John Burdett - Bangkok 8

I called the FBI after I put the phone down on Fatima, and Kimberley made the same point she's been making for days: Why is Fatima working for Warren, after she killed Bradley? It simply doesn't fit with our hypothesis or Fatima's mind-set when I went to see her in her apartment. In fact, it's so out of whack with our suspicions that we've discussed twenty different theories which make Fatima a hit woman for Warren, but for the life of us we cannot come up with a reason why Warren would want to rub out Bradley. It doesn't fit with the FBI profiling exercise, it doesn't fit with Fatima's declared intention to kill Warren-it doesn't fit with anything. I'm not expecting a confession when I ride the escalator up to Warren Fine Art.

The shop is shut with the chain-link curtain down, but Fatima is in there dusting the six-foot wood sculpture of the Walking Buddha. She is wearing a pearl blouse, open at the neck, her large pearl necklace and Vietnamese black three-quarter-length silk pants. I stare at her between the links. She senses my eyes behind the glass, gives me a warm smile as if I'm an old friend, and presses a button to raise the chain-link. After I enter the shop she presses another button and the chain curtain descends again. She slips me a grin, which almost seems to say: Now we're all cozy.

"I thought you were fantastic the other night," I say with total sincerity. "I've never heard that song sung so well." She laughs modestly and makes a comic little flutter with her eyelashes.

While this has been going on the Khmer who owns the Uzi appeared from a side door. He is not wearing his gun at this moment but might as well be from his attitude. He leers at me and slouches against the back wall. Fatima picks up a telephone, dials a number. "Mr. Warren, Detective Jitpleecheep is here to see you," she says with the smile of a competent P.A. "He's in the warehouse," she tells me in Thai. "He'll be along in a minute. Can I get you something to drink? Green tea? Coke, whisky, beer?"

I shake my head. We keep locking eyes, for long seconds, then breaking the contact. I am uneasy and cannot understand the nature of this meeting, this morning, this day. When I get the chance I furtively try to meditate for a second to try to plumb the depths of what is going on, but I simply cannot read her or the Khmer. Everything is wrong, unnatural. I think that perhaps the Khmer is her jailer, that Warren has proof she killed Bradley and is using this and his Khmer bodyguards to control her and ultimately to use her as he intended from the start. I know this is Kimberley's favorite theory and it certainly seems to fit the facts, if not the atmosphere. The FBI has no patience for atmosphere, of course, and Kimberley is certain I'm being set up, perhaps Warren will have me killed with Vikorn's permission? I managed to enrage Kimberley with my indifference to this possibility. After I put the phone down on her I meditated with a joint and went to bed. Pichai was there, in my dreams, glowing and smiling.

Warren enters from the door at the end of the shop, followed by the second Khmer, who is wearing the Uzi. The American is wearing a gold paisley cravat, sleeveless cream cashmere sweater, navy superfine wool sports jacket, Zegna gray-green pants and Baker-Benje slip-ons which I find too beautiful to look at. He transfers his cigarette and jade holder to his left hand in order to shake mine with his right. His gray eyes search my own. As usual I cannot read him, his protective coating is impenetrable to my Third World sorcery. His face is just a little haggard, though, and his shaving this morning has been imperfect, leaving a line of stubble under the right side of his jaw. Close up I become convinced that his fragrance is from Joel Rosenthal, the jeweler at 14 Rue de Castiglione in Paris who launched his own perfumes, and I wonder if this is not perhaps some kind of reference: jeweler turned perfumer?

"Glad you could make it," Warren says with his usual charm, and actually makes me feel as if he is pleased to see me. I do no more than nod, however, and wait. Of course he understands perfectly, and with a facial expression which is almost a wink, if a weary one, he beckons for me to follow him across the shop to where the horse and rider is sitting on a shelf. He takes the piece down, holds it up to the light, then hands it to me. As with all jade, hefting it is a sensual experience, its weight belies the lightness of the artist's design. I know very little about precious stone, but an inner voice compels me to come out with an inspired observation, which I transform into somewhat stilted English: "The piece is so transfused with light it seems as if it might fly away at any moment, then when you hold it you realize it originates in the earth after all, that the weight, coldness and darkness of the earth are still somehow locked inside it, but that a magical power has caused it also to express the airiness of the spiritual world."

This is not at all the sort of thing I normally come out with, and for a moment I wonder if I have taken too much of a chance and gone too far. Warren is in an unusual mood, though, and my outrageously pretentious words, because inspired by the Buddha, have finally penetrated his shield. I've unbalanced him for a moment, during which he stares at me with the hostility of someone who has been found out, then he recovers, touches my arm with the tenderest of gestures (I believe I feel a slight shiver on his part as he does so) and takes the piece away from me.

"Bradley was having it copied for me," he explains. "I sent someone to get it back as I had a right to do-it's mine after all. I guess I sent the wrong guy, but you have to bear in mind that Bill had very recently been murdered. I had no idea what to expect at the house, so I sent someone who knew how to be rough. I'm sorry about your injury. If the scarring is bad, I'll have someone in the States take care of it." He is gazing into my eyes as he speaks and I experience a deep need coming from him. If I didn't know better I would think it a cry for help. His eyes are watery. Fatima and the two Khmer are watching us closely.

"Fatima told me that you and the FBI woman came here last week," he says, now fully recovered, while he replaces the piece on the shelf. "So I thought you and I should talk before the Bureau gets out of control again. You probably have no idea what price you pay for success in the land of the free. You become a sitting duck for every second-guessing bureaucrat who sees you as a vehicle for promotion. I've already got some people in Washington onto it, I don't expect that Special Agent Jones will be in the kingdom for very much longer."

While he is speaking he is leading me inexorably to the front of the shop and the window display, which is protected by a second, inner chain-mail curtain. At a pad on a wall he punches in a code, presses a button and this hardened steel curtain rises. It is exactly like watching a beautiful woman undress, only to be overwhelmed by the power of her nakedness. The ancient jade glows under the lights, and now for the first time, no doubt influenced by Warren's presence, I can see the genius which underlies many of the modern settings in silver and gold.

"These are all your ideas," I say. Now that I have glimpsed his spirit I can understand his art.

" 'Ideas' is right. I hardly do any detailed design anymore, I have people who are better at it than I am. But a craftsman is not necessarily an artist. He needs that something extra that only comes from the cold heart of the universe." A faint smile and he picks up a heavy jade necklace on a gold chain. The jade is worked into large balls about three-quarters of an inch in diameter. "It was Hutton's," he says matter-of-factly. "Actually it went round the whole circuit. Henry took it with him when he fled the Forbidden City, then sold it to Koo, who sold it to her best friend Edda Ciano. Edda sold it to poor Barbara, who sold it to me the year before she died. She was so doped up by then I could have had it for a dollar, but I gave her the market price."