John Burdett - The Bangkok Asset

Inside, it is a typical local shop house, with cheap electrical and household goods for sale on the ground floor, family accommodation upstairs. I am thinking this is not like any rescue I can remember. Everyone is focused on the body of the perp.

Two shots from marksmen waiting in ambush inside the house have brought him down. Their guns are propped up against a wall, high-tech and capable of firing exotic shells. The body on the floor with two big holes in it has everyone’s attention, but no one wants to preempt the Captain. He is behind me as we enter; I am aware of everyone looking toward us.

“Listen up,” the Asset commands. “The three scientists-using our color coding that’s Drs. White, Black, and Pink-will have exclusive use of the body for exactly eight minutes for preliminary research. Sergeants Purple and Violet, you did the shooting, you stay with the doctors in case they have questions. During that time, the women lieutenants, that is, Gray and Cream, will form the first line of resistance: anyone coming within fifty yards of ground zero is warned off. Use polite feminine firmness on local people, any nonlocals are to be treated with suspicion. Your line is: Please accept our apologies, we are protecting American government property for the moment, and we will release the area in less than ten minutes. Soldiers Brown, Blue, and Charcoal, you are the second line of defense. No outsider gets to look at this body. Lethal force is authorized as a last resort. At the end of eight minutes an old black Toyota covered van will arrive. Do not shoot at it. It will be traveling fast. If you keep to the timing, at the moment when the body is being rolled up in the tarp, the van will arrive, and the body will be placed in the back of the van, which will drive off. There will be no American personnel within a hundred yards of ground zero after two minutes of the van being gone. Understood?”

The Asset in this mode has a natural authority. Everyone holds him in awe; at the same time, he is polite and friendly. I cannot tell if this group has worked with him before or if they have come together for this case alone. He is so polished in his performance, so much the highly trained pro, that his people simply follow his orders. The three scientists do not wait but instantly start on an examination of the body. I’m left wondering if this Captain really is the crazy I had lunch with only days ago. I think the Asset tonight is neither acting a part nor being himself; I think transhumans learn to select personalities to fit with the moment and cover the void that way. Like humans, only more so.

Blood-splatter patterns and large dark deposits on the floor show how the perp was shot twice before he could reach the girl: I think the first shot was a hollow-nose bullet of large caliber, and the second an exploding bullet that destroyed his chest. He lies facedown with arms and legs spread in classic shot-man position, his face pointed away covered by a forearm and invisible to me, his bright blond hair catching the light.

Sorry, R, it looks as if I’ve misled you: I’ve been wrong all along. He didn’t do it after all. I turn to the Asset and say in disbelief, “It really wasn’t you who killed Nong X here in the market ten days ago?” Not the most elegant question I’ve ever asked; he graciously ignores it.

“Let’s get this straight,” Dr. Pink, a woman, says to the gunmen. “You shot him through the gut with a hollow-nose round?”

“A JHP, ma’am, jacketed hollow-point forty-five with high-velocity propellant. Right through, hit his spine round about L1 or 2, but he kept coming on. No point giving him a warning. Something like that, you don’t give margin, you just shoot while you’re still alive. Sergeant Violet then hit him with an HE, ma’am.”

“HE?”

“High Explosive, ma’am.”

“I had no choice,” the other shooter said. “Never seen anyone recover from a JHP before.”

“I’m not interested in legality, soldier,” Dr. Pink says in a gravel voice. “It’s the technology that’s sending green balls down my pants leg.”

“Me, too, ma’am,” Dr. Black says. “He was still walking after you cut his spine in half?”

“Still running.”

The three scientists kneel over the body. “Damn it, will you look at this.”

“It’s a graphene sheath,” Dr. Pink says. “I saw it right off.”

“They’ve learned how to encase the nerves in graphene?”

“Might be worse than that,” Dr. Black says.

“Yeah, that thought crossed my mind too,” Dr. White says.

“How’s that? What could be worse than that they’ve worked out how to encase nerve fibers in graphene sheaths?”

“That they’ve worked out how to make the nerve fibers out of graphene rods,” Dr. Pink says. “That they’re about a decade ahead in nanotechnology.”

“Oh,” Black says. “Oh no. That is bad news, if it’s true. That puts us way behind.”

“Of course we’re way behind,” Pink says. “They get to do vivisection on humans. If they let us do that, we’d be ruling over America’s second empire by now with the world at our feet. It would be 1945 all over again.”

“Yes, but with that kind of progress they must suffer a failure rate of two in three.”

“Either you have Darwinian capitalism or you don’t,” Dr. Pink says, probing around inside the carcass. “I bet ol’ Polonium doesn’t lose any sleep over his casualties. He would probably use Chechens anyway.”

“Is it true that Polonium himself has been enhanced?”

“I heard that. I don’t know if it’s an urban myth or not. All that superman junk he’s into, though…maybe.”

“And if Polonium is in deep now, you can bet the rest of the world apart from the U.S. and Western Europe will be doing it in ten years’ time.”

“So we find ourselves at the end of the food chain and have to play catch-up. So we have to break the rules in the end anyway and everyone gets to call us hypocrites.”

“Our people do some cheating too,” White says as he examines the abdominal cavity. “On the quiet. You know that. What the Corporation won’t allow is vivisection on human children, because the scandal if it broke would close them down. Comparisons would be made with Hitler and Mengele. That’s where these guys beat us every time. They don’t worry about a free media.”

“I know that,” Dr. Pink says. “We have this taboo, but we’ll have to break it sooner or later. Kids don’t necessarily suffer as a result of the research. Anyway, who in hell would ever find out? This program is SECRET, in capitals. I had to go through five hoops, they tapped my phone, talked to my friends and colleagues and everyone who’s known me since high school, followed me around for six months-and that was just to get on the consultancy list. I’ve had five different identities in as many days, and tonight I am Dr. Pink. No, no, nobody is ever going to bust us. Not only does the President not know about what we do, ninety-nine percent of the CIA have never heard of it.”

“Well, they put us all through the same rigor. The military isn’t subtle, but the money’s good.”

“You got that right. Why do you think I’m here? I earn more in three days than I get in a year on civil research projects.”

“Anyway, going back to what you were saying, you’re right, the kids don’t suffer at all for the most part. You start to put synthetic cable in a kid’s spine at age about seven, by age seventeen you have a superman with an unbreakable back. Where’s the suffering?”

“Like this one,” Black says. “Shot through the spine with a hollow-nose and he was still walking. We’re gonna have fun with the reverse engineering here. I’d sure like to know how they did it.”