John Burdett - The Bangkok Asset

“I heard about what happened yesterday,” he said and paused. “If you speak of it to anyone, the Americans will take you out. On the other hand, the Chinese want you to continue with your investigation into the Market Murder-that Nong X case.”

This was the first official indication that there might be a connection between the Market Murder last week and the events on the river yesterday. In my mind I had tried to connect the unusual strength of the blond young man on the boat and the decapitation of Nong X, but there was no evidence to justify such a theory. After inspecting the crime scene, Sergeant Ruamsantiah had tried to take witness statements from the crowd around the roti vendor. Nobody knew anything. The best lead, if you could call it that, was a remark from the roti vendor to the effect that the house was managed by a middle-aged woman who sold watches in the market. That’s all he knew. Despite my detailing a team of ten constables to ask questions all over the market for the past three days, there were no other leads at all. I didn’t even have any information as to why the girl was in the apartment at that time. In a last desperate attempt to move the case forward I had the men put up lurid posters all over the market, asking for anyone with information to come forward. So far nobody had.

“Chinese, Chinese, Chinese,” I said. “It used to be everything American. Why, please tell me, would the Chinese give a damn about that sad little murder case I’m working on? And more important, why would you even think of forming a sentence that starts with the words the Chinese want you to continue with your investigation ? Did the Chinese recently take over District 8?”

“You could say that.”

“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

When Vikorn doesn’t want to answer a question, he stares at you, unblinking, like a lizard. “What do you care about the reason they’re interested? I thought you were moving heaven and earth to find the perp who murdered that girl in the market square? Didn’t you get a witness statement yet?”

“No. You distracted me with a mission that was totally top secret and therefore totally useless for my investigation. Did the Chinese order you to order me to the river yesterday? I’m just curious about who I’m working for these days.”

He shrugged. “You are famous. The Chinese hold you in high regard. If you cannot find convincing proof of a connection between the homicide you’re investigating and what happened on the river yesterday…”

“Yes?”

“Then I suppose that makes the American Asset worth the price.”

“Price? What price? There’s some kind of investment going on here?”

He grunted. “You have studied history. How did our great country save itself from foreign aggressors in the past?”

“By playing the British off against the French and the Americans off against the British, bending but never yielding. Selling off pieces of the country so the core could remain uncolonized.”

“Exactly.” He stared at me. “That boy killed his own mother,” the old gangster whispered and shook his head. “The Chinese were very impressed.” He creased his brow. “But they gave me a proverb: Pride comes before a fall. ”

“That’s not Chinese, that’s farang. ”

He nodded. “Yes, I think that’s what they meant: the proverb is about Americans.”

He took a couple of minutes more before he turned and strode to his desk. His ability to step back from despair took longer than usual but was nonetheless miraculous. When he was seated he said, “So, you finally met Inspector Krom?”

He knew very well I’d never heard of her before yesterday, but he wasn’t going to explain how or why a senior member of his force had been recruited and kept secret from the rest of us for…well, I had no idea how long Inspector Krom had been on our team, or where her office might be. I said, “Yes.”

“Good. That’s good. You’ll be working with her on this.”

“On what?”

“I’ll let her brief you later. Right now there’s something I want you to see.”

He stood up with a perfunctory smile and led me out of his room, past Manny who as usual was busy typing at her post, then down the corridor to the large room that was officially called the Main Conference Room, unofficially the Big Interview Room, and, more accurately, the Large Interrogation Chamber. It had been out of service for more than a month, so I was interested to see what kind of renovations Vikorn had ordered for it. As I followed him I noted a slight dragging of his left foot, a way of walking that was not yet a shuffle but perhaps heralded the onset of one. There was no pride or pleasure when he opened the door to the room. He opened it rather with an expression of defeat, like a husband who had reluctantly consented to his wife’s wholesale renovation of the home and now had to live with the consequence of his weakness.

When we entered, I found myself slack-jawed with astonishment: everything was Macintosh gray and tinted blue, and there was a huge LED screen at the end of the room, which he switched on, so that now we were looking at Google Maps. Vikorn, who has about ten words of English, experienced no difficulty in typing Pacific Rim on the laptop that controlled the screen. Now we had the entire ocean on the wall along with the lands that border it, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego on the right, from Siberia to the south of Indonesia on the left. Australia and New Zealand didn’t figure in this value system, but flags popped up in unlikely locations in Myanmar, Hong Kong, Jakarta, the Philippines, and northern California. Those all tended to be red and green points, however, with the reds in Asia and the greens in North America. The yellow flags were mostly in China, especially Yunnan and so-called second-tier cities in the southwest and along the east coast, while a few clustered on the outskirts of Shanghai. I scratched my jaw, determined not to ask the obvious question: what the hell are you up to now? Instead I went at the issue crab-wise.

“That’s, ah, an awful lot of exposure to China.”

He nodded. “Correct.”

I stared at the map some more, wondering what the deeper meaning might be. Vikorn always has deeper meanings. It was only when I realized the deeper meaning was really a form of confession that I began to develop a fuller understanding. “You have a partnership with them?”

“Joint venture.” He shrugged. “They didn’t leave me any choice: joint venture or massive bust, abduction up north, bullet in the skull.” He scratched his jaw. “They think like me. What I didn’t understand is that with them the real business is all mixed up with politics. It’s like a merger: you grow but you lose control at the same time.”

I nodded, taking it all in. The Earth still looks beautiful on a map. I knew, though, that if one were to zoom in on any town or city and switch to camera view, the gorgeous electronic colors would disappear and the screen would show dormitory towns, pollution, shopping malls, and traffic jams no matter which country you chose; our planet these days is best viewed from space. “All this high-tech stuff-who’s running it for you?”

“I thought you’d never ask.” He paused in quizzical mode, then added, “But I’m sure you’ve already guessed.”

He picked up his cell phone, pressed a button, said, “Send her in,” and closed the phone. He threw me a tolerant smile to show me how far behind his my thinking was. Now there was a knock on the door and a young woman entered.

“I know you’ve already met, but let me make the introduction anyway,” Vikorn said. “Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep, this is Inspector Krom. Inspector Krom, this is Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep.” He turned to me. “Inspector Krom is our new head of technology,” he said.