“He didn’t say anything?”
She shakes her head. “Oh, yes, he did.”
“What?”
She stares at me and starts to shake again. I try to hold her, but she pushes me away. She is not shaking with terror, but with a kind of high, disbelieving laughter. “He said, ‘Happy birthday to you.’ For tomorrow.” She shakes her head at me as if to say, Can you believe this? “You forgot, so did I. He remembered.”
“Did he say anything else?”
“That you had to meet him for your birthday lunch. You must not tell anyone else. And you must not bring a weapon. If you told anyone or brought a weapon, he would know. But otherwise you would be perfectly safe. He did not want to hurt a hair on your head.”
“That’s all?”
“Then he said, ‘Tell my brother I’m sorry if I’ve been rude.’ ” She looks at me. “That was the weirdest of all. Like he just appears from nowhere, scares me to death, then worries that he might have offended you. Like he’s broken some minor social rule, when he’s, you know, the living walking image of something totally alien that doesn’t belong, like something that just got off a spaceship-and he says it again, in a polite tone, quite apologetic as if he was really concerned: ‘Tell my brother I’m sorry if I’ve been rude.’ But at the same time the psychic gouging was deliberate, he started to feed off my terror and had to control himself. I could feel him doing things to my guts, just by staring, boring straight into my womb. He knew what he was doing. He kind of paralyzed me with perverted lust that twisted my guts. He had to literally snap out of it, or he would have had his fun with me. I would have been like that poor girl whose murder you’re investigating, body parts all over the house.” She poured herself some more wine. “That’s beyond screwed up, Sonchai, that’s way beyond psycho. And I could tell, he has perfect mental organization-I bet he would come out sane and well-balanced in any test. Probably a model citizen.”
“A model citizen,” I repeat, grabbing the bottle and swallowing some wine before she drinks it all. We stare at each other.
“I forgot,” Chanya says, drunk now. “He left you this.”
She takes a packet from the table. “I wondered if it was a bomb and if I should leave it outside. But he’s not like that. He’s much more intimate than that. He fucks you with his mind before he tears your head off.” She hands it to me. It can only be a book, a paperback, wrapped in satin with red, white, and blue stripes. I pull off the wrappings and show the book to Chanya: The Gospel of Judas. I heft the gift for a moment while Chanya watches. When I open it the inscription reads:
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
To my dear brother, long lost, found now.
I show Chanya the message and open the book. The central argument of The Gospel of Judas is that it was Judas Iscariot, not John, whom the Christ loved most. Judas, the only disciple with any worldly sense, is set up by Jesus as the fall guy for the most brilliant piece of theater of all time called the Crucifixion. In other words, it turns Christianity on its head.
Now my phone bleeps:
Birthday lunch tomorrow, Dear One? Do you know Nandino’s? It’s on the river. They have a private room. I’ll book. Twelve forty-five for one o’clock? Smart casual.
“You won’t go, will you?” Chanya asks. “He could just kill you on a whim, rip your head off like-”
“Of course I’m going,” I say, staring at the book and the neat handwriting. “How can I not?”
“Because you’re a cop?”
“No. Because I’m a lost soul.”
32
“Please, do have some grissini,” the Asset says. “Freshly baked this morning. I told them I want the highest standards, no shortcuts, for I have a very special guest.” I take one of the breadsticks Superman is offering me. We both crunch for a moment. “Hmm, they baked them with rosemary. Excellent, don’t you think?”
“Ah, yes, very good,” I say truthfully, “very, very good.”
As an expression of his good manners he has seated me in a chair facing the panoramic window. I have a perfect view of the Chao Phraya River behind him: rice barges, tourist yachts, long-tail water buses, sampans, rowboats. It’s busy.
“Do you love Italian food as much as do I?” he asks in that silky, well-washed voice.
“Actually, yes, I do enjoy it more than any other farang cuisine.”
“Let’s face it, everything worth having in Europe originates in Italy. Especially the food. French is basically Italian with a truckload of butter and cream thrown at it. Of course, the word Italian covers a thousand dishes. I don’t mind the poverty cuisines of Sicily and the south, but it doesn’t have the finesse or variety of the north. No, it’s got to be Tuscan or Piemonte.” I blink at him for a moment and continue munching. His blue eyes shine. “Shall I tell you what you are thinking? You are thinking my, my, what breadth of education and culture they gave him, this Asset. Am I right?” I cough. “But let us return to the small talk. Italian, yes, basically, the whole of modern Western culture originates in my hometown.” He smiles and crunches on another grissini.
“Your hometown?”
He shrugs. “One of them. I can’t say I’m exactly proud, but there you are.” A pause. “We’ll come to that shortly.”
I shake my head. The frightening thing is that he is not crazy. It is just as Chanya observed: a perfectly organized brain of the highest intelligence. Now the waiter brings a full bread basket with seven-cereal rolls and a tapenade of anchovies. Every Thai loves anchovies; they taste like the sauces we make from rotten fish.
“Could you tell me-I mean, I’m very flattered-but, why, exactly, would you want to celebrate my birthday, at such short notice?”
“Orders from the Doc. He got stoned with you, didn’t he? Just like him, goes on one of his opium trips, spills his guts, still high the next day and still spilling, then a couple of days later he’s paranoid about security. He wanted me to check you out. I told him not to worry, the detective is my half brother, I trust him implicitly with everything.”
I don’t know how to respond to that, so I let a few beats pass. “So how are your-our-brothers and sisters?”
He frowns. “If I gave the impression they are still alive, I’m afraid I misled you for sentimental reasons. They all took their own lives. I’m the only one left. They pushed us too hard, you see? It’s the way they are, destructive testing is all they know.”
“I’m, ah, sorry to hear that.”
“Yes. I was the only one willing to go all the way. They had no idea what all the way meant, of course. Clumsy fools. But, as you see, it all worked out brilliantly in the end.” He gives me an assessing smile. “Now they are wondering if there is something special in our genes-the ones we inherited from our father.” He shrugs. “But it’s just speculation. Personally, I’m not convinced genes have anything to do with our mutual survival. After all, as I told you, our siblings all failed.”
“Who is they?”
He pretends not to have heard my question. I’m in a dilemma here. If I simply continue to humor him, he will become irritated. On the other hand, how else can I handle it? In normal social intercourse one breaks through a level of basic politeness to something more intimate. But with him? As usual he has read my mind. It took one flash of those unreal eyes.