John Burdett - Bangkok 8

By the time I reach the front door only the driver is there. He leads me through the house to a huge room on the river side which spans the length of the house. The wall is entirely of glass and looks onto an old wooden jetty on a bend in the river on which a couple of fishermen are paddling a small teak boat. It's like a painting from former times, the dense green of the jungle nodding over the slow-moving loop of brown water, two preindustrial fishermen with their nets and paddles, a serenity so profound it is as if time has stopped.

The room is so big I have to search for him; he is in a leather armchair at one end, smoking a cheroot and looking out. An empty bottle of Mekong whisky sits on a coffee table. I walk silently across the teak floor and take a seat in the armchair opposite his: Italian leather, cigar-colored, as soft as a baby's skin. The gun on the coffee table between us is an old-style army revolver with a barrel about twelve inches long. The Colonel does not look at me.

"You're angry with me, Sonchai?"

"You lied."

"Not really. I told you I'd never met a woman of Fatima's description. Fatima is not a woman. Not to an old-fashioned man like me, anyway."

"She was your contact for the yaa baa Bradley was moving?"

He raises his arms. "What could I do? I had to have someone. I had my doubts about employing a farang, but in some ways it made a lot of sense. As a marine at the American embassy he was never under suspicion, but how far can one trust a foreigner? I needed someone to tell me what he was up to, moment to moment. I recruited her at the same time my people agreed to use him."

I nod in my turn. This much I have understood. "What I don't understand is why you had Pichai and me follow Bradley in the first place."

"Because of what you were, the two of you. By that time I was sure she would kill Bradley and I expected the Americans to demand a full investigation. Any other cops might simply have arrested Fatima, but you two devout Buddhists, I knew you would not have the heart to prosecute once you knew what had happened. Naturally, I didn't want her in jail where she could be interrogated by my enemies. Her crazy thing with the snakes took me completely by surprise, though. I had no idea. I'd like you to believe that. I knew she would kill him, but I didn't know how."

"You knew she would kill him? And you used Pichai and me because you were feeling compassionate? I don't understand."

He covers his mouth to burp. "I'm getting old, Sonchai. I'm talking to my brother again these days. I sent him a mobile telephone more than six months ago. He almost never switches it on because it would disturb his meditation, but he uses it to call me now and then, when he can get someone to charge the battery at the nearest village. He doesn't have electricity in that Stone Age monastery of his. He told me I'd be lucky to be reborn in the human form at all, after the kind of life I've led. Maybe a deformed beggar was the most I could hope for, but something in the animal kingdom was more likely, or even an insect, a bug of some kind. He's pretty merciless, as you know."

"Go on."

"I asked his advice when I realized what Warren and Bradley had in mind for Fatima."

"How did you realize that?"

"That tape of Warren the Russian mafia made. They made it because they thought it would be a good idea to blackmail Warren on the basis of his sex with a prostitute. What they ended up with was a recording of a murder. Warren was desperate. He saw his whole life collapsing. He asked his good friend Colonel Suvit to get the tape for him, to deal with the Russians. The urkas have business here, they need us much more than we need them, but Suvit is not exactly a diplomat. You know what he's like. So then Warren asked me to help for old times' sake-perhaps the FBI told you about all that? So I was the one to negotiate the return of the tape. Apparently the urkas have their standards, their honor. If they say there's only one copy, then that is supposed to be reliable. I don't know, I've never dealt with them before, but they do run a lot of prostitutes here, and they move a lot of their heroin through Thailand, so they need to keep us on their side. It was smart of Warren to have us negotiate the return of the tape on his behalf. And the money they received for the tape should have been enough to shut them up. Warren paid three million dollars for it, less our commission. I saw the wire. I got the tape, but I refused to hand it over to Suvit or to Warren. Suvit was furious and so was Warren, but what could they do? I told Suvit: 'Look, we'll keep the tape to keep Warren under control. So long as we have it he'll do as he's told.' " A wave of the hand. "But then I started talking to my brother. He started to dismantle my mind, the way he does. And that tape, you know, what they did, Warren and Bradley, it's very Western, very cruel, very un-Thai." A sigh. "We've killed a lot of men, you and I, but no women as far as I can remember. And what did it amount to? We simply sent them on to their next lives a little sooner than expected, usually without pain or suffering."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying I couldn't let them do what they planned, not even to a bum-boy." I am still puzzled and wrinkle my brow, wondering if it is alcohol poisoning which has paralyzed my brain functions. "I decided to outline my problem to my brother and let him guide me. I didn't tell him about the tape, he knew nothing of its existence. He meditated for a day and called me. His solution was elegant, clairvoyant and radical, like Buddhism itself, and consisted of one sentence: Give her the tape. Call me a superstitious old man, but I gave it to her, just a few days before she murdered Bradley with those snakes. Naturally, she understood everything, once she had seen the tape and that poor Russian woman with that gold stick in her navel."

I stare at him, then can hardly resist a smile. "With that tape she controls Warren? She made him come here, to Thailand?"

"That is correct. We've all underestimated her. She's turned him into her slave. I guess you could say it is justice Thai-style."

"But what about Warren's minders, those Khmer?"

A scoffing sound from deep in his throat. "She always controlled them. Warren and Bradley hired them in a panic when the Russians started putting on the squeeze, but how could Bradley communicate except through Fatima? Those animals only speak Thai and Khmer. Sure, Warren speaks Thai, but he's not here all the time and they don't trust farangs. Her people are all from the jungle, she understands how those goons think. Warren and Bradley saw no danger because they underestimated Fatima. Little by little Fatima turned herself into a religious figure for those Khmer. They're all lost since the civil war, and since Pol Pot died. For them she's like a return to the old days, with transsexual shamans, apocalyptic visions-plus she's provided them all with Harley-Davidson motorbikes and Uzi machine guns. She's like a combination of Pol Pot, Father Christmas and a Hindu death goddess, all in one."

The mind likes truth. It will work quite hard to make the connections, once the pieces are all on the board. "She and Warren invited me to Warren's shop two days ago, I watched her destroy his most expensive piece of jade-a priceless piece, and a whole lot of other stuff."

"She's toying with him. I don't know what she has in mind. She's the cat, he's the mouse. She's enjoying herself. The worm has turned." He raises his eyes, the lazy one still half covered by its lid. "Actually, she's toying with all of us. An interesting situation, no?"

"You have no idea-?"

"None. I don't know what she has planned. I always kept Fatima at arm's length. I only used her to report that the shipments had arrived safely and the product duly moved across the city. Bradley was a fool if he didn't guess someone was checking up on him every minute of the day. Some of those shipments were worth twenty million dollars. And I'm not talking about the jade." A pause while he rubs the side of his nose. "Actually, I don't like the trade at all, but we have to keep our people awake somehow."