John Burdett - The Bangkok Asset

“Running,” the gunman says, as if he has an inner need to keep repeating the story. “Running at full speed. I guess he was about a yard from me when I hit him with an exploder full in the chest and he finally went down. I was sweating it, I can tell you.”

“Well, let’s turn him over, let’s see how well they’ve done here.”

The body it seems is quite heavy. It takes the three of them to turn it over so the face is staring at the ceiling. We all groan, myself more loudly than anyone. I cannot believe it.

“Wow!” Pink says.

“They’re winning,” White says. “As good as won, I would say.”

“Will you look at that?”

Everyone in the room is constantly switching their attention between the creature on the floor and Captain Asset.

“Damn it!”

“Can you believe it?”

Dr. White is so shocked he wants to check with me, as if I am a fellow scientist. “Have you ever seen anything like that?” he asks, stabbing his finger toward the Asset then back again at the creature on the floor.

“No,” I say. “Never.”

The Asset also is transfixed. The face of the perp is a perfect replica of his own, as is the near-white hair and the crew cut. “Does it come off?”

“It must,” Dr. Pink says. “He sure wasn’t born like that.”

“It probably fits by suction or glue,” Black says.

The Asset kneels beside it. “I’m going to touch it,” he says.

“No gloves?”

“No. I did a program. I can tell what material it is, skin to skin. Yes, a graphene trellis,” he says, caressing the dead one’s cheek. “I think they’ve grown skin and hair follicles on top of it.”

Dr. Black examines further, wearing surgical gloves. “I think you’re right, Captain.”

Pink shakes her head. “If they’ve gotten that far, they’ve as good as won the contract,” she says. “We can only do masks using the living original. We can’t copy or imitate like this in graphene-they must have done it from photographs. Probably thousands of pictures fed into a software program to get this kind of accuracy. We can’t model this material at all except on a living face, that’s way beyond our capabilities at this point in time.”

“So they’ve won already,” Black says.

“Except for the control thing,” White says.

“We don’t even know that,” Pink says. “This HZ is not here on a private debauch. This baby came here tonight for commercial sabotage-right, Captain?”

“Correct,” the Asset says, “to discredit me. The Russian lobby in Beijing have already started a campaign. I’m an uncontrollable child murderer, a tearer-apart of innocent kids, an undisciplined mutant.”

A certain frisson passes through the group. I guess only the Asset is allowed to use the M word.

“The control thing was our best selling point-now they’re using it against us?”

“Sure,” the Asset says. “We would do the same. Three years ago they nearly clinched a deal with the ministry, until we pointed out how bloodthirsty these guys are. And how ugly. Now they’re turning it around.”

“That mask, though. It worries me a lot more than the unbreakable spine. I haven’t studied it yet, but from what I’ve seen, there can be no doubt they are way ahead in the manipulation and shaping of graphene. You all see the implications, right?”

“If that mask can pass a standard isometric test, which it probably can, and they already know how to fake fingerprints and DNA, which they do, then say goodbye to identity. Sure, they’re ahead of us. We can’t impersonate like that-we wouldn’t even know where to start.”

“Face is everything. If someone can steal that, you’re done. As a person and as a society. You produce a spy identical in every way to a spy on the other side, who behaves in every way like that spy, whose wife and kids are even fooled, who in the end actually becomes that other spy-so who in the world is who? You don’t just get social chaos, you get a full-blown psychic winter. People walking around in circles like broken toys.”

“You spent time in L.A. lately? What else is new?”

“Take it off,” the Asset says.

“Take off the mask here? Now?”

“Yes,” the Asset says. “Take it off now.”

The instruction has a strange effect. No one wants to be the one to take off the mask. “It is probably a full hood, including ears and eyes.”

“Including? Oh, man! I was thinking-”

“We saw it on the other example,” the Asset says. “They preserve the ear/eye nerves and cords, extend them and cut off the original organ, use a synthetic replaceable. Looks like they would have no trouble making ears and eyes out of graphene.” He jerks a chin at the team. “I need that information now,” he says. “Pull off the mask. Do it.”

Whatever is under the mask, even a seasoned team like this doesn’t want to see it. The Asset nods. “Amazing, isn’t it? Nobody can bring themselves to look. Only a freak can face a freak, right?”

He bends over the body again then plunges a hand down under the T-shirt at the back of the neck. “I was right, it is a full hood, stops just above the shoulders, I can feel the graphene trellis. Okay, I’m going to pull.”

He manipulates the material between a thumb and forefinger, as you would open a very thin plastic bag, then pinches something and starts to lift. The material is so fine as to be invisible at first, then as the light catches the dust and the Asset lifts farther, I cannot see but have to deduce a transparent sheet so thin it is two-dimensional, rising from the face. It is also very strong. He is holding the amazing material in a fist and pulling until some of the perp’s face has gone, but it is not possible to tell what lies underneath. The mask is stuck. Now I have some idea what to expect, and so do the others. We all move back as the Asset pulls harder. It will not come away, though, because the material is trapped under ears and eye sockets.

“Those will be artificial organs,” one of the team says. “You could probably pull them up with the mask. That graphene isn’t going to break, that’s for sure.”

The Asset pulls still harder, things pop. Now the mask is a tiny crumpled piece of material mixed up with two ears and two eyes embedded in it.

What lies underneath? R, you don’t want to know, really you don’t.

Okay, you do, but it’s hard to describe. If it were simply animal, it would be easier. If I could report to you that the new artificial humans are some godforsaken splicing of ape and man, with an ape head and long hairy arms and a British accent, etcetera, it would be easier for you to deal with. What we have, though, is definitely not animal. And it’s not human either. Neither is it a space alien. With a huge domed fishlike forehead, two high-tech cables for eyes and another two for ears, a thin face, cruel mouth, and a set of teeth like a baboon’s…No, R, I simply cannot do justice to it, because to describe the surface is to miss the point. When you look at it, you experience a feeling deep in your gut that the Neanderthals must have felt when they first set eyes on Homo sapiens: This hideous thing is smarter and more ruthless than us. This thing is taking over. There goes the neighborhood.

I must have started to talk to myself or mumble out of shock, because the rest of the team has stopped to look at me.

“It’s okay,” Dr. Pink says. “I was like that the first time.”

“Our whole species suffers from hubris because we have no experience of creatures mentally superior to ourselves. This is the beginning of payback,” Dr. White says.

“Imagine how a dog feels, having to live in a world full of humans with superior cunning and intellect who keep tricking and fooling and exploiting and tormenting it. Well, that’s how humans are going to feel when this thing takes off. When the artificial intelligence becomes self-evolving and independent of us.”