisy vehicle for more than half an hour; suddenly there is only a single cicada with the energy to rub its legs together.
Mustafa beckons to me, and I follow him down a footpath that leads into a tranquil valley in which the only buildings are a large wooden house on stilts and a tiny mosque, apparently made of wood that has somehow been fashioned to produce a dome. He tells me to stay with the guards while he checks on his father. He emerges from the house with joy in his face and beckons for me to climb the stairs to join him. Inside the house the old imam with the fire in his black eyes welcomes me with his usual hospitality. We sit on mats drinking peppermint tea. My report is brief but welcome. Of course, in light of the photograph of Chanya in Mitch Turner’s bedroom in Songai Kolok, no responsible cop could avoid the conclusion that Chanya killed Mitch Turner, for whatever reason. They knew each other; she went back to his hotel when he came to Bangkok. Whatever happened in the hotel room, only she came out alive.
The imam has been examining my face while I speak. “But your Colonel is strangely keen to protect this prostitute. Why is that?”
“She’s a key worker. These things happen from time to time. I guess he’s just protecting the club and its reputation.”
“You will put your report in writing?”
“I can’t do that without permission.”
Silence. Mustafa looks angry.
The old man says: “If Colonel Vikorn changes his mind under pressure from the Americans, will you warn us?”
“Yes,” I say. “Okay.” A long shot comes to mind. I’m shy to ask the question, considering its mystic origin, but what the hell? “Does the name Don Buri mean anything to you?” Blank glances.
The interview is over, and I go back to town in the truck with Mustafa, who is wrestling with some karmic obsession and says nothing throughout the journey. Indeed, he hardly manages to say goodbye.
Back in my hotel room I call Vikorn with my heart in my mouth. “I’m just about finished down here.” I tell him about Hudson and Bright, the picture of Chanya.
“So?”
“I’m convinced Chanya did it.”
Impatiently: “Well, what else is new?”
“So it wasn’t a Muslim assassination.”
A pause. “I hope you’re not resurrecting that bleeding heart of yours?”
“It’s not a bleeding heart, it’s practical politics. If we try to blame Al Qaeda, it could have repercussions down here.”
Even more impatiently: “Nobody’s blaming Al Qaeda. You wrote her fucking statement yourself. Chanya acted in self-defense.”
“She knew him from the States. He had a picture of her in his apartment. She sent me a copy of the diary she kept when she was over there. They were longtime lovers.”
A longer pause. “You better get back here.”
“I think I should make a written report—”
“No.”
“If the CIA find out that she knew him, the cover story won’t work, and you’ll start blaming Muslims. That’s your B plan, isn’t it?”
“Get back here.”
“If the Americans put pressure on us and our government gets clumsy, there could be war down here.”
“War or no war, people die. They’re always causing trouble in the South. Don’t you want to save Chanya?”
“I don’t want to be responsible for an insurrection.”
“Then tell Buddha it’s all my fault. Obedience is part of the Eightfold Path; you tend to forget that from time to time. Read my lips: no written report.”
16
Rebirth, farang (in case you’re wondering): You are lounging on a magnificent balcony open to the starry sky, divine music is playing with such exquisite perfection you can hardly stand it, when all of a sudden something terrible occurs: the magical sounds break up into an obscene cacophony. What is happening? Are you dying? You could put it that way. That awful noise is the first scream of an infant: you. You have been born into a human body hardwired with each and every transgression from the last time around, and now you must spend the next seventy years clawing your way back to the music. No wonder we cry.
THREE
The Zinna Distraction
17
Farang, I humbly offer an apology. I had intended, on my return to Krung Thep, to reread Chanya’s diary and share it with you (honestly), but duty—and ambition—compel me to postpone. Just now, while I was unpacking in my hovel by the river at about six this morning (the flight from the South was delayed, I didn’t get in until after midnight), the cell phone rang. It was Vikorn’s formidable female assistant, Police Lieutenant Manhatsirikit, known, not inappropriately, as Manny.
“The Colonel’s not around and I can’t get hold of him, so you’ll have to sort this out on your own. It sounds like a nice little Trance 808 at the Sheraton on Sukhumvit. The general manager’s scared shitless about the publicity, so you’d better get over there. Take someone with you.”
“Why me?”
“I think it’s X file.”
“Zinna?”
“Must you be so indiscreet over the phone?”
I call Lek, whom I extract from the depths of sleep by dint of persistent ringing on his cell phone. He is all deference, though, as his mind clears and I tell him to be waiting outside his housing project so I can collect him in the cab.
At the Sheraton the general manager, an elegant but anxious Austrian (one of those European men who spend a good chunk of their time in this body trying to persuade a slick of hair to cover a bald patch—he was a woman last time around: vain, snobbish, and French; as is often the case when we switch genders between incarnations, he is having trouble adjusting: bald was never an issue last time; on the contrary he kept a magnificent head of hair all the way to his—actually her—deathbed), is waiting for us.
He ushers us into a lift, which takes us to the floor of suites near the top of the building. Outside room 2506 he produces a key to let us in. “Room service found him early this morning when they went in to collect a food trolley from last night. No one responded to their knocks, so they assumed the suite was empty. No one’s been inside since.”
In the room Lek takes one look at the corpse, then falls to his knees to wai the Buddha and pray that we will not be contaminated by death or bad luck, while the manager looks on in amazement. I tell the manager to wait outside.
The Japanese, dressed in smart casual, is slumped sideways on the sofa with that telltale professional hole in his forehead. I note that rigor mortis h
as set in but have forgotten exactly what that means in terms of the time of death. Lek, fresh from the academy, can’t remember, either. I undo the buttons on the shirt to check if there are any other wounds, in the certainty that there will be none.
“Not a mark on him,” I confirm, mostly to myself. There won’t be any other clues, either, of course, so why waste time looking for them? I call the manager back in.
“It’s a very professional hit. One small-bore slug between the eyes. How long has he been staying here?”
“He wasn’t staying here. He must have been invited by the guest, who has disappeared, of course. Why the hell they had to choose this hotel I can’t imagine.”
My cell phone rings. It’s Vikorn. “What are you up to?”
“I’m on a T808 at the—”
“I know where you are. Get out of there.”
“But Manny said it’s X file. Zinna.”
“That’s why I want you out of there. This is needle, pure provocation, I’m not taking the bait. Let the fucking army deal with it. I don’t want any record that you were there at all. I’ll needle him back with silence, while I think up something better.” Despite the restraint in his strategy, he is boiling with rage.
“Oh.” Somewhat crestfallen, I take another look at the corpse. “This is the General’s calling card?”
“He’s just letting us know he’s back on form, after that court-martial.”
Out of the corner of my eye I watch Lek posturing in front of the long mirror opposite the sofa. He can stand on one leg and pull the string of an imaginary bow with extraordinary elegance. I’m wishing I hadn’t allowed the manager back in.
“So who’s the stiff?”
A grunt from Vikorn. “The victim is a muckraking journalist based here and employed by some Japanese environmentalist group with an ax to grind about Japanese destruction of forest lands in Asia. He was investigating a Thai-Japanese corporation that intimidates peasants off their lands in Isaan so they can plant eucalyptus trees. Eucalyptus soak up the whole of the water table and destroy all other forms of vegetation, making the land useless for generations, but they grow fast and keep the Nips supplied with disposable chopsticks. Why the fuck they can’t use plastic chopsticks, I just don’t know. If the Chinese used disposable wood, there wouldn’t be a tree left on the planet.”