The Bangkok Asset: A novel

by John Burdett

  “Chinese, Chinese, Chinese,” I said. “It used to be everything American. Why, please tell me, would the Chinese give a damn about that sad little murder case I’m working on? And more important, why would you even think of forming a sentence that starts with the words the Chinese want you to continue with your investigation? Did the Chinese recently take over District 8?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

  When Vikorn doesn’t want to answer a question, he stares at you, unblinking, like a lizard. “What do you care about the reason they’re interested? I thought you were moving heaven and earth to find the perp who murdered that girl in the market square? Didn’t you get a witness statement yet?”

  “No. You distracted me with a mission that was totally top secret and therefore totally useless for my investigation. Did the Chinese order you to order me to the river yesterday? I’m just curious about who I’m working for these days.”

  He shrugged. “You are famous. The Chinese hold you in high regard. If you cannot find convincing proof of a connection between the homicide you’re investigating and what happened on the river yesterday…”

  “Yes?”

  “Then I suppose that makes the American Asset worth the price.”

  “Price? What price? There’s some kind of investment going on here?”

  He grunted. “You have studied history. How did our great country save itself from foreign aggressors in the past?”

  “By playing the British off against the French and the Americans off against the British, bending but never yielding. Selling off pieces of the country so the core could remain uncolonized.”

  “Exactly.” He stared at me. “That boy killed his own mother,” the old gangster whispered and shook his head. “The Chinese were very impressed.” He creased his brow. “But they gave me a proverb: Pride comes before a fall.”

  “That’s not Chinese, that’s farang.”

  He nodded. “Yes, I think that’s what they meant: the proverb is about Americans.”

  He took a couple of minutes more before he turned and strode to his desk. His ability to step back from despair took longer than usual but was nonetheless miraculous. When he was seated he said, “So, you finally met Inspector Krom?”

  He knew very well I’d never heard of her before yesterday, but he wasn’t going to explain how or why a senior member of his force had been recruited and kept secret from the rest of us for…well, I had no idea how long Inspector Krom had been on our team, or where her office might be. I said, “Yes.”

  “Good. That’s good. You’ll be working with her on this.”

  “On what?”

  “I’ll let her brief you later. Right now there’s something I want you to see.”

  He stood up with a perfunctory smile and led me out of his room, past Manny who as usual was busy typing at her post, then down the corridor to the large room that was officially called the Main Conference Room, unofficially the Big Interview Room, and, more accurately, the Large Interrogation Chamber. It had been out of service for more than a month, so I was interested to see what kind of renovations Vikorn had ordered for it. As I followed him I noted a slight dragging of his left foot, a way of walking that was not yet a shuffle but perhaps heralded the onset of one. There was no pride or pleasure when he opened the door to the room. He opened it rather with an expression of defeat, like a husband who had reluctantly consented to his wife’s wholesale renovation of the home and now had to live with the consequence of his weakness.

  When we entered, I found myself slack-jawed with astonishment: everything was Macintosh gray and tinted blue, and there was a huge LED screen at the end of the room, which he switched on, so that now we were looking at Google Maps. Vikorn, who has about ten words of English, experienced no difficulty in typing Pacific Rim on the laptop that controlled the screen. Now we had the entire ocean on the wall along with the lands that border it, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego on the right, from Siberia to the south of Indonesia on the left. Australia and New Zealand didn’t figure in this value system, but flags popped up in unlikely locations in Myanmar, Hong Kong, Jakarta, the Philippines, and northern California. Those all tended to be red and green points, however, with the reds in Asia and the greens in North America. The yellow flags were mostly in China, especially Yunnan and so-called second-tier cities in the southwest and along the east coast, while a few clustered on the outskirts of Shanghai. I scratched my jaw, determined not to ask the obvious question: what the hell are you up to now? Instead I went at the issue crab-wise.

  “That’s, ah, an awful lot of exposure to China.”

  He nodded. “Correct.”

  I stared at the map some more, wondering what the deeper meaning might be. Vikorn always has deeper meanings. It was only when I realized the deeper meaning was really a form of confession that I began to develop a fuller understanding. “You have a partnership with them?”

  “Joint venture.” He shrugged. “They didn’t leave me any choice: joint venture or massive bust, abduction up north, bullet in the skull.” He scratched his jaw. “They think like me. What I didn’t understand is that with them the real business is all mixed up with politics. It’s like a merger: you grow but you lose control at the same time.”

  I nodded, taking it all in. The Earth still looks beautiful on a map. I knew, though, that if one were to zoom in on any town or city and switch to camera view, the gorgeous electronic colors would disappear and the screen would show dormitory towns, pollution, shopping malls, and traffic jams no matter which country you chose; our planet these days is best viewed from space. “All this high-tech stuff—who’s running it for you?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.” He paused in quizzical mode, then added, “But I’m sure you’ve already guessed.”

  He picked up his cell phone, pressed a button, said, “Send her in,” and closed the phone. He threw me a tolerant smile to show me how far behind his my thinking was. Now there was a knock on the door and a young woman entered.

  “I know you’ve already met, but let me make the introduction anyway,” Vikorn said. “Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep, this is Inspector Krom. Inspector Krom, this is Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep.” He turned to me. “Inspector Krom is our new head of technology,” he said.

  If he had not spoken her name, I might not have recognized the drenched and hooded inspector in the black coveralls from the day before. Today she wore the regulation white blouse with blue shoulder boards and a navy skirt that reached below her knees. Vikorn normally treated all young women the same way: with impeccable chivalry based on the assumption that his power and charisma would be sufficient to bed her were he crass enough to use them, which he never did. After all, he owned clubs full of women younger, more voluptuous, and less challenging; but Krom stumped him. Part of the problem was that Vikorn was too old-fashioned—and the Inspector a tad too good-looking—for it even to occur to him that she was gay. I had radically to revise my view of the young woman who yesterday had seemed so fascinated by a hunk straight out of Hollywood. It seems I had misread her, for, in the Thai vernacular, it was plain to me that she was most definitely a tom. Of course, the requirements of survival in a man-dominated profession in Thailand demanded that she dissimulate: it was a little embarrassing the way she turned girly, to give the impression that the phallic force of Vikorn’s power and money were overwhelming her inner command center. (Are there any women who don’t know how to do that where you come from, R?)

  It was a tired ritual, though, that neither party believed in. I think she would have liked to stand with legs apart, chest inflated, one hand in her pocket, the other brandishing a cigar. Trying to explain the technology while keeping up femininity and deference was quite a strain. Vikorn, on the other hand, looked like he needed to put his feet up in a comfortable chair at home.

  “The red are pickup points and the green are delivery points.” She looked me carefully in the eye throu
gh those very cute black-framed spectacles that sat on the end of her tiny nose. Now she paused, waiting for me.

  “And the yellow?” I obliged.

  She checked with Vikorn, who nodded for her to answer my question. “They are…I don’t think there’s a word for it in Thai, and my English doesn’t stretch that far.” She checked with Vikorn again.

  “Listening posts,” he said with a groan.

  “Right,” she said. “The Colonel is correct as always. Listening posts.”

  “But they’re almost all in China?”

  “Correct.” Now it was him and her against me. They both stared into my eyes for a moment, then looked away.

  “May I ask why?”

  “Because they are Chinese listening posts.”

  “Listening to who?”

  “Me,” Vikorn said, then added, “and the Americans. And all the other Asia Pac countries. But it’s okay.” He shrugged. “The Chinese are our friends.” He glanced at Krom and added, “Apparently.”

  He and Krom were staring at me now, waiting. Why would they be waiting for something from me, the lowest-ranked of the three of us? I looked at Vikorn for an answer.

  “Sonchai, what would you like to do?”

  Does that sound like a normal, civilized question to you, R? Well, over here it’s not, it’s damned strange for someone like the Chief to ask me in social-worker tones what I would like to do. It’s never been my place to do what I like, my business is to do what he likes.

  “What would I like to do? I’d like to arrest those bastards from yesterday, of course. Especially that damned Asset who somehow induced a Thai boy to kill his mother. I don’t have to tell you what that must mean. They’ve developed some kind of military technique for taking over a person’s mind. I don’t care what anybody says, no Thai boy that age is capable of killing his mom. Thai mothers instill total and absolute obedience in their children, a dependency that death itself cannot break. Everybody knows an emotionally enslaved male child is a lot more reliable in old age than social security. No, that Thai boy was poisoned by farang mind, no doubt about it.” I paused. “And most of all I would like to find the perp in the Market Murder case. I want whoever killed that girl and plastered my name in blood all over the mirror.”

  Vikorn scratched his chin. “You can’t arrest the Asset or Goldman. They both have diplomatic cover, and anyway the CIA would never allow it. If you made too much fuss, they would take you out.”

  “Then I want to arrest Lord bloody Sakagorn of Senior Counsel,” I yelled. “He’s clearly guilty after the fact and knows what’s going on.”

  I uttered this last outburst quite certain that no one was going to give me authority to arrest the aristocrat lawyer whose connections went all the way to the top of government. To my surprise Vikorn smiled, though a tad wanly. “That’s what I thought you would say. Leave it with me for the moment. I’ll, ah, have to check.”

  “With the Chinese?”

  He frowned. Then, as if in a senile change of heart, Vikorn suddenly dismissed us: “Well, that will do for now. I’m sure the two of you will catch up in your own time. I’m afraid I have a meeting with the Director in an hour and the traffic is gridlocked on Rama IX. If you’ll excuse me?”

  Krom and I immediately waied and left the room, now known as the Communications and Command Center, or CCC.

  —

  The door had no sooner closed behind us, leaving us in the hall together, than Inspector Krom reverted. She hunched her shoulders and lowered her head, giving the impression of serious, if narrow, intent. At the same time she walked next to me slightly bowlegged, like a man with swollen testicles, and used a kind of rolling rhythm with her arms, as if she were readying herself for a fight. She was chummy, though, in her natural form, and chatted to me in a matey way, making use of the latest—and most masculine—street slang.

  “What are the girls like over at your mother’s bar?” she wanted to know. “Great tits and ass, I bet.”

  “We pay over the odds.” I wrinkled my brow. “You’re not a feminist?”

  She wrinkled hers in turn. “Do I look that old? Want coffee?”

  We left the station to cross the road to the cooked-food stalls. I’d already eaten so I ordered a coffee. Krom ordered extra-spicy somtam salad. She stared at me, waiting for me to speak first.

  “I’m a homicide detective,” I said.

  “I know. And yesterday you witnessed a quadruple homicide, and no way will they let you bring in the perps. Like Vikorn said, they have diplomatic immunity.”

  “Fuck immunity, this is matricide.”

  She nodded. “I understand. But the key is Vikorn who takes his orders from a ministry in Beijing these days. What did you think of that new high-tech meeting room?”

  “I think it’s weird, like an alien installation.”

  “But that’s exactly what it is. The aliens are Chinese. That display on the map, that is an electronic gun held to the Old Man’s head. It’s a naked statement of how much—how very, very much—he owes the Chinese. Basically, he screwed up.”

  “How’s that?”

  “They tricked him. He was allowed to move a lot of stuff out of Myanmar—I mean huge loads—through Yunnan and all the way across to Hong Kong and Shanghai. He was already a billionaire, and he doubled his fortune. Sure, he bribed. He bribed and bribed and made a lot of regional bosses very happy—the mistake he made was to underestimate Beijing. Since they never lifted a finger to stop him, he assumed either they didn’t know or they were getting kickbacks from the regional bosses. Being a cop and a crook, he didn’t quite have the sweep and depth to figure out what Beijing was up to. Now it’s too late.”

  “So what is Beijing up to?”

  “Research and development. Of humans. But they’re way behind.”

  Research and development of humans: only a nerdy dyke could come out with a phrase like that and make it sound humdrum.

  “And you are what? How come you know so much? How did you know who the players were yesterday, and why were you there right on the spot and right on time? D’you work wholly for the Chinese or just part-time?”

  “Can we do me later? I’m sort of classified. Look, you could call this an American Age, or you could call it a Chinese Age, but either way it’s a Pacific Age—and Thailand, politically, is Asia Pac.”

  “So where does that leave me?”

  “It leaves you working for a boss who is owned body and soul, head to feet, by certain ministries in Beijing. When Vikorn heard the details of the Market Murder he totally freaked. I was with him. He shook like a leaf.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s brokering the biggest deal of his life and Beijing is forcing him to guarantee the product. If there’s a problem, they take him down for all he’s got. He’s a very big player for you and me, but to the government that runs the lives of one-and-a-half billion people he’s nothing, nothing at all.”

  “But, yesterday, on the river, that was all American.”

  “Correct. And the spies behind the cameras were Chinese.”

  “Americans selling military programs to the Chinese on Thai soil? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Yesterday was not a demo, that was the point. Goldman and the Asset chose that terrible weather as cover—they didn’t think the Chinese had the technology to penetrate the storm. They were experimenting—what you saw was a dress rehearsal.”

  “Experimenting? With murder by mind control?”

  She looked away, turned her gaze to the street. Beyond the cooked-food stalls where people were sitting and standing, chatting, as on any other day, a knife cutter was calling out from his cyclo on which he had installed a revolving whetstone, another man in long blue shorts and a singlet was peddling brooms and mops from his tuk-tuk, mothers were taking their kids to the local nursery school. It was a very ordinary morning.

  “You’ve never met a cop like me before, have you?” Krom asked.

  “No.”

&nb
sp; She paused as if deciding what to say next. “Very few people know it, but the fact is, we’re living in a transhuman age.” She glanced at my face to see if I’d understood. I hadn’t. In an epoch of constantly expanding vocabulary, I’d never heard the expression before.

  She ate some of her somtam salad. I sipped my coffee and waited.

  “The West is bankrupt in every sense, on every level,” she said. “Money is out of control and so are people’s heads. Over the next decade technologically empowered civil unrest will force most countries to militarize their police forces even more—much more—than they have already. And when the West goes, the myth of democracy goes with it. It will be dictatorship or chaos, and humans prefer order to freedom when it comes to the crunch. A lot of us feel like slaves anyway: where’s the freedom if you’re working three miserable jobs to pay off your debts to keep bankers rich? The secret technology we witnessed yesterday is tomorrow’s law enforcement, worldwide. It will be every government’s must-have, with the blessing of a paranoid population. Those who own it will be billionaires, automatically. Just like the Internet moguls of yesteryear.”

  “Okay, so Vikorn is a go-between for sale and purchase of highly classified military programs. I got that.”

  “An unwilling go-between. But who better to use for background checks than the most powerful cop in Bangkok, together with his best detective? If the Chinese were to go through with the deal and the product found faulty—well, they call in the Colonel’s guarantee, don’t they?”

  She gave me a couple of minutes to think it through. “If the product proved faulty, how? You mean, if the product is given to the spectacular murder of young virgins? Yes, I can see that might cause the masters of Beijing to start frothing at the mouth. They would be forced to claim American sabotage, even if it wasn’t.”