Bangkok 8 sj-1

by John Burdett

  She brings the news that Bradley's computer has arrived, and a few minutes later she begins organizing a bridge over the bed, cables, even an Internet connection. Kimberley Jones does not flirt, indeed I think she must have taken an antiflirting course at Quantico, so there is a stiffness in the way she leans over me every few minutes. When we have the computer up and running, it is even more awkward. Half the time I have her bosom in my face, which often causes her to blush. Did American culture go back in time about a hundred years? I'm sure all those movies from the Vietnam era showed a more relaxed people. Not that it matters. We become quite excited, in a professional sense, once we enter Bradley's e-mail files.

  Pretty soon we are joined by Rosen and Nape, who look over my shoulder at the monitor. Everything is affable and even jolly until I say: "This guy, Sylvester Warren, does anyone know who he is?" Silence from the rest of the team. I search out Kimberley Jones' eyes. She looks away. Rosen coughs.

  "You have a way of coming straight to the point, Detective, I'll give you that."

  Nape comes to the rescue. "I don't think we'd want to let it be known we're even reading e-mails from Mr. Warren. Not unless we get something concrete we can use."

  Rosen agrees with a vigorous nod. "That's right. If what we have is a revenge killing in a narcotics feud, we don't want to drag Warren into it. Not if all he's doing here is keeping up an erudite correspondence with Bradley on some obscure aspect of the jade trade."

  I make big eyes from one to the other in the most charming and humble manner. Nape grins. "Warren's a big shot. Actually, he's a big shot here as well as in New York. He comes to Bangkok every month, gets invited to receptions at the embassy. He mixes extensively with local high society, especially the Chinese. He's a jeweler and art dealer, big-time. He has shops in Manhattan, Los Angeles, Paris, London-and here. His passion is jade. It's not surprising he would have contacts with Bradley, who's coming across as a gifted amateur, living here in Bangkok, and a fellow American."

  "What a wonderful, democratic society you have, that a sergeant in the Marines hobnobs with a baron like this Warren."

  All three check my face for sarcasm, which I did not intend. I have managed to produce an awkward silence. Rosen says: "Well, Americans talk to each other. We still do that. Especially if there's a profit to be made."

  I think I get the point and use the program to select some of Warren's e-mails and Bradley's replies to him. Helplessness radiates from my American colleagues as I read aloud.

  Bill, your piece arrived yesterday FedEx. The boys are getting the point, I agree, but there's still a long way to go.

  Bill, look, this is good work which I can sell anywhere, but it's not what we discussed. I'm arriving on a Thai Airways flight next Tues. We'll talk.

  Bill, I have to tell you I was very impressed with the latest piece. It's not quite there, but it's damn close. I'm going to release the second tranche today. Keep it up.

  I interrupt my reading to search the three sets of eyes around the bed, until Rosen says to Nape: "Tell him."

  He clears his throat. "Sylvester Warren is a very well-connected man. He knows senators, congressmen. He probably fits out thirty percent of America's richest women and a lot of our richest men with their jewelry, thanks to his gift for finding the best original designers. Basically, he knows everyone with real money, donates huge amounts to the Republican Party and somewhat less to the Democrats. He's occasionally invited to the White House. He knows judges, senior lawyers. He's also been under surveillance by the FBI for years. We suspect him of art frauds, but he's just too smart to catch. Also, we don't have a whole lot of specialists in imperial jade and he's probably the world's leading expert. It's his hobby, his passion as well as his profession. If he's a crook, he's only ripping off the rich, and the rich don't like to admit to being ripped off. There's a limit to how many resources the Bureau wants to put into something like this, given our other priorities."

  I click my tongue. "Would I be right in thinking his collection of imperial jade is one of the biggest outside of museums?"

  "Yes."

  "And he sells off a piece every now and then, probably at an auction?"

  "Usually privately, but every now and then Christie's or Sotheby's gets a piece of the action. When they do, it's a special occasion. People you thought had been dead for years come out of the woodwork. Of course, the bidding is done by proxies, the public doesn't know who the real bidders are."

  Rosen, frowning, takes up the story. "Washington's not keen on collecting evidence against Warren, not unless it's so good all his friends will be forced to disown him, and he's too smart for there to be evidence like that. Another problem, frankly, is that if there is evidence, it's likely to originate here in Thailand, and-do I have to go on?"

  "He's too well connected here for such evidence to survive a day after it comes to light?" Nods from the FBI. "How old is Mr. Warren?"

  "He's sixty-two and looks like a young forty."

  "And began his career in his twenties?"

  "Got a master's in gemology and another in Chinese studies, specializing in the late imperial period. He speaks Mandarin well and his Thai is very good." A pause while Nape moves his finger around the edge of the monitor. "He also speaks the Swatow dialect. That say anything to you?"

  "Swatow? Where the Chiu Chow come from? Chiu Chow run Thailand," I say. "They run our banks, all major businesses. They have Thai names, but they're Chiu Chow."

  "I think you've got the point," Rosen says.

  Nape pauses to check my expression, which I have rendered studious. He coughs and continues. "A possible hypothesis which we don't want to go into print looks like this. A relatively crass black sergeant in the Marines, with an unexpected eye for beauty, starts a web page shortly after making a trip to Laos, where he bought an experimental lump or two of unprocessed jade sometime after May 17, 1996, probably just a few months after his arrival. Sylvester Warren sees the exhibit on the web page, notes the apparent quality of the workmanship, whatever he might think of the theme, and looks up Sergeant Bradley on one of his visits to Bangkok. Bradley is probably overwhelmed and astonished that his little venture has drawn such a distinguished eye. He also sees an opportunity to put money aside for his retirement. What he's got that Warren wants is direct on-the-ground contact with local craftsmen, who are probably of Chinese extraction, probably the artistic inheritors of world-class jade workers who fled the Communists in 1949. Warren has his own craftsmen, of course, the best in the world, but he can't use them for anything illegal. Bradley can provide both a firewall and American-style quality control. We're talking fakes. Every time a museum or private collector comes out with a catalogue, there are people all over the world who copy the best pieces and sell them. There's no scientific way to prove a fake jade-carbon-14 dating doesn't work, neither does thermoluminescence"-to Rosen-"I checked all this out yesterday."

  I look up. "For Bradley's craftsmen to copy Warren's pieces properly, they would have to have the original?"

  "We thought of that," Kimberley Jones says. "We talked about Bradley absconding with some priceless piece from the Warren Collection, but it just doesn't fit. There was nowhere Bradley could hide from Warren, and probably nowhere he could have sold the piece at a halfway decent price. These artifacts are matters of public record, experts know who owns what down to the date of purchase. Only Warren could sell something from the Warren Collection, real or fake."

  "Anyway," Nape adds, "is Warren going to use snakes in a revenge killing? With his money and contacts here, he could have snuffed Bradley and made it look like natural causes. Why would he want the heat?"

  A moment of communal reflection. I say: "What does the word 'tranche' mean?"

  "Slice. What it probably means here is that Warren was financing the experiment, giving Bradley installments of cash through one of his agents in Bangkok. Like a lot of very wealthy people, Warren is notoriously tight with money. We don't think he was giving much away. Big bucks wa
s the carrot he was offering only when Bradley had produced a perfect copy of one of Warren's pieces."

  "A strange game for Warren to play, if he's so rich."

  Rosen rumbles, "Welcome to American capitalism. It's a great system, except that no one ever has enough."

  I say, "The horse and rider?" and draw only blank expressions. My strength is fading. I allow myself the luxury of forsaking human consciousness for the bosom of the Buddha.

  25

  Using the Net and station gossip as tools, it wasn't too difficult for Pichai and me to piece together our Colonel's drunken ramblings, even though their deeper meaning continued to elude us.

  REMFs were Rear Echelon Mother Fuckers-a standard epithet used by U.S. combat troops for the despised officers who stayed back in Saigon and ran the disastrous war. The Other Theater was Laos, where America was forbidden by international treaty from waging war, and where it waged the most ferocious bombing campaign in history. Ravens were exceptionally gifted American aviators who had come to loathe REMFs and volunteered to fly O-1 spotter planes on secret missions out of Long Tien in the green Laotian mountains to locate the positions of the North Vietnamese regular army, which was steadily encroaching into Laos. The more obscure references to American Breakfast, eggs over easy and Pat Black proved impossible to track down.

  Somehow Vikorn had made a small fortune in Long Tien. A good part of this money he used to buy his commission in the Royal Thai Police Force. There were rumors of contacts in the CIA, dark secrets known to our Colonel which the Americans didn't want to get out.

  It takes more than two hours for Nape and Jones to reach Bradley's teak house and call Rosen to report that the horse and rider is gone. Rosen thrusts his hands in his pockets and goes to the window. "Looks like we found the motive for the attack on you."

  "But he didn't get away with the horse and rider. He never got further than the corridor."

  Rosen shrugs. "Because you kicked him in the balls. So he came back later, or sent someone else."

  I know what Rosen is thinking. If the horse and rider is an original that Bradley was copying, it's going to be difficult to keep Warren out of the case. I see the weight of a controversial investigation bear down on his thick shoulders, sloping them still further, driving him more deeply into the negative karma which dogs him. I say: "Did you take pictures, or would you like to borrow mine?"

  He makes a face. "Sure, we took pictures."

  By the afternoon my hospital room is turning into a library. Somehow the FBI have got hold of every illustrated book on jade available in Krung Thep. They have also e-mailed the picture of the horse and rider to Quantico. A wonderful hush envelops my room, the hush of concentrated minds following clues as we work carefully through the books, checking the color plates against our photograph of the horse and rider. Is investigation normally like this in the West? I have never done things this way before and I'm finding a subtle pleasure in this novel approach to law enforcement, with no one to shoot, intimidate or bribe.

  Almost at the same time Nape and Jones emit deliciously triumphant aahs. Trying not to let his enthusiasm run away with him, Nape shows Rosen a page from the book he is using, while Jones tries to show him hers. Rosen looks at both and turns to me. "What did I tell you?" He shows me the page in Nape's book, which is a beautiful picture of the piece carrying the cryptic caption: Horse and Rider from the Warren Collection, formerly from the Hutton Collection, believed to be one of the pieces the last Emperor Henry Pu Yi took with him when he fled the Forbidden City. Procured for Hutton by Abe Gump.

  At that very moment, Rosen's mobile starts to ring. I note that he has chosen the theme tune from Star Wars for his ringing tone, whereas I myself opted for "The Blue Danube" (thereby demonstrating that I am no more than an impostor in Western culture, a naIve tourist anyway, with the musical taste of a grandmother; I can't think why I didn't choose Star Wars, which I actually prefer). The voice on the other end is someone he calls "sir"; it causes a gray and haggard look to dominate his features.

  "We're not investigating him, sir… That's correct, we did e-mail that picture, which was taken from the scene of a murder attempt on the local detective who is investigating… I know the Bradley case looks like a narcotics vendetta but… The piece was stolen from Bradley's home, sir… Mr. Warren exchanged a number of e-mails with Bradley… No, there's not necessarily any connection… No, I don't want another screwup… That's right, I agree, neither I nor the Bureau need the heat… Well, I don't know that I can do that, we don't have any investigative powers here… Leave it to the local police? That's exactly what I am doing, sir… Goodbye sir." He folds the telephone and his eyes are glittering when he looks at me. "Quantico has no comment on the picture. They say it didn't come out clearly enough on the e-mail."

  Cynicism has distorted Nape's face, but I'm most sorry for Kimberley Jones, who looks ashamed and cannot meet my gaze. She says to Rosen in a quiet voice: "This man nearly died."

  "But I'm not American," I say with a cute twist of my lips.

  A long pause. Rosen says: "Looks like you're on your own. Kimberley here will accompany you whenever you feel you need her. She'll… she'll help with anything that doesn't lead to Warren." He shrugs.

  "Can I at least have a picture of Warren?"

  Three furrowed brows. Kimberley Jones says cautiously: "Sure, we can get you one of those. There's probably a thousand in the public domain. He's been photographed at the White House scores of times. Right?"

  "Yeah, right," Rosen agrees. "But don't make it obvious it came from us."

  "I'll use a brown paper envelope," Jones says with heavy sarcasm. A Do I need this? look from Rosen.

  26

  Nong sits and watches while the nurse changes my dressing. She holds herself together while the nurse is in the room, then bursts into tears. Drying her eyes: "The person who did this to you will not make a good death."

  I'll have to explain that, won't I? Look at it this way: you're facing old age, your sins have been mounting steadily, but you cannot for the life of you see how you could have reacted differently, given the pathetic cards Fate handed you at birth, and now you have to consider the inevitable karmic bill: You think this lifetime has been tough? See that legless guy on his atrocious trolley begging on the sidewalk? Last time around he wasn't nearly as bad as you've been, why, he was a saint compared to you.

  With us the lifting of the egoic veil at the moment of death reveals the workings of karma in all its pitiless majesty: see that clubfoot in your next life, that's from when you fouled your best friend on the football pitch; see those buckteeth the size of gravestones, that's your cynical sense of humor; see that early death from leukemia, that's your greed.

  To make a good death is to proceed gracefully into a better body and a better life. The consequences of a bad death are hard to look at. You will not make a good death is a power curse; it makes Fuck you sound like a benediction.

  Nong stays with me while they carefully help me into a wheelchair and push me down the corridor to the lift, which takes us down to the garden. This is my first outing and I insist on sitting near the deliciously swishing irrigation system. I like the intermittent spray on my face, the return to infancy in more luxurious surroundings than I ever knew. Is it just me or are we all hardwired to expect our first years to be spent surrounded by flowers in a magic garden? I'm surprised that my mother seems to read my thoughts, holds my hand and smiles. Over the wall the harsh city claws away like an animal. I experience the invalid's repugnance toward return: two more days and they will let me out. I suppose it would be unmanly to ask to stay a little longer?

  A hospital orderly brings some of the art books and sets them on a table near my chair, then a few minutes later Rosen comes with a complex expression on his face where shame does battle with career-path paranoia. On the one hand, he gives me the photographs himself in broad daylight in front of my mother; on the other, they are in a brown paper envelope on which no eagle or other identifi
cation appears. He departs rather abruptly, too. After a while Nong takes her leave with some unconvincing excuse. She is bored and a little repulsed by the anodyne atmosphere. She belongs on the other side of the wall, in the lusty, clawing city.

  Now that I've had a chance to examine the pix (as the FBI call them), I wonder if Rosen is making a point: Warren with the first Bush, Warren with Clinton (twice), Warren with the second Bush, looking older and sleeker. I was not expecting a jeweler to be a man of steel, but that's how he comes across, as if it was sheer willpower that got him into the Rose Garden every time. Clinton was tall, and Warren is the same height, but leaner. Gray-blue eyes, thinning light brown hair turning elegantly gray. He looks so much more sophisticated than the President, with his even tan, filigree gold chain on his left wrist, the posture of a man who has no need to insist. You can almost smell the cologne. He will outlast this President, his smile says; every time. I put him down on top of one of the art books, feeling my strength start to fade. I doze off for a couple of minutes and wake to find him still there, staring at me. I pick him up again. Perhaps it is the power of the White House that triggers an old appetite for the art of detection. Often when we are sick the mind is temporarily released from its prison in the body and floats freely. During this afternoon I sense my own begin to dock again with its destiny.

  "What's the matter?" Kimberley Jones asks me when she comes up behind my chair and catches me staring at Warren for the thousandth time. "You were frowning as if you know him."

  How to explain? I dare not mention the dark figure that, spiritually speaking, I see standing behind him in each of those pix and whom I seem to recognize.

  27

  In Kat's modest home the scent is mostly sandalwood, from her joss sticks. Like me, she lives in one room which our national optimism leads us to call an apartment, although hers is inches bigger. Her picture of our beloved King hangs in exactly the same position as mine, and her Buddha shrine sits on a high shelf near the door. I watch her bow to the Buddha three times with the incense held in a bunch between her hands. She concentrates mindfully, no doubt praying for luck. She is wearing a baggy housecoat and, I suspect, nothing else.