“Turner sat reading that junk? It doesn’t sound like him.”
“He had no choice. Intelligence sifting was part of his job. He would have to give an opinion on it alclass="underline" valuable or not, if valuable how many stars? The whole game is basically as dumb as that. Because of the need for security clearance, guys with Ph.D.’s do stuff a schoolkid wouldn’t find challenging.” That thin smile of his starts to build. “Drugs too, of course. We still have to do a lot of narcotics work, the DEA are such dummies.”
I stare at him, not having the faintest idea where he’s going here.
He leans a little closer. “What the hell do you think she was doing with herself while he was stoned out of his brain on the opium she brought him? All she needed was his log-in code. He probably told her the number himself when he was on the dope. Opium can do that-you see the world from a whole different perspective, one hundred and eighty degrees different. Yes, I’ve had my moments.” I’ve stopped working the mouse. “She’s a very very smart lady. For supersmart street sense, Chanya’s the finest I’ve ever seen.” He lets the smile spread some more. “Put in a good word for me, and I’ll tell you more.”
“I don’t care.”
A chuckle as he grasps my shoulder in a manly grip. “You’re a lousy liar, and I love you for it.”
With the CIA apparently on my side, I take the opportunity to ask that question that never seems to go away: “Does the name Don Buri mean anything to you?” He looks convincingly blank and shakes his head.
Later that night, with Hudson gone and the bar almost empty, Su emerges from one of the upstairs rooms with something in her hand.
“Know what this is?” Su asks when I’m half in, half out of the bar, fishing something out of her handbag. Instantly I step back in, breaking into a sweat of excitement and relief, for it is none other than the Super Secret Sony Micro Vault. You wondered about that, didn’t you, farang? You said to yourself: where is that damned Micro Vault he made such a fuss about chapters and chapters ago, surely that was a Road Sign if ever there was one? Well, the embarrassing truth is that I lost the damned thing, and I’ve been searching all over for it ever since. Of course Hudson and Bright have been grinding on at me daily forever (nag, nag, nag: Has he found it yet? Nah: how typical, dah dumb third-world cop lost dah Micro Vault), but I wasn’t going to put that on record out of sheer shame. I’ve practically turned the club upside down-now our laziest whore is holding it in the palm of her hand.
“The john was humping me so hard in room five a couple of hours ago, I had to hold on to the mattress, and this thing dropped out. I thought maybe it would vibrate, but it doesn’t.”
“No,” I say, taking it and stepping behind the bar, “it doesn’t.”
“So what is it?”
“It’s a Micro Vault.”
“Oh.”
She leans over me while I slot it into the computer and double-click with bated breath. Su and I exchange an astounded glance.
“It’s a man’s back,” she explains, drawing on deep experience.
“I can see that.”
“Pretty muscular, damned good bod, actually. What are all those green lines?”
“It’s a kind of grid.”
I click and click, but there really is nothing more to it.
31
One night, after the two a.m. curfew, the bar is empty save for Hudson and me. He is drunker than I’ve seen before, though still more or less in control. Sitting on a stool, he starts to talk, as if continuing a conversation, probably with himself.
“Freedom? What kind of dumb all-purpose Band-Aid is that?” With pleading eyes: “I mean, what are we selling exactly? Money is the state religion of the West. We pray to it every waking minute-and we’re gonna make damned sure every last human on earth gets down on their knees with us. All our wars are wars of religion.” A pause. “Want to know why I’m still here, at my age? I’m just a few hundred miles away from where I was thirty years ago in Laos. Look, I’ve made no progress at all, not financially, professionally not much, romantically not at all, not even geographically. Why am I still here?”
I shrug.
“Same reason the other guys couldn’t go back. All over Southeast Asia there are American men who never go home. We simply can’t. Because when we look into the eyes of your people, we see something, call it what you like. Soul? The human mind before fragmentation? Something sacred we farang habitually amputate like tonsils because we don’t understand its function? Maybe it’s your damned Buddhism. But we see something. Now tell me this, Detective. When you look into the eyes of farang, what do you see?”
When I fail to reply, he sniggers. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
Three days after this conversation, everything changed. Hudson and Bright arrived at the bar that evening, looking gloomy. They ordered a couple of beers, which they took to a corner table, where they whispered together. Finally, Hudson came over to the bar with his news.
“Your Colonel’s little game worked too well. Maybe he’s a kind of a genius. Well, we’ll see. They’re sending the Boss.”
32
I’ve been summoned to the police station, and I’m on the back of a motorbike listening to Pisit, who is on the warpath over a Hollywood film star who headed a campaign to stop a factory in the north of Thailand from employing underage children. She put pressure on a certain sportswear retailer, who canceled orders to the factory, which had to close down. Now the parents of the newly unemployed kids are having to sell their daughters into sex slavery in Malaysia because of lost revenue from the factory:
Anyone out there with information on those algorithms in the English language that make its native speakers so self-righteous, or indeed on the psychopathology of crusading in general, give me a ring on soon nung nung soon soon nung nung soon soon.
I pull off the headphones as we near the station. There was something in Vikorn’s tone when he told me about this meeting last night. Apparently yet another CIA has arrived, supposedly to kick ass. The alleged Al Qaeda connection has got Langley salivating. Things are not looking so good today.
She is tall, close to six feet, slim with a military bearing, a fit and handsome fortysomething, although her face and neck suffer from that drawn quality characteristic of those beset by the vice of jogging. Her hair is very short, gray and spiky: I wonder if she and Hudson share a barber? She does not waste time or money on cosmetics; her hygienic odor includes carbolic references. The suit is iron gray with baggy pants. We are in Vikorn’s office, but it might as well be hers.