by John Burdett
“Not on the phone. I’ll come around to your house. No, wait, I don’t want to be seen visiting you, I don’t want them to think we have a personal relationship.”
“D’you want me to wear a disguise?”
“Would you?”
“I was joking, Detective.”
He coughs. “How about Hua Lamphong?”
“Thirty minutes.”
• • •
So now I’m sitting at a café in the train station with an iced lemon tea, watching some backpackers hump their packs to the platform from which the train for Chiang Mai and all points north will depart. The station is crowded, as usual, mostly with rural Thais who have come to find fortune in the big city, or to depart in sorrow that they have failed. There are plenty of food vendors and taxi hustlers, as well. There is a big clock under the old-style rotating noticeboard that carries the departure times and makes it possible to imagine it is a hundred years ago when the station and its clock were new. Sukum is late. Sukum is terrified.
Finally he shows up in a pair of jeans, a black T-shirt, and dark glasses. He is carrying a Thai newspaper, which he has opened and raised to eye level, so that he has to take precautionary peeks before every step. He still walks like a cop. When he sees me he makes a sign to say, Don’t say hello. Instead of taking the seat next to me at my table, he sits at an adjacent table and takes out a pack of L&Ms. Sukum never smokes. I try not to stare as he opens the pack, thumps it to extract one, and lights it clumsily with a butane lighter. Ad-libbing as best I can, I wait for a few moments, then ask if I can have a cigarette. He shoves the packet at me. When I take one I use the opportunity to go nearer to him to beg a light. All the time his eyes are darting, and I see a fine patina of sweat has covered his face and soaked his T-shirt into a still darker shade. “Get a newspaper,” he hisses. So I find a vendor, buy today’s copy of Thai Rath, sit down at my table again but nearer to him, and carry on the conversation as if I am making remarks about the day’s news.
“You really met Johnny Ng?” he whispers. Despite his fear, he is fascinated that I may have penetrated further into the heart of darkness than he did ten years ago when he first started investigating Doctor Moi.
“Yes.”
“And he talked?”
“Yes, he talked. But that guy is a born survivor. What he said is all unat-tributable. I need you to fill in the gaps.”
He shakes his head at the incalculable depth of the void that has opened under his feet. “Okay,” he croaks, “talk.”
I tell the tale of a Chinese soldier of fortune whose tragedy was not entirely without a silver lining. True, Ng was shuttled around between family members after Mao’s Cultural Revolution had claimed his parents, and finally found a long-term foster home with a British family living in Hong Kong when it was still a British colony. All along, his surrogate families tended to be quite well-off and very well educated. He himself was also very, very smart. The youngish bisexual man—he was in his mid-to late twenties—who went to Bangkok to check out the possibilities of a distant family connection with a well-to-do pharmacist only a few years older than himself was cocky, adaptable, fluent in English and three Chinese dialects including Teochew, excessively good-looking, and entirely without moral sense. He married Moi within three months of meeting her, without expecting much in the way of love or normal family life. He had no illusions. Mimi Moi was weird within a tradition of upper-class Chinese women and not in the least interested in sex. That made a deal easy to reach. He would provide her with a respectable and attractive front for social events; in return she would have him trained in the most esoteric, and profitable, aspects of the gem trade. Theirs would be a symbiotic arrangement between what one might call “married singles.”
When I introduce the word gem into the narrative I watch Sukum’s face very carefully. He sinks into depression. I say, “Except that Moi doesn’t know much about precious stones at all, does she, Detective Sukum?” Sukum groans. “Oh, I expect she can tell a real sapphire from a fake—she would have learned that at her mother’s knee, no doubt.”
Sukum lights another cigarette. I don’t think this one is a prop. “Go on,” he gulps.
“The story at this stage, as with everything to do with China, plunges into a historical sidetrack. I’m talking about the 14K Triad Society.” Sukum drops the cigarette as he’s tapping ash into a tin ashtray, and has to retrieve it; now it’s covered in black ash, so he has to light another. “I didn’t know how widespread their operations are. I didn’t know they’d colonized half of the Pacific Rim.”
“You don’t call it the 14K outside of Hong Kong,” Sukum hisses. “Didn’t he tell you the unoriginal Thai name they’ve adopted?” I raise my eyebrows. “Kongrao. I want you to use that name when you talk to me about it.”
Kongrao means “our thing,” and, like cosa nostra, can be used in conversation without invoking anything sinister. It’s a phrase you hear a thousand times a day. I say, “Okay, so, Kongrao goes back to the eighteenth century—”
“Seventeenth.”
“Whatever. Chinese secret societies are genuinely religious at their core. All that Westerners see in the ceremonies is a lot of mumbo jumbo designed to brainwash and terrorize members into total obedience. Like with the Sicilians. What farang don’t understand is that no Asian society, especially not a criminal one, lasts for hundreds of years without a spiritual foundation. The rites work because they have something behind them.”
“Right,” Sukum says, lighting another foul-smelling L&M with shaking hands.
“And as so often in Asia,” I continue, “the priestly line was dominated by one family. One family whose duty it was to provide a priestess to preside at the rituals.”
Now that I’ve really let the cat out of the bag, Sukum seems almost relieved. I explain, “We’re talking about an exceptionally successful operation built up patiently over a period of centuries by dedicated men and women who never think of themselves as criminals at all, merely as people making a living in a difficult environment which requires absolute loyalty and absolute secrecy and includes an apprenticeship that lasts more than fifteen years. That’s why the rituals are so important and why the priestess has to be perfect for the part. Using this age-old system based on Confucian values, Kongrao has long dominated loan sharking throughout the Rim. All the big illegal logging operations in Cambodia, Thailand, and Malaysia, for example, are financed by Kongrao. But even logging is secondary to the most consistently lucrative trade, which has never failed for three hundred years and is the most closely guarded of all Kongrao’s operations. Comparatively, heroin and methamphetamine are like cash crops that, though good for turnover, do not bring in anything like the steady income generated by this business: the buying, cutting, polishing, faking, smuggling, and selling of precious gems.”
Sukum has stopped smoking. The cigarette is held suspended between his fingers, and he is staring at it. He is unable to speak, so I continue: “In many ways Moi is an ideal priestess. As the eldest girl in a family which has dominated the Bangkok chapter of Kongrao for centuries, central casting could not have provided a better one. In other ways, though, she is a dangerous liability—because she really is half mad. So Kongrao needed someone to keep an eye on her: who better than her maid, on whom she has been emotionally and physically dependent all her life? Thus the maid is promoted to a kind of surrogate priestess herself, or perhaps a handmaiden to Moi, who also acts as master of ceremonies. And the maid is very shrewd, very controlled, and very Chinese. Nobody is surprised when she finds a way to make herself rich, this is natural, and she is respected for the way she makes a profit without harming the interests of the society. For the maid took the precaution of learning an awful lot about precious gems, especially sapphires. And especially a particular form of sapphire called padparadscha.”
I pause here to take in Sukum. He is still in a kind of terror trance, unwilling to allow his frozen body any freedom of movement. “Tell me, Khun Sukum, for I�
��m sure you know. Of all those guests at Moi’s house that night participating in the rites, how many were connected to the gem trade?”
“All of them,” he splutters. “The maid has been recruiting jewelers and gem traders for decades. In reality, she runs all of Thailand’s precious stone rackets. No one gets to survive, especially not with sapphires, except by joining Kongrao, which means they’re under her thumb. Even the guests who weren’t gem traders, the politicians, senior lawyers, top cops—they’ve all been bought by the gem industry, through the maid’s maneuverings.”
“Yes. That’s what Johnny Ng said.”
I stop talking because I want to see what Sukum will say next. This is the most interesting point of the story, after all, but I’m not sure how much even he knows after a decade of investigations, all of which got blocked sooner or later. “And the maid, perhaps better than anyone in Kongrao, saw the risks of too much success—am I right?” I take out a collection of magazines from a plastic bag I have brought with me. Some of them are Western publications, but most are local; all of them could be described as trade publications for the gem industry. “And this is her brilliant strategy,” I say, pointing to a picture of a tuxedoed white man in the center spread of one of them. The caption explains at some length that the local guild of jewelers and gem dealers had decided to copy other high-end retail industries by appointing a kind of mascot or exotic representative, called an “ambassador,” who will be their public face to the West, where most of the customers live. The guild is proud to appoint Mr. Robert Thomson as honorary roving ambassador of the Thai gems industry.
“Put it away,” Sukum hisses.
“It’s her third husband, isn’t it? The first one to die young and tragically—a heart attack, I believe, while Moi and her maid were out of the country? Interesting that the maid persuaded the guild to appoint her mistress’s husband as its ambassador, don’t you think?”
Sukum is disinclined to speak, so I take out another, later copy of the same trade magazine. “Once again, the Thai guild of gem traders is appointing a farang to be its official ambassador. Once again the ambassador, a Frenchman named Marcel Legrand, also in a tuxedo, is honored to accept the appointment.” Legrand is the one who was hit by a truck. I raise my eyes at Sukum.
“She didn’t need to persuade them,” Sukum mutters. Finally, he decides to cut to the chase. “She had to share her scams with the others—the other gem traders, I mean. You have to look at the big picture. Kongrao wasn’t just cheating a few regional traders and retail outlets. It was bankrupting the gems industry in entire neighboring countries. Cambodia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, even Burma, all got stung.”
“I see. Therefore it would have been obvious from the start that sooner or later victims would retaliate. But who would they assassinate to avenge themselves for the massive frauds that had been perpetrated by the Thais? Thailand is a mysterious place not only for farang, but also for everyone who lives near us. Our language is largely impenetrable, and our businesses are, shall we say, dominated by families who know how to remain anonymous. And ninety percent of the trades in wholesale jewelry are never declared, for tax reasons.” Sukum nods. “So the smart thing was a form of sacrificial corrosion: let the farang mascot take the hit. After all, in such cases murders are largely symbolic. There’s never any way to get the lost investment back, but a well-executed vendetta always makes the aggrieved party feel better and allows you, after a respectful pause, to go on doing business in Asia.”
“Right,” Sukum says.
“I think Witherspoon and Johnny Ng were both too smart to take the bait. But Thomson and Legrand were not so fly. They both died, and in both cases the hit was perfectly executed: the cops did not find evidence of foul play.” Despite Sukum’s reluctance, I take out the more recent of the trade magazines—it is less than a year old—to flash a picture of Frank Charles, also in a tuxedo, also with a caption which declares him to be the new honorary representative of the Most Honorable Society of Thai Gem Traders. But Sukum is not disturbed by the photograph. He waves a hand at it. “That’s after my time,” he explains. “I don’t know anything about developments after I nailed her on tax evasion. You’re on your own now, there’s nothing more I can say. You’ve got the big picture. Whatever you find out from now on has nothing to do with me. You’ll have to get the rest from Moi.”
I nod respectfully, then notice he is tapping rather heavily on his ashtray. After he has gone I lift it up and find yet another of his newspaper cuttings. There is no date, but the clipping is yellowing:
Kontea, Tanzania: Not long ago Godot passed quickly through this tiny village in the deep South of this sleepy African country. Last year, during a routine pass by a gem-hunting corporation, “gravel” was found here: a technical term referring to certain unprepossessing small pebbles the color of raw prawns. They are near-worthless members of the sapphire family, but can be, and often are, indicators of the presence of their most valuable cousins. For a full six months the village was home to earth-moving and sieving equipment, mobile homes and offices, a cell phone pylon, and a small army of dependent industries including cooked food, laundry, and prostitution. Then, when it was confirmed that such sapphires as existed here were all of inferior quality with poor coloring and other flaws which made it impossible to market them profitably, the twenty-first century withdrew like a high tide, leaving plenty of detritus with the original villagers, who are scratching their heads and wondering if it has all been a dream. Said Mr. Jomo Matembele, shopkeeper: “We really thought we’d all been saved from poverty by God, but God went back North and now we have just a few white devils poking around the riverbed and buying up cheap stones for pennies.”
49
It’s late morning before I get around to thinking about Moi and the Frank Charles case again. Out of curiosity, and kicking myself for not thinking of it sooner, I check out padparadscha for myself on Wikipedia:
Because of its rarity, it is frequently fabricated via synthetics in laboratory settings, or on regular pink or orange sapphires by a process of beryllium surface diffusion. This diffusion process involves heating the stone along with crushed chrysoberyl, the source of the beryllium in the treatment.
The vast majority of padparadscha sapphires (and most other colors of sapphire) are heated in varying temperatures to enrich color and improve clarity. While this may have a negative effect on the price of the stone, it is an accepted practice so long as it is disclosed to the buyer in the process of the sale.
Treating stones with surface diffusion, however, is generally frowned upon; as stones chip or are repolished/refaceted the “padparadscha” colored layer can be removed. (There are some diffusion-treated stones in which the color goes much deeper than the surface, however.) The problem lies in the fact that treated padparadschas are at times very difficult to detect, and they are the reason that getting a certificate from a reputable gemological lab (e.g., Gubelin, SSEF, AGTA, etc.) is recommended before investing in a padparadscha.
The rarest of all padparadschas is the totally natural variety, with no beryllium, or other treatment, and no heating. To find a stone that is certified by a reputable lab as being completely natural is extremely rare and the stone will be very expensive. High-quality unheated and untreated natural padparadscha sapphires will start off in the range of $5,000 per carat and rise by size, color, tone, cut, and clarity, to $20,000–30,000 per carat.
I decide to take a flyer and show up in a cop car at the front entrance to Moi’s house on the river.
It’s quite a different prospect from this side. You could say the estate is almost conventional, with its long curved drive lined with tropical plants. Orchids of every shade grow like parasites in coconut husks hanging from ficus and palm trees. Scarlet poinsettias, amaryllis, and ivy poke and drape for most of the drive, with a stand of bamboo next to a large pool surrounded by tropical succulents that look as though they could bite your hand off. A large anthurium bush owns slim golden phalli
that emerge from bracts exactly the same color as the backside of a red-assed baboon, and just as obscene. Finally, at drive’s end, a porch like a Thai temple, and, of course, the shrine in the northwest corner of the grounds garlanded with lotus. Someone has already made an offering of rice, oranges, and bananas to the household gods. I press the electric bell three aggressive times, because I intend to crash, whatever mood she is in. The maid answers, sees the marked police car behind me, and beckons me inside. She is immaculate as ever in her black-and-white servant’s livery, tall and elegant with her long sad moon face soaring over the frilly collar. I think it a little odd, the way she directs me across the polished teak floor of the central part of the house, and onto the terrace at back, without first alerting Moi. I can hear the Doctor yelling long before I see her. Why would the maid want me to see her mistress in the midst of one of her early-morning tantrums? Perhaps it is a statement about who is in control. To my surprise, her preferred language of scolding is not her native Teochew, nor even Thai, but finishing-school English.
“And you bloody spilled cocoa on my favorite cheungsam,” Moi is howling in a slightly hysterical voice, before she sees me. “How much more of my life are you going to destroy before you kill me, too?”