by John Burdett
There is no point trying to press her for more information; when Mama Nong says no, it means just that. I will have to return for more answers when her mood has changed. I hardly need to point out, R, that the man she has just described bears no resemblance to the “prize buffalo” who would “tear the shed down” if deprived of sex. I seemed to have at least two natural fathers, according to Mum. But by the time I reach the end of the soi, my passion for more knowledge overcomes me. I buy an iced lemon tea at the 7-Eleven on the corner, down it, and walk slowly back.
She is waiting for me. I snuck around the side, using my key to the garden door, but she is not surprised when I appear before her, blocking her view of the pool where she sits cross-legged on her mat. She looks up to stare at me, sees something in my eyes that was not there before, and nods.
“You’re not leveling,” I say. “There’s something else. There has to be. Something direct and personal that made you ashamed. That made you not want to tell me the truth. That made you want to break with him totally. It must have been serious—this was the guy who took you to America, right?”
“Did you bring dope?”
“No.”
“What are you going to use for anesthetic?”
“Nothing.”
She raises her eyes, then gestures for me to sit with her. “Of course, you’ve guessed he came back?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. So he came back.”
She pauses for so long, staring at the Bodhi tree, a gnarled triumph of persistent life that hangs over the dead blue pool, that I have to say, “Yes?”
She grunts. “It is all so long ago.” She stares at the pool. “He’d changed, but so had I. The war was coming to an end. You were about eleven months old, growing fast. Obviously, only a year had passed, but that’s a long time in war and people change quickly when they see their loved ones shredded. He wrote to me, but I had stopped replying. A woman in the position I was in then is interested in hearing from the father of her child only if he has something practical to offer. Money would have been great, but even a reliable presence might have been helpful. I wasn’t interested in confessions of guilt and how bad he felt about leaving me and how he still had such strong feelings for me.” She checks my eyes.
“I thought you didn’t read those letters.”
She smiles. “Only one in ten. A girl gets curious, after all. And there was some small gratification that he felt so bad—that he was still thinking of me at all. Frankly, a Thai man in his position would not have stayed in touch.” She lights a Marlboro Red, inhales gratefully, exhales.
She swallows. “He came back after about a year and he was exactly the kind of man I had expected him to be on the first date. Oversexed, tough, willful, physically incredibly strong, wired, hyper-alert—a killer. We had the affair we should have had the first time round, but neither of us had known how. I’d been selling my body and he’d been hiring flesh in Vietnam—lots and lots of it. So we both knew everything there is to know about sex. I was still young, in my early twenties, he was only a year older, but you could say it was an affair made in hell. We simply went wild. Like all such things, it lasted maybe a month, then when we cooled down we didn’t like what we saw. We didn’t like each other and we certainly didn’t like the face in the mirror in the morning. The passion died like a damp firework and it was all over. At least as far as anything physical was concerned.”
“This is when he took you to America?”
“Yes. You wouldn’t remember, but your aunt Mimi looked after you for a month.”
“But how was he over there?”
She pauses and then nods. “Stressed, I suppose, although I was too young to look at it like that. He was angry as hell at the way vets were being treated.” She looks at me. “He kept getting into fights—except that other men could see what he was and were scared of him. At least five times I had to hold him back—beg him, even. I knew in my bones how easy it would have been for him to kill. I kept telling him I was a Buddhist, I didn’t believe in solving problems that way. It was one of the things that broke us up.” She gives me a shy look. “That and sex.”
“How so?”
“He was voracious. Even with my background I found it hard to cope. Three, four times a day, no letup. Amazing.”
She looks at me. It is as though she is challenging me to ask the last big dangerous question. I have no idea what that might be and stare back at her, puzzled. Then it hits me.
“There was another change in him, wasn’t there?”
She looks away at the Bodhi tree. “Yes. The wired psychopath who volunteered for Special Forces could not survive—I could see that. To tell the truth, I began to assume he would end up murdered or in jail. But something else happened. He volunteered for some super-secret military project he said had been officially closed down, but was still going strong in secret locations. He said I might read about it one day. I didn’t know what he was talking about. All I know is there was some kind of initiation—and he never contacted me again. I assumed he was dead. He is for me, anyway.”
I nod. I’m a cop, I think I know when I’ve got the full story. Without another word I stand up and leave. While I am walking away I am sending a text message to Krom: Roberto Eduardo Santos Tavares Melo da Silva. On the one hand, I’m feeling optimistic: that is one very unusual name; if Krom can find his records, then she must be able to find out the names of the other men who were in his squad.
On the other hand, I have at least five images of this strange man, my father: the classic naïf who believed the lies his country told him; the Special Forces psychopath; the MKUltra volunteer—perhaps; the vet locked in vengeful nostalgia for those terrible, intoxicating years four decades ago; the man who, somewhere in all this, really did once love my mother.
17
The parcel from Know the Father Corporation arrived promptly with my DNA sample collection kits. It was quite large because I’d ordered three packs, and came with instructions the tone of which swung abruptly from kindly parental (phrases began with We at KTFI want you to be comfortable with…) to the fanatical when it came to preventing contagion.
I’m excited about paying a visit to the upmarket hospital in Chinatown to which the three old men have been sent, but when I reach the station there are over three hundred e-mails with my name on them and at least ten percent are urgent and need answering. Then, when I’ve waded through the e-mails, one of the sergeants wants me down in the cells to interpret for a farang couple: Brits who have brought in about ten thousand Ecstasy pills expecting to make a small fortune. Now they are going to spend a few decades in jail and are hysterical and hard to understand. It’s about eleven-thirty in the evening when I finally retrieve my pack of DNA sample collectors and grab a cab.
The hospital is crowded, despite the hour. In Asia we are much attached to our traditional cures for common diseases; after all we have been using them for thousands of years and, generally, they all follow the principle that the body should be treated holistically. Acupuncture, Ayurveda, meditation for healing, Chinese herbal remedies all follow this impeccable ideal, and we embrace one or more of them, depending on the case, with faith and reverence—except if the disease hurts like hell or threatens death, when we opt for the quick, artificial, life-denying fixes of farang drug-and-cut cures. Sure, we Thais have plenty of folk remedies for gout, for example, which we believe comes from eating too much chicken, but try living with the agony of a swollen knee joint for a month (or have the metatarsal-phalangeal joint at the base of your big toe swell to the size of an orange), while your revered herb master guides you majestically through the Four Natures, Five Flavors, and the Meridians before finally arriving at the Specific Function, when you know that colchicine will fix it in a day. In other words, the international-class Western hospital in Chinatown is always busy—and not only with Western medical tourists (drugs average twenty percent of the cost stateside and the atmosphere is much less militarized). The department for int
estinal diseases, for example, is perpetually crowded with Thais who are unable to curb their chili habits despite the holes the pepper burns in their intestines.
It is close to midnight by the time I arrive at the special ward to which they have transferred the three American vets. The huge hospital is as alive and vibrant as the go-go bars at this time; many of the patients are on Western time schedules, especially those who have popped over from California to change sex on the way to the beach. A guard takes me up to the ward in a special lift; there are two more guards at the door to the ward, which is very small and at this time contains only three beds and as many patients. A large sign in Thai and English says: SILENCE. It seems the Registrar sent the fingerprints of the three oldies to the American embassy, who maybe checked with Veterans Affairs, or the U.S. military, and came back with their names within the hour. Now I read the names at the ends of the beds upon which three men lie unconscious: Willie J. Schwartz, Larry Krank, and Harry Berg.
Harry Berg is the closest to death, but I don’t pay him much attention. His breathing is shallow, there is very little brain activity. There is no sign that he will ever resume command of his body, or even want to. Larry Krank is still unconscious but the machines are recording bouts of rapid eye movement, which might prefigure a return to the world. Now I fixate on what I consider my best bet: Willie J. Schwartz, whose middle name is John, but he might be known as Jack. I noticed when I entered that he moved his eyelids a few times and may be ready to emerge from his coma. I don’t want him to recover just yet, though, and start to open the large envelope into which I’ve slipped the sterilized envelope with the two swabs. I’m just about to open the seal when one of Larry Krank’s machines starts buzzing. It’s not an insistent emergency kind of buzz, more like a friendly hey this guy’s waking up kind of signal. I see that Larry Krank has opened his eyes and is staring at the ceiling. Now a nurse enters, a Thai woman in her forties who looks like one of those devout Buddhists whose life direction was always to help others. She sees me but has no time for me just now. Her nametag says she is Nurse Silapin. She’s a pro and only needs one look at Larry to call a doctor. When the doctor enters she doesn’t ask him what he wants to do, though. She tells him what drugs she wants to give the patient and the doctor apparently agrees. Now she is calling the hospital pharmacy. Now she is looking at me.
“Detective Jitleecheep,” I say, flashing my ID.
“Why are you here, Detective? It will be days before any of these men can speak. Perhaps not even then.”
“Just checking,” I say, holding the envelope behind my back.
A junior nurse arrives with a drug concoction from the pharmacy and gives the package to the senior nurse, who takes out the vial with the cork top and the disposable syringe. Meanwhile the male doctor leaves the room. I watch in fascination as she plunges the needle into the cork, turns the bottle upside down, withdraws the piston, and fills the syringe with a colorless liquid. I think she is going to inject him in the arm; instead she pulls the sheets down, bares a part of his chest, and stabs him with the needle in the solar plexus at the same time as pressing down hard on the plunger.
It is like watching a resurrection. The big old man opens both blue eyes wide as if he’s seen God, sits bolt upright, lets out a scream, then allows himself to descend gracefully back to a lying position.
“Adrenaline and testosterone,” the nurse says. “The combination works better with men than women. It’s like they’re made for the big crude blast. Then they fade on you.” She spares Larry Krank a long look. He has closed his eyes again. “He’ll pull through, though. He’s strong.” She offers me a celestial smile. Now she turns to Willie J. Schwartz. Apparently he is the subject of a different experiment. She keeps her eyes on the patient as if she has a keen intuitive understanding of where his mind is at; then, at a given moment, she caresses his bare forearm in a blatantly sensual way. His eyelids spring open. She smirks at me. “It works in fifty percent of cases. It’s like most human beings don’t really want to return to the world unless there’s some love waiting. A tender touch can stimulate the will to live better than any drug.”
If old Willie was dreaming of an erotic welcome back to the world, though, he is disappointed. He groans as one glance at the ceiling confirms his worst fear: he’s still alive. Now he turns over on one side to go back to sleep. The nurse isn’t happy with this idea and asks me to sit and talk to him while she goes to find the doctors. I’m tempted to break out the swabs and stick one in Willie’s mouth, but decide against it because I have no idea how long the nurse will take to return. I think there will be more windows of opportunity and with luck I’ll be able to do at least two of them. I’m a little nervous about Harry Berg, the one still on the critical list. I don’t suppose a swab can be life-threatening, but that kind of fragility is scary—and perhaps there’s that cynical thought that I don’t really want it to be him, not if he’s going to die on me. I decide to wait. After all, none of them are going anywhere, I can return again and again. If the worst comes to the worst, I can find some excuse to swab them for forensic reasons when they’re recovered. It is impatience that drives me, though.
The nurse’s instruction to keep Willie J. Schwartz’s attention is not as easy to follow as one might think. Despite that he has just emerged from a coma that has lasted many days, his overwhelming instinct is to return to it. When I sit on one side of the bed to stimulate him with conversation that will prevent a relapse, he turns over again, leaving me with his back. When I walk around the bed, dragging my chair, to attack from the other side, he turns over once more. At least I can be sure he is fully awake and, apparently, an antisurvivalist of some stature.
“Your friend is awake, he needs you,” Nurse Silapin tells him when she returns with two doctors. She has to repeat it three times before he turns his head to look at Larry Krank. At the same time the doctors are forcing Larry to look at Willie. Finally, the two old men recognize each other despite the copious bandages around their heads and chins and start to grin. Apparently the doctors are satisfied with Nurse Silapin’s unorthodox methods and the three of them leave the room together, discussing another case.
Now the old men begin to speak in a language that I cannot follow. It seems to be a mixture of English, Vietnamese, and Khmer, with a few Thai words thrown in. My eyes are fixed on Willie J. Schwartz, waiting for a chance to find out what the J stands for. Using my English and Thai, with just a smattering of Khmer and no Vietnamese at all, I try to understand some of what they are saying. I want to know what names they use for each other. After a couple of minutes I am able to decipher a scrap of conversation:
“Where the hell are we, Mitch?”
“In a hospital in Bangkok. It’s okay, it’s a good hospital. The Thais are taking care of us.”
“What the fuck happened?”
“He bombed us, Brad. The bastard bombed us.”
This news takes a while to penetrate the mind of the man I’ve been thinking of as Larry Krank, aka Brad. After a while, he turns his head in the other direction, to look at Harry Berg for a few moments. Then he turns back to Willie. He makes a slow kind of jerk of the head in the direction of the other man. Now he utters his first full English phrase.
“What happened to Jack?” Larry asks Willie.
“Looks like he got hit bad, Brad, real bad. I don’t know if Jack’s gonna make it.”
My pulse has doubled. How strange is the human heart! Now I am filled with compassion for the man who I’m certain is my father. Don’t die, Jack, I mutter. Whatever you do, don’t die. I stand up, suddenly reckless. The two old men have assumed I’m part of the administration and paid me no mind so far. They look at me. “Did you just call him Jack?” I demand.
They look at each other. Willie, aka Mitch, shrugs. I make a quick assessment and decide they’re both too old, too vague from drugs and injury, too past it to care. Anyway, if it comes to the crunch, who would believe their word against mine? I break open the firs
t envelope, pull out the second, grab the swabs by the stems, careful not to contaminate the heads, and I’m approaching Harry Berg, aka Jack, when an alarm goes off. I turn to see Willie J. glaring at me in senile outrage. It is only then I notice the big red button on the wall next to his bed and the light flashing above it. Larry Krank, too, is suddenly in a state of military alert.
“He’s a fucking cop,” Willie says, then reverts to what sounds like expletives in their private language. Then in English: “Trying to fucking bust us when we’re—”
The nurse bursts in, sees the swabs, and comes to the same conclusion. Her outrage is of the kind exclusive to the pure of heart. Blood rushes to her head. Guards and doctors appear. Now they’re dragging me out and frog-marching me down the corridor to a small room without windows. They lock me in there. Five minutes later a cool Chinese man in a dark suit arrives with two guards. He is the Deputy Registrar.
“Do you have a warrant to take DNA samples from these patients?”
I take a deep breath. “No.”
“Please let me see your police ID.”
I show him. He nods at one of the guards, who snatches it. “I’ll need three photocopies,” the Deputy Registrar says.
We wait, staring at each other until the guard arrives with the photocopies. The Chinese gives me my ID back. He nods at the guards, who jerk their chins at me. I stand up. At the door the Deputy Registrar says, “No doubt you will be hearing from your superiors. Our group’s legal department will decide how far to take this.” He pauses for a moment. “We like to keep on good terms with the Royal Thai Police Force. And the RTPF have good reasons to keep on good terms with us.”
My companions and I take a private lift down to reception, where they throw me out. I’m trying to shake myself free from an embarrassment that attacks like a pinching demon, causing me to twitch, and at the same time feel a strong need for further evidence. I hire the first motorbike taxi that passes.