The Bangkok Asset: A novel

by John Burdett

  “That’s what Goldman is looking at? That’s the future he’s selling into?”

  “That’s my interpretation, from a distance. He doesn’t share.”

  I thought from Vikorn’s body language that he would end the interview there. So did Sakagorn. We were both surprised when in a fumbling motion that looked almost absentminded the Colonel switched the screen on again. There was our illustrious lawyer with his hand on the young aristocrat’s backside. Sakagorn groaned.

  “So what did he need from you?”

  Sakagorn wrestled with his professional conscience; it didn’t take long. “To my surprise, he became interested in the lower ranks of the underworld. I finally realized he wanted some low-life thugs. I thought at first for some dirty stuff. Typical CIA, in other words.”

  “You thought? But you don’t think that now?”

  He pushed his hair back in extreme irritation. “I’m not a monster. I love life, beautiful things, beautiful women. It’s the way I’m made, the way I was brought up. My father had three minor wives and five mistresses, but he paid his way. He was a man, whole. He never hurt anyone unless he had to. He’s been my role model all my life. I’m not as good as him and I never will be, but I try—” He had to break off to stifle a sob.

  Vikorn and I stared in fascination at this sudden undressing of a baron. He seemed almost to have forgotten us and continued as if talking to himself.

  “But when it comes to this sort of thing, this damned hellish new farang thing they’re springing on the world.” He stopped and stared at me, as if I at least retained sufficient innocence to understand where he was going. “Making that boy kill his own mother! Sweet Buddha, if I’d known he was going to do that, I would have stopped him. Even if I’d had to shoot him myself, I would have stopped him, I tell you!” he shouted at me.

  “Stopped who?” Vikorn asked.

  “Goldman’s Asset, of course!”

  A pause. “You knew—those two young men?” the Colonel asked.

  “Not really. I used an assistant to find them for Goldman. I never met them.”

  The lawyer’s anguish was palpable. Vikorn gave me a nod, which I took as permission to pounce. “So, Lord Sakagorn, may we now return to that lunch at the French restaurant in the Oriental—where the three of you HiSo men downed two and a half bottles of Cheval Blanc. You did say there was someone else at that lunch, didn’t you? You don’t have to tell us who, the nationality alone will do.”

  Sakagorn stared at me. I guess he was not expecting a murder squad detective to be so sharp in matters of international espionage. He opened his hands as if to say, Okay, you win. “Chinese, of course. Very senior in one of the main ministries. Accredited diplomat here in Bangkok.” He sighed. “Okay, I was recruited to spy for China, but at the request of the government of Thailand. It happens a lot. Their intelligence services do us favors, and vice versa. I was serving my country by serving the PRC—what’s wrong with that?”

  “Which is the real reason we find you in such unlikely locations like the river during the storm a few days ago—hardly an occasion for legal counseling, I would have thought?”

  Sakagorn waved a hand. He was back on form now and too tough to show how shocked he was that I knew he was there on the river on that wild wet and dreadful day. “Goldman sometimes invites me on his jaunts. My brief is to find out as much about him as possible—so I go along. I hate it, I don’t really understand, and I hate it from my gut. But I’m a patriot, I do my duty.”

  Sakagorn jerked his chin at me and asked Vikorn, “Does he understand? I’ve heard of him, some kind of monk manqué, they say. The only cop in Krung Thep who doesn’t take money.”

  “True, but he takes orders. You can rely on us.”

  We watched the Senior Counsel stand and leave the room.

  Vikorn bit his lower lip. With Sakagorn gone, he knew I was looking to him for some kind of clue. He played with some controls until the big screen behind him showed the tropical band of the Pacific Rim. He reduced the scale until tiny Laos almost disappeared and it looked as if Thailand shared a border with the PRC. You could draw a vertical line north from Bangkok all the way through the center of China until you reached Mongolia. When he reduced the scale still further, though, the northern direction revealed another player of substance: Russia. He took us on a jaunt through the Taymyr Peninsular in Siberia all the way to the Arctic Ocean, then switched off, stood up, and left the room.

  7

  BTW, R, are you up to speed on the Higgs boson experiment? You know, all those guys who spent decades looking into the very depths of the universe and finally found the law of symmetry? If they’d asked a Buddhist like me I could have saved them the fourteen billion euros they spent on the Hadron Collider. Yep, the mind works by symmetry. When you think you are looking into the first nanoseconds of the Big Bang, what you are really looking at is the way your own mind works, because that’s the only thing the mind can ever discover: itself. Bottom line: the cosmos is an expression of loving kindness; but even symmetry is subject to the law of symmetry. You can’t have it without its opposite: asymmetry. It’s the law of opposites, good for everything this side of cosmic consciousness.

  Once you know the rule, you are no longer surprised by the antics of your head in its unending quest for a smooth ride and a free lunch. For example, here I am in the back of a cab and by all accounts I should be racking my brains about the Market Murder, the atrocity on the river, the tangled intentions of the CIA and the PRC, the huge new game changer of electronic surveillance, etcetera—when in its unending quest for symmetry my mind has counterbalanced into trivia: I am thinking about that thumb drive Inspector Krom gave me. It is still in my pants pocket.

  It was clear from her body language that it was not something to check out on my computer at the station; I guessed it was a video of the more explicit kind: with a tattoo like that she had to be a closet exhibitionist. So I called Vikorn’s secretary, Manny, to tell her I was stuck in traffic, then told the driver to take me home to the hovel.

  When we roll up outside I can see Chanya at her desk working on her computer. She glances through the window in reaction to the noise of the cab, sees me, and waves and returns to her work. It is her new big idea that Western feminism was long ago hijacked by market forces, low-rent journalists, crusader narcissism, and petty-bourgeois judgmentalism, not to mention an unhealthy obsession with clitorectomy as practiced by the Ashanti of South Ghana (I don’t know where she finds her Facebook buddies). She decided to found a website that really tells it like it is for Asian women. And that’s where her heart is, while I pull off my clothes and pull on a pair of shorts.

  “You’re taking the day off?” she asks, barely hiding her irritation.

  “Just a few hours.”

  I need a strategy to get her to watch the video. Like many people who don’t have much to do, she is fiercely sensitive to any implication that she doesn’t have much to do. I think about rolling a joint but decide against it. I also think about that oil Krom gave me, and decide against that, too. I scratch my head and go to the window to think: What the hell is wrong with me? I’ve been beating myself up with that question for years, but every time is like the first beating all over again. Why is paranoia ever green?

  “Ah, tilak,” I venture. “Listen, I don’t want to interfere with your work, but I do have something relevant to show you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, your website is dedicated to those good, genuine, strong, independent women who are not eternal undergraduates with personality problems trying to make a name for themselves by endlessly bitching about men, right? The politically correct cannot stand very much reality.”

  “That’s an oversimplification, but okay.”

  “So, I’ve met someone you might be interested in. Someone very real in a weird kind of way.”

  Silence.

  “It’s okay, she’s a hundred percent gay—one of those left out by mainstream fe
m—” I stop to correct myself. “From mainstream everything, actually. She’s really from down your alley—I think. And she has a genius IQ.”

  “So?”

  I tell her about the video. “It’s okay,” I say. “No need to look at it straightaway, whenever you’re ready. I could leave it with you if you like.”

  “Why, where are you going?”

  “Well, nowhere.”

  “So, we could watch it together, couldn’t we?”

  “Sure, I just thought you were busy all day.”

  She sighs, saves something she’s been writing, and gives me her full attention. “Okay, let’s watch the fucking video. You’ve got me all excited now.”

  “Sure,” I say, “sure,” and take out the thumb drive.

  —

  Chanya was intrigued. Lesbianism was only beginning to gain general acceptance in Bangkok when she was in her early twenties. It has taken off quite a bit since then, but she felt part of an earlier generation who didn’t really get it. For her, from the start, the mystery, the challenge, the game of life was all about men. She frowned as the video started on her screen. It was obvious, though, that it was mostly song-and-dance, which needed the sound system. Chanya plugged in our rickety old speakers and suddenly the small room seemed to disintegrate under the pressure of that form of rock music called punk, indie, or alternative—unless you don’t like it, in which case it’s just plain bedlam. Krom stood center stage wearing her full police inspector uniform, waiting.

  I almost never look at YouTube, never check out all those clever amateur video clips that go viral all over the global village and have already been forgotten by the time someone like me thinks about looking at them. So it was a surprise, even a shock, to see how professional the tom’s video was.

  The scene was some kind of basement. It was less than minimalist: the plaster on the walls was missing in many places, revealing brickwork and reinforced concrete; a large number of luridly colored water pipes emerged from one wall and disappeared into another. There was no stage, but the bare, crumbling wall behind her was effectively the top of the room. She had chosen an old-style microphone so she could use the stand as a prop, but she had a Bluetooth receiver in her ear. The microphone and the Bluetooth receiver already turned her cop uniform into a kind of pantomime costume. At a nod from her the music started. It was something extreme and heavy—I’m afraid I lost track of the counterculture long ago. Now we saw it was a strip video.

  Krom doesn’t tease when she strips; on the contrary, she rips off her white police shirt with its blue shoulder boards as if to be free of an unendurable burden. She is not wearing a bra. Her small, tough tits form two hillocks in a densely worked tattoo that begins a couple of inches below her neck and takes us on a wild fantasy ride all the way to her shaven pubic region, and farther, to halfway down her thighs. She is both more and less than human, a kind of indigo streak of super energy with seriously animal cravings: a lot of simulated humping in her dance routine. Now she is joined by two young women also dressed as cops. Krom rips off their shirts and skirts; now everyone is naked with close-shaved pubic hair and Krom has found a dildo to strap to her loins, but there is no immediate debauch into group sex. The camera focuses on Krom’s face, now, as she starts to sing—I guess holler would be a better word—in some kind of rap-style adaptation in Thai. Her two female companions dance on either side of her but are overwhelmed by the force of her superior energy and end by making highly erotic swoons that take them to their knees before her. From somewhere she has produced a huge cigar, which she does not light but uses as a second penis substitute; is it a coincidence that it is the same size cigar that Vikorn uses to celebrate his victories?

  When one of Krom’s sex slaves began an erotic journey starting with her mistress/master’s toes but moving quickly upward, Chanya, former working girl though she is, pulled the thumb drive out of her PC.

  “I hate watching dykes make out. It disgusts me.” She cast me a glance that was almost apologetic: she was supposed to be our ambassador to modernism, after all, the university graduate who should be closest to the hip gold standard of cocaine, hard rock, and orgies—but she was frowning and looking like she wanted to throw the thumb drive out the window. Instead she handed it to me with one of her psychological insights that are all the more devastating when delivered, as then, in a calm, compassionate tone. “The truth is, she wants to be Vikorn.” She gave a pinched smile and added, “A patriarch tyrant with a pussy.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  She stared at me in a certain way. I made a face that said, Well, I’ve shown you she’s totally homosexual, what more security do you want?

  “You’re fascinated by her, aren’t you?” she said. I shrugged.

  After a couple of minutes two arms embraced me, a hand found its way to my crotch.

  “That video made me feel horny,” Chanya whispered, pulling my shorts down. “When am I going to meet her?”

  “Tomorrow if not sooner,” I said, turning and slipping my hands under her T-shirt.

  Afterward I gave a sigh—actually, if I recall correctly we both sighed at the same time. I had to go back to the station and she wanted to return to the webpage she was designing. There was a twinkle in our eyes, though, as we said goodbye. That was quite a video so early in the afternoon.

  “So, I’ll tell Krom she can come visit…”

  “Anytime,” Chanya said. Now she was relaxed enough to add, “My schedule is pretty free for the rest of the year.”

  —

  At the station I found a serious buzz among staff and cops that I didn’t have time to inquire about because Manny called me on the internal line.

  “The boss wants you, now.”

  —

  Once again Vikorn was staring out of his window, this time leaning against the frame (a neutral message, this: something happening somewhere else that, no matter how important in the abstract sense, did not rank in his personal value structure).

  “You heard the news?” he asked without turning.

  “No. I only just got back.”

  “There was an explosion at Klong Toey Slum early this morning. Somehow it didn’t get reported in the media—so far. We heard about it on the grapevine a few hours ago.”

  “Explosion? As in a bomb?”

  “Probably—nobody seems to know yet.” He turned to stare at me for a moment. “Not our patch. Not our problem.”

  “No,” I said. I did not say, So why did you send for me?

  A pause, then: “That moron Lotus Bud called me.” Lotus Bud, usually abbreviated to LB, was the sergeant who ran the slum, more or less single-handed.

  “Yes.”

  “He said he found something of yours there, among the debris.”

  “Huh? Mine? I haven’t been to KTC for years.”

  “Whatever. He says he can’t hold it for long but it might be confidential.”

  “Hold what?”

  “He didn’t say. But you know what he’s like—a moron, but a cunning one. And that’s the first time he’s called me for about a decade—so I suppose you’d better take it seriously.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. I did not move, though. This is a tactic I developed years ago to solve the problem of the boss who doesn’t answer questions. He returned to his desk and pretended to get on with some paperwork, while I waited. When he engaged my eyes I said, “It’s related, isn’t it? It must be, or you wouldn’t be bothering with it.”

  He started to say, Related to what? then grunted. “You don’t want to know, not yet.”

  “I do.”

  He sat silent for a long time, looking at me as if he could not decide what I was, a pawn to be sacrificed in a war game, or one of the few people he’s ever been close to. He coughed. “I think Inspector Krom told you how sensitive your case is right now.” He covered his embarrassment by turning pompous. “A certain power unit north of here is interested in the progress of your inquiry. From time to time they”—here he dumped p
omposity to reveal anger—“throw me a little hint or two. Just get over there, will you?”

  “Yessir,” I said. Such is the nature of the feudal mind that I am saddened my lord and master has been brought under the heel of a foreign power. I ought to be delighted at the possibilities of freedom that are opening up before my eyes, but I’m not. Anyway, foreign powers never really bring freedom, only chaos. Isn’t that true, R?

  8

  A word about Klong Toey Slum, or KTC (Klong Toey City) in the local argot: don’t go there. It is not the risk so much as the revelation you may wish to avoid. I speak from personal experience. I was still in my late teens, fresh down from the north after a year in a forest monastery where I purged my guilt after Pichai, my best friend, murdered our yaa baa dealer with me as accomplice. As an unconvicted felon I teetered between two futures: the police academy or a return to the robes. I favored the latter and sought advice from an uncle who had spent twenty years as a monk, before succumbing to the siren call of conjugal love (it didn’t last). Twenty years is a very different proposition than one year, which anyone can survive with a little grit. His advice was simple: “To succeed as a monk long-term you must become a connoisseur of bitterness. You must live off it the way others live off distraction. I failed.” I rented a shack in the slum for ten baht a week to test my appetite for the bitter. Three months later I joined the police.

  —

  KTC is, I suppose, much like any favela in Rio or barrio in Buenos Aires, but with Thai twists. It is unusually neat and tidy, even gentrified in certain parts, and there is a clear, communally agreed demarcation of areas. If you arrive from the Sukhumvit direction you will probably see the great slum at its best, with wood-and-corrugated-iron huts neatly set out as if on a grid from ancient Rome, streets well swept, front doors occasionally painted in bright proletarian-pagan tones, all things mostly spick and span; small shops sell basic necessities. This is the upmarket end, though, the Upper East Side of the complex, which comprises five square miles. Press on and you will find a deterioration in the neighborhood: a meth addict lolls unconscious against a hut with no risk of being moved on by a cop, at least not while he’s alive; a couple of overweight retired working girls drink moonshine and gamble heavily while they loll on futons outside their front doors. Then you come to the decrepit part of town where old ladies with sparse teeth blackened by betel habits relentlessly bash stacks of aluminum cans into rectangles slimmer than iPhones, twenty satang the kilo. A few yards farther on you reach the heart of the matter: crazies end up here who were never going to bear the rigors of survival out in the world, but are not dangerous enough to be locked up at taxpayer expense in an economy with few taxpayers. Skinny women who could be any age between thirty and fifty, with torn cotton dresses revealing shriveled breasts, faded tattoos, and puncture marks. They are too mad for the discipline of prostitution, too dangerous for rape, too unpredictable to be mules in the drug trade. Their total disengagement from society gives them a license to be wild: rage-filled faces thrust themselves before your nose; harpies sing the epic of mass exodus from the countryside in a tuneless rant free of the need for approval or even company. Their male counterparts are even less social: given to solitary postures of religious intensity in the urban wilderness, fueled by the cheapest of narcotics, or by the narcotic of distilled loneliness itself, they sit on rubbish heaps and screech during brief moments of clarity when the full extent of the catastrophe becomes, for a moment, unavoidable.