Bangkok 8 sj-1

by John Burdett

  "A serviceman?"

  "Yes. Very brave. He had lots of medals. He was an officer. He had a terrible war, he was in a mess psychologically for quite a while."

  Inhaling deeply on the cigarette: "He took you to the States? He wanted to marry you?" A nod. "New York?"

  "Manhattan. The apartment was near a fire station. There were sirens every five minutes. I thought the whole city was on fire."

  "And the food was awful?"

  "Have mercy, darling. I was eighteen years old for god's sake, I'd never been outside Thailand and I hardly spoke a word of English. I was terrified and I wanted my mother. I wasn't the hard-ass I became. I grew up after I had you." An exhalation. "They couldn't even cook rice properly. His parents hated me. I was brown with slit eyes, and no matter what he said they knew how we had met, what I did for a living."

  "But he adored you?" A nod. "He knew you were pregnant?"

  "He was crazy about you even before you existed. I had to run away. He came back to Thailand looking for me, but I hid up in the country. I was in a state of panic after New York. I'm sorry. I talked about it with the abbot-I went up to the monastery. You never knew that I'd been up there, did you? He asked me if my American lover needed me only while he overcame his shell shock. That was a good question and I didn't know the answer, so I vowed to the Buddha that if you grew up strong and healthy and I had the luck, I would make sure you learned perfect English."

  "You deprived me of a crack at the presidency of the United States because you didn't like the food? That's very Thai."

  "You got a crack at nirvana instead. What kind of Buddhist would you have been if I'd stayed in America?"

  I choose to ignore this brilliant riposte. "I could have been an astronaut."

  "No you couldn't, you can't stand heights."

  "What did he do, what was his profession, was he a drafted man?"

  "Drafted. He was going to be a lawyer."

  "What? American lawyers are all millionaires. I could have been a senator at least."

  My mother has dried her eyes. She is a master of abrupt recovery. "Children of American lawyers all die of drug overdoses at an early age. Look what I saved you from. Anyway, if you'll only sign those damned plans we'll make a million and you can go and live there if you like. See how long you can stand to be away from Thailand."

  I have smoked the whole cigarette in less than a minute, causing me to feel nausea. My heart rate is calming, though, and I'm beginning to see things with a little more focus. "What was his name?"

  "Mike."

  "Mike what?"

  "What difference does it make? Smith. There, now you know, has it changed anything?"

  I do not believe for one moment that his name was Mike Smith, but I let it pass. I surprise her by giving her a big smile and patting her hand, which seems to relax her. She drinks a glass of beer in a couple of gulps, lights another Marlboro and sits back in her chair.

  "Thank you for taking it so well, darling. For thirty-two years I've lived in fear of this moment. Did I do the right thing or not? Don't you think I've been tortured by that very question? I wanted to tell you, but all the family advised me not to-what you didn't know you couldn't blame me for-that's very Thai, isn't it? Sometimes I think I must have been insane to leave America. Even if he'd divorced me after a couple of years, I probably would have got a work permit, the right to stay. But Thailand was a different place then, we were all so unworldly, so fearful of strange lands. We were prudes, too. Does that surprise you? A girl wouldn't think of selling her body unless she was desperate. My father was sick with his heart problems, my mother was hit by a car when she was riding her bike, my grandmother had to be kept-she was blind by that time-and my two brothers were in their early teens. I had a right and a duty to work in the bars. These days girls will go on the game just to save enough to put a deposit on an apartment, they sell themselves for any old excuse, because they love sex and money, though being Thai they never admit it and like to pretend they hate the work. Would you believe I'm shocked at what the trade has come to? But what can one do? This is the real world."

  After I sign the plans, she pays the bill and we stand up. I embrace her warmly. She gives me a puzzled look as we say goodbye. She takes a taxi but I decide to wind my way amongst the jammed cars. What difference does it make? He adored me even before I existed. He loved her. I'm walking on air.

  Still high, I am trying to be invisible as I make my way to Charmabutra Hospital. The complex is new and shiny and about one minute from the bars of Nana Plaza. There is a McDonald's on the ground floor and a Starbucks in the first-floor lobby, a marble and glass reception area with parabolic front desk, Internet access from computers everywhere and a telephone wherever you put your elbow. But it is a hospital. The brochure boasts over six hundred highly qualified physicians and a small army of Singaporean, Thai, American and European managers and talks about the Heart Center, laser correction of nearsightedness, a stroke screening package, abdominal ultrasound, a complete laboratory analysis of blood urine and stool samples, liposuction, body contouring and laser resurfacing of the face, packages which take care of everyone's travel needs from the U.S. and Europe and luxury rooms with brilliant city views. At reception I mention an interview I have arranged with Dr. Surichai. An administration official takes me in an elevator to the seventh floor, where the doctor is waiting for me. We spend about an hour together. As I am leaving the hospital a group of three large men surround me and bundle me into a waiting limo. It is a navy blue Lexus and there is plenty of room in the back for myself and two of my abductors. The third remains behind as we speed off with a corny squeal of tires which I feel is unworthy of my Colonel, who is lounging in the front passenger seat, wearing civilian clothes and dark glasses. It is his usual driver behind the wheel.

  "May I ask why I'm being abducted?"

  "You're not. You're being quarantined in preparation for your meeting. The last thing we need is for you to turn up in your Tommy Bahama rip-offs, flashing your police ID for every Tom, Dick and Harry to squint at."

  "Turn up where?"

  "Give me your ID."

  I hand it over. "I would like to know where we're going."

  The Colonel puts my ID in the pocket of his Zegna jacket, which is not an illegal copy, and shakes his head at my obtuseness. "Did I or did I not receive a written request at 4:33 p.m. two days ago to the effect that one Detective Jitpleecheep Sonchai be permitted to interview one Khun Warren Sylvester during his five-day stay in our country on a business trip from the United States?" He turns to look at me, raising his glasses. "Written request with date and time stamp?"

  "I like to do things properly."

  "You like to fuck things up royally is what you like to do. To whom were you going to go with your copy of your written request with date and time stamp if I refused?"

  "No one. There's no one to go to. I just wanted to make it clear-"

  "That in the whole of the Royal Thai Police Force there is one arhat, one pure, unblemished soul valiantly and heroically doing his job while the rest of us slop around in the sleaze." My jaw hangs unattractively. "Have you any idea what shit you're dragging us into? Why couldn't you pop unobtrusively into my office when no one was looking and whisper plaintively in my ear that you needed to see the great Khun if I could pull the right strings and so long as it was okay with me and everyone with his foot on my shoulder all the way up to the top of the pyramid? You do know that the most important and influential women in the kingdom get most of their rocks from this jerk? Especially the Chinese. You do know that?"

  "Yes," I confess.

  "You do know that when he is in Krung Thep officially he stays at the Oriental in the Somerset Maugham Suite with all its charming nostalgia and river view, and that when he is not here officially he stays somewhere quite different?"

  "I did guess he might have two different preferences, as far as official and unofficial business is concerned."

  "Then you did guess tha
t in return for generous donations to the Police Widows and Orphans Fund by the great Khun, quite a lot of effort is expended by your superiors to help the Khun keep his little unofficial pleasures from the notice of the media?"

  "It probably crossed my mind."

  "And did it further cross your mind that any interview of the Khun by you would have to be witnessed by those qualified to deny anything incriminating he might say, in the unlikely event he says anything of importance to you at all?"

  "No, I never thought of that because I never thought you'd let me talk to him."

  The Colonel grunts. "Didn't you? Not even after you mentioned to your friends at the American embassy that you had made an official request to interview Warren which you expected to be turned down."

  "Damn."

  "Thus precipitating one of those reverse domino effects, you know the kind that makes all the pieces stand up again just when we all thought they were finally knocked flat and lying in peace?"

  "There's been trouble before?"

  "The Khun's a dangerous asshole. There's a whole section of our noble force assigned to making sure he doesn't go too far when he's over here. He's one of those farangs who think our country is a playpen for rich Western psychos who've been unfairly repressed by their First World cultures and need to reexperience humanity's primordial roots out here in the exotic Orient. How would there not have been trouble before?"

  "What sort of trouble?"

  "None of your business."

  "I'm an investigating officer-"

  "You're an investigating dickhead who will get your death wish granted while the rest of us have to clean up with our hands in the shit. You're worse than my brother. Have you any idea what a pain it is to have a fucking saint for a brother?" He turns away from me to look out a side window. "Anything went wrong was always my fault. It's going to be the same with you, I can see it coming. The media will get hold of it after your spectacularly violent death, they'll build a shrine to you, you'll be the first Thai cop ever to be martyrized for his love of truth, justice and the rule of law and I'll spend the rest of my life telling people what an honor it was to have you on the force and how difficult it is for a poor fallen wretch like me to live up to the high standard you set. Don't you think I get enough of that with having an abbot for a brother?"

  "Was it whores?"

  "Was what whores?"

  "The trouble. He hurt one? It must have been pretty bad for anyone to even notice."

  A sigh. "It was bad, okay?"

  "Even so, must have been a foreign whore," I muse. "Even if he killed a Thai girl, there wouldn't have been the kind of heat you're talking about."

  "No comment, and what the fuck's it got to do with Bradley? Warren didn't kill Bradley."

  "I know. But that doesn't mean Warren's not the culprit, karmically speaking."

  As we turn into Asok, a shake of the head: "Just like my fucking brother."

  The traffic coagulates halfway down Asok. I'm pretty sure I know where we're going now, and of course the Colonel knows I know. He glances up to look at me in the rearview mirror. "Just out of interest, what were you doing at that hospital?"

  "None of your business."

  "Did Warren ever use it?"

  "Not that I know of."

  He shifts his eyes from the mirror. "Why do I not like that answer?"

  38

  Just as I suspected, we are heading for the Rachada Strip. Think Las Vegas with a different vice at its center. Think also neo-Oriental wedding cake architecture of blinding vulgarity. Think about wearing sunglasses after dark. In daylight the neon competes with the sun and most of the signs include the word MASSAGE. We slink into the forecourt of the Emerald Hotel where each of the Lexus's four doors is opened simultaneously by lackeys who have been trained to do that for little Japanese guys with towering bank accounts, for this is not normally a Western haunt at all. But then, I have begun to wonder if Sylvester Warren is really a Western man.

  I watch and wait with my two minders while the Colonel crosses the vast lobby to speak to one of about twelve receptionists, who wais to him. Even over the distance one can sense the reverence when Warren's name is mentioned. A jerk of the Colonel's head brings us across the floor to the bank of lifts. We choose the one which reaches the penthouse suite, and when the LED flashes 33, we step out into another lobby. A young woman in a blue and gold silk sarong wais to us and leads us into a room the size of a school hall with floor-to-ceiling windows, five-seater sofas, an undergrowth of orchids in cut-glass vases and a tall slim man standing in profile to us with his hands thrust into a twenties-style padded smoking jacket. We lost the minders at the ground floor so it's just the Colonel and I who wai to the Khun, who to my surprise wais elegantly back, with the proper moment of mindfulness. Under the rules a man of his exalted status is not supposed to wai to minions like us at all, but the gesture has a charm which is not lost on the Colonel. For all his cursing in the car, Colonel Vikorn is all smiles and deference before this unique source of wealth and power.

  "Welcome to Shangri-la," Warren says with a generous smile which contains many things, self-mockery being one of them. I feel my spirits sink at such impenetrable subtlety. His perfect poise also is intimidating, and seems to go with his perfect tan, the filigree gold chain on his left wrist which I remember from the presidential photographs, the nuance of an expensive cologne-and those implacable gray-blue eyes which seem to acknowledge that all affectation is merely a means to an end, adornment a form of jungle camouflage. We are so enthralled by the Khun's aura it takes both the Colonel and me more than a minute to realize there is someone else in the room. "You know Colonel Suvit of course, superintendent of District 15?"

  I wai dutifully to the stocky man with shaved head in police colonel uniform while Colonel Vikorn, not entirely surprised, gives him a nod. Colonel Suvit's presence here is deeply shocking to me, not least because it amounts to an insolent confirmation of my worst fears: I will never be permitted to progress beyond this moment, professionally, even personally. I will be the bird flying against the window until I fall from exhaustion and join all the other bird corpses lying on the floor. I feel more than a little dizzy.

  "I asked Colonel Suvit to come because I understand his beat covers the spot where the late William Bradley was found. The Colonel and I have known each other many years so it's also an opportunity to enjoy his company." The sentence is a little flowery because he has spoken in Thai and we're like that. At the same time I know that Warren has taken me in, absorbed the entirety of what I am, and relaxed. As he expected, I'm no threat at all. Now he looks me in the eye. "Unfortunately, my time here on this trip is very limited." He pauses and seems genuinely to hesitate between a number of options. His eyes flicker across to Colonel Suvit, who remains inscrutable. I have no intuitive grasp of this American at all, even his vibrations are carefully, masterfully controlled, like those of one who lives behind a protective shield. "I wonder therefore if it would be in everyone's interests if I spoke, and then if I've left anything out, Detective Jitpleecheep can ask anything he likes?"

  "I'm sure you won't leave anything out, Khun Warren, and the detective won't want to ask a single thing." Colonel Suvit does not trouble to look at me. He raises half an eyebrow at Vikorn instead, who leans his head to one side, dubiously. The hostility between these two men is my only source of comfort in this palace of privilege.

  "First, I must apologize to you, Detective, I really should have contacted you directly instead of putting you to the trouble of seeking me out."

  The biggest surprise here, after the apology, is that Warren has switched to English, neatly cutting out the two colonels, who are reduced to dumb observers. His accent is soft and almost British. While I'm trying to think of an elegant reply to his elegant opening, he carries elegantly on. "I heard about Bradley's death probably not long after you found him. Let me be frank and admit I have many friends in your country, many of them in high positions, and, being Thai, they look a
fter me. They knew that Bradley and I were friends of a kind, brought together by our quite irrational passion for jade." He pauses to search my face before continuing. "As Hemingway said about big-game hunting, either you understand it or you don't. To those who don't, the jade craze must seem ridiculous in this modern world where silicon rules. To those who do, a friendship between a marine sergeant and a jeweler is not unthinkable; on the contrary. Hobbies bring people of different walks of life together-wine, horses, pigeons, falcons-gems. When people find a common passion they overlook social barriers. Not that a jeweler is necessarily an exalted personage. My trade obliges me to cultivate the truly exalted. Who will buy gems if not the rich? My friends and clients are the movers and shakers of this world, I myself am no more than a humble merchant."

  This last sentence, delivered without a trace of humility, but without irony either, marks the end of the beginning. He takes a cigarette holder out of a pocket of his smoking jacket and walks to one of the coffee tables where a packet of cigarettes awaits. Ignoring the colonels, he offers me one. I refuse, speechless. I think I am receiving the kind of special treatment a condemned man receives the night before his execution. He resumes whilst fitting the cigarette, waving it to make his points. The cigarette holder is jade.

  "I'll cut to the chase. The best nephrite and jadeite in the world come from an area in the Kachin Mountains in Burma and have for thousands of years. During every one of those thousands of years, the political situation in Burma has been volatile, the human cost of mining the jade appalling, the greed of the Chinese middlemen-they have always been Chinese-outrageous. This is no less the case today than it was in the warring states period. At the present time a corrupt and probably insane military junta, desperate for hard currency, sells the jade in parallel with opium and methedrine. The miners are encouraged to shoot up on heroin to help them endure the disgusting conditions, and there is a high incidence of HIV, often developing into full-blown AIDS. The mortality rate amongst the miners is extremely high, which suits the junta, who don't want the miners returning to Rangoon to gossip. Word has got out, however, and a few Western journalists have published accounts of the situation, along with the usual sort of photographs showing destitute Third World people dying in conditions of extreme squalor. Everyone has their own views about political correctness. Is it a sign of a new high-mindedness in humanity, or has it produced a society of blamers, second-guessers and tiny-minded, self-righteous bigots? You can guess where my own answer lies. In any event, as a merchant whose customers need to be seen to adhere to the highest public morality, I have to be careful. I cannot afford for it to be obvious where my jade is coming from. In a nutshell, I have not been able to visit Rangoon for nearly a decade." He shrugs. "If I cannot be seen to sell new jade, I must sell old jade. Fortunately, there is some around. Not all the stone plundered from the Forbidden City was of the highest workmanship. One can take a piece and improve it, according to demand. One can also disguise the new jade by making it look like something that has been around a long time. By imitating a piece from the imperial collection, for example. There is no fraud involved. The customer knows very well what she is buying and is delighted to be able to dodge the pseudomorality of these strange times. If she doesn't really like the design of the piece, she can always ask me to have it reworked by my craftsmen. We're not talking about whales or baby seals, after all, jade is not about to become extinct. Nor is the Burmese government about to stop selling it, so if I don't buy it while the price is really quite reasonable, my Chinese competitors certainly will. As I say, there has never been a time when a person of delicate conscience could purchase jade from Burma. I can't afford to have a delicate conscience. I made a decision early in my career that I wasn't going to try to compete with people like De Beers, Boucheron, the whole Vendome clique. My bag was going to be East Asia and I have spent a lot of my time and money protecting my territory. The media might pretend to follow the rules of heaven, down on the ground nothing has changed since the turf wars between Neanderthals and Sapiens. The Sapiens won because we know how to fight dirty."