Bangkok Tattoo

by John Burdett

  His self-esteem was not much improved, though, by the imam, who seemed to intuit the depth of Mitch’s terror and smiled somewhat patronizingly, as if to a frightened child. The other middle-aged men, at least some of whom Mitch recognized as respectable and influential citizens of Songai Kolok, many of them successful hoteliers, were also making calming gestures with their hands. When it was clear that Mitch was not going to make a run for the door, one of the young Malay guards respectfully seated himself next to the imam.

  “Please forgive us, Mr. Turner,” the imam began. “I’m afraid that if we had approached you in any other way, certain interests would have taken notice and your life would have been in danger, not to mention our own. Mr. Turner, we are here to help you stay alive. We will do you no harm ourselves, but our warning to you is not without self-interest, as you will see.” A cough and a strange gesture that would burn into Mitch Turner’s memory: the imam had a habit of moving his hand in a curving, horizontal motion as if he were caressing a pet cat. “Mr. Turner, we know you work for the CIA and that you are here to spy on Muslims, especially fanatics from Indonesia and Malayasia who might be part of Al Qaeda or some other terrorist organization. Believe me, Mr. Turner, we are not at all out of sympathy with the cause, only with the manner of your country’s serving it.” A placatory raising of the hand. “But no matter, we are not here to convert you, only to try to help you. Mr. Turner, do you really think your presence has gone unnoticed throughout the Muslim world in Southeast Asia? Of course, no one believes your cover story about working for a telecommunications company, and of course your identity, even your photograph, has been broadcast throughout the Muslim networks. How many young fanatics do you think would be only too happy to dispatch you in a suicide bombing? We have been approached by three separate Indonesian groups, two groups based in Malayasia and a couple of young Thai Muslims who are enraged by your provocative presence here. You are an intelligent man, Mr. Turner, even a brilliant one, so I do not need to tell you about the advantages your ruling elite would derive from a permanent war with Islam. Oil and arms, Mr. Turner. America is so much easier to govern and exploit when it is at war, is that not so? Indeed, the world is so much easier to exploit when it is at war.” Another pause. “Allow me to quote a very smart American: America is a giant but a deformed one. Yes, Mr. Turner, you are not the only ones who can eavesdrop on the electronic world—most of your components are fabricated over the border in Malaysia, don’t forget.”

  A long pause. Mitch Turner was trying to come to terms: what the hell was going on here? That quote was from an e-mail he’d sent to a close friend in the United States.

  The imam continued. “We do not want war, Mr. Turner. We are Thai citizens and happy to be so. However, we are also Muslims, and perhaps I do not need to tell you how ruthless Thai Buddhists can be when they feel the integrity of the kingdom under threat. If you are murdered down here in the south, Mr. Turner, Washington’s screams will be heard worldwide. Enormous pressure will be brought to bear on the Thai government, which already has contingency plans to intern Muslims in camps if the security situation worsens. That of course will be the beginning of the end, not only for us but for peace in Southeast Asia. But I don’t think your government minds much about that.” A short pause. “We want you out of Songai Kolok, Mr. Turner. If you will not go to save your own skin, then do it for our sake. I believe you are a Christian, is that not so? Perhaps you know how deeply Islam reveres Christ? For Christ’s sake, then, go away.” Looking deeply into Mitch Turner’s eyes: “Pursue your death wish in some other land, Mr. Turner. That way perhaps you will be the only victim, rather than half the world.”

  And with that the imam rose and crossed the floor with great dignity, leading the others behind him. He paused at the door: “Mr. Turner, there are so many problems with Western society, but there may be one above all others that will destroy civilization. I speak of your inability to conceive that you might be wrong.”

  Now Mitch Turner was alone. Down below in the huts around the police station the night was in full swing. Mitch Turner was shaking with shock. Pacing up and down his flat with his head reeling, it took him more than five minutes to notice a package on his coffee table done up in ornate green and gold wrapping and topped off with a gold ribbon. In the circumstances a booby trap was unlikely, but his nerves were in such bad shape, he fumbled time after time while opening it. Inside: a ball of dense black viscous opium, far bigger than anything Chanya had ever brought him.

  He knew I have a death wish, he saw it, Mitch Turner muttered as he prepared his pipe.

  42

  Now Chanya couldn’t believe what a bad turn everything was taking. Mitch Turner was an opium addict, and it was all her fault.

  A Thai shrug. Karma was karma. Perhaps she should not have introduced him to the drug, but the kind of obsessional behavior that turned it into a dangerous addiction came from his own background—she could hardly hold herself responsible for that. She had acted with the best of intentions, but as the Buddhists said, the only real favor you can ever do for another being is to help him or her on the way to nirvana. Everything else is mere indulgence. She felt it was about time she ended her own indulgence. In any event, she had now made the decision to come work for us.

  With the simplicity of a Thai in a fix, she changed the sim card in her mobile telephone and stopped replying to his e-mails. With the determination of an American in the grip of an obsession, he found her after a few months at the Old Man’s Club.

  Chanya had nothing against my mother’s bar, but it was a drag, frankly, to return to that sordid mind-set just when you thought you’d escaped. She had nothing against the johns either—in the whole of her long career, she had come across no more than five or six who’d given her trouble, and she knew how to deal with that. More than anything it was the indignity. Being twenty-nine simply was not the same as being nineteen. You couldn’t laugh it off as some game you were playing on the way to growing up. Whenever she could, she avoided fellatio. Nothing to do but to put a brave face on it all, though. A sad whore is a bankrupt whore. The johns come to be cheered up; generally they had problems of their own—why else would they be hiring flesh? It was a sad and fallen world, under the surface, just like the Buddha said: there is suffering. She could hardly believe it when she saw him sitting there in the Old Man’s Club that night.

  She had already been with one customer, and it was her right to go home if she wished, but she was working at full power. She was taking it easy at that moment, though, and had just emerged from one of the upstairs rooms where she had been resting for half an hour, by which time the brooding farang was sitting in his corner, ignored by the rest of the girls. She caught my eye when she reached the bottom of the stairs and made it look as if she were following a hint from me to go and sit with him. She exercised all her powers of self-control, not because it mattered particularly that this customer was her lover, but because like all Thais she loathes any kind of public scene. She was thankful that Mitch understood enough about Asia to respect this. Indeed, she was impressed with his appearance. He seemed much healthier and mentally more together than when she’d last seen him.

  His approach to her that night was quite new. He no longer relied on wacky humor to seduce her, but he obviously intended to impress her with his sobriety. Apparently he was able to drink a couple of beers without losing control. He was doing Cool with considerable success. He admitted to being lonely and to missing her badly, but strictly within the parameters of the sane. He wanted to try again, to show her that he was not nuts, that the thing could work. There was enormous charm in the humble way he told her how good she looked, how deeply he was in love with her, and offered to pay her bar fine.

  He had rented a room in a reasonably clean hotel just a short walk from the bar. They held hands as they left, and on the way to his hotel she asked how he was managing to cope with the culture shock, the boredom, the lack of purpose down there in Songai Kolok, where frankly
even she would feel lonesome.

  “Stop,” I tell her. “I can’t stand any more of your lies.”

  43

  What lies?”

  She is startled. Her narrative seemed to be going so well. Perhaps she had started to believe it herself.

  “Lies of omission. The tattoo, darling. You have to tell me about that.”

  She takes a deep breath. “I do?” Checking my face with an ancient question in mind: Can he take it? “Okay.”

  Hard to say what happened first—Mitch’s interest in Islam, or his decision to finally go ahead with a large tattoo. Somehow they seemed a product of the same desperate impulse. Even then his conversation had begun to lack coherence. Putting it all together as best she can, it seems that the CIA spy befriended the very imam who had come to see him that night to warn him of the threat to his life by radical fanatics. Chanya’s memory of his conversation at this time is vivid but partial, like the intense but inexplicable images of an opium dream, which it may well be, for at this stage Mitch hardly left his room without smoking at least one pipe.

  The imam lives out of town in a modest wooden house on stilts in the middle of a lush green hollow, of the sort his Arab brethren associate with paradise. An artesian well with the long crossbeam of former times joins land and sky. There are no electric or telephone cables here; this is an oasis undefiled by utility. Nestled still more deeply into the hollow and no more than five minutes’ walk from the cleric’s home: a mosque so cute, it might have been invented by a cartoonist. The dome’s compass is no greater than that of a large house; the minaret is less intimidating than a radio antenna. On his first visit Mitch found himself at the center of a small gang of bodyguards, one of whom spoke to a servant woman, who reported that the revered cleric was in prayer but would see him in due course. He sat cross-legged on a rush mat, drank sweet peppermint tea, and exchanged small talk with the bodyguards who, apparently convinced by intuition that he was harmless, did not search him. Then quite different men began to arrive. They were bearded, wore the long robes and skullcaps of Muslim clerics, and took no notice of him at all.

  Now five quite elderly men with graying beards arrived with the dignified bearing of magi, each one more straight-backed than the last, each smoothly descending to the floor and crossing his legs under his long robes with the fluidity of the enlightened, each composing himself with a sigh and a closing of the eyes. They communicated with brief unintelligible murmurs and paid him no attention. Finally the host arrived. He owned all the bells and whistles of an aesthete, including the gaunt features, the long gray beard, the straight back, the prayerful manner—but there was an extra energy in his gestures, a gleam in his coal-black eyes. A young man translated the imam’s words for Mitch:

  “We were speaking, were we not, of the great Abu’l Walid Muhammad ibn Rushd?” With a smooth flourish the imam adjusted his robe. His voice was hardly more than a power-laden whisper. “Shall we continue our study?”

  “God willing,” murmured the others.

  Mitch realized he had stumbled upon a seminar of the learned in which the words of an ancient cleric were being examined and discussed. Mitch was enthralled. Nevertheless, he decided to wait outside the house until the seminar was over. With whatever grace he could muster, he stood up, bowed, and waied, and left the room. He feared his footsteps on the wooden stairs that descended to the path that led to the well were the loudest noise in this tranquil valley.

  He waited by the well. It was nearly dusk; therefore the imam would go to the mosque to pray before he would have time for Mitch. He watched while they all trooped out of his house, crossed the short path to the mosque, and disappeared inside, exactly as the muezzin’s song seemed to rise from the grass up to heaven. The sun set, the moon rose: an impossibly large and shiny crescent hung haphazardly above a palm. It did not surprise him that the imam possessed the magical power to creep up silently from behind. At the sound of a cough, Mitch turned and there he was, leaning against the opposite side of the well.

  The imam spoke softly in formal, accented English unconstrained by context:

  “There will be peace on earth when Hollywood makes movies in which the heroes are non-Americans. According to someone called Ibn Qutaiba a certain rose bush used to be cultivated in the gardens of Hindustan, the petals of which were bright crimson and bore the text in Arab characters of the famous line from the Koran: There is no god but God, Muhammad is the prophet of God.”

  “I see,” said Mitch in the slow drawl of a man under a spell.

  “That’s it? That was his Islam?” I ask Chanya as we lie naked side by side in our poor shack, listening to the sounds of the night.

  “That’s all I remember. He was pretty incoherent at this point.”

  “And the tattoo?”

  The horimono was a different matter, one requiring some fairly concrete decisions. Chanya sees it as the male equivalent of a breast implant: the revolutionary modification that would surely change one’s destiny. All she knows of the origin of the tattooist is that he emerged from Mitch Turner’s Japanese connections. Turner, as a nonofficial cover operator in Tokyo, built up a wide network of contacts with whom he kept in touch. As frequently happens in the spy business, not a few of these contacts were associated with the underworld, which was to say the yakuza mobs. From time to time the e-mail gossip still echoes with memories of the hilarious exile of a manic tattooist who got drunk one night with a yakuza godfather and tattooed the mobster on the forehead with a picture of Mount Fuji. It was thought the tattooist was in hiding in Bangkok. He was, the legend confirms, a master of his craft, a genius within the glorious tradition of the woodblock artists of yesteryear, but hard up and hungry for work and more than a little crazy. Using techniques known to all spies, Mitch located him without difficulty.

  The Japanese tattooist came to stay for a week in Mitch’s spare bedroom in Songai Kolok. He and Chanya disliked each other on sight. The segment of pinkie missing from his left hand disgusted her. When he stripped to his shorts in order to work, she realized she was sharing an apartment with a monster.

  He did not speak to her at all at first, which she took to be the height of rudeness and an expression of contempt for her profession. Later she realized he was pathologically shy because of his stutter. He and Mitch huddled together over a thick wad of drawings the tattooist had made for the American spy’s consideration, speaking in rapid Japanese. Mitch’s instructions were quite specific, apparently. The horimono was to be a single gigantic work covering the whole of his back, from shoulders to hips. Ishy’s right hand worked so fast it was a blur; he was able to produce elegant sketches at lightning speed. Chanya had never seen a man infected with the passion of art before. She was not offended that the Japanese cast not a single lecherous glance at her body. Even though she had decided to hate him, she respected his fanatical concentration. She watched, mesmerized, the first time he opened a long black lacquer box roughly the dimensions of something you might carry a flute in. She wondered if this man ever treated a woman’s body with the reverence he showed for his tebori, those twelve-inch-long polished bamboo tattooing needles.

  After the paper sketches came the painstaking computer work. Ishy brought a digital camera and a Sony Micro Vault. His software enabled him to impose a grid on the snapshot of Mitch Turner’s back, which in turn enabled him to plan each pinprick with precision. There followed the painstaking transfer of the grid to the American’s back, then broad outlines of the work using a Western tattoo gun. Finally ready, Ishy mixed his ink in another machine, which juddered quaintly. The apartment was filled with the indescribable odor of sumi ink, which she decided was neither pleasant nor unpleasant but exclusively Japanese. Stoically, Mitch endured the first deep penetration of his skin as he lay on the bed with Ishy sitting above him, using the full weight of his body behind the tebori, which the tattooist worked as if it were a long chisel.

  Now a problem arose. Sober, Mitch had difficulty keeping still for hours on
end. He could take the pain but not the boredom. Ishy grew irritated. He would not have his masterpiece ruined by American impatience. An obvious solution offered itself. Mitch would smoke a few pipes of opium before each session, which would keep him happily comatose for nearly eight hours. The tattooist was delighted. His concentration was such that he could easily work almost nonstop for the full eight hours. What he thought would be a two-week job could be accomplished in one, so long as Mitch remained stoned.

  Chanya was not allowed into the bedroom, now an artist’s studio, while Ishy worked. It was her duty to keep one bottle of sake warm at all times, that being the only sustenance the artist would tolerate while on duty. Finally she was amused at the way the tattooist emerged from the bedroom every couple of hours, went to the sake bottle, and returned to the bedroom without so much as acknowledging her existence. She had begun to understand that this was not bad manners so much as the behavior of a wild thing, a denizen of the electronic jungle that had never been socialized. To test her theory one day, she stood topless in the kitchen while the artist emerged from the bedroom, gulped some sake, and returned to his work, pausing only to remark at the door that her nakedness would benefit from a horimono—perhaps a blue dolphin over her left breast?