To make matters worse, Krom, who I’d considered incapable of small talk, immediately opened up the conversation by referring to the Jade Rabbit. BTW, R, Jade Rabbit was the Chinese Moon buggy who kept a diary on the PRC’s social media sites. The poor thing ran out of energy while stranded on the Dark Side and left his two billion fans in Greater China with a touching farewell message:
If this journey must come to an early end, I am not afraid. Whether or not the repairs are successful, I believe even my malfunctions will provide my masters with valuable information and experience.
That did sound a tad like the heroic self-sacrifice of early communist mythology, and I was waiting to see how the very urbane Chu would respond.
“Believe me,” he said to Krom with a smile, “I despise Chinese infantilism as much as you probably do. But Jade Rabbit has been a great success with the masses-like Mickey Mouse in the West. Except that JR is doing a real job. That must constitute progress, no? Imagine a world where Donald Duck, Tom and Jerry, Mickey and Minnie actually do something useful instead of mindlessly beating each other up?”
“That’s so true,” Chanya said.
“So much depends on how technology hits the private citizen,” the Professor explained. “Computing power among the masses is already extraordinary-there was a degree of paranoia about that in the Party, but it turns out the little people prefer to share porn, gossip, and insults and listen to junk music. It’s a fantastic way of shutting them up, like a voluntary electronic gulag. No danger at all except from organized Islamists.”
Chanya had now decided she didn’t like the Professor after all, and took this last statement as clear indication of his male chauvinist totalitarian soul, which, she had already intuited, was not attracted to her anyway. Krom, though, looked at it differently. She agreed that the amount of computing power out there among the people as a whole was amazing-like a source of uranium nobody has yet seen how to harness. Suppose, for example, a village of a couple thousand people all linked up their computers in pursuit of a common cause? Of course, when that does happen, the world will cease to be recognizable.
It was conversation as cover, in other words. Krom had the attention of the alpha male that Chanya had lost, despite the fact that Krom didn’t want it. For my part I did not banish from my mind the possibility that the irresistible Professor might be hors de combat by reason of being gay. He didn’t give a single clue about which way he swung until, at the end of the meal when the ladies went off to the bathroom together, he changed seats and shifted closer to me than is normal at this kind of supper and began to whisper sweet nothings in my ear.
The sweet nothings, though, were yet another cover in this hall of mirrors. In between seductive smiles along with a hand placed on my shoulder, he managed to convey a quite different message. I confess I had not noticed the arrival of two Chinese men during the course of the meal who had installed themselves at the far end of the restaurant on seats facing us.
“They’re from the ministry,” he whispered. “I wonder if you would help me lose them?”
I used my best quick flick to take them in. My mind went back to that morning on the river. “Are they photographers?” I asked.
“They’ve been using miniature video cameras all night. They’re the latest, better than anything the West has. Quite invisible unless you know what to look for.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“Pat Pong-but I don’t dare with them on my tail.”
“No problem,” I said and took out my cell phone to call Sergeant Ruamsantiah.
“No problem,” the Sergeant said. “I’ll call Colonel Wanakan. He’ll have a couple of his boys check their passports when they leave the restaurant. Where are you?”
“Heaven’s Gate Tower.”
“I went there once. Hated it.”
“The food?”
“No. The height. It gave me vertigo.”
–
But on the way to Pat Pong the Professor received a phone call that altered all our plans. I watched the change in his expression as someone spoke on the other end of the line: playtime postponed, this was a work moment; adulthood returned with a thump. “Tell the driver to go to this address,” he said to Krom in the back of the cab, using a stern tone we’d not heard before. “We’re going to a demo,” he told us.
13
The address was a condominium in an upscale building on Soi 24, probably the most expensive street in the city outside of the business district at Satorn. According to the property pages of the Bangkok Post, units here sell for just under two million dollars. It sounds a lot until you compare similar properties in other capitals. In Bangkok that kind of money buys four thousand square feet of habitable area including maid’s quarters with a plunge pool on the terrace, guards at the gate who cut sharp salutes and click their heels Prussian style, and a house god who lives in a small palace atop a stone column and looks in four directions at once. To judge from the offerings as we passed him on the driveway he was partial to oranges, bananas, and Pepsi-Cola.
I was not entirely surprised to see the two Chinese cameramen from the ministry in the lobby, waiting for us. They had brought a modest movie camera with tripod that they carried into the lift. A woman from reception took us all to the top where the entire floor led to a magnificent entrance with alcove. Just inside the alcove, on either side of the double front door, two burly white men who had to be ex-marines, or serving marines co-opted for the night, stood at ease. They raised machine pistols and politely asked us to wait before coming any closer, then spoke into their shoulder mikes. Goldman appeared at the door with a Chinese woman in a business pants suit who told him that Chu was one of them, that Krom and I had to be let in because we were from Vikorn and the cameramen had to be let in because they were with the “other” ministry. “That camera stays outside with the guards,” Goldman said, then turned to us with a smile.
“Good evening. Please come in.” The tone said, Quickly, fast now, but it was to be a gracious soiree: the giant wore a silk paisley smoking jacket, puffed on a cigar, stood by the door like a good host while we trooped in. Then he said to the guards, “That’s it, you see any apes coming out of those lifts, you shoot.” The ex-marines grunted.
I wasn’t expecting rows of seats as in a small movie theater, all pointing toward a back wall with a white screen. It was a long room that lay between us and the blue plunge pool on the other side of glass sliding doors. You couldn’t miss the state-of-the-art sound system or the large photograph of Goldman in a dinner jacket high on a wall. A polished pine staircase led to bedrooms upstairs. Krom took in the sound system while I scanned the framed photographs that took up the length of one wall. I paused at one of the Asset with a racing bicycle and a famous American cyclist who had won the Tour de France. Both he and the Asset wore identical high-tech shirts featuring the Stars and Stripes and looked so happy they might have been in love. Most of the other photos showcased the Asset’s sports achievements: swimming, fencing, karate, and especially cycling. At the far end of the room a blackwood Chinese temple table held cups and trophies; I guessed he came top of the league in all those challenging sports.
The chairs were filled mostly with Chinese, men in gray business suits, with a couple of Chinese women also dressed in monochrome. Sakagorn, in a tuxedo, sat next to one of the HiSo Chinese women who might have been the head of the delegation. Everyone was looking serious but relaxed, polite but not convinced. Buyers in a buyer’s market was the impression I took away on my first glance. And now Goldman looked nervous.