by John Burdett
"Yes, well, I don't know anything about the politics of course. I suppose the two colonels are just very good friends."
She follows me up some narrow winding stairs to the second floor, and now I see there is a third floor. "How many rooms were you thinking of?"
"Ten on each floor."
"Ten?"
"Too cramped?"
I measure out the length of the corridor, off which there are only three rooms at present. "Mother, they will have to be on top of each other before they enter the rooms. You're going to have about five feet from wall to wall. The rooms are going to be all bed."
"What else, darling? If you think ten is too many, I suppose I'll settle for nine."
"Seven. I'm not putting my name to plans with more than seven. That still only leaves seven feet of width for each room. You have to give them space to undress. You can't have them stripping in the corridor, this isn't the country, you know."
"I suppose." With a sigh: "Very well, let's settle for seven. I'll tell the Colonel you insisted on seven. He's not going to be exactly delighted, you've just cut the profits by thirty percent."
I clamber up to the third floor, which is a chaos of old mattresses, plastic beer crates, some aluminum beer barrels and musty-looking books. We make our way down the stairs back to the bar. I am shaking my head. "What am I doing, signing plans for a brothel? I hate brothels."
"I know, my love, but it's still the number one business. I'd love to have an Internet cafe or something, but they just don't pay. Imagine, you have a room full of farangs who could be renting girls at a thousand baht an hour and instead they're tapping at keyboards for forty baht an hour. It just doesn't stack up."
"I suppose. What are you going to call it?"
"Ah! I've a surprise for you. We're calling it the Old Man's Club."
"The what?"
"You wouldn't understand, my love, we've studied the market. We're going for a niche. We won't bother to compete with those glitzy things next door, they can have the thirty-to-fifty crowd. We're going for the retirement funds. You'll see. I explained it all to the Colonel after I finished my course-I got the best grades by the way. He went away and thought about it and he agrees. In fact, he thinks I'm brilliant."
I've been backing away from her as we speak, an obvious subconscious reaction-Is this really happening? Am I really doing this?-and now she has shepherded me into the street where the light is better. I can see it in her face now, I am witnessing that metamorphosis that women's books sometimes talk about: for more than ten years she has led a peaceful, idyllic life in the country, with all the unbearable boredom that implies, while a great reservoir of ambition has slowly risen in her, co-inciding with the onset of middle age. Her jaw is set, there will be no stopping her now. She is working the strings, I am the puppet. She still looks terrific. She knows she has won by the way I kiss her on the cheek.
From Soi Cowboy I ride a motorcycle taxi to the Hilton International, where the FBI has summoned me. I take the elevator to her suite on the twenty-second floor, where she is working at her desk on a collection of metallic objects which, I realize after some concentration, are the insides of a gun. The barrel and stock sit calmly in one of the massive armchairs, presiding over their own disembowelment, and she sits me down in the other. The gun and I-I think it is a Heckler Koch submachine gun, about eighteen inches long with a forged steel stock and parabolic magazine-stare at each other while she talks. On the hotel blotter she takes apart the subassembly and hammer mechanism and stares at them for a moment, before reaching for the ice cream. Mesmerized by the gun, I did not notice the pint of Haagen-Dazs macadamia nut brittle on the corner of the desk. Such is her training that she is able to poke at the mechanism with one finger whilst dipping a plastic spoon into the ice cream with the other hand. To eat alone is a sad and pathetic condition in my country, evidence of social and emotional dispossession. To do so in front of another without offering to share is an obscenity and almost impossible for me to watch. I feel the blood draining from my face as she gulps down a miniature Everest.
"What's the matter, you scared of guns?" She takes a small can of gun oil from the desk drawer and expertly allows a single drop to fall on the subassembly. "Oh, I get it, you don't think I've got a license, right? No need to worry, Rosen discussed it with one of your capo di capi, I'm allowed to keep it so long as I use it with discretion. If I do have to use it, there'll be one of those Thai cover-ups which you know all about. You sure you're okay? I didn't think a gun would disgust you all that much. It's a sprayer, I know, but so are most short barrels, the H and K MP-5K is about the best. Anything larger and I'm going to look conspicuous, aren't I?" A couple more drops for the hammer base, then she reaches for the barrel and stock and begins to slide the subassembly into the guides of the receiver. "See, I haven't taken it out since I picked it up from the embassy-they had to send it over for me in a diplomatic bag and you never know how well they treated it. One thing they always tell you at Quantico, look after your piece." More ice cream. "Anyway, what I wanted to talk to you about is, generally, how do you see the case shaping up?"
I watch, nauseated, while she eats more macadamia nut brittle, picks up the completed gun, hangs it round her neck from the cord and stands in front of a full-length mirror. From a loose hanging position she is able to aim and fire and perforate herself with a thousand shots in less than-oh, I don't know, nanoseconds anyway. Quantico meets Hollywood. The unexpected drama triggers one of my perceptions and I see a whole string of previous incarnations standing behind her. American cops are identical to Thai cops at least in one respect. We're all reincarnations of crooks.
She catches my gaze. "This really isn't turning you on, is it? Okay, no more guns, we'll go for a walk. There's something in the garden I need you to explain to me." She strides over to the Haagen-Dazs for a couple more mouthfuls, catches herself. "You want some?"
"No, thank you," I reply with relief, feeling as if something very unpleasant has been removed from the carpet.
"Didn't think you did. Ice cream really isn't you, is it? No chili, no lemongrass, no rice, just a pile of Western junk like sugar and dairy products with a ton of artificial flavoring. Tastes great, though." The Haagen-Dazs goes into the small fridge under the credenza. From a wardrobe she takes out a black fiberglass briefcase which turns out to be custom-molded on the inside for the H K. She slips the magazine out of the gun, places it in its hollow, then does the same for the gun itself. I see two people here: a girl who loves ice cream, and a consummate professional taking loving care of the tool of her trade.
Now that the gun and the ice cream are out of sight I take in the view while she disappears into her bedroom. It's not a New York or Hong Kong skyline, although it's a modern city these days. I'm put in mind more of Mexico or South America in the way soaring tubes of steel and glass preside over ragged bits of park, hovels, shacks and squatter dwellings. Its true signature, however, is the permanent skeletons of unfinished buildings, their bare bones turning black in the pollution, as if the Buddha is reminding us that even buildings die. It takes training to see the metaphysics behind a failed construction project, though, and I decide not to share my insight with the FBI, who emerges wearing white linen shorts and a white and navy tennis shirt with a YSL label which may or may not be a fake. We ride the lift down to the lobby (Kimberley, the gun and I), and I wait while she checks the black briefcase into the hotel vault.
Kimberley returns minus the gun with her blond hair bouncing and a smile which could almost make her sixteen. She indicates that we are to descend into the well of the lobby with the subtlest brush of her fingers against my forearm, and we walk side by side out into the swimming pool area. Adjacent to the pool is a canal which is part of the hotel grounds and which leads to a large spirit house festooned with marigolds.
"Okay," says the FBI, "could you tell me what these are all doing in the grounds of the Hilton hotel?"
There may be as many as three hundred of them,
ranging from six inches in length to one which is all of ten feet tall. They are arranged in a semicircle around the spirit house and even form a kind of low fencing around the flower beds. They are parabolic with bulbous glans, a tiny slit at the top, and some are on gun carriages with balls hanging down. Some are stone, at least three are concrete and most are wood. Some are painted lurid reds and greens. To the left is a gigantic ficus tree, its aerial roots tangled in passionate embraces.
"The spirit house is dedicated to the spirit of the tree, which happens to be male."
"And this is a Buddhist country?"
"Buddhist with a lot of Hinduism and animism underneath."
"I'm surprised the Hilton management put up with it."
"They wouldn't have had any choice. You don't destroy important shrines-it's incredibly unlucky. No one wants bad luck, especially not senior management of international corporations."
"So who brings all these cocks? Who adorns them with fresh marigolds?"
"Local women."
The FBI walks up to one and stares at it. "Women bring giant dildos to dedicate to the male spirit of the ficus tree? Hmm, food for thought." She extends a finger and traces the loop of the glans where it meets the shaft. She checks me with a half smile. I think the effects of that antiflirting course are wearing off. I decide not to return the smile, not even my half of it, and am shocked by the anger-cloud which passes over her face. She recovers in an instant and now we are walking briskly back to the lobby and the coffee shop. I'm thinking about the Heckler Koch when she snaps: "There's a meeting at the embassy tomorrow, Bradley's senior officer is going to tell us what he knows, if anything. In the interests of information-sharing, you're invited to attend. I'll tell Rosen you're coming."
I think I'm being dismissed, without discovering why I was summoned in the first place. Despite decades of study, I still find the Western mind hard to take, close-up. The expectation that the world should respond to every passing whim (ice cream, cock, target practice) is shocking to this son of a whore. Like most primitive people, I believe that morality arises from a state of primeval innocence to which we must try to be faithful if we are not to be lost altogether. I fear such a conviction would be quaint and pathetic to the FBI, if I ever dared to express it. In Western terms Jones and Fritz are poles apart; to me they are almost identical: two infantile bundles of appetites-except that one is a catcher and the other got caught.
30
I'm late for the meeting and racing to the embassy on the back of a Honda 125, listening to Pisit on my Walkman. He is doing his daily run-down of the Thai-language dailies.
The tabloid Thai Rath has resurrected the old story of the cop's wife who chopped off her husband's penis (the standard penalty for overuse outside the home) and attached it to a helium balloon to send it sailing over the city. The significance of the balloon was that it made it impossible for Police Sergeant Purachai Sorasuchart to retrieve his organ within the vital nine-hour minimum for our skilled surgeons to reattach it. The organ was never recovered. Thai Rath reports that new evidence from neighbors now suggests that the helium balloon was a sensationalist invention (probably by Thai Rath), for Mrs. Purachai was seen on the day of the severance behind her house prodding about tearfully in the rubbish heap, which was unfortunately much visited by rats who doubtless got there before her. Pisit insinuates that the new evidence itself was stimulated into life by Thai Rath, who wanted an excuse to replay the story which Pisit is now replaying. Now Dr. Muratai comes on the program to be jollied into giving the usual lurid details of the reattachment surgery and why Thai surgeons are the best in the world in this field: they get more practice. "So, gentlemen, if your philandering results in a visit from the knife in the night, whatever you do, retrieve the missing piece and don't forget the ice."
Pisit reminds us, Thai-style, that the story had the happiest of endings: Sergeant Purachai retired from the force and ordained as a monk in a forest monastery, from which lofty viewpoint he is able to look back on his erstwhile philandering and his former organ with equal indifference. He claims to be grateful to his wife for propelling him onto the Eightfold Path.
I pull off my headphones as we approach the embassy and realize that I'm ten minutes late for the meeting, which I interrupt when I'm finally through the security and allowed to enter Rosen and Nape's office.
A lean, fair man in his forties in a buff military uniform, bursting with health, is talking to a rapt audience. "I was Bill Bradley's superior officer for most of the five years he spent here. He came in March 1996, posted at his own request. I arrived in late November of the same year. He was older than me by five years and he was the kind of sergeant you leave alone, if you're a smart captain. He was a long-service man and he knew his job inside out. He knew what he had to do better than I could have told him, and he also knew the rule book cover to cover. Frankly, with a sergeant like that under your command your worst fear is he'll make you look inferior, but Bradley knew how to handle that, too. He was always extremely respectful, especially when there were other servicemen around. I guess you would say he was the perfect sergeant and that perfection made him impenetrable from a personal point of view. If I have any insight at all that I would care to share, it would be that he was a man who sought perfection, of himself and his environment. My guess would be that was why he never tried to rise higher. A good sergeant like him is in total control of his world, even though it's a small one. Join the officer class, and other forces come to bear on you, forces which are never entirely under your control no matter how good you are. A perfect sergeant, on the other hand, is that rare animal in the military: an almost free man, in command of his turf."
Rosen said: "Anything in his service record you would like to draw our attention to, Captain?"
"His record was perfect. He was serving at the embassy in Yemen at the time of the attack by a local mob with AK-47s, rifles and other firearms. He risked his life bringing back another marine from the roof of the embassy while the roof was under fire. There was talk of a medal, but it never came through."
"What about his private life?"
"Like I say, this was an impenetrable man. He did his duty and gave a hundred and ten percent while he was here, but off duty we hardly saw him. He came to those functions he had to attend, when a colleague retired or left Bangkok, for example, but didn't socialize."
"Isn't that unusual for a marine?"
"In a younger man it might have been cause for concern, but Bradley was middle-aged, coming to the end of his thirty-year term. A lot of men value their privacy in those circumstances, and no one was about to cross-examine him about what he did in his spare time."
"He was a bachelor. Any love interest you know of?"
"Only a very old rumor that he had a relationship with a particularly exotic local woman. I don't think anyone here knows if that was true or not, because he never brought her here to introduce her. He always came alone to functions and celebrations."
"Do you know anything about a hobby or interest he might have had in jade?"
"Jade? No, I don't know anything about that." A pause. "I did watch him once, in the locker room after a basketball game. He had the kind of physique you just can't help but stare at. He'd arrived in uniform but now he put on civilian clothes. It was like watching a metamorphosis. Jewelry he could never wear on parade: earrings, rings for his fingers, a gold Buddha pendant. He put on a bright purple Hawaiian silk shirt that only looks good on black skin. That's about the most intimate I got with the sergeant. Everybody goes through a transformation when they get out of uniform, but I've never seen anything that complete before. He just didn't look like a career soldier. He even stopped walking like one, as soon as he put on that shirt."
"Thank you, Captain," Rosen said, and Nape echoed his words. "Oh, just one last thing, Captain. You did say that Bradley's posting here was at his own request?"
"That's right. It's in his file, which I reread when I heard about what had happened."
> When the captain had gone, everyone looked at me, so I said: "Thank you for allowing me to attend, it has been very useful."
"Useless you mean," Jones said. "Did the captain tell us one thing we didn't know already?"
"That Bradley was pathologically secretive," Nape said. "And led a double life."
"Not so unusual in long-term soldiers," Rosen said. "You tend to hang on to what little privacy the service permits."
"And that he was a control freak," Nape added.
"All successful men are control freaks," Jones said.
"D'you want to correct that to 'all successful people'?" Nape demanded with a glare.
Jones shrank a little under his gaze. "I guess."
Rosen jerked his chin at them and grimaced toward me. "So, did you speak to your Colonel, Detective?"
"I made a written request that I be permitted to interview Sylvester Warren on his next visit to Thailand, which is today."
"And?"
"I think I will not receive an answer until after he has left."
Rosen opened his hands generously. "Like I said, a well-connected man."
My stitches are healing nicely, but I allow Jones to accompany me to the gate of the embassy with one arm locked in mine, I suppose for support. The marine behind the glass is an old friend these days and he waves me through the turnstile.
31
The Matichon daily reports that an unusual number of ghouls have been sighted at the notorious junction of Rama VI and Traimit. This is an accident black spot and experts opine that the ghouls are the spirits of the dead who lost their lives in crashes and are now intent on causing still more fatal accidents for the sake of companionship. In death as in life, it seems, my people love to party.
Reluctantly, I pull off my headphones. This is the moment I've set myself to visit Pichai's old room.