by John Burdett
The Colonel owns the military bearing, strong jaw and frank unblinking eyes of a truly accomplished crook. Nobody knows the extent of his wealth; he probably has no idea himself. Apart from the million-dollar yacht he confiscated from a Dutch smuggler and subsequently bought for ten thousand baht at an auction at which he was the sole bidder (because no one else was invited), there are large tracts of land in the northeast along the edge of the Mekong, a hundred bungalows on Ko Samui which he lets to tourists, a country mansion near Chiang Mai in the northwest. In Krung Thep he lives in modest accommodation as befits a humble cop, with wife number one and the youngest of their five children. Why do I love this man?
For reasons unfathomable to me, the Colonel has hung on the wall behind his desk a map of Thailand issued by the Crime Suppression Division, which shows the geographical areas in which police conniving in organized crime is supposed to be at its worst. Arrows of different colors point almost everywhere. Along the Lao and Cambodian borders the police help smuggle drugs and endangered species destined for China; along the Burmese border we help bring in enough methamphetamines weekly to keep the entire population awake for a month. All along the coast the police work hand in hand with Customs and Excise to assist the clandestine oil trade, for which most of the country's fishing fleet has adapted its boats: they sail out to offshore tankers most nights, receiving the contraband diesel into their specially designed stainless steel tanks; more than 12 percent of Thailand's diesel oil is contraband. All around the edges of Krung Thep and in hundreds of rural locations the police protect illegal gambling dens, mostly from other police and the army, which is always trying to muscle in. At street level the police commercial genius produces some of the best cooked-food stalls in the city, owned and run by young constables who are immune to prosecution for illegal hawking. The map is a mind-boggling maze of red, green, yellow and orange arrows designating the different infractions indigenous to each area, with Day-Glo cross-hatching, dire warnings in boxes, pessimistic footnotes and stark headers. I am not the first to observe that the Colonel is the only person in the room not to have it in his field of vision.
I have gazed at this map many times. Taking into account that the police are generally facilitating someone else's scam, it begins to look as if 61 million people are engaged in a successful criminal enterprise of one sort or another. No wonder my people smile a lot.
My Colonel, a born leader, stands up while I approach his desk. I place my palms together near my forehead and wai courteously. The Colonel comes around his desk to embrace me. A firm, manly, warmhearted hug which starts tears in my eyes.
"Are you going to kill me, Sonchai?" He gestures to the chair by the desk.
I sit as the Colonel does so. "Should I?"
The Colonel shrugs. "It all depends on whether I set you up or not, doesn't it? If I did, then by all means, shoot me. I would in your place."
"Did you set us up?"
The Colonel rubs his chin. "I feel guilty of negligence-but that is my only crime." I nod. It is somewhat the answer I had expected. "Sonchai, I've been waiting for you all morning and I haven't eaten. We are going to eat at my bar." He lifts the receiver of an old-style telephone/intercom, presses a button and speaks. "We're going across town to Pat Pong-call the bar and tell them to keep it closed. If they've opened already tell them to clear it. And I want an escort, I don't want to spend the rest of the day in traffic." He replaces the receiver. "Shall we?"
18
The Colonel's car today is an old white Datsun, but it could have been the royal limo for the way it beats the traffic. It helps having a two-man motorcycle escort with sirens screaming. We approach Pat Pong from the Sarawong side, and the driver stops outside the Princess Club, which stands in a side soi off the main street of Pat Pong. The Colonel knows that my mother worked this street and I wonder if he is making some kind of point. As we pause to enter the bar, I see myself as I must have been more than twenty years ago: a skinny boy bewildered and intrigued by the business of flesh.
The mamasan and half a dozen girls in jeans and T-shirts wai to the Colonel as we enter. They have set up a table in the seating area, with a tablecloth, forks, spoons. They immediately begin bringing an array of dishes from the restaurants and food stalls round about.
"D'you want to start with beer or shall we go straight into the whisky? Let's have a beer, we sell Kloster for the tourists, which I have to admit gives a cleaner taste. It goes so well with chili too."
I've eaten at the Colonel's banquets before, it is one of the old man's favorite ways of cementing the esprit de corps (trips on his boat are another), but never as the sole guest. I find it a little eerie to be served by girls who will be selling their bodies in a few hours' time, as if they were a team of virginal housemaids. They go out of their way to please the Colonel, waiing and giving him their best innocent smiles. I know it is my duty to get drunk in pace with the Colonel, but I'm not sure how my body will react to alcohol after the ravages of the yaa baa the night before and more than twenty-four hours without sleep, not to mention those two cups of moonshine which sat in my stomach like burning coals. I sip at my Kloster, which I drink straight from the bottle, as does the Colonel. I watch him dip into a small wicker basket and bring out a portion of sticky rice which he makes into a compact ball and dips into a papaya salad, nodding to me to follow suit. Perhaps you have tormented your stomach with papaya pok-pok, farang, on one of your visits to my country? It is made with twelve chilies, ground up with the sauce so you cannot escape them. Even my Colonel is sniffing after the first mouthful. I let the pepper inflame my mouth slowly, before it trickles like fresh lava down to my empty stomach. I sip some more beer and immediately experience the delicious clash of the ice-cold beer with the fire of the chili. The Colonel is watching me closely. It is my duty to demonstrate heartiness.
I sample some tom-yum soup, which is almost as spicy as the salad, then start on the braised chicken with oyster sauce, which is more a Chinese dish than a Thai one, but popular with the Colonel. The fish is sea bass simply but expertly fried, with an excellent sauce of chili and fish paste, and the raw minced toad has been well prepared with spring onions and, of course, more chili. Deep in my empty, yaa baa-flayed stomach it is as if the chili were oozing over a wound, setting it alight. I quickly down the rest of my beer and one of the girls immediately brings another. I ask for water, too, raising a grin on the Colonel's face. Now a girl brings a large tureen of fat snails, cooked in their own juice with a brown sauce. The Colonel wipes up some of the sauce with a ball of sticky rice, then starts sucking loudly on the end of the snail until the body pops out into his mouth. I follow suit, trying not to gag.
My master finishes his beer, calls for another and opens the bottle of Mekong whisky the girls have left on the table. He pours two beakers and adds ice from a bucket. "So, Sonchai, why don't you tell me your views on the case so far?" This is not an innocent question.
"I've only had a day." I suck on a snail for punctuation. "Nothing significant yet. By the way, why did you order us to follow the black farang?"
He tuts disapprovingly and shakes his head. "Why must you always come straight to the point? Is it your farang blood? No wonder you're so unpopular."
"I'm unpopular because I don't take money."
"That too. Neither you nor your late partner made one contribution to the common pot in ten years. You were like monks on a permanent alms trek."
"Why did you put up with us?"
"My brother asked me to."
"I think you want to make merit. We might be the only good thing you ever did."
"Don't flatter yourself. Because of my brother I shielded you from a prosecution for homicide. What's so good about that?"
What can I say? I look into the tom-yum and its bright crimson fragments of chili. "You won't tell me why we were following Bradley?"
"Do you think perhaps the FBI asked me to have him followed?"
I shake my head. "The FBI didn't know anythi
ng until yesterday. They didn't even know where he was living."
"You're talking about the FBI at the embassy. I'm talking about the FBI in Washington."
"You talk to them?"
"Of course not. They talk to someone who talks to me."
"Really?"
"Because the CIA talk to the FBI. At least, from time to time. And guess who the CIA talk to?" I shrug. "The same people we talk to, on the ground in Laos, Burma, Cambodia. The CIA pays in cash, we pay in immunity from prosecution for Customs and Excise violations. In the end, we get the same information." He prods the sticky rice. "Something to do with jade." He adds this tentatively, to try me out.
"Don't believe it. Why would jade traders use snakes to kill the competition? Anyway, how could a black farang get into the jade trade in a serious way? It's dominated by Chiu Chow Chinese. They trade in a secret sign language. And why would the FBI care?"
He frowns. "Okay, so it wasn't jade."
"Yaa baa?"
"Why yaa baa? Why not heroin?"
I force-swallow a ball of rice to soak up the fire. "Because the DEA is all over the opium trade. Heroin is for desperadoes. Yaa baa is safer and the market is growing all the time."
He opens his hands. "So, you've solved the case. It was yaa baa for sure."
"You've told me nothing."
"It's my job to tell you things? You're the detective, I'm just the guy in the office."
"Colonel, sir, my partner died yesterday. I want to know why we were following the black farang." A moment of truth as our eyes lock. No one doubts the Colonel has strong ties to the yaa baa trade.
He toys with the idea of staring me out, which he knows well how to do, but decides on a posture of meekness and looks away. "I'm sorry, Sonchai, I'm really really sorry. The truth is I don't know why you were following Bradley. I just passed the order on down the line. Was it the FBI? Was it our Crime Suppression Division? Was it someone else? Who knows?"
"You're the chief of District 8. No one gives you orders without explanation."
"I was told his visa had expired." I want to laugh, but the Colonel has assumed a somber expression bordering on the pompous. "It's a grave offense for a member of a foreign armed force to overstay. It's not like a civilian."
"You're serious?"
He nods. "That was the official reason. I'll show you the file if you like." He leans forward. "I'm not like you, Sonchai, I don't ask indiscreet questions. That is why I'm a colonel and you will never be more than a detective."
"So whoever gave you the order was important enough for you to need to be discreet?" He shakes his head. Clearly I'm a hopeless case. Then suddenly he switches it on, the amazing charm and candor, that two-thousand-volt charisma which I can never resist. His humility and compassion are totally convincing. "I promise you, Sonchai, I had no idea Bradley was going to die yesterday. And I won't stand in your way, no matter where the investigation leads." To my question-mark gaze he adds: "I promised my brother I would take care of the two of you. Losing one is bad enough. My brother is an arhat. One keeps one's promise to such a man, especially when he is a blood relation. You have my word. Anyway, whatever Bradley was up to, it had nothing to do with me."
An awkward moment, before we resume eating and drinking. I say casually: "I found out Bradley's address through the Internet. I went to his house."
The Colonel raises his eyes. "You did? Find anything?"
"If I ask you a question to do with the case, will you be straight with me? Or am I a pawn in some game you're playing with the CIA in Laos, or the FBI in Washington, or the American embassy?"
"Sonchai, I swear to you, may Buddha kill me if I lie."
"A stunning woman in her early thirties or late twenties, half Negro, half Thai, very tall, maybe as tall as six feet, beautiful long legs, full firm bust, great face, hair dyed all the colors of the rainbow, a discreet little piercing in her navel for a jade ball set in a gold stick. Who is she?"
The Colonel sips his whisky. "I'm supposed to know?"
"This is your bar, right in the middle of the red-light district. Girls move around between here and Nana, they try everywhere to see if they can get a better deal-you know the skin trade like the back of your hand."
"You're saying she's a prostitute?"
"What is the likelihood she's not?"
"She's a suspect?"
"She's a possible accomplice. No woman acting alone could organize something like that. I still have no idea how it was done. How does anyone drug a full-size python and twenty cobras and get them to bite the right guy at the right moment? It must have taken an incredible organization involving a lot of people. The snake aspect is simply incomprehensible to me at the moment. Who is she?"
19
"What am I, an idiot?" The Colonel is drunk and has launched into his favorite topic-the difference between East and West-without answering my question.
"Don't I know I'm vulnerable to an inquiry anytime? Don't I know that some army bastard or muckraking journalist, or some asshole who wants my job, can start digging anytime and find stuff-my boat, my little house up north, my handful of bungalows on Samui-and start pointing the finger? Wouldn't I be happier with less assets and more peace of mind? Why d'you think I keep that stuff where everyone can see it, when I could just sell up and put the money in a bank in Switzerland? Why?"
"Because this is Asia."
"Exactly! If I'm to do my job properly I have to have face. And my enemies have to see the war chest. You just don't survive at the top of the greasy pole if you're a humble little cop piously shuffling files around. Someone's bound to defame you, and then what d'you do if you don't have the money to pay lawyers? If you don't have money to buy senators and M.P.s, how the hell are you going to defend yourself? How are you going to fight back at all?"
"Very difficult."
"I envied you and your late partner from the start, because you guys made a decision never to rise in the force-how could you if you never take money? I admired it. You made no contribution to the common pot, but I put up with that. I defended you against those who said you're not pulling your weight. I said: Look, every district needs at least one cop who doesn't take money, we're lucky, we've got two. We can wheel them out as shining examples, pure Buddhists, half monks, half cops. Besides, I said, Sonchai speaks perfect English, what a prize for a district like ours to show off to the foreign press. How many times have you spoken to the foreign media?"
"Hundreds." Dozens anyway. Every time there's a big enough scandal in District 8 to fascinate people overseas-the extravagant execution of those fifteen traffickers was a good example-the Colonel drags me out in front of the cameras to send my mug zinging around the international networks.
"And you do it brilliantly. What's that favorite phrase of yours? I love it."
"Whilst Thailand is a humane Buddhist society committed to human rights and the dignity of its citizens, the wealthier countries of the world must appreciate we do not always have the resources to meet those high standards of law enforcement which, frankly, are a luxury afforded only by those countries which industrialized first."
The Colonel claps his hands in delight. "Brilliant. Did I ever tell you the Director of Police himself said what a good front man you are?"
"Yes, you told me. But it won't get me a promotion. You told me that too."
My Colonel sighs. "Sonchai, the difference between us, the only real difference, is that you are a man of the future, I am a man of the present. The present is still, unfortunately-" He cuts himself off to watch a girl who brings more Mekong, more snails, more sticky rice, a whole chicken fried in honey and chili sauce and shredded, two bottles of Kloster clouded with condensation. She wais respectfully, and slightly flirtatiously, to the Colonel. She is the most beautiful of the bar's girls and the one who most frequently serves her boss, who waves a hand toward her and laughs before he continues. "The present is as it is. It's not only your enemies you have to have face for, it's your friends, too, perhaps
even more than your enemies. What kind of district do we serve? Is it populated with upwardly mobile yuppies, Internet fiends, law-abiding sandwich-class lawyers, doctors and dentists?"
I miss my cue because I'm cramming chicken into my mouth with large quantities of sticky rice. The chicken is to supply nutrients, the sticky rice to absorb the alcohol and chili. I have never felt so surely on the point of being dangerously ill.
"No, it's not. It's a sewer and the rules which apply to sewer workers are not the same as those which apply to stockbrokers. My people would never forgive me for being as small as life. Of course, I do not fool a man of your intelligence, I don't try to, I'm not a superman, but my people need a superman and that requires-" A yacht, a hundred bungalows, et cetera-I recite the list to myself as he falls into a rant. "There are gangsters who give millions to the poor, honest people who talk compassion and give nothing. Tell me, wise one, who do the poor prefer?"