by John Burdett
I want you to tell me who my father was. I still wonder about him almost daily, although my obsession has bedded down to some subconscious layer. I still stare rudely at middle-aged white American men who seem to fit the bill, but I no longer suffer from the unhealthy fanaticism of my teens. In my thirteenth year I took over one corner of our hovel and forced my mother to witness my yearning, month by month, while I plastered the walls with old Vietnam War clippings. For one week I was certain he was one of those who fought with superhuman courage in the tunnels of Cu Chi. For more than six weeks he was an aviator, imprisoned and tortured in the Hanoi Hilton, until I discovered that those heroes were not released until after I was born. Where was he during the Tet Offensive? Was he one of those of troubled conscience in the photograph where disillusioned GIs are smoking ganja through the barrels of their rifles? I think I was sixteen when I finally realized that America had lost the war, despite my anonymous father’s best efforts. But by then confusion had already divided my mind. After all, despite his undoubted qualities he must have been one of those white men from far away whose mission it was to kill brown men racially indistinguishable from my mother, her father and her brothers (some years later I realized Vietnam was not a race war but a war of religion). And what about the atrocities? My only overseas trip without Nong consisted of a week in Vietnam, where I searched for him in Cu Chi, Da Nang, Hanoi and the Museum of American War Atrocities in Ho Chi Minh City. And all that time she watched in agony. Sometimes her lips would tremble as if she were about to speak his name, but she never did. What terrible secret was she keeping? Was he “special forces”—one of the torturers?
22
The FBI has a good figure, blue eyes, light blond hair, peaches-and-cream complexion, the pleasant odor of honest soap. No Parisian perfume for her. She tells me her name is Kimberley Jones. I think she’s about twenty-eight and a worrier. She is a little gaunt. I suspect overexercise.
I am in a hospital such as I have never seen: a private room like a room in a five-star hotel, with a window which looks out on palms and banana plants, orchids and bougainvillea, hibiscus and the infinitely enticing whish-whish of an automatic irrigation system. When I last regained consciousness the FBI was already here. She said: “You lost a lot of blood, pilgrim, we only just got to you in time.” She could almost be a nurse, the way she takes my pulse from time to time and plumps the bed.
When I reemerged the second time from the depths of delicious oblivion, where I’m sure I encountered my brother Pichai, the seat by my bed was occupied not by the FBI but by a more military figure.
“All this for a scratch? The Buddha must really love you.”
“How do I look?” I had been afraid to ask this question of a foreign woman.
“Without the nose? On you, an improvement.” To my startled glance, the Colonel added: “Joking, joking.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “But just tell me this, it won’t go any further I promise: Why did you have to kill the old lady? Was she coming on to you?”
I lay back on my pillow and returned to oblivion, just so I could tell Pichai about that one.
It seems that my mother met the Colonel in the corridor today. There’s a gleam in her eye as she draws up her chair.
“He’s very charming, isn’t he? I think he must be very rich.”
“No, Mother.”
“He asked me out on his yacht. Is it true it’s one of those huge things with a captain and crew, swimming platform, all that?”
“No, please, don’t.”
“Oh, I don’t care for myself, but it would be good for you. You deserve promotion more than any cop on the force, and you’ll never get it without developing connections. He even hinted—”
“If I was offered promotion that way, I would refuse it.”
She sighs and pats my hand. “Well, you can’t say I don’t try. You’re such a moral boy, I don’t know where you get it from.”
“Of course you know who I get it from, obviously not from you. I don’t know who I get it from because you won’t tell me.”
Nervous laughter as she reaches for her Marlboro. “I will, darling, one day, I just need a little time, that’s all.”
23
Random-access memory: an island in the Andaman Sea reserved for nature and forbidden to everyone except high-ranking cops with luxury yachts; more girls than I could count, their perfect young bodies permanently sparkling with droplets from incessant diving off the swimming platform (the girls really had fun that trip); Pichai and I uncomfortable and aloof, taking a lot of flak: to refuse bribes was bad enough, to refuse free sex was downright seditious. It was an office outing, a bonding binge soon after the assassination of those yaa baa smugglers, intended to cement the esprit de corps, just in case anyone was getting cold feet (no one was). The other cops were all too keen to bed the girls, leaving Vikorn, Pichai and me to drink beer together and stare at the stars. I guess the old man felt secure there on his boat, with the velvet night around him—and maybe he loved us, Pichai and me. On the boat’s stereo system Vikorn was playing “The Ride of the Valkyries,” the only piece of Western music of which he showed any awareness. In a lull in the conversation Pichai finally asked what no one else had dared to ask: What the hell was that weird music?
Even at his drunkest Vikorn’s war stories were veiled in secrecy. He might seem to lose control of his tongue altogether, but there was something as hard as diamond, some heavily guarded safe room in his mind that he dare not enter in company. The only real clues he gave us consisted of single words: REMFs; Ravens; O-1s; the Other Theater; American Breakfast; eggs over easy; Pat Black.
24
As soon as Nong has gone the FBI returns with a frown on her face. She cannot speak Thai, but I think she saw my mother and the Colonel flirting in the corridor. Perhaps she is suffering from advanced culture shock? I already know she and the Colonel are not going to get along.
She brings the news that Bradley’s computer has arrived, and a few minutes later she begins organizing a bridge over the bed, cables, even an Internet connection. Kimberley Jones does not flirt, indeed I think she must have taken an antiflirting course at Quantico, so there is a stiffness in the way she leans over me every few minutes. When we have the computer up and running, it is even more awkward. Half the time I have her bosom in my face, which often causes her to blush. Did American culture go back in time about a hundred years? I’m sure all those movies from the Vietnam era showed a more relaxed people. Not that it matters. We become quite excited, in a professional sense, once we enter Bradley’s e-mail files.
Pretty soon we are joined by Rosen and Nape, who look over my shoulder at the monitor. Everything is affable and even jolly until I say: “This guy, Sylvester Warren, does anyone know who he is?” Silence from the rest of the team. I search out Kimberley Jones’ eyes. She looks away. Rosen coughs.
“You have a way of coming straight to the point, Detective, I’ll give you that.”
Nape comes to the rescue. “I don’t think we’d want to let it be known we’re even reading e-mails from Mr. Warren. Not unless we get something concrete we can use.”
Rosen agrees with a vigorous nod. “That’s right. If what we have is a revenge killing in a narcotics feud, we don’t want to drag Warren into it. Not if all he’s doing here is keeping up an erudite correspondence with Bradley on some obscure aspect of the jade trade.”
I make big eyes from one to the other in the most charming and humble manner. Nape grins. “Warren’s a big shot. Actually, he’s a big shot here as well as in New York. He comes to Bangkok every month, gets invited to receptions at the embassy. He mixes extensively with local high society, especially the Chinese. He’s a jeweler and art dealer, big-time. He has shops in Manhattan, Los Angeles, Paris, London—and here. His passion is jade. It’s not surprising he would have contacts with Bradley, who’s coming across as a gifted amateur, living here in Bangkok, and a fellow American.”
“What a wonderful, democratic societ
y you have, that a sergeant in the Marines hobnobs with a baron like this Warren.”
All three check my face for sarcasm, which I did not intend. I have managed to produce an awkward silence. Rosen says: “Well, Americans talk to each other. We still do that. Especially if there’s a profit to be made.”
I think I get the point and use the program to select some of Warren’s e-mails and Bradley’s replies to him. Helplessness radiates from my American colleagues as I read aloud.
Bill, your piece arrived yesterday FedEx. The boys are getting the point, I agree, but there’s still a long way to go.
Bill, look, this is good work which I can sell anywhere, but it’s not what we discussed. I’m arriving on a Thai Airways flight next Tues. We’ll talk.
Bill, I have to tell you I was very impressed with the latest piece. It’s not quite there, but it’s damn close. I’m going to release the second tranche today. Keep it up.
I interrupt my reading to search the three sets of eyes around the bed, until Rosen says to Nape: “Tell him.”
He clears his throat. “Sylvester Warren is a very well-connected man. He knows senators, congressmen. He probably fits out thirty percent of America’s richest women and a lot of our richest men with their jewelry, thanks to his gift for finding the best original designers. Basically, he knows everyone with real money, donates huge amounts to the Republican Party and somewhat less to the Democrats. He’s occasionally invited to the White House. He knows judges, senior lawyers. He’s also been under surveillance by the FBI for years. We suspect him of art frauds, but he’s just too smart to catch. Also, we don’t have a whole lot of specialists in imperial jade and he’s probably the world’s leading expert. It’s his hobby, his passion as well as his profession. If he’s a crook, he’s only ripping off the rich, and the rich don’t like to admit to being ripped off. There’s a limit to how many resources the Bureau wants to put into something like this, given our other priorities.”
I click my tongue. “Would I be right in thinking his collection of imperial jade is one of the biggest outside of museums?”
“Yes.”
“And he sells off a piece every now and then, probably at an auction?”
“Usually privately, but every now and then Christie’s or Sotheby’s gets a piece of the action. When they do, it’s a special occasion. People you thought had been dead for years come out of the woodwork. Of course, the bidding is done by proxies, the public doesn’t know who the real bidders are.”
Rosen, frowning, takes up the story. “Washington’s not keen on collecting evidence against Warren, not unless it’s so good all his friends will be forced to disown him, and he’s too smart for there to be evidence like that. Another problem, frankly, is that if there is evidence, it’s likely to originate here in Thailand, and—do I have to go on?”
“He’s too well connected here for such evidence to survive a day after it comes to light?” Nods from the FBI. “How old is Mr. Warren?”
“He’s sixty-two and looks like a young forty.”
“And began his career in his twenties?”
“Got a master’s in gemology and another in Chinese studies, specializing in the late imperial period. He speaks Mandarin well and his Thai is very good.” A pause while Nape moves his finger around the edge of the monitor. “He also speaks the Swatow dialect. That say anything to you?”
“Swatow? Where the Chiu Chow come from? Chiu Chow run Thailand,” I say. “They run our banks, all major businesses. They have Thai names, but they’re Chiu Chow.”
“I think you’ve got the point,” Rosen says.
Nape pauses to check my expression, which I have rendered studious. He coughs and continues. “A possible hypothesis which we don’t want to go into print looks like this. A relatively crass black sergeant in the Marines, with an unexpected eye for beauty, starts a web page shortly after making a trip to Laos, where he bought an experimental lump or two of unprocessed jade sometime after May 17, 1996, probably just a few months after his arrival. Sylvester Warren sees the exhibit on the web page, notes the apparent quality of the workmanship, whatever he might think of the theme, and looks up Sergeant Bradley on one of his visits to Bangkok. Bradley is probably overwhelmed and astonished that his little venture has drawn such a distinguished eye. He also sees an opportunity to put money aside for his retirement. What he’s got that Warren wants is direct on-the-ground contact with local craftsmen, who are probably of Chinese extraction, probably the artistic inheritors of world-class jade workers who fled the Communists in 1949. Warren has his own craftsmen, of course, the best in the world, but he can’t use them for anything illegal. Bradley can provide both a firewall and American-style quality control. We’re talking fakes. Every time a museum or private collector comes out with a catalogue, there are people all over the world who copy the best pieces and sell them. There’s no scientific way to prove a fake jade—carbon-14 dating doesn’t work, neither does thermoluminescence”—to Rosen—“I checked all this out yesterday.”
I look up. “For Bradley’s craftsmen to copy Warren’s pieces properly, they would have to have the original?”
“We thought of that,” Kimberley Jones says. “We talked about Bradley absconding with some priceless piece from the Warren Collection, but it just doesn’t fit. There was nowhere Bradley could hide from Warren, and probably nowhere he could have sold the piece at a halfway decent price. These artifacts are matters of public record, experts know who owns what down to the date of purchase. Only Warren could sell something from the Warren Collection, real or fake.”
“Anyway,” Nape adds, “is Warren going to use snakes in a revenge killing? With his money and contacts here, he could have snuffed Bradley and made it look like natural causes. Why would he want the heat?”
A moment of communal reflection. I say: “What does the word ‘tranche’ mean?”
“Slice. What it probably means here is that Warren was financing the experiment, giving Bradley installments of cash through one of his agents in Bangkok. Like a lot of very wealthy people, Warren is notoriously tight with money. We don’t think he was giving much away. Big bucks was the carrot he was offering only when Bradley had produced a perfect copy of one of Warren’s pieces.”
“A strange game for Warren to play, if he’s so rich.”
Rosen rumbles, “Welcome to American capitalism. It’s a great system, except that no one ever has enough.”
I say, “The horse and rider?” and draw only blank expressions. My strength is fading. I allow myself the luxury of forsaking human consciousness for the bosom of the Buddha.
25
Using the Net and station gossip as tools, it wasn’t too difficult for Pichai and me to piece together our Colonel’s drunken ramblings, even though their deeper meaning continued to elude us.
REMFs were Rear Echelon Mother Fuckers—a standard epithet used by U.S. combat troops for the despised officers who stayed back in Saigon and ran the disastrous war. The Other Theater was Laos, where America was forbidden by international treaty from waging war, and where it waged the most ferocious bombing campaign in history. Ravens were exceptionally gifted American aviators who had come to loathe REMFs and volunteered to fly O-1 spotter planes on secret missions out of Long Tien in the green Laotian mountains to locate the positions of the North Vietnamese regular army, which was steadily encroaching into Laos. The more obscure references to American Breakfast, eggs over easy and Pat Black proved impossible to track down.
Somehow Vikorn had made a small fortune in Long Tien. A good part of this money he used to buy his commission in the Royal Thai Police Force. There were rumors of contacts in the CIA, dark secrets known to our Colonel which the Americans didn’t want to get out.
It takes more than two hours for Nape and Jones to reach Bradley’s teak house and call Rosen to report that the horse and rider is gone. Rosen thrusts his hands in his pockets and goes to the window. “Looks like we found the motive for the attack on you.”
&n
bsp; “But he didn’t get away with the horse and rider. He never got further than the corridor.”
Rosen shrugs. “Because you kicked him in the balls. So he came back later, or sent someone else.”
I know what Rosen is thinking. If the horse and rider is an original that Bradley was copying, it’s going to be difficult to keep Warren out of the case. I see the weight of a controversial investigation bear down on his thick shoulders, sloping them still further, driving him more deeply into the negative karma which dogs him. I say: “Did you take pictures, or would you like to borrow mine?”
He makes a face. “Sure, we took pictures.”
By the afternoon my hospital room is turning into a library. Somehow the FBI have got hold of every illustrated book on jade available in Krung Thep. They have also e-mailed the picture of the horse and rider to Quantico. A wonderful hush envelops my room, the hush of concentrated minds following clues as we work carefully through the books, checking the color plates against our photograph of the horse and rider. Is investigation normally like this in the West? I have never done things this way before and I’m finding a subtle pleasure in this novel approach to law enforcement, with no one to shoot, intimidate or bribe.
Almost at the same time Nape and Jones emit deliciously triumphant aahs. Trying not to let his enthusiasm run away with him, Nape shows Rosen a page from the book he is using, while Jones tries to show him hers. Rosen looks at both and turns to me. “What did I tell you?” He shows me the page in Nape’s book, which is a beautiful picture of the piece carrying the cryptic caption: Horse and Rider from the Warren Collection, formerly from the Hutton Collection, believed to be one of the pieces the last Emperor Henry Pu Yi took with him when he fled the Forbidden City. Procured for Hutton by Abe Gump.
At that very moment, Rosen’s mobile starts to ring. I note that he has chosen the theme tune from Star Wars for his ringing tone, whereas I myself opted for “The Blue Danube” (thereby demonstrating that I am no more than an impostor in Western culture, a naÏve tourist anyway, with the musical taste of a grandmother; I can’t think why I didn’t choose Star Wars, which I actually prefer). The voice on the other end is someone he calls “sir”; it causes a gray and haggard look to dominate his features.