“Every ninety minutes or so, one of our drivers will take the basket out in the car. A few miles away, he’ll stop and power one on, check for incoming, turn it off again, and drive a few more miles, doing them one at a time until he’s got them all. Then he’ll use his own phone to call whoever got a message.”
Rafferty says, “You’ve done this before.”
Arthit says, “How do you know that the cops know where we are?”
“It’s obvious that my family would come here,” Nguyen says. “And almost all of you have your phones, which are signaling away. But mostly, I know because we’ve got four in plainclothes watching the embassy.”
Rafferty says, “Well, hell.”
“It’s more psychological than anything else. They can’t come onto the grounds, and they’d be risking an incident if they stopped and searched an official embassy vehicle, so that’s what you’ll go in and out in, when you have to go in and out. And they probably don’t know we’ve spotted them, which is an edge. Perhaps the two of you,” he says to Arthit and Thanom, “would like to look at them on video, see whether you know any of them, whether you can figure out who might have sent them. And Mr. Rafferty, could you please come with me? We need to talk for a minute.”
“Sure. You want some coffee?”
“Oh, why not. Black.” Nguyen turns toward the door and waits for Rafferty. As he takes the cup, he says to Thanom, “Don’t worry too much. This is going to be a very full day.”
RAFFERTY TRAILS NGUYEN as they track down one hall and then another, leading into an area of the embassy Rafferty hasn’t seen yet. It’s obviously for the top echelon and their visitors: the carpets are thicker and paintings line the halls. Outside a dark, heavily grained double door, Nguyen stops and turns. “You want to get out of here today, right? To go see your reporter friend at the Sun?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. Let’s get the cops really worked up. You and I will go out in an embassy limousine, complete with the flag flying on the fender, with Chinh driving. They’d be apprehensive just to see you go into a newspaper office, but we’ll crank it up. We have an early lunch reservation in a very nice restaurant, at a window table, with the paper’s business editor. My official title here is business liaison, so I know him quite well.”
“You and me and the business editor. That’ll be an acid reflux moment for Ton.”
“Then we’ll walk in plain view, with Chinh and my bodyguard, Tuan, flanking us, straight to the newspaper. I’ll go into the building with you and do some work of my own while you go through the pictures.”
“It could take hours.”
“The longer the better. Gives them more to worry about.” He surveys Rafferty’s jeans and T-shirt and shakes his head. “I guess you have your own inimitable style. But stand up straight, okay?”
Rafferty sips his coffee and says, “Do I slouch?” but Nguyen is already opening the door.
They enter an anteroom with carpets of a regal red on which floats a wide teak desk that’s been claimed by a fearfully groomed Vietnamese woman in her mid-thirties. She smiles at Nguyen, glances at Poke, then says to Nguyen, “Go right in. He’s expecting you.”
Rafferty snags Nguyen’s arm. “He who?”
“Secretary Tran.” Nguyen puts his cup on the desk, and the woman immediately opens a drawer and puts a frilly white coaster beneath Nguyen’s coffee and another beside it for Poke. “He’s the ambassador’s executive assistant, and for the purposes of this meeting he is the ambassador.”
“Got it.” Poke drains the cup and puts it on the coaster. The woman re-centers it.
Nguyen takes one last regretful look at Rafferty, sighs, and goes through the door, with Rafferty trailing along like a chastened Labrador Retriever. The room into which Nguyen leads him has the kind of volume that’s meant to impress. Thick midnight-blue carpets match heavy woven drapes, and vermilion walls rise at least fourteen feet to culminate in a ceiling of dark, highly polished hardwood. Pinspots set into the ceiling pick out gilt-framed watercolors, impressionistic views of scenery that Rafferty supposes is Vietnam.
The desk is half the size of Rafferty’s kitchen. Standing behind it, all ten of his widespread fingertips touching its surface as though Nguyen and Rafferty had caught him at the apogee of a pushup, is a thin, very sleek man in his fifties with a steel-gray military brush-cut, cheekbones that jut like elbows and tight, dry eyes that announce an unwillingness to be entertained. There’s almost no upper lip, but the lower plumps out like a bumper, and for a second Rafferty thinks it’s expressing disapproval of his clothing.
But then the man smiles, just a tug at the corners of his mouth, and the lower lip stays out there. He says, “Captain. Mr. Rafferty.”
Nguyen says, “Sir.”
“Your Colonel Thanom,” Tran says without any warm-up. “How bad is he?”
Rafferty waits a beat to give Nguyen a chance, but when it’s clear that the question is meant for him, he says, “Pretty bad.”
“Is he—was he—involved in the murder ring?”
Rafferty says, “Sure, he was.” Tran’s eyes dart to Nguyen just long enough to cause frostbite, and then resettle on Rafferty, who picks up the thread. “Sawat’s operation took a lot of cooperation. Cops had to be evaluated in advance to make sure they’d play. They had to be pulled from duty to free them up for the hit. Time cards showing they were on their regular assignments had to be forged and entered into the system. Other cops had to be brought in to cover for the cops who were otherwise employed, et cetera. On and on. And, of course, all those secrets had to be kept, so money flowed. Thanom was Sawat’s immediate superior, and there’s no way he wasn’t on the pad.”
“On the pad,” Tran says.
“Getting paid for odds and ends, for keeping his mouth shut. Maybe twenty thousand, thirty thousand baht at a time. Not often, just enough to keep him hoping for more. So, yeah, he was involved. Was he running it? No.”
“You’re certain.”
“I’d bet the farm on it.”
“And how big is your farm?”
“Not very big. But it’s the only one I’ve got.”
Tran nods. “That’s the better question, isn’t it? Not how much the other person will lose, but how much he’ll have left.” He steps in front of the high-backed chair behind the desk and sits. “In order for me to allow you to move ahead with this—”
Rafferty says, “Excuse me?”
“Your plan, whatever it is, undoubtedly calls for my offering your little flock a sanctuary. It presumably includes the continuing participation of Captain Nguyen.”
“It certainly does.” Rafferty ignores Nguyen’s warning glance. “And they’re not my little flock, beyond my wife and child, and I’ve taken care of them without your help in the past.”
“Well, let’s try not to put you in that position again. If I’m going to be involved, I need to know two things: first that we’re not shielding an embarrassing villain; and second, that you—the two of you—are after the right man. Ton has business interests in Vietnam, and it would be counterproductive to disrupt them for no good reason.”
“We’ll know absolutely by the end of the day,” Nguyen says. “And until we’re completely certain, we won’t do anything that would have a permanent effect.”
Rafferty says, “He’s the guy.”
Tran looks at him long enough to memorize him. “This isn’t theoretical,” he says. “We’ve received a formal request to hand Colonel Thanom to the Bangkok police, and I can only stall them for so long. And, relative to the size of your farm, I need to know whether Ton will still have the resources to cause problems when you’re done with him.”
Nguyen says, “We’re going to strip him stark naked and flay him alive in public.”
Tran pulls the corners of his mouth together, perhaps at the imagery, and says to Rafferty, “And you?”
“Exactly what he said,” Rafferty says. “But he forgot the salt.”
“So I stall,�
� Tran says. “Thank you. That’ll be all.”
“Just out of curiosity,” Rafferty says, “How will you stall?”
“I’ll tell them that we’ve taken their request under consideration.” He blinks and pauses, and Rafferty has the sense that he’s reviewing what he’s just said to confirm that it’s the right course of action. He gives himself a tight, stiff-necked nod. “That will hold them a few hours.”
“We need more than a few—”
“And when they come back to us,” Tran says, without raising his voice, “we’ll inform them that one more importunate query will lead us to issue a public statement that Colonel Thanom sought refuge here voluntarily, and that we believe that a situation involving certain elements within his department poses a threat to the sovereignty of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the personal safety of its diplomatic representatives and their families.”
Rafferty starts to speak, but Tran raises a hand. “And bearing in mind the long friendship between our respective countries, et cetera, et cetera, we’ll promise to expedite our investigation of the particulars of the case—particulars, I have to say, just between us,” he says, looking at Nguyen, “that are in scarce supply. And that we’ll act according to our discoveries. Oh, and it’s also come to our attention that those same certain elements within the police department are holding Colonel Thanom’s wife without a legal basis, and we will be petitioning for her release.” He gives Rafferty the ghost’s smile again.
Rafferty says, “My, my.”
“As solid as that sounds,” Tran says, “it’ll have holes worn in it twenty-four hours from now. So settle it; make absolutely certain you’ve got your man and that you can take him all the way down. In no more time than that.”
“Yes, sir,” Nguyen says. “We will.”
“You understand, Colonel, you wouldn’t even have twenty-four hours if it weren’t for the assault on your family.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And now,” Tran says, “if it’s all right with you, Mr. Rafferty, that’ll be all.”
“We’ll just let ourselves out,” Rafferty says, and when they leave the room, he’s in the lead. They pass the perfectly groomed woman in the outer office without a detour to get their cups. In the hallway, Rafferty stops when Nguyen touches his arm. Before Nguyen can speak, Rafferty says, “We’ll be certain within twenty-four hours?”
Nguyen says, “The salt?”
“It seemed like a colorful touch.”
Nguyen nods and then breaks into a smile. “You must have Vietnamese blood,” he says.
“Filipino,” Rafferty says, “but thanks for the compliment.”
“So it’s time at last,” Nguyen says. It’s the kind of smile, a tight-edged baring of the teeth, that probably gives his enemies the night sweats. “Twenty-four hours, and not a minute more. What was that phrase you used? From some song?”
“Aim and ignite,” Rafferty says.
Nguyen says, “If not now, when?”
39
The One Wearing Hand-Me-Downs
THE RESTAURANT BUILDING used to be a bank, complete with the requisite picture window, and they get the number-one table, dead-center behind the big pane of glass. They get a hard, hot slab of morning sun, yellow as butter, through the window. They get service that seems to begin before they walk in: a maître d’ pulling the door open when they’re still several steps away, complimentary appetizers. They get offered specials that are, they’re assured, available only to certain valued patrons. They get to watch a bottle of champagne—a gift of the house—be borne toward them in a sweating bucket from the open bank vault.
They get a beefy man in a red baseball cap passing the window and glancing in at them. Two minutes later they get the same beefy man going the other way, wearing a yellow cap.
And, ten minutes after they sit down, they get James Kalmenson, in whose name the reservation was made: a fiftyish, balding, very closely shaved, pink-faced man whose broad jowls and tiny mouth give him a permanent expression of petulance and who has no obvious shortage of self-regard. The moment he walks in, the reason the entire staff is on its knees to them becomes apparent.
Kalmenson is a finger-snapper, a man who points at people across the room and crooks a finger when he wants them, a man who indulges in the kind of imperious post-colonial behavior that makes Rafferty feel apologetic for being a farang. Within a moment after sitting down, Kalmenson refers to the Thais as “these people” and makes it clear that he holds each and every one of them personally responsible for the sorry mess the country is in.
“Compared to what other country?” Rafferty says, leaning across Nguyen, but Nguyen steps on Rafferty’s foot and agrees that the Thais certainly seem more interested in having a good time than in running a tight ship, and Kalmenson takes a corrective stance, because, Rafferty can see, Kalmenson takes a corrective stance on everything.
“Not your boy Ton,” he says. “Not the boy you’re here to talk about. The exception that proves the rule and so forth.” He sips his red wine, the second bottle brought to the table after he waved the first one off. “Of course, he’s mostly Chinese, all the good ones are, but my Lord, he’s a pistol. He could make it in the States.”
He holds up the wine glass and tilts it, sighting through it, and Rafferty bets himself one hundred and seventy million baht that Kalmenson will say something about legs, and he says, “Nice legs. It’s a little thin on the tongue, but got a nice viscosity to it.” To Nguyen, he says, “Ton was the runt of the litter, of course, third son and all. Real Medici family: oldest brother in government, second in the Army, Ton in police, all of them using their positions to shovel whatever business they can into the family vault. Not much fondness among them. You’re broadening your relationship with him?”
“We’re considering modifying it,” Nguyen says. “We’re beginning to see him in a new light.”
“He’s quite the emerging boy,” Kalmenson says. “You could do worse. You’ll keep me abreast of matters as they progress.”
“You’ll learn what we learn,” Nguyen says.
“Tit for tat.” Kalmenson looks up, irritated, as a shadow falls on the table, but when he sees the menus in the waiter’s hand he smiles.
He demands and gets the list of specials, orders something that there are only two servings of—it could be pheasant feet, Rafferty thinks, and he’d still order it—and strongly recommends something to each of them. Nguyen accepts his suggestion, and Rafferty says to the waiter, “Whatever you’d order.”
“Give me an overview,” Nguyen says. “The family business as it stands now.”
“Not a lot of change in the past year. Overall, they’re in construction—roads and buildings—and communications: they control one of the not-quite-top cellular networks. They’re in rice milling and export, they’re massive landlords—probably control several million square meters of business, residence, and factory space in Bangkok alone.”
He pulls another roll out of the bread basket. “But the current jewel in the crown,” he says, “is all Ton’s: the Northeast Farmers’ Trust.” Rafferty’s ears ring with the name and he sees Chalee’s drawing of her sister as Kalmenson pours his third glass of red wine. “I told you, he’s already got milling operations and rice export networks, and he’s got some influence on price-setting. He controls about fifteen percent of the national crop, worth I can’t even guess how much. So tell me, what’s the pebble in the rice bag?”
Nguyen says, “Farmers.”
“You Viets,” Kalmenson says approvingly. “You’ve got the instinct. All that Chinese blood.”
Rafferty says, his voice sharp in his ears, “What about the farmers?”
“Who needs them?” Kalmenson makes an expansive sweeping gesture with the back of his hand, just missing his wine glass. “They’re a mess. They have too many kids, so farms that once were decent size have been carved into dozens of tiny plots, all brothers and fathers and cousins, squabbling night and day. A nightmare to d
eal with. So here’s the deal. These people are already living at subsistence level, right?”
Rafferty, whose wife’s bankrupt farmer father tried to sell her into the sex trade, swallows and says, “Right.”
“It’s a classic squeeze. As a miller, you lower the price you pay for their unmilled rice, and you increase the price they pay for the milled rice they eat. Say they’re making two hundred baht per kilo for unmilled rice, but they’re spending three for the rice they live on. And you restrict the kind of seed they use and double the price. The farmers are in a deeper hole every year. Beauty, huh?” He pulls the bread basket over to him, peeks in, then raises his hand to catch a waiter’s eye and points at the basket.
“Typical,” he says as the waiter takes the basket. “So, so, so—right, right—he sets up the Northeast Farmers’ Trust, Ton does, a little bank with no purpose except to lend money to farmers who aren’t making it. No interest, just a balloon payment at the end of the year. And you map the village, mark out the pieces each family uses, and when it comes time to collect and they can’t pay, you foreclose. The first ones you take are the ones around the perimeters, create a wall around as many paddies as you can. Deny people the right to cross your paddies to get to theirs. Put rural cops—here’s where being an opera cop, with that fancy uniform, pays off—to enforce the no trespassing edict.”
Rafferty says, “What happens to the families who get foreclosed on?”
“He keeps them on at first, pays them a little to work their old land. But when you’ve got ten or fifteen plots, you give all but one or two of the families the old heave-ho and leave the others in charge. Then, when you’ve made it really difficult for people to get across your land to their family plot—good one, family plot, because that’s what it turns out to be—you offer the others sixty cents on the dollar to sell. Pretty soon, you own a village. Do it often enough, and you’ll own the rice business from seed to feed and everything in between. And he does. About fifteen percent, like I said.”
For the Dead Page 27