Who else, other than Martin?
It would be convenient to have a person vanish in the middle of Bangkok. Probably there’s few places in the world with more opportunities to disappear. You could go to Patpong and have a prostitute slip you a little GHB, and the next thing you know you’re decomposing in a field on the road to Ayuthaya while she empties your bank accounts. You could get on a bus for Phnom Penh or Chiang Rai or Vientiane and leave in the middle of the night. If I went missing, I thought, who would look for me? The night before leaving I’d emailed my parents my flight receipt, telling them I was on a reporting trip for a book project with no definite return date. They don’t expect regular phone calls or emails; it might be a month before they started looking in earnest.
Have I become that much of a liability?
Because of that additional five percent?
Because I’m a competitor? Another story, another celebrity? Becoming Chinese: If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Them: An American Leaves Home to Join the World’s Newest Superpower: Chinese from the Inside Out.
Because he thinks he’s doing me a favor. Before I become the tragic mulatto.
Because I’m the last one on earth who knows his real story. Who can pin him to a map.
Thinking this way was so ridiculous I flushed, the hairs prickling on my arms.
But then why would he have them follow me? Don’t these things depend on the element of surprise, the bag over the head, the hustling into the unmarked van? Wouldn’t they be more likely to send someone as bait? Like in The Crying Game. Forest Whitaker, the black soldier from Tottenham, snogging with Miranda Richardson in a muddy field at an Irish country fair, when Stephen Rea puts a gun to his head. Miranda Richardson, killed in a skiing accident just a few years ago, an untreated head wound, only in her fifties.
No, that was Natasha Richardson.
This is my last day on earth as Kelly Thorndike, I thought, the last day in my own skin, as the person my parents made, my grace period, and I’m inventing surreal murder plots and misremembering old movies. Shouldn’t this be a sign of something? I ought to be in a panic. Shouldn’t I run home, in a defensive posture? I ought to be missing my Rice Krispies about now. My neat and orderly life, my books and furniture, my desk, the clean-swept hardwood floor where I can pad about barefoot and listen to the police sirens streaking down St. Paul knowing they’re not coming for me. Baltimore. Home. But no. I didn’t want any of it. I’ve broken the spell, I thought, I’m free.
You want anything else?
The kind-faced young waiter in a Greenpeace T-shirt scooped up my dishes with one hand and refilled my water glass with the other.
Give me a recommendation, I said. I’ve seen the temples. What should I do now?
Take a river taxi, he said. You won’t regret it. Best thing for a day as hot as this.
—
The man in the gold glasses and brown uniform followed me onto the boat, ten paces behind, never glancing my way, talking on his phone the entire time. An ordinary preoccupied commuter. Now he’s taken a position on a bench next to the gangway. Alarm, alarm. A well of panic into which anything can fall without making a sound. I’m going to be leaving this life before it’s even begun. I turn away and pretend to study the enormous white cone of Wat Arun, just coming into view on the far side of the river.
Or — it occurs to me just now — maybe he’s simply having me followed. To make sure I don’t stray. No surreptitious emails, no long phone calls, no meetings with clandestine publishing agents. Why does that seem, if anything, even less believable? Of course he would consider it. I would, too. Given our history, who would believe in such a thing as absolute trust? I should call him just to confirm. In an easy tone. Hey, Martin, about that guy watching me—
Two heavy fingers rest on my shoulder.
You Kelly? he asks when I turn around. He’s removed his glasses and stares at me with puffy eyes, the lids swollen like inchworms. Kelly from USA? My name San.
I have no idea what to say to this, so I nod.
Somebody want to see you, San says. You know. You know him. Follow me, please. We get off next stop.
—
We’re in the tourist quarter. Khao San Road, where the trustafarians play. Streaming past me are muddy-faced white girls done up in braids and beads, batik skirts and jingling anklets; twenty-something boys in Beerlao and ManU and Che T-shirts; towering Aussies with splotchy sunburns gnawing kebabs and spooning pad thai out of paper cups. San threads me through the middle of the street, dodging tuk-tuk drivers and travel agents offering flyers, strolling ukulele players and kickboxers giving impromptu demonstrations. We turn two corners, all the sidewalks packed with pink faces, puffed out by heat and alcohol. Down an alley lined with sidewalk cafés and massage chairs, and under a hotel canopy—Hotel Santana—into deep, pungent shade. Sticky cocktails, cigarette smoke, spilled beer and fish sauce. On the back wall The Notebook plays on an eight-foot screen with the volume turned down, a close-up of Ryan Gosling’s puppy-dog eyes.
Mort Kepler, reclining in a rattan chair, a bottle of Singha and a glass of mango juice at his elbow, sees me and jumps to attention, with a broad, toothy grin. Son of a bitch, he says. I can hear him halfway across the bar. They got you. I was just about to pack it in for the day. Want to know how long I’ve been sitting here, waiting for you?
—
Mort, I say, swallowing a warm wave of shock, how the fuck did you make this happen?
I’m a reporter, he says. This is what reporters do. Use fixers. Local eyes on the ground. Haven’t you ever — oh, wait. I forgot. Right! You don’t have a background in journalism. Okay. I guess I have to explain everything from the beginning. Well, I have what Hemingway used to call a one hundred percent foolproof bullshit detector. And when I looked at you, right from the start, I knew you were hiding something. Just not what.
I raise one hand, defensively, and lower it a moment later. What’s the point in arguing with him? I’m so glad to see him, so relieved, I almost want to reach over the table and hug his bristly shoulders. Go on, I say. Give me the full report. I’m listening.
So you shitcan the station, you and what’s-her-name, after, what is it, three months? Three months after you get there? I’ve had Chinese food that lasted longer than you at BCC. Well, so I had nothing else to do. And a grudge, yes. A vendetta. So I started tailing you. Having nothing better to do. Don’t you remember that day I crept up on you in Fell’s Point? There are no accidents in this world. Didn’t anybody ever tell you that? I was hoping for an introduction to the girl, but it didn’t take long to trace her back. Quite a pedigree.
You followed her, too?
No, you idiot. I used the good old-fashioned Internet. Photo-recognition software. And then a fifty-dollar scanner to pick up your WiFi signal. There’s this amazing store online, Orchid Imports? Based right in Baltimore. Sells all that kind of gadgetry. Ever heard of it?
Nope.
That’s okay. I don’t expect you to give up your sources all at once. Let’s just chitchat. Pretend I didn’t just shell out five thousand bucks to make this happen.
Who ever told you I was reporting anything?
Well, you don’t expect me to believe you’re involved, do you? Come on. Good luck with that. If you’ve managed to convince them of your ideological soundness, you’re a better actor than I ever gave you credit for.
I can’t do anything but stare at him, in sheer, confused defeat.
The movement, he says. Does it have a name? I did a lot of digging and came up all zeroes. Wilkinson’s friends with everybody, but no one wanted to talk when I came around. And believe me, I know people. So I’ve been doing a process of elimination. It’s not the New Black Panther Party. It’s not the Revolutionary Communists or the ACP. It’s not Occupy Wall Street. It’s not the Nation. If it’s Islamist at all, he’s a cell of one. Never been to a mosque, never met with an imam. There’s always that possibility. He could be one of those YouTube guys, the Zarqawi syndicate. But I doubt it. I think he’s starting from the ground up. He’s got the charisma, the connections, and the funds. But what is it, man? Just give a clue. What’s his agenda? Black nationalist? Radical self-determination? Third World revolution? Chavismo? Or is he just another drug runner with fancy ideas? Okay. Not that. I can tell just by looking at you.