“Now you listen to me,” he says, “and you listen good. I’m no slick lawyer but I have leverage here. So, they screwed us by turning the bug-that’s a damn sideshow and you know it.” He is addressing the FBI lawyer. “I don’t give a shit if I seem like something from ancient history, what I have nobody else has in the whole of American covert operations. I have the most special product in the world. So cut me a little respect, okay?”
Matthew Hadley-Chan snorts. This is no ordinary spat between two giant American egos; this is a battle between the divorced hemispheres of the American mind. Now Goldman really lets go.
“I don’t give a shit what it takes, my program gets priority. I’m not interested in any bleeding-heart liberal crap about democracy, civil fucking liberty-” He has shifted the pincers from the end of a pinkie; now they are buried in the soft flesh of his palm near the thumb; blood drips from two puncture marks like a cobra bite; his frustration is reaching ballistic level. “From World War Two onward we have been and are the only true guardians of civilization in our time, the greatest country the world has ever known, that has brought the highest standards of living to the ends of the earth-and who was it who created, fought for, developed all this? The white man, of course.”
Like most Thais, Krom has an inbuilt reflex in times of rage. She goes very quiet and attacks her laptop with some rapid keywork. Goldman is too far into his tantrum to notice until the other M245Xs have crossed the floor and run up the legs of his pants. Whether they reach the apex simultaneously or one by one is unclear. Certain it is that the meeting ends with Goldman staring at Krom and Krom staring back with her finger poised above one of the keys.
“Adam and Eve were niggers,” Krom explains. “From Africa.”
Goldman blinks and nods in submission. Krom releases the devices, which fall down his pants to the floor. He thinks about stamping on them, but decides discretion may be the better part of valor and storms out, slamming the door.
Now I realize there is one vital element to the meeting that has quite passed me by. Maybe you saw it coming yourself, R, but frankly, my mind has been boggled enough recently and I must have blocked out the clues. There is no denying it, though, that very special thing between Matthew Hadley-Chan and Krom, which has nothing to do with sex or lonely hearts, even though the glance they share can only be called intimate. And there is something else, too: the FBI dealt with Goldman’s outburst by switching off entirely and retreating deep within. Once you’ve seen a TH do it once, you never forget.
My jaw hangs open: They’ve infiltrated the FBI already? The Eurasian lawyer coughs. “Sorry about that,” he says, and adds, looking Vikorn in the eye, “I don’t think we’ll be bothered by him anymore. He won’t be bugging anything for a while.” He turns to Krom. “You got all that on video?”
“Sure,” Krom says.
“I’ll make sure it reaches the right levels,” he says, nods again at Vikorn, and leaves.
I notice that Krom, also, is in a hurry to leave the room. When she has packed up her laptop and the surveillance gadgets she makes hurried apologies to Vikorn and me and also leaves. I decide to give her a couple of minutes before I follow.
Neither she nor the FBI are anywhere to be seen in the corridor. The obvious place to look for them would be in the smaller interview room next door. It is locked from the inside. When I put my ear against the door I am able to hear a conversation between the two of them. I cannot understand a word of it; it is in Mandarin. Perhaps one of them has attended an enhanced hearing class, though, because suddenly the door opens and Krom and the FBI are staring at me. They exchange a glance. The lawyer seems to be waiting for Krom to speak.
“Can we let him in?” she asks.
“Certainly,” Matthew Hadley-Chan says. “The Messiah has given his half brother full clearance, even up to the highest level.”
He pronounces the word Messiah in exactly the cringe-making way of any evangelist. I am shocked, but not so shocked that I lose curiosity in Krom’s reaction. As usual, I have no intuitive understanding of her mind: I just never seem to know where she is coming from. I am fascinated by the unforced reverence in her face.
“You’ve been with the Messiah recently?” she asks with naked awe.
“He has done me the extreme honor of including me in the next step of the project,” he says with nauseating piety. He turns to me. “Here,” he says, dipping into his jacket pocket and taking out a thumb drive. “All you need to know is on this drive. The files will self-destruct within the next six hours-and cannot be copied. I think the matter speaks for itself.”
I see from the body language of the two of them that it is time for me to leave. The point, apparently, is the thumb drive. I shake my head. That cannot be sexual attraction filling Krom’s eyes when she looks at the FBI; it’s an awe more radical than that. I exit and close the door as quietly as I can. In my pocket I carry the thumb drive. Six hours, I think, six hours. I better take it home. If Chanya’s working I can listen to it on earphones.
–
It is the FBI legal attaché who fuels my speculation as I make my way back to the hovel. In my mind’s eye I trace his probable life path. A smart Eurasian born, perhaps, in disadvantaged or lower-middle-class circumstances to a mixed couple, the Chinese half probably his father with the traditional Asian immigrant’s drive to succeed in a society more mobile and fairer than the one he was born into, which is not necessarily saying very much. His dutiful son passes exams at or near the top of his class, absorbs law at Harvard or Yale with relentless ambition, then joins the great benefactor, Uncle Sam, to serve honorably as living proof of the loyalty and dedication of a leuk kreung who knows all about the sneering racist forces ranged against him and is forever grateful for the protection built into the system. Like me, though, he suffers from an internal contradiction: the rootless I needs more than status to be sure it exists. Then a fateful meeting occurs: as in the book of Luke, Christ shows up at the lawyer’s office one fine day, whether in Bangkok or Washington, and the lawyer turns evangelist. My mind boggles.
34
At night when I’m working on a heavy case I switch to the vibrate function on the smart phone before I sleep. I leave the ringtone on, but turn it down low so as not to disturb Chanya. Even so, when it goes off it makes quite a display, lights flashing, the vibrations sending it on a circular navigation of the floor and, of course, the subdued ringtone (the Stones: “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”). I block it before it vibrates its way over to the bookshelves, then I pick it up. I am only one-third awake. The screen tells me it is two twenty-four in the morning and that the caller is anonymous-except that the freshly washed voice is familiar to me.
“A car will be outside your house in three minutes. It will wait thirty seconds. Do not bring your gun, you will be protected.” He hangs up.
Three minutes, as it happens, is exactly how long it takes to pull on some shorts, grab a T-shirt that I hold in my hand, slip on some flip-flops, leave the house, remembering to bring my wallet, keys, smart phone, and police ID, and walk to the road. The car is rolling up to our front door as I’m pulling on the T-shirt.
The driver is none other than Matthew Hadley-Chan of the FBI, looking very fit in shorts and sweatshirt as if he has been jogging. He owns a gun, a large combat rifle made of high-tech materials lying across the backseat. I sit in the front. We do not speak but drive off at high speed toward the police station at District 8. We do not stop there, though, but penetrate farther into the market area. I am aware that we are only one street away from where the Asset wrenched the head off Nong X, so that I am casting more and more glances at my driver.