John Burdett - The Bangkok Asset

She was in her early twenties, owned the pure white skin of northern Chinese genes, held herself with the grace and simplicity of a virgin protected by power and money, turned to smile at Sakagorn now and then with the respect of a loyal daughter for a father figure, and became confused every time the middle-aged barrister rested a hand on her butt. Her dinner gown was midnight-black, her jewelry silver, her experience limited. Part of her wanted to look on the roulette as a child’s game; on the other hand, she would allow Sakagorn to have his way with her sooner or later-perhaps that was why he had made the rather reckless decision to take her to the casino, so that she would be excited, impressed, and perhaps a little drunk when he made his move. Her expression held the question of all young people at a certain point: Is this what I have to do to be an adult? To have arrived in the world? To be a part of it?

I have not mentioned her before, because I paid her no attention, assuming she was simply part of the casino’s entertainment. Vikorn, though, knew who she was. When he found a photo where her face was snapped at the moment Sakagorn fondled the nates of her ass, he stopped the show and left the picture on the screen. He still had not said a word to either of us, not even a “hello” to Sakagorn, who was technically his superior in the national protocol by a huge margin. Now the Colonel stared at Sakagorn.

“She is over the age of consent,” Sakagorn said in a cracked voice that could be a wail of fear or indignation-he perhaps had not decided which.

“By a day or so, perhaps,” Vikorn said. “But that’s not the point, is it?” Sakagorn stared at Vikorn for a moment, then looked away. “Are you going to tell me her father knows you intended to corrupt her at the casino, maybe slip her something to mellow her, before taking her up to the penthouse? There’s a private lift, isn’t there, from the casino all the way up to the top of the building?”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Sakagorn snapped.

Vikorn shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter, does it? Her father is in Washington, according to the news. Comes back at the end of the week. I doubt he’ll go the legal route to punish you-what d’you think? He can hardly turn a blind eye, with all these photos all over YouTube and Facebook.” Sakagorn had paled. Vikorn sighed. “I suppose you took such a risk because you are in love, Lord Sakagorn?”

The idea that Sakagorn could be in love with anyone other than himself caused me to smile, which caused Sakagorn to turn on me in a rage, which caused Vikorn to smile. Little by little, though, the eyes of we three men were seduced back to the screen. That was a very beautiful and very charming young aristocrat. Vikorn cleared his throat. “You haven’t had her yet, have you?”

“No,” Sakagorn admitted.

“That might just save your life. How did you intend to keep it secret?”

“I don’t know. She drives me crazy. She’s perfect, perfect. If her father gets heavy, I’ll marry her.”

“But you are already married, Lord Sakagorn.”

“If she doesn’t want to be a minor wife, I would divorce for her.”

“Tonight was supposed to be the night?”

“Can we talk about something else?” Sakagorn said. He shrugged. “Okay, it’s a deal. You keep quiet about tonight, erase all those pictures-I’ll give you what you want.” He was channeling a quite different persona when he muttered, “It won’t make an atom of difference, even you don’t have leverage in this. It’s a lot bigger than you, Colonel. Bigger than the police altogether.”

Vikorn seemed pleased that Sakagorn saw sense so quickly and took no notice of the implied threat. The lawyer cleared the hair from his face with both hands and stood in front of the video screen to block the view. Then he had a better idea. “Can you switch that damn thing off?”

Vikorn switched the screen off.

“Goldman,” the Senior Counsel said. “Goldman and his Asset.”

“I didn’t particularly want him for a client,” Sakagorn explained, pacing up and down. “ Farang are always a problem. Either they can’t understand that a system can be different to theirs, or they do understand and cannot stop telling you what’s wrong with it. They compare an idealized description of their own catastrophe with a brutally accurate description of ours. In the end one just grows angry and keeps quiet.”

“So why did you take him on?”

“I was asked to by a senior member of government. Goldman was doing the high-society circuit and looking for a lawyer. A good friend who is a high-ranking civil servant wanted to know what kind of legal advice a retired CIA officer could possibly need in our country. He suggested I find out.”

“You’re spying on your client?”

“Who doesn’t spy, now we have the gadgets? It’s the pandemic nobody talks about.”

“But Goldman was special-why?”

“Because he was here before. During the Vietnam War. He was young, but not too young. That’s why his Thai is so good-he’s been using it on and off for half a century. He’s clever, good at languages. The kind of Company man who came into his own during ’Nam. Who was given a super-secret project called MKUltra to oversee in the field.”

At the name MKUltra, Vikorn raised his eyes for a moment, then dropped them.

“Who became an embarrassment later on. A Cold Warrior from the espionage community of yesteryear. Usually they retired early or took desk jobs at Langley. But there were a few like Goldman who were field men to their marrows, who could not function well stateside-and who could still be useful when run by the right supervisor, someone who knows how to use such men.”

“This is the brief you received from…someone senior in the Thai government?”

“Yes. That was it. A long lunch with someone very senior-at the Oriental-and someone else. We got through two and a half bottles of Cheval Blanc. It was a good lunch.”

I expected Vikorn to pick up on the casual reference to someone else. He didn’t.

“But even in the context of American wild men from ’Nam, this was a little extravagant, wasn’t it? To use our best-connected Senior Counsel to spy on his own client? There must have been something specific.”

“A lot of his stuff was done here, in Thailand,” Sakagorn said, looking away. “Remember, this goes back half a century. Go back only a little further, to World War Two, and you come to the embarrassing incident when Thailand declared war on the United States. We had reasons to cooperate with Uncle Sam.”

“You mean MKUltra happened here?”

“The setup, the drugs, the preparation-a lot of it happened here. The actual violations of human rights happened in Vietnam or stateside. Goldman ran the operation here and in ’Nam.”

“But there had to be a specific reason for anyone that senior in the Thai government to be interested in Goldman. Interested enough to involve you.”

“The Chinese were keen for us to service Goldman.”

Vikorn did not blink at the mention of PRC interests. “You report back to them?”

“Classified,” Sakagorn said.

Vikorn had come to the end of his preliminary questions, designed to set the scene. Now he nodded at me.

“And the advice he needed from you-was what?” I asked.

Lord Sakagorn frowned. “One day it will be a question for every jurisdiction: what do you do with transhumans? How does the law apply to them?”

“ Trans humans? I’ve only recently heard that term for the first time,” I said. “Who are they?”

“They are what we’re talking about. What everyone will soon be talking about.”