by John Burdett
“I’ll make sure it reaches the right levels,” he says, nods again at Vikorn, and leaves.
I notice that Krom, also, is in a hurry to leave the room. When she has packed up her laptop and the surveillance gadgets she makes hurried apologies to Vikorn and me and also leaves. I decide to give her a couple of minutes before I follow.
Neither she nor the FBI are anywhere to be seen in the corridor. The obvious place to look for them would be in the smaller interview room next door. It is locked from the inside. When I put my ear against the door I am able to hear a conversation between the two of them. I cannot understand a word of it; it is in Mandarin. Perhaps one of them has attended an enhanced hearing class, though, because suddenly the door opens and Krom and the FBI are staring at me. They exchange a glance. The lawyer seems to be waiting for Krom to speak.
“Can we let him in?” she asks.
“Certainly,” Matthew Hadley-Chan says. “The Messiah has given his half brother full clearance, even up to the highest level.”
He pronounces the word Messiah in exactly the cringe-making way of any evangelist. I am shocked, but not so shocked that I lose curiosity in Krom’s reaction. As usual, I have no intuitive understanding of her mind: I just never seem to know where she is coming from. I am fascinated by the unforced reverence in her face.
“You’ve been with the Messiah recently?” she asks with naked awe.
“He has done me the extreme honor of including me in the next step of the project,” he says with nauseating piety. He turns to me. “Here,” he says, dipping into his jacket pocket and taking out a thumb drive. “All you need to know is on this drive. The files will self-destruct within the next six hours—and cannot be copied. I think the matter speaks for itself.”
I see from the body language of the two of them that it is time for me to leave. The point, apparently, is the thumb drive. I shake my head. That cannot be sexual attraction filling Krom’s eyes when she looks at the FBI; it’s an awe more radical than that. I exit and close the door as quietly as I can. In my pocket I carry the thumb drive. Six hours, I think, six hours. I better take it home. If Chanya’s working I can listen to it on earphones.
—
It is the FBI legal attaché who fuels my speculation as I make my way back to the hovel. In my mind’s eye I trace his probable life path. A smart Eurasian born, perhaps, in disadvantaged or lower-middle-class circumstances to a mixed couple, the Chinese half probably his father with the traditional Asian immigrant’s drive to succeed in a society more mobile and fairer than the one he was born into, which is not necessarily saying very much. His dutiful son passes exams at or near the top of his class, absorbs law at Harvard or Yale with relentless ambition, then joins the great benefactor, Uncle Sam, to serve honorably as living proof of the loyalty and dedication of a leuk kreung who knows all about the sneering racist forces ranged against him and is forever grateful for the protection built into the system. Like me, though, he suffers from an internal contradiction: the rootless I needs more than status to be sure it exists. Then a fateful meeting occurs: as in the book of Luke, Christ shows up at the lawyer’s office one fine day, whether in Bangkok or Washington, and the lawyer turns evangelist. My mind boggles.
34
At night when I’m working on a heavy case I switch to the vibrate function on the smart phone before I sleep. I leave the ringtone on, but turn it down low so as not to disturb Chanya. Even so, when it goes off it makes quite a display, lights flashing, the vibrations sending it on a circular navigation of the floor and, of course, the subdued ringtone (the Stones: “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”). I block it before it vibrates its way over to the bookshelves, then I pick it up. I am only one-third awake. The screen tells me it is two twenty-four in the morning and that the caller is anonymous—except that the freshly washed voice is familiar to me.
“A car will be outside your house in three minutes. It will wait thirty seconds. Do not bring your gun, you will be protected.” He hangs up.
Three minutes, as it happens, is exactly how long it takes to pull on some shorts, grab a T-shirt that I hold in my hand, slip on some flip-flops, leave the house, remembering to bring my wallet, keys, smart phone, and police ID, and walk to the road. The car is rolling up to our front door as I’m pulling on the T-shirt.
The driver is none other than Matthew Hadley-Chan of the FBI, looking very fit in shorts and sweatshirt as if he has been jogging. He owns a gun, a large combat rifle made of high-tech materials lying across the backseat. I sit in the front. We do not speak but drive off at high speed toward the police station at District 8. We do not stop there, though, but penetrate farther into the market area. I am aware that we are only one street away from where the Asset wrenched the head off Nong X, so that I am casting more and more glances at my driver.
“Can’t tell you anything, sorry,” he says. “Looks like they’re gonna bag the big one tonight. The Captain will explain soon as you’re there.”
“Captain?” I say.
“Yeah. The bright shining star himself.”
I am puzzled by the casual reference made in the offhand American style. “You don’t mean the Messiah, do you?”
His expression turns serious. He puts a finger to his lips.
—
The market is not open at night, but the framework of iron poles that provides support for tarps during the day is left intact, along with the bare wood boards. As I look I see that there are men and women with blackened faces under some of these stands, all with combat rifles, all lying very still on their stomachs. As I pass I count eight humans—some are Caucasian, some are black, a couple are Thai, three are female. The FBI leads me quickly to a corner where an alley leads onto the square. It is quite dark. At the same time as the FBI whispers, “Here he is, Captain,” a fine, slim hand reaches out, grasps my upper arm with unexpected strength, and pulls me into the darkness.
“We’re about to catch me this time,” he whispers. “I’m two minutes away,” he adds with a giggle. “Watch.” In the darkness I can just make out those perfect teeth when he smiles. “You do still think it was me who killed that poor girl and wrote your name on a mirror in blood?”
“Yes,” I say. Then, looking around at the carefully laid trap: “Okay, no.” I must be confused, because then I say “Yes” again.
“Watch. The perp will be heading for a specific building about thirty feet from where we stand, where the bait is waiting.”
Bait? I want to know if the bait is a professional and a volunteer—or not? Now that fine manicured hand grasps my arm again and a faint nod causes me to look across the silent market. A tall figure has appeared, a farang with hair so blond it could almost be white. He is young, springy on his legs, at an unusually high level of physical fitness. His face is obscured by a baseball cap. I think, Two? There are two of them? Two Assets? Identical twins? Why didn’t I think of that? Asset II sniffs the air a lot, sometimes bending down, sometimes reaching up nose first to catch whatever olfactory information is hanging around.
“He’s had the olfactory App,” my half brother explains with a sneer. “Guides himself through his nose, like a dog. Disgusting.”
We watch while the intruder works swiftly, moving from side to side but always heading toward one particular front door. He tries it, it is not locked. He turns the handle. I feel an urge to rush him, but a hand restrains me. He is allowed to enter the building. Seconds later there are two bangs that are too loud and too special to be shots from an ordinary gun. A child or young woman screams. We all move in a rush toward the building. A farang woman in combat dungarees emerges running with a young Thai girl in her arms, about twelve years old, horror in her eyes. The woman takes her to a van parked on the other side of the market. Everyone else makes for the front door. There are about ten of us now, entering one by one.
Inside, it is a typical local shop house, with cheap electrical and household goods for sale on the ground floor, family accommodation upstairs. I
am thinking this is not like any rescue I can remember. Everyone is focused on the body of the perp.
Two shots from marksmen waiting in ambush inside the house have brought him down. Their guns are propped up against a wall, high-tech and capable of firing exotic shells. The body on the floor with two big holes in it has everyone’s attention, but no one wants to preempt the Captain. He is behind me as we enter; I am aware of everyone looking toward us.
“Listen up,” the Asset commands. “The three scientists—using our color coding that’s Drs. White, Black, and Pink—will have exclusive use of the body for exactly eight minutes for preliminary research. Sergeants Purple and Violet, you did the shooting, you stay with the doctors in case they have questions. During that time, the women lieutenants, that is, Gray and Cream, will form the first line of resistance: anyone coming within fifty yards of ground zero is warned off. Use polite feminine firmness on local people, any nonlocals are to be treated with suspicion. Your line is: Please accept our apologies, we are protecting American government property for the moment, and we will release the area in less than ten minutes. Soldiers Brown, Blue, and Charcoal, you are the second line of defense. No outsider gets to look at this body. Lethal force is authorized as a last resort. At the end of eight minutes an old black Toyota covered van will arrive. Do not shoot at it. It will be traveling fast. If you keep to the timing, at the moment when the body is being rolled up in the tarp, the van will arrive, and the body will be placed in the back of the van, which will drive off. There will be no American personnel within a hundred yards of ground zero after two minutes of the van being gone. Understood?”
The Asset in this mode has a natural authority. Everyone holds him in awe; at the same time, he is polite and friendly. I cannot tell if this group has worked with him before or if they have come together for this case alone. He is so polished in his performance, so much the highly trained pro, that his people simply follow his orders. The three scientists do not wait but instantly start on an examination of the body. I’m left wondering if this Captain really is the crazy I had lunch with only days ago. I think the Asset tonight is neither acting a part nor being himself; I think transhumans learn to select personalities to fit with the moment and cover the void that way. Like humans, only more so.
Blood-splatter patterns and large dark deposits on the floor show how the perp was shot twice before he could reach the girl: I think the first shot was a hollow-nose bullet of large caliber, and the second an exploding bullet that destroyed his chest. He lies facedown with arms and legs spread in classic shot-man position, his face pointed away covered by a forearm and invisible to me, his bright blond hair catching the light.
Sorry, R, it looks as if I’ve misled you: I’ve been wrong all along. He didn’t do it after all. I turn to the Asset and say in disbelief, “It really wasn’t you who killed Nong X here in the market ten days ago?” Not the most elegant question I’ve ever asked; he graciously ignores it.
“Let’s get this straight,” Dr. Pink, a woman, says to the gunmen. “You shot him through the gut with a hollow-nose round?”
“A JHP, ma’am, jacketed hollow-point forty-five with high-velocity propellant. Right through, hit his spine round about L1 or 2, but he kept coming on. No point giving him a warning. Something like that, you don’t give margin, you just shoot while you’re still alive. Sergeant Violet then hit him with an HE, ma’am.”
“HE?”
“High Explosive, ma’am.”
“I had no choice,” the other shooter said. “Never seen anyone recover from a JHP before.”
“I’m not interested in legality, soldier,” Dr. Pink says in a gravel voice. “It’s the technology that’s sending green balls down my pants leg.”
“Me, too, ma’am,” Dr. Black says. “He was still walking after you cut his spine in half?”
“Still running.”
The three scientists kneel over the body. “Damn it, will you look at this.”
“It’s a graphene sheath,” Dr. Pink says. “I saw it right off.”
“They’ve learned how to encase the nerves in graphene?”
“Might be worse than that,” Dr. Black says.
“Yeah, that thought crossed my mind too,” Dr. White says.
“How’s that? What could be worse than that they’ve worked out how to encase nerve fibers in graphene sheaths?”
“That they’ve worked out how to make the nerve fibers out of graphene rods,” Dr. Pink says. “That they’re about a decade ahead in nanotechnology.”
“Oh,” Black says. “Oh no. That is bad news, if it’s true. That puts us way behind.”
“Of course we’re way behind,” Pink says. “They get to do vivisection on humans. If they let us do that, we’d be ruling over America’s second empire by now with the world at our feet. It would be 1945 all over again.”
“Yes, but with that kind of progress they must suffer a failure rate of two in three.”
“Either you have Darwinian capitalism or you don’t,” Dr. Pink says, probing around inside the carcass. “I bet ol’ Polonium doesn’t lose any sleep over his casualties. He would probably use Chechens anyway.”
“Is it true that Polonium himself has been enhanced?”
“I heard that. I don’t know if it’s an urban myth or not. All that superman junk he’s into, though…maybe.”
“And if Polonium is in deep now, you can bet the rest of the world apart from the U.S. and Western Europe will be doing it in ten years’ time.”
“So we find ourselves at the end of the food chain and have to play catch-up. So we have to break the rules in the end anyway and everyone gets to call us hypocrites.”
“Our people do some cheating too,” White says as he examines the abdominal cavity. “On the quiet. You know that. What the Corporation won’t allow is vivisection on human children, because the scandal if it broke would close them down. Comparisons would be made with Hitler and Mengele. That’s where these guys beat us every time. They don’t worry about a free media.”
“I know that,” Dr. Pink says. “We have this taboo, but we’ll have to break it sooner or later. Kids don’t necessarily suffer as a result of the research. Anyway, who in hell would ever find out? This program is SECRET, in capitals. I had to go through five hoops, they tapped my phone, talked to my friends and colleagues and everyone who’s known me since high school, followed me around for six months—and that was just to get on the consultancy list. I’ve had five different identities in as many days, and tonight I am Dr. Pink. No, no, nobody is ever going to bust us. Not only does the President not know about what we do, ninety-nine percent of the CIA have never heard of it.”
“Well, they put us all through the same rigor. The military isn’t subtle, but the money’s good.”
“You got that right. Why do you think I’m here? I earn more in three days than I get in a year on civil research projects.”
“Anyway, going back to what you were saying, you’re right, the kids don’t suffer at all for the most part. You start to put synthetic cable in a kid’s spine at age about seven, by age seventeen you have a superman with an unbreakable back. Where’s the suffering?”
“Like this one,” Black says. “Shot through the spine with a hollow-nose and he was still walking. We’re gonna have fun with the reverse engineering here. I’d sure like to know how they did it.”
“Running,” the gunman says, as if he has an inner need to keep repeating the story. “Running at full speed. I guess he was about a yard from me when I hit him with an exploder full in the chest and he finally went down. I was sweating it, I can tell you.”
“Well, let’s turn him over, let’s see how well they’ve done here.”
The body it seems is quite heavy. It takes the three of them to turn it over so the face is staring at the ceiling. We all groan, myself more loudly than anyone. I cannot believe it.
“Wow!” Pink says.
“They’re winning,” White says. “As good as won, I woul
d say.”
“Will you look at that?”
Everyone in the room is constantly switching their attention between the creature on the floor and Captain Asset.
“Damn it!”
“Can you believe it?”
Dr. White is so shocked he wants to check with me, as if I am a fellow scientist. “Have you ever seen anything like that?” he asks, stabbing his finger toward the Asset then back again at the creature on the floor.
“No,” I say. “Never.”
The Asset also is transfixed. The face of the perp is a perfect replica of his own, as is the near-white hair and the crew cut. “Does it come off?”
“It must,” Dr. Pink says. “He sure wasn’t born like that.”
“It probably fits by suction or glue,” Black says.
The Asset kneels beside it. “I’m going to touch it,” he says.
“No gloves?”
“No. I did a program. I can tell what material it is, skin to skin. Yes, a graphene trellis,” he says, caressing the dead one’s cheek. “I think they’ve grown skin and hair follicles on top of it.”
Dr. Black examines further, wearing surgical gloves. “I think you’re right, Captain.”
Pink shakes her head. “If they’ve gotten that far, they’ve as good as won the contract,” she says. “We can only do masks using the living original. We can’t copy or imitate like this in graphene—they must have done it from photographs. Probably thousands of pictures fed into a software program to get this kind of accuracy. We can’t model this material at all except on a living face, that’s way beyond our capabilities at this point in time.”
“So they’ve won already,” Black says.
“Except for the control thing,” White says.
“We don’t even know that,” Pink says. “This HZ is not here on a private debauch. This baby came here tonight for commercial sabotage—right, Captain?”
“Correct,” the Asset says, “to discredit me. The Russian lobby in Beijing have already started a campaign. I’m an uncontrollable child murderer, a tearer-apart of innocent kids, an undisciplined mutant.”