John Burdett - The Bangkok Asset

“Accelerated learning enhancement? ALE has taken off already,” the Asset says, and everyone falls silent. “And by the way, you wouldn’t want me to remove my mask, would you?” He checks his watch. “Three minutes to go.”

Three minutes later the team has rolled the cadaver up and four men are lifting the tarp exactly at the moment a battered black Toyota Carryboy screeches to a halt outside. The six-foot roll is placed carefully in the back, the rear door closed and locked, the car squeals away-and I’m alone at the crime scene, which has been cleaned and tidied. Even the Asset has silently disappeared. I step out onto the marketplace and understand without a shadow of doubt that sometime over the past decade the world changed radically forever-but the event was top secret and may be classified for the next fifty years.

When I take out my phone I see it is three zero-five a.m. There is only one person I know who might just be awake at this time. But I don’t much care if she’s awake or not, I need to call her anyway. I press the autodial button and let it ring. She answers after about three minutes. I tell her what has happened.

“There in ten,” she says and hangs up.

–

The streets are pretty much empty except for a predawn garbage truck and some drunks in an alley with a flashlight. It takes Krom no more than ten minutes, as she promised, and now here she is in her own battered little white two-door. She has pulled on a pair of shorts and T-shirt. Close up in the front passenger seat I become aware of how muscular her legs are. They are elegant enough, but firm, like an athlete’s. She lets a couple of beats pass until we are half a mile away from the market area.

“So, you saw an HZ-a humanzee? I’m jealous.” I stare out of the window, watching the silent city go by, working my jaw. “Is it true that they’re too ugly to look at?”

“Yes,” I say.

“But is that because, you know, we’re just not used to seeing that kind of being?”

“The opposite. We’ve all seen them before, in our worst nightmares-something tells you: this is the future you’ve been running from all your life.”

“Tell me more, tell me everything.”

“ You tell me everything,” I say. “It’s time. You know a lot more than me. What is that creature? Who is that creature? How is that creature? Why is that creature? And why did you refer to the Asset as Messiah when you spoke to the FBI?”

“I’ve been promoted. Thanks to you. In the top circle we refer to the Asset that way. It’s the protocol. You’ll see.”

She flashes me a glance while she changes gear at an intersection. The glance resembles the way a woman might take a quick look at a cake baking in an oven, to see if it’s done yet. “Okay,” she says. “Okay. But you must have guessed most of it.”

We have come to a set of red lights. Stopping is optional at this time of night, especially for cops, but she brakes anyway, her hands resting on the steering wheel. “The new technology is not expected to change the way wars are fought. In the future, security will mean controlling and suppressing the have-nots of a global economic system that has collapsed. For that you need transhumans: THs. According to all the experts, that is the most economic and probably the only way of doing the job. A TH can wait like a sleeper until needed, collecting information on neighbors, friends, and employers, then use his or her special skills in conjunction with conventional security services when revolutions start. A TH has no loyalty to any normal human because a TH is a superior order of life. In a riot one trans could hold off as many as ten rioters indefinitely, but it’s exponential. Ten THs could hold off not a hundred but a thousand, by acting in perfect coordination. The problem all along was how to inject enough ferocity in the product without having a rogue mutant on your hands. It became a problem of personality.” She flashes me a look. “Which is kind of funny, if you think about it.”

“Why?”

“Because from the military point of view, the personality is one of those little vanities that only nonmilitary wimps worry about. That’s what threw them fifty years ago in Vietnam. It’s what drove Goldman crazy and the reason why he teamed up with Dr. Christmas Bride. You’ve guessed that, right?”

“Through a glass darkly.”

“So Goldman took the children of those spaced-out vets who were born at the camp. But he screwed up. That’s one of the things most freaked Richard Helms, who was running the CIA at the time: records of disastrous interventions with children. No wonder he blatantly destroyed the files right in the middle of the inquiry. Dr. Bride’s point was that the human personality is the product of a hundred thousand years of evolution based on archetypes: what our forefathers called gods. Although we like to be cynical about it, those dead deities are actually very important to our functioning, like enzymes in digestion. We simply don’t want to be a part of the world if we can’t dream about transcending it. What he gave to those kids was the transcendent. And it worked. You’ve met the Asset. For many in the transhuman community he is the most accomplished, advanced being on the planet.”

“You really believe he’s Jesus Christ?” I mutter in disbelief. I had not realized how much I had come to rely on her cynicism.

“He is,” Krom says, that incongruous tone of reverence in her voice, the same she used when talking to the FBI. “You just have to see it right, as a historical mandate.”

“He also kills people, scares the shit out of them, plays with their emotions.”

“You can’t make omelets without breaking eggs. Save your judgmentalism. How was he tonight?”

“Functioning perfectly.”

“See? That’s what I’m getting at. In a dangerous fix with an HZ killer who could easily take out a dozen trained men, he functioned perfectly.”

“Maybe you should fill me in on the HZs,” I said.

“Look at it like this: transhumans are the only way to go. Americans and Russians both experimented in the last century, failed, and in the American case caused a huge scandal. Naturally, the experiments continued in the USSR based on Professor Ilya Ivanov’s work with apes, and the Americans continued with vets and volunteers in secret in various locations, mostly in Southeast Asia. Both had breakthroughs at the same time. Both found the funding to be difficult since it was extremely expensive and officially was not happening. The country that most needs to bolster its internal security is China, with a population that soon will reach nearly two billion. China has a minor TH program of its own based on chemicals, but is way behind the other two. The PRC is very interested in breeding transhumans rather than producing them through specially designed drug regimes they already have, most of which were sold to them by Dr. Christmas Bride. They let it be known they would be interested in buying into someone else’s research, which means Russia’s or America’s, but they need reassurance that the assets produced by such a program are stable and reliable. So Russia and America are in competition. The one who succeeds in selling to China will inevitably grow close to the PRC, with all the commercial and economic benefits that implies. They will also receive a massive injection of nonstate funding from sale of the system. Naturally, the U.S. doesn’t want Russia to be close to China, and Russia doesn’t want the U.S. to be close to China, and neither party wants the other to race ahead thanks to an injection of billions of tax-free nonaccountable dollars. There’s more than just commerce at stake.”

“So the competition is fierce and deadly.”