The Bangkok Asset: A novel

by John Burdett

  There was no point trying to goad him on. I waited. He took a deep breath. “So I worked with Goldman. He played General Groves to my Oppenheimer. We both realized independently that trying to capture or define the human spirit was a pointless exercise. The way forward was to indulge it.”

  “Indulge it? Like indulging an animal in its favorite food?”

  “Exactly. I’m afraid it was exactly like that. Except that we are here talking about psychic food. A kind of nourishment peculiar to human beings.” A pause. “A form of nourishment well studied by those societies we are taught to despise in modern times. A form of nourishment someone like Hitler or Himmler might have understood, although they were no more than beginners, dark clowns nibbling at the edges who quickly became victims of their own meddling.” He looked at me. His voice shook. He was a quite different kind of old man when he said, “We discovered the rage of fragments cut off from the whole and the way to harness it.” He could not keep the triumph out of his voice.

  Now he stared at me like a madman. “The awful thing was that it worked. D’you see? I think even Goldman hoped it was not so. Unfortunately, we had found the God particle on the psychological level, which is the only level that matters. Suddenly the whole of human history fell into place, human sacrifice by another name: Aztecs, Romans, Nazis, European colonists, American imperialists, video games, endless holocausts.” He shook his head. “Goldman went mad. Even now he is only sane fifty percent of the time. That’s why the CIA tries to keep him at a distance. But they cannot do without him. He is the only one they have who fully understands the new weapon system.”

  “So why not dump the new weapon system?”

  He smiled wryly. “D’you know, I think they would like to do just that. But they cannot. Competition, d’you see? You can’t stop arms races once they start—the logic is irresistible.”

  “But a race with whom?”

  “Do you really think the Americans are the only ones working on this? Experiments on helpless humans is universal wherever there is an absence of democratic surveillance, which is everywhere because democracy is failing. The Japanese did it in World War II, the Russians did it led by Professor Ilya Ivanov under Stalin in the twenties and carried it on in secret after Ivanov died: the so-called humanzee project. Now the new player is China. They have made a lot of progress, but they’re coming from way behind. They have no comparable program, but their need is great. This kind of weapon is more suited to homeland security than war. Soon there will be two billion people in the PRC, just when food and fuel start to run out, worldwide. Keeping the peace, putting down riots with muscle—that’s the policing and soldiering of the future. A normal man who has been trained to kill cannot manage more than a few hundred slaughters without breaking down. Himmler discovered that.”

  A long pause during which his gargoyle returned. His expression was pop-eyed, triumphant and vicious now. “In fact, that was the main problem they wanted me to solve: how do you kill relatedness between humans so that a single warrior can go on killing without any psychological fallout?” He smiled. “It was such an intriguing puzzle, I couldn’t resist the challenge. Then I came up with the answer. Do we worry unduly that literally billions of animals—cows, sheep, chickens, pigs—are killed on our behalf every day? It does not trouble us because of the differentiation of species.” He stopped to check I was following. He was eager to share his brilliance. “I said: ‘I will make them gods, for the gods never care how many little humans they destroy.’ ” He shook his head. “And that’s what I did. After all, what is identity other than a subjective certainty based on no evidence at all? A manipulable fantasy, in other words. Descartes didn’t dig deep enough. It would have been smarter to say, I think therefore I am not, since honest thought destroys identity. A Buddhist like you knows that.”

  “So you created a new species?”

  “Yes.” He warms to his theme. “Naturally, I gave them many of my own tastes in music, history, cuisine, and the arts—perhaps went a tad too far with the Counter-Reformation and the French Revolution, which are my favorites, along with metaphysical poetry and Renaissance choral music—but I was careful to give them a wide range of religions to choose from. Or they could be atheists, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that they were too different, too superior, ever to relate to normal people.” He let a couple of beats pass. “Even Goldman and his gang realize that seven billion people living on credit and surface tension is not a goer long-term. The transhuman has to be higher and deeper than that.”

  My cop’s mind processed what he’d said despite myself. I, too, felt a terrible reluctance to see something that, I guess, many people sense but will not acknowledge. I thought again about that incident on the river. “It’s not actual killings that…feeds these…products?”

  “No. It’s the destruction of the souls doing the killing. That’s what it feeds on. And you do have to feed it, regularly.”

  “But feed who or what exactly? Something that is no longer human? So what is it?”

  “Ah! How difficult it is for a modern man to answer that question, which a medieval man would have answered with confidence in a second.”

  “You’re talking about the devil?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  I thought about that and decided to change the subject. I was on the point of leaving, after all, with the most pressing question still unanswered. “Doctor, may we now talk about the elephant in the room? Why have you gone to such lengths to help me understand all this? Surely not on the strength of one phone call from a Bangkok cop in the middle of the night?”

  “I was asked to,” he said with a smile.

  “Who by?”

  He cocked his head. “Well, if we stick to the terminology, I suppose I would have to say the devil.” He stood up and disappeared into the interior of the suite for a moment, to return with his Camels, his ivory cigarette holder, and his Zippo. I watched and waited while he lit up. “Of course,” he said, coughing out a stream of smoke, “one has always to bear in mind that in the more sophisticated forms of Christianity, the devil is simply Christ seen from a different angle.”

  —

  An English gentleman to the last, later that morning Christmas Bride accompanied me to the airport, where I took the next flight back to Bangkok. While I was waiting airside I called Chanya to tell her a little about my adventures. She said she had had lunch with Krom while I was away, but did not elaborate.

  27

  It is a busy night at the Old Man’s Club and I am on my own: Mama Nong complains that I’ve managed to avoid my bar-minding duties for over a week already and she did not see why a couple of days in Cambodia should excuse me from my obligations as junior shareholder, which, she pointed out, pays better than my cop’s salary. When I’ve finally kicked out the last drunk and locked up and am looking forward to going home to my wife, my phone vibrates in my pocket:

  Darling, I’m so incredibly f##**g bored and Krom just called to ask if I wanted to go see a show—so that’s what I’m doing. C.

  The message hits me in a place that suffered collateral damage during the war of adolescence: nobody loves me and I feel lonely. My jealousy is of the self-pitying kind: I was looking forward to telling her all about my adventures in the jungle; but she is with Krom and our contract of intimacy has been compromised. I don’t want to go home to an empty hovel, so I decide to stroll instead while suppressing a voice of rage against Chanya for leaving me all alone late at night. And she’s with that dyke Krom!

  Sukhumvit has changed. Most of the bars have closed after the one a.m. curfew; those that have remained open have locked their doors and will only allow entrance to farang or those Thais with the correct password. The luckier girls found customers and are either in a hotel bed somewhere if the deal was for “all night” or snug in their own beds if it was merely chuakrao or short time. The rest are hanging out at a long line of collapsible tables and chairs placed around makeshift bars on the sidewalk that have s
uddenly appeared and stretch, with intermissions, for over a mile. Fortune-tellers also have emerged from whatever underworld they inhabit during the day: a square of dark cloth on the ground, some Hindu diagrams of the body, some Buddhist diagrams of the mind, a couple of packs of well-worn tarot cards, a guide to palm reading, and you’re set up as a clairvoyant, or mordu, of the night. It’s a clever piece of targeting: almost every girl who is still around at this time is feeling down on her luck and needs reassurance. Generally, though, the ladies of the night resort to the more reliable relief of a bottle of rice whiskey shared among friends. At the same time I’m wondering in some dark alley of the heart, Are they having sex together right now, Chanya and Krom, this minute, while I’m walking along?

  Nothing like self-regard to strip you of your street smarts: I do not hear the car roll up, or the door open and close, or quick steps behind me. I do not even realize I am no longer alone until a feline caress begins at the base of my spine. Even then I assume it is a girl risking all on the last chance of the night; I turn with a Sorry, darling smile on my face. It is him.

  —

  He is taller than me by about four inches with a proportionate advantage in body mass. It is his superhuman fitness, though, that intimidates. I do not feel threatened—I do not think he is about to kill me—but I am unmanned. He walks beside me with effortlessness grace, while I immediately begin to sweat and my pulse rate increases. When he takes my arm I’m unsure how to react: to pull away might be offensive; on the other hand, that gentle but firm hold on my right forearm is freaking me out. Now he leans over to me to whisper a sweet nothing in my ear:

  “ ‘Twice or thrice had I loved thee before I knew thy face or name, so angels affect us oft.’ ”

  He smiles into my shock. It is important, though, to keep walking. “I know you’re a compulsive, like me,” he whispers. “You’ve read everything in your search for self, haven’t you? But it’s time you realized something very important.”

  “What?”

  He wants me to look him in the face again, but I am unable to. That pale skin, slightly tanned, those cornflower-blue eyes, that short hair so blond it is almost white: the eerie beauty that came over in the video clip is tripled in real life. A trillion dollars of farang brainwashing from Hollywood is telling me how perfect he is, theoretically. I need to keep walking with my eyes focused on the pavement, like a woman propositioned by a strange man late at night.

  “That old man in the hospital, our biological father, he can’t tell you anything about yourself,” he whispers in my ear. “He is the past. He has no relevance anymore. We are on our own in the world, you and I. We need to bond.” He speaks gently, as if to a child. “Don’t be frightened of me. I wouldn’t hurt you for anything. You’re all I have, my love. All I have on this great wide earth.” He hesitates. “This sterile promontory, as the poet said.” He leans around as we walk to produce a caring, loving smile right in my face. I cannot do other than to give a half smile back. Fear aside, the sense of being trapped in a submissive female role is profoundly irritating, but even if I had not seen what that superbody can do, his superior training and strength are too obvious, too much a part of his reality to ignore.

  He sighs. “It’s okay, I understand, this is all very new to you. How did you like the camp, though? What a dump, huh?” He makes a face that I suppose is intended to be nonchalant. “Oh, how I wish you could have seen it at its height, with us kids running around, everything shipshape, spick and span, every day a holiday. Football, baseball, fencing, athletics, classical music, poetry—we were all so smart, you see, junk culture could not seduce us, for the Doc had inculcated us with his own tastes in the arts—cries of joy, our little souls overwhelmed by our great good fortune all the livelong day. It was our holiday camp long, long ago. That’s where I met our daddy for the first time…I wanted so much to be there with you when you visited, but they told me, ‘No, it’s too soon, the poor love has to catch up with things you’ve known all your life.’ ”

  He stops to hold my shoulders and turns me to face him full frontal, smiles again with tolerance and patience, like a lover who does not doubt his wooing will win out in the end. “Don’t you want to thank me for setting it all up for you? You do know it was me all along, don’t you?”

  “Ah, yes, I think I worked that out. The iPhone was yours, there was only one entry in Contacts, I called it. Yes, you set it all up brilliantly.”

  He smiles and looks as if he is about to pinch my cheek, so pleased is he with me. “I can wait, oh yes I can wait, but you have to let me share my little treats with you. One by one, not all at once, naturally. The last thing I want is to freak you out.”

  I am focused on his voice now; light, silky, freshly washed, not a trace of blue-collar masculinity; not a soldier’s voice at all. It sings a song of vacancy. Is that a howl I hear behind it all? Is this really my brother? I feel his antiseptic need like a steel band around my head, tightening. This must be the demonic motivation Dr. Bride spoke of: the vacuum from which all life flees.

  Only now I become aware of the car that has been following us. It is exceptionally quiet because it is a sky-blue Rolls-Royce. Now it slides up to stop with the rear near-side door perfectly aligned with us. The door opens. “Please, my dearest brother,” he says and jerks his chin.

  I enter a HiSo world of aromatic leather, discreet perfume, air-conditioning at a pleasant twenty-three centigrade, and the famous barrister Lord Sakagorn dressed in a dinner jacket with plum bow tie, his long hair held back in a new silver clip, sitting in the front passenger seat, his liveried driver at the wheel.

  “Are you excited?” the Asset asks me. “You’re going to see your kid brother strut his stuff—not all of it, just a little exhibition to help with sales, isn’t that right, Lord Sakagorn?”

  Sakagorn is almost dumb with embarrassment. “Yes,” he manages and sags. “Yes, that’s right.”

  Next to me in the backseat the Asset stretches out. He flashes me a smile. “Forgive me, my brother, I need to go into a different space now. I have to prepare. I might not have time for you until it’s over.” He closes his eyes and psychically disappears, leaving only that extraordinary body.

  —

  Silence as the limousine rolls through Chinatown. Normally there are gold shops with glittering lights and Sikh guards in turbans with pump-action shotguns on just about every corner, and hundreds of small clothes stalls that take up the sidewalks and narrow the road; now, though, it is too late even for gold traders. We pass a couple of Chinese Christian churches that were founded before Constantine converted, a huge gaudy Taoist shrine, the Temple of the Gold Buddha, then a glimpse of the river. Fangton, the other bank, is the downmarket side where murders are more common and less expensive: I take comfort from the fact that this is Sakagorn’s Rolls-Royce and all the people we pass give it a second glance. A kidnap is unlikely. Now we take the bridge to cross the river.

  “It’s a fight?” I ask Sakagorn. It is the obvious conclusion, after all. The Asset is quite still and appears not to have heard the question.

  “Yes.”

  “A kind of exhibition match?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Who—” I stop myself because I almost said we. “Who’s he fighting?”

  “Rungkom.”

  I gasp. “Oh no.”

  Sakagorn doesn’t say anything, merely stares ahead into the night.

  —

  Rungkom retired as unbeaten Muay Thai national and international champion about five years ago. People wondered why he didn’t keep fighting for another few seasons, considering the amount of money he was making; there was a hint of moral weakness, whether women, drugs, or alcohol is unclear, although most gossips cited all three as probable causes. Everybody knew that Rungkom, a great bashful hulk from Isaan when he first started on his career, just loved to party with Krung Thep’s fashionable elite. The usual dark stories abounded, implying a dependency on cocaine and indebtedne
ss to loan sharks. What I remembered of him in the ring was an incredible high kick with speed and feints that seemed to come out of nowhere. It was so fast and so hard, no one could figure out a response. Most of his fights ended in the first or second round. His face, rocky with scars, appears vividly in my mind as we drive to the fight. I recall that his path has taken a certain predictable turn since his retirement and drug dependency. He is by far and away our most popular and expensive private boxer: the kind rich men hire to fight bare-knuckle in secret locations where the betting starts at a million baht.

  Sakagorn’s driver slows the car when we reach a ragged area where not much has been done to separate the land from the river, which flooded a few days ago, leaving a lot of mud and uninhabitable dirt between building projects that were ruined by the water. The driver knows where to stop thanks to two large halogen lamps that have been set up on the wasteland where a single white Lexus people mover is waiting with the lights on.

  The barrister Sakagorn shakes his head. “Such a shame, such a sacrifice—but what can you do?” Suddenly he loses control. “Fuck you, Jitpleecheep, fuck you to hell.” I stare at him. “It didn’t have to be Rungkom, any bunch of hoodlums would have done. He could take out ten no problem. This is to impress you.” The Asset remains in deep meditation, oblivious.