The Secret Agent

by Francine Mathews

  It was windowless and damp, five meters square. He knew the distance to within a fraction; he had measured it repeatedly during one bout of imprisonment as a boy. The floor was unpaved dirt but someone had thrown dried grass underfoot to make the place sweet smelling. In Sompong’s mind, however, this would always be a place of execution.

  Tell me again about the night Jack Roderick died.

  Himself, much younger, his right hand wrapped decisively around the pistol butt. The muzzle against the old man’s ear. A ring of soldiers outside the hut, standing at attention as they had for hours, in honor of their fallen comrades. The smell of sweat from his own armpits and urine from the old man’s bladder. The other two, already shot but not yet dead, staring dully at what remained of their knees. The old man beginning to tremble.

  Tell me again.

  Today there were burlap sacks piled on the spot where the corpses had lain fifteen years before, and Wu Fat now sat in the old man’s seat. Sompong thought of the rocket-propelled grenade launchers and the surface-to-air missiles crated in the belly of his ministry plane at Chiang Rai, and felt a piercing relief for the art of the deal. Today there would be no shouting or pistol shots, no brains spattering the dried grass of the floor. Just a handshake and the exchange of priceless commodities.

  Today it hardly mattered how Jack Roderick died.

  Wu Fat pushed back his chair and saluted the General’s son.

  17

  Bangkok,

  1952

  The night of the first full moon of the dry season in 1952, Jack Roderick opened the doors of his home to all of Bangkok, and they came by car and by boat, up the gravel drive and down the waterways, through the lanterns that flickered amid the jungle palms like jeweled fireflies.

  He placed torches along the drive and up the staircase of his soaring entrance hall, luminous with women in silk. There was a Western orchestra and champagne and caviar, and the men were dressed in white tie and they smoked Dunhill cigarettes and wore their hair clipped very short. Most of the Thais were people Roderick knew from the years of the war or his hunting expeditions among the old caves of the West; they were doctors and lawyers or men who had no love for Pibul and never talked politics in public at all. Some of them were agents that Roderick handled, but tonight was not a night for business. Alec McQueen had sent reporters and photographers with enormous lamps, and they bathed the most spectacular of the new arrivals with phosphorescence.

  Tonight the farang community was out in force: wives of French-legation members, who spoke of l’Indochine in guttural tones; British envoys, plotting the ruin of victorious Mao; American businessmen whose breezy laughs suggested that the world was a damn big oyster, and they had the tools to open it. Alec McQueen wore a white ascot and brandished a cigar, his black hair unkempt over his flushed brow. One very blond and languid beauty, a divorcée come to Bangkok for the fun of it, competed for Roderick’s attention with a black-eyed Chinese woman dressed in a skin-tight cheongsam. Several men grew drunk on Roderick’s Scotch and began tossing champagne corks from the terrace wall, in an effort to reach the waters of the khlong; and across the khlong itself, rocking gently on their floating doorsteps, sat the silk-weaving families of Ban Khrua.

  The weavers stared at Roderick’s lights and listened to the foreign music that prevented their children from sleeping, and one boy dove suddenly into the water and surfaced with a handful of corks, laughing uproariously at the foolishness of farangs.

  The Minister of Culture, Vukrit Suwannathat, came without his wife, Li-ang, whom he had abandoned recently for an exotic mistress. Vukrit came in the shining glow of confident power, and his bodyguards hugged the walls with drinks untouched in their hands. He came, and where he passed, the party shifted like a rice paddy swept by a fitful breeze. Roderick laughed just as loudly as the rest of the Americans, but his eyes followed Vukrit as though the man might steal him blind. McQueen’s reporters gathered dutifully around the minister and jotted his comments in their notebooks while the cameras seared his image in their brains.

  At eleven o’clock, when the brilliant hum of the spinning party threatened to slow and jangle, Roderick ordered the lights doused and left the room dusky with coconut-oil torches. He gazed out over the wilted crowd of sweating men and women, assembled willy-nilly among his bright silk cushions and his priceless salvage of ancient empire, and he clapped his hands twice. The terrace doors swung open. The lakhon dancers filed in.

  There were eight of them dressed in silk and jewels, their headdresses elaborately worked, their masks and painted faces like figures cut down from the walls of the Grand Palace. A hush fell over the crowd; most had seen Thai dancers before, but never like this, with the torchlit shadows and the khlong waters moving ceaselessly behind them. It was as though for an instant they were all returned to the days when dance was a court ritual, and the movements of sinuous women the privilege of kings alone. Tonight, Roderick seemed to declare, I am royal too. Roderick in his palace. Roderick the king.

  The music was made of wind instruments and strings, the movements were studied and controlled. There was impossible grace in the curve of a fingertip, the turn of a cheek; grace in the principal dancer, a woman dressed in the guise of Taksin, the warrior king of Ayutthaya. The dancer’s eyes were expressionless when they roved the crowd, but once—and only once—they widened slightly, as though in shock or fear. That was the moment they fell on Roderick, standing spare and elegant in his dinner jacket. His pale hair was swept back from the high forehead, a cigarette burned forgotten in his fingers. It seemed the dancer’s wrist trembled slightly as she extended her palm in a choreographed gesture of denial; then it steadied, and she moved on.

  “What is her name?” Roderick muttered to Alec McQueen. Alec alone in all that room was certain to know.

  “Thongchai Pithuvanuk,” he said slowly. “Trained in the Royal Palace. Her friends call her Fleur.”

  “Fleur,” Roderick repeated. “It suits her.”

  Later, when the last of the guests had left, Roderick strolled through his garden in search of Alec and the woman named Fleur and instead, in the breezeway amid the stilts of his house, found His Excellency the Minister of Culture leaning against a massive limestone head of a reclining Buddha. The head was sunk in a square of gravel like a meteor fallen from the sky.

  “And this is what comes of your fine words, Jack.” Vukrit spoke with distaste. “You wanted experts and priests, someone from the museum—you put us all off with talk of what is sacred—and then you returned alone and cut the thing from the wall.”

  Roderick stopped short, his hands slouched in his trouser pockets. “You know the story better than that, Vukrit. You know all the stories, don’t you? You collect them, I think. You spin them out of thin air. You even sell them to the highest bidder. Like you sold your friends. Carlos. And Boonreung.”

  “I could have you arrested,” the minister replied evenly, “for the theft of precious national artifacts. What else do you have hidden away? I could bring my troops here tomorrow. Examine your papers. Confiscate your house—”

  “‘There is only one minister who matters.’ A dying man told me that. Was he talking about you?”

  Vukrit threw back his head and laughed. “I certainly hope so. May I ask his name?”

  “Chacrit Gyapay. It was almost the last thing he said.” From his pocket, Roderick drew something—a dull red stone. He fitted it tenderly into the hollow in the Buddha’s brow, then returned it to his pocket. “How much did you get for your brother-in-law, Vukrit? Tell me that.”

  “Carlos was never found.” The laughter stopped abruptly, and Roderick saw that the minister perspired in the torchlight, his eyes shifting from Roderick’s pocket to the hole where the gem had rested. “Carlos’s life is forfeit if he returns. He killed our king.”

  “No,” Roderick replied. “Not Carlos. That’s another story you’ve sold.”

  “You dare to call me liar?”

  “I could call you m
urderer instead.”

  Something pulsed between them like the strobe of a camera bulb: hatred, blood lust. Roderick stepped closer to this man he despised as he might a viper lying underfoot, and Vukrit moved instinctively backward, his spine against the ancient stone head.

  “I know some stories of my own, minister. I know the trails you blazed through the jungle, I know the treasures you’ve sold in the Thieves Market and the man who paid your price. You cut Carlos out of his life, just as you cut this head from the wall of the cave we found together.” Roderick held up the stone as though it were a sacred bond. “I will see Carlos avenged. As I avenged the boy.”

  “Boonreung was a traitor,” Vukrit spat contemptuously, “and you’re a farang. You backed the wrong horse. Pridi! My God, how it makes me laugh!”

  “I back all the horses, Vukrit.” Roderick’s voice remained low and ruthless. “I back your boss, Field Marshal Pibul, and I back his chief rival, Sarit Thanarat. I’ve got money on the favorites, money on the long shots, I’ve got the bookies in my pocket and I’m even setting the odds. You see, I’m the guy who’s staging the race. The only horse not entered is yours.”

  “There you are, Jack,” McQueen drawled through the darkness. His hair was in his eyes, his white scarf dangling over one shoulder, and on his arm was a woman. Fleur. Roderick’s heartbeat quickened.

  She had shed the martial uniform and the startling makeup and now wore a long, slim skirt made of silk he recognized immediately as having come from his own shop. She looked quite young—eighteen?—and the bones of her face were as delicate as porcelain. She raised her palms to him in reverence but he returned the gesture immediately, as though unworthy, his hands far higher.

  “Yours is a beautiful home,” she murmured.

  Her voice was plangent and dark, the voice of a goddess and not a child.

  “And yours, a beautiful dance.”

  Her eyes slid away in humility, but he saw that she was pleased. Vukrit seized her by the arm and muttered something swift and brutal in Thai. Roderick’s expression changed as he understood the slur. He took a step forward and came up hard against Alec’s restraining hand.

  “What’s your hurry, Minister?” McQueen asked Vukrit. “We’re all old friends here. Or were you and Jack plotting coups together?”

  “I plot nothing with this man.” Vukrit spat deliberately into the gravel at Roderick’s feet.

  Alec’s right hand tightened implacably against his chest and the left came up around Roderick’s neck, as though he’d cheerfully strangle Jack rather than allow him to brawl in his own courtyard. “Steady,” McQueen muttered. “Steady. There are reporters here.”

  Vukrit gripped the girl by the wrist and dragged her furiously toward the khlong gate. Fleur stumbled in the narrow skirt and high Western heels, and gasped a beseeching word of Thai. Vukrit did not turn his head.

  “Poor kid’ll pay for her kindness to you tonight,” Alec told Jack quietly. “And she was a virgin when he bought her. Bastard brags about it.”

  A spurt of anguish tore through Roderick’s gut. “How long?”

  “—Has she been his mistress? Three months. Maybe less.”

  Shoulders nearly touching, they stood together in the fragrant shadows. McQueen offered him a cigar but Roderick refused it. The smell of khlongs in the dry season and burning tobacco mingled in a way that might almost be confused with incense. Roderick the king

  He had threatened a man and made him look foolish, then presumed to flirt with his toy. He’d given Vukrit an excuse for rape.

  Cotton-mouthed and ashamed, he doused the torches.

  18

  Have you seen the papers?” Matthew French demanded over the phone on Thursday morning. “The press has been calling my office all morning. It has been most disruptive.”

  “Anything interesting?” Stefani retorted. “Exclusive interviews? Talk-show appearances?”

  “I’m afraid the media spin is highly negative, Ms. Fogg.” The lawyer sounded disapproving. “Your public display at the museum yesterday is regarded as a deliberate attempt to humiliate both the Minister of Culture and the Thai Heritage Board.”

  “Poor them,” Stefani cooed.

  There was the rustle of newsprint over the line.

  “Sompong Suwannathat states unequivocally, in one of the Thai-language papers I wouldn’t expect you to have seen, that your claim is ‘a farang woman’s brazen effort to exploit a national legend, and strip the Thai people of their priceless heritage.’”

  “So Sompong owns more people in the press than he’s sold out. Bravo for the minister. How do we save the situation? Publicly request a meeting with the museum’s Board?”

  “I would urge you to abandon the public assault and employ back channels.”

  “Such as?”

  “Any that are available to you,” French concluded. “For my part, I must refuse to act further on your behalf. Several clients informed me this morning that they are taking their business elsewhere. I can no longer afford to link my name to yours.”

  “I see why you’re in Trusts and Estates, Mattie—a nice, comfortable branch of the law that’ll never get your hands dirty.” Acid words, but she felt an undeniable thrust of panic in the pit of her stomach.

  “Trusts and Estates is what you said you needed,” he shot back. “I have never claimed to be a celebrity publicist.”

  “Does Oliver know you’re dumping me?”

  “Mr. Krane was kind enough to support me wholeheartedly.”

  “When?” Stefani demanded. Oliver had dropped off the face of the earth. His private number—the discreet voice at Carlton Gardens—was disconnected. And he’d sent no reply to her e-mail inquiries.

  “I received a severance wire from his account this morning.”

  Stefani swore under her breath. “Matthew—I need to reach Oliver. Can you put me in touch with him?”

  “Unfortunately, no.” French was smug. “He requested that I say nothing of his whereabouts—a simple request, as I never know where Oliver is.”

  * * *

  The woman seated alone at the rickety table outside Jimmy Kwai’s Guest Café was drinking a Michelob and toying with a tired plate of pad thai. They were always toying with pad thai, Jeff Knetsch thought; it was a backpacker staple on Khao San Road, like the cheese steaks and the soba noodles and the Oreo cookies imported and sold in the thousands to homesick Americans. But usually the women moved in twos or threes, if they weren’t hooked up with a guy; women preferred the protection of numbers. It was a defense against muggings and pick-up lines and the sudden surrender of loneliness; and so Jeff decided the sole female next to him had left someone sleeping off a hangover in one of the seven-dollar-a-night guesthouses nearby.

  She wore the woman backpacker’s garb of choice: a featherweight sarong that limned her tanned legs, and a spaghetti-strapped camisole she could wash out in a basin. She was very blond, in the sun-damaged way that comes with excessive exposure; her cheekbones were raw and hungry and she’d spread glitter provocatively along her brow. A Californian on self-imposed exile? Or an Aussie touring the Pacific-rim world? As Jeff watched, she shoved the plate of noodles and the plastic fork to one side and leaned protectively over the paperback in her lap. He realized, with a faint buzz of anticipation, that she was conscious of him watching her.

  “Food’s pretty bad, isn’t it?” he asked.

  She glanced up. “Least it’s cheap.”

  New Zealand, probably. Or south Australian. He wondered if the person she’d left behind was male or female, and whether she practiced massage or aromatherapy. Everyone who drifted through Khao San Road did one or the other. They also did Ecstasy and pot and psychedelic drugs, when they weren’t toying with heroin; they traveled overland in the back of pickup trucks to Tibet and Bhutan; they danced to techno-rave for three days straight on the beaches of Ko Pha Ngan; and they all believed in a Universal Experience of Love and Peace, at least until their parents’ money ran out.

&n
bsp; After his chilling discussion with Sompong Suwannathat at the Peninsula Hotel the previous night, Knetsch had immediately checked out of his room and hopped a tuk-tuk to the warren of bars and cafés and Internet outlets on Khao San Road. He had been a gambler long enough to know when his luck had turned. His blood money was out of reach. He couldn’t go home; he couldn’t pay off the debts that were about to bury him alive. Sompong owned the city: Sompong would track him down.

  Knetsch had landed on Khao San in the suit and tie he’d worn for the past two days, and booked a bed for ten bucks in a guesthouse whose name and location he promptly forgot. Somewhere around midnight he traded the suit for tie-dyed drawstring pants and a T-shirt with the words Hard Rock Café, Reykjavik emblazoned across the chest. He’d lost his loafers after a three A.M. rerun of MI:2 and gave up his briefcase for a pair of Taiwanese Tevas. Khao San Road was lined with the refuse of lost backpackers’ lives, all of it for barter or sale. Travel agencies offered cheap tickets on unknown airlines to obscure destinations. Tiny shops sandwiched between street vendors and tattoo parlors sold bedrolls and iodine tablets and pocketknives and Sony Walkmans. One of the shops bought his cell phone for a song. After that, he felt absurdly free, as though his last bond to life had been cut in two.

  Amid the noise and neon it was harder to see the shadowy silhouette of the boy-specter who’d been following him through Bangkok. Knetsch still heard Max’s voice, babbling inconsequentially about snowpack, time trials and the new race wax he could lend Jeff—but once Knetsch started singing Gilbert & Sullivan tunes, desperate and badly off-key, he hardly heard Max anymore.

  The knowledge that he was hunted—by Sompong’s people, by the boy-ghost—drove him relentlessly through the shops and arcades, as though he would not be found if he did not stop moving.

  In the hours between five A.M. and noon, he ordered eggs and bacon, eggs and sausage, eggs and noodles. He talked to Israeli soldiers taking a break between compulsory service before hitting college in Tel Aviv; to Germans and Danes who thought they’d found paradise; to American Peace Corps volunteers returning to the United States from posts in Africa and New Guinea and Bucharest. And he drank a raft of beer. Beer was plentiful and cheap, like everything sold on Khao San Road. What started as a necessary sedative became, with time, a pleasant background buzz of befuddlement, but he could not screen out the thoughts of what he’d done and what might happen, the thoughts of what he meant to do.