The Secret Agent

by Francine Mathews

  He guessed the guns filtered down from China—the cast-off treasures of Mao’s victorious troops, bartered for bread. Why did the hill-country boys want weapons? Who was the enemy, and who the friend? Disquiet soured in him like an ulcer as the Jeep lurched on.

  He broke his trip in Vientiane, talking to laconic men assembled in the back rooms of shops that had closed for the night. There was his old friend Tao Oum and others like him, their ageless hostility toward the French overlords of l’Indochine fueled now by a new religion-Mao’s Communist text had spread like the guns. The Laotians, too, had revolvers they wore near their hearts and concealed under their bamboo mats at night. He promised the friendship of President Eisenhower and the prosperity of free trade; promises as old as Roosevelt and Truman, promises that were as arid as the borderlands of Khorat.

  “We need antiaircraft guns,” Tao Oum told him. “We need Washington’s assurance that America will not intervene in our fight for independence from France.”

  Roderick listened uneasily and remembered Eisenhower’s command of the Allied landings on French beaches in ’44. He could not say the words Tao Oum hoped to hear.

  He began to have the sort of nightmares he’d suffered only once before in his life, during July and August 1945, in Ceylon. Roderick, walking alone through the densest jungle, snipers training their sights from the trees. But a decade had passed since his OSS days and the conflict in Korea had ended in stalemate and Ike was now playing golf on the greenest fairways in the free world. What could possibly go wrong?

  One night in Laos, he woke in the grip of a scream, dressed hurriedly in the dark and turned his car toward the Thai border.

  He could have gone on into Burma and taken soundings in Rangoon. He could have prolonged the moment of reckoning. But he had grown bone weary of guns and death and pointless conversations. He felt heartsick and old. He missed his home and the weavers who bowed to Mecca across the khlong and the way the wind tossed handfuls of rain on the old brick terrace. It was time to make his final call.

  The road into Thailand was unguarded. No one in Bangkok cared very much about the Far North, the Golden Triangle, where the hill tribes mingled freely with wild bands of Chinese soldiers who had once fought against Mao. The Far North was a place of exile, ungoverned and crude, and yet almost a kind of Eden. There were teaks with massive trunks, and higher against the backbone of the hills, rainforest conifers rose black and silent. The lush growth was alive with insects and vermin. Snakes and glorious birds tangled along the riverbanks. The soil was little good for farming—but opium poppies had thrived there for nearly a century, and they danced like butterflies over the terraced fields. Along the flower beds, more men with guns patrolled.

  He entered Sop Ruak just as the sun rose. The town was a collection of hovels that had existed from time immemorial. The people were a blend of Lao and Burmese and Thai Lue hill tribe; lately something of the Chinese lurked in the children’s faces. As the Jeep creaked to a halt on the settlement’s edge, Roderick saw the doors of the houses were already flung open, and a clutch of women half-knelt, half-lay in the dust of the main street, keening hopelessly over the fallen bodies of their men. Flames seared through the roof of one hut. A baby girl toddled unsteadily down the street, screaming in terror. Her hair was on fire.

  Roderick seized his suit jacket, leapt out of the car and beat at the flames with the fabric. He was panting with fear and horror and bitterness, the child rolling at his feet, no longer screaming. A woman clutched his arm, shrieking pleas he did not understand, and when he stepped back she curled over her baby, wailing.

  The steel orb of the rifle’s mouth nipped at the skin below his skull, where the cords of his neck met the spine. He stiffened, gulped for air, then raised his arms.

  “You cannot walk like a prince into the hills of Chiang Rai,” a voice said softly in English, “whatever you may risk in Bangkok, my friend.”

  Roderick closed his eyes and said: “Carlos.”

  “They come across the river from Burma near the town of Fang, or perhaps Mae Sai. Bandits and renegades, ruled by one leader. The point of entry varies, depending upon the season; but it seems that whichever fording place we patrol, they find another.”

  “What’s their reason?” Roderick asked. “Plunder?”

  Carlos shrugged. “They want the poppy fields that belong to my men. I refuse to give them up. And so the fields burn at night and the scent of opium drifts across the hills on the smoke, and good men die for bad reasons.”

  “Burmese?”

  “National borders mean nothing in this part of the world.” Carlos studied him grimly. “The opium wars between Burma and the Chinese—and my men are nearly all Chinese—are of ancient origin. You might credit the British, who fostered the trade and farmed it out all over their empire, if you were prone to blame only white men for Asian troubles; or you might credit instead the overlords of Burma and Thailand, who starve their peasants. Whatever the cause, we live with fire and bloodshed in the night. Guns and vigilance are a fact of northern existence.”

  “But you, Carlos?”

  He shrugged again, his canny eyes half-lidded. They had hunkered down near the river two miles out of town, in the shade of a teakwood tree, to trade stories and eat longan fruit. “My fate turned on a gun, Jack, as you may recall.”

  As if the murder of King Ananda had been yesterday, Roderick saw a younger Carlos standing dazed, a pistol in his hand. The elderly nurse screaming. Ananda’s face turned toward the open window. The neat round hole, and the welter of blood. Nearly ten years ago.

  “You were never just a victim of circumstance, Carlos.”

  “No?” He reached for one of Roderick’s cigarettes. “What do you hear of Ruth? Does he carry on the fight?”

  “I hear that Pridi Banomyong has traded his soul for a Mao jacket. He sits in a place of honor in Peking.”

  “Then you hear lies.” Carlos spat into the dust. “It is good to see you, farang. I had forgot that men dressed like that, in places like these.”

  Roderick smiled, the first grin he’d managed in days. Carlos was dressed in the faded garb of a Kuomintang soldier, distinguished by a general’s stripes. Roderick’s silk suit jacket was burnt in several places and stank to high heaven. He rolled it in a ball and handed it to Carlos. “Be my guest.”

  “With thanks,” he said gravely, and placed it in his pack. “My wife can do anything with a needle. And the boy is always growing.”

  “How is Chao?” Roderick asked. Chao. The Thai word for river. She had been a charming woman when he’d last seen her, in 1948—as fragile as blown glass, with a cunning mind that had made her indispensable to the Free Thai during the war. Boonreung’s final journey in Roderick’s service—the last before the failed ’49 coup and the boy’s execution—had been to smuggle Carlos’s family into the north.

  “Chao endures, like the waters after which she is named.”

  “You were always a poet.”

  “But no longer.” The General buckled the straps of his pack and rose. “We shall have to build funeral pyres for those men before nightfall. It is required of our honor.”

  “You run this village, Carlos.”

  “Much worse, farang. The peasants think I’m a god.”

  It had been no exaggeration, Roderick thought ten minutes later as he watched Carlos enter his camp. A crowd of men, some grizzled and some mere boys, came to attention as the General approached. Three Burmese raiders had been captured during the night; the trio were gagged and tied to posts thrust into the dirt a hundred feet from the door of Carlos’s bungalow. Chao stood in the doorway, her arm resting on the shoulders of a young boy; at the sight of Roderick her once beautiful face lit up with joy. Then she glanced at the three captives, and all expression was extinguished. She turned back into the house, her son herded in front of her.

  Carlos barked a question in what Roderick guessed was pidgin Chinese. A soldier on guard near the prison posts shouted a reply.
r />   “They’ve been tried and found guilty of murder,” Carlos told him casually. “We’ll carry out the sentence in due course. But first, a real breakfast! You will eat with us, of course.”

  Roderick felt his skin prickle where Carlos’s rifle had rested earlier, inches below his brain. A hearty meal before the execution. And the boy within earshot. He thought of his own son—of the Rory who was nearly eighteen. Then he followed Carlos into the bungalow without a word.

  Chao sank to her knees before him, her palms lifted high in the ceremonial wei. There were tears on her sunken cheeks. He bowed in return. She dissolved in a deep and painful coughing.

  “We have rice and fruit and a fish done over charcoal,” Carlos said. “And while we eat, you will tell us all the news, Roderick.”

  “You know the news before I do.”

  “Informants, Jack. They will save us both, one day.”

  “Or murder us in our sleep.”

  Carlos did not reply. He motioned him to a chair, then sat in one himself; the boy had disappeared into the loft above, and could be heard singing to himself as he played. But Chao, before she turned back to the brazier and the earthenware bowls, said, “Jack—”

  “Yes, oh river goddess?”

  She bowed her head. “I wondered … You must know the minister, Vukrit Suwannathat.”

  “The only minister who matters.”

  “He is married to my sister, Li-ang. I have had no word from her in more than two years, and I thought—”

  “Your sister has forgotten you,” the General broke in harshly. “Her husband makes sure of that. You are dead to Li-ang, Chao. She should be dead to you also.”

  “I believe,” Roderick interposed quietly, “that Madame Suwannathat has lost her husband’s favor. She has left Bangkok, and lives in a family villa on the coast near Pattaya.”

  “My parents’ house,” Chao murmured, “where we stayed as girls. Li-ang must be happy if she has returned to that place! Did Vukrit shame her?”

  “Vukrit shames himself.”

  Chao glanced around the hut. “There are some who would find my present life an embarrassment. But I have been happy here. Carlos is a good man.”

  “I know that, Chao. I will learn what I can of your sister, and send you news.”

  She bowed again, and busied herself over her fire.

  “I do glean some information about Bangkok now and again.” Carlos pried the cap from a beer bottle with the blade of his knife. “I hear that Vukrit is more entrenched than ever. That the Pibul government will never fall. That the powers of the West shall feel the anger of Indochina, and die upon their swords.”

  “That is Communist propaganda.”

  “It is also truth. This part of the world is like a paddy that is drained and baking in the sun. It is ready to burn at the slightest spark.” He drank deep of the warm beer and brushed his hand across his mouth. Carlos’s hand, Roderick thought, had changed as much as his uniform. It was brown and hard and had the permanent stain of gun-barrel grease embedded under each fingernail. “But I remain loyal to the West, Jack, and so do my men. They are Chinese Nationalists who hate Mao and all his works. They have sworn a blood vengeance. When the time comes, they will know how to fight—and upon which side.”

  “I believe you.”

  Carlos offered him the bottle. Roderick sipped and felt the bitter aftertaste. Chao placed a platter of fruit and seared fish upon the table, and his appetite unexpectedly surged, despite the three Burmese prisoners strapped like sides of beef to the posts outside the threshold.

  “I also hear,” Carlos continued, “that Roderick no longer sleeps alone. A dancer, they say, as lovely as jasmine flowers that bloom in the night. Are you happy?”

  “A man who loves is never happy, Carlos.”

  “No. Love blinds our reason. It brings death into the house. You are rarely stupid, Jack—only once that I can think of, when you gave your hand to Vukrit Suwannathat long ago, on the Western Coast.”

  “He sank in his fangs, my friend.”

  “And yet you take his Flower into your bed. Are you insane? Have you not considered what use he finds for her there? Do you choose this wound so willingly, Jack, that you thrust in the knife yourself?”

  Roderick flinched and closed his eyes. Immediately she was there: black hair gleaming in the moonlight, dressing gown trailing. With his sleepy gaze he followed the curve of her back, outlined in silk, and the movements of her hands. She was a dancer in this, as in everything. They had made love and fallen together into sleep: he had awakened before dawn to find her sifting through his private papers. What risks she had taken—

  What was she searching for? What did she need? The price of her freedom from both of them—Vukrit and Jack alike?

  “I am a fool, my friend.” He said it wearily.

  “You must be indeed, to ignore so fine a breakfast,” Carlos returned. “Now it is time for the execution. Come, Jack!”

  When it was done, and the Burmese pirates lay like crumpled clothes in the dust of the camp, Roderick made his farewells.

  “You did not meet my son,” Chao said, as he bowed to her. She coughed into her hand and turned away. “I am sick, Roderick. I have not much time left.”

  He looked at the faded woman who had been named for a river, and said, “You will live as long as the Chao Phraya itself.”

  “Do not lie,” she replied brusquely. “You saved my husband’s life—and saved me an eternity of loneliness. But I must ask one more favor.”

  Her dark eyes burned fiercely in her wasted face. Nine years ago they had danced in Amphorn Gardens. Exile had cut away Chao’s grace as water will erode a streambed, leaving rock-hard strength exposed.

  “Anything,” he replied, and meant it.

  “When I am gone, take my son to my sister, Li-ang. He will forget this place, with time.”

  “He will never forget you. Or Carlos.”

  “Carlos wants for Sompong the life that has been denied him. But it is death for Carlos to take our son to Bangkok.”

  “You have my word,” Roderick said; and saluted the General’s wife.

  22

  Mr. Halliwell,” Paolo Ferretti said into the phone Thursday evening, “I’m afraid we have a problem here at the Oriental. You remember Ms. Fogg? The American woman you met at the cocktail party Tuesday?”

  Rush leaned against his secretary’s desk in the half-empty station. “I remember,” he answered.

  “She’s just killed a man.”

  Halliwell cursed silently.

  “I have to call the police,” the assistant manager continued. “We would appreciate it if you could come over right away. To explain to Ms. Fogg her rights, before the police arrive.”

  “Of course. Is she okay?”

  “Unharmed.” Paolo hesitated. “But she is perhaps too much in command of herself. She was attacked, you see. A very curious incident. Quite beyond our usual experience. How the man ever got in—”

  “Are you saying this guy was in her room?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I’ll be right over,” Rush said, and hung up the phone.

  Paolo moved all the guests from Stefani’s corridor to a different wing of the hotel, with complimentary champagne and no explanation. They left the corpse where it lay.

  She sat in a chair to one side of his desk, cradling a glass of brandy in her hands. Someone had put a blanket around her shoulders, as though she had survived disaster, and offered her a cigarette. It burned unnoticed in Paolo’s ashtray.

  “How did you … do it?” the assistant manager asked her once.

  “You should be wondering how he got into my room.”

  “He used the key.”

  She glanced up swiftly from her brandy.

  “Your butler was found dead in the service elevator.”

  “I crushed the bastard’s windpipe,” she offered. “Instinct, I guess.”

  “Instinct,” Paolo repeated, and looked away.

  I
n Bangkok there are two kinds of traffic: rush hour and worse. Tonight the streets were snarled in ways that even a native could not penetrate. Halfway to the hotel Rush abandoned his taxi and walked. The police employed sirens. He beat them by three minutes.

  “What happened?” he demanded as he strode into Paolo’s office.

  Stefani looked up. “Rush, he was going to cut my throat—”

  “But you got to him first.”

  “What does it cost to whack a stranger in this town? A hundred bucks?” “Try forty.”

  The Bangkok police spent five hours and forty-two minutes in the Oriental Hotel. They sealed the elevator where the murdered butler lay, they sealed Stefani’s suite, they sent in forensics teams to manage evidence collection and they muttered into walkie-talkies the length of the Garden Wing corridor. They found no identification on the dead man.

  What they did find was a pack of clove cigarettes and a matchbook imprinted with the name of a tattoo parlor on Khao San Road. They took Polaroids of the corpse’s face and sent an eager young officer to sweep the backpacker district.

  Rush followed Paolo Ferretti up a service elevator and into the deserted corridor. He took in the details: Stefani’s laptop on the coffee table, a bottle of Bombay Sapphire three-quarters full. She liked a Bulgari scent that smelled like green tea and she had very little in the way of luggage. The room had not been ransacked. But he had never thought burglary was the motive.

  A police medic had slit open the stocking that shrouded the dead man’s features. He was Asian, neither young nor old, with a head of spiky hennaed hair. He stared at the ceiling, amazed. Rush bent to study the crushed throat.

  “How is it possible?” Paolo whispered anxiously. “She’s such a small woman—”

  Halliwell shook his head. “This is a Green Beret’s move. And it wasn’t done by accident. Have the cops mentioned it yet?”

  “No.”