John Burdett - The Bangkok Asset

Goldman [in an okay, I’ll come clean tone of total despair, as if he is coughing up his own guts]: Bride double-crossed us.

[Silence]

Control [in a tone expressing disgust and disbelief]: Bride? The wizard himself? Do you have any idea how many wonderful, laudatory, praise-my-man memoranda and minutes you-you personally, G8-have placed on record throughout four decades precisely in order to keep that jungle shaman on the case when others were in favor of eliminating him, in the old-fashioned sense of the word?

Goldman: I know. I know that. I also told you he is a genius. And a Brit. The combination produces eccentricity like you wouldn’t believe. He made his Asset an expert on Italian cuisine, classical arts, and the French Revolution-and just about every goddamn religion under the sun. An Asset designed for essentially military operations, yet. And who can tell in advance what direction a man will take thirty, forty, fifty years down the track? Nobody, nobody on this earth thought the thing would take this long.

Control: I’m with you there. Looked at objectively, you could say this program is even older than you. About eighty years since those maniacs Dulles and Gottlieb started on this Frankensteinian extravaganza. [Wearily] So, tell me about your problem with the Brit nut job.

Goldman: I don’t think he has any intention of selling to China. He’s letting the Asset kill the deal.

[Long pause]

Control: How’s that?

Goldman: A truckload of small things, hints.

Control: For Christ’s sake, man.

Goldman: Okay, I can’t prove it and I don’t have the evidence, but I think the Old Man programmed his Asset, as in deep, deep psychic penetration, long before he handed him over to us.

Control: Well, now at least I understand why you’ve been quiet about your doubts up to now. You mean you’ve connived knowingly or unknowingly with a total con, a half-century long, during which time the Company spends untold millions on a project which is preprogrammed to revert to the use of a private person who is not even a U.S. citizen? Is this call a request to take out the Brit?

Goldman: Not specifically. What I need you to think about is this. Like you say, this thing has been going on too long. The Brit is already a billionaire and he’s damned old. He discovered a lot of stuff in the jungle, not just hallucinogenics. I think he can keep himself alive for at least another decade, maybe more. He’s like a Celtic magus-weird but successful.

Control: So?

Goldman: So, why would he content himself with being the midwife to a revolution that will change the way governments govern and control population worldwide?

Control: Why not? Doesn’t sound like a humble role to me.

Goldman: Because his intention is to rule that world himself. I tell you he’s deep and European-he doesn’t think utilitarian or democratic. And he doesn’t need money. Like you said, he’s a billionaire already thanks to the private chemical programs he sold to China.

Control: You’re going vague on me again, G8.

Goldman: He thinks the greatest motivating factor today, and certainly for tomorrow, for the whole of humanity, is a search for meaning.

Control: Search for meaning? What, he’s reverting to his hippie days?

Goldman: You could say he never stopped thinking that way. He was brought up religious. His main point is that what people want is a new god. Culturally and psychologically the global situation is almost identical to that of Palestine and the eastern Mediterranean two thousand years ago under the Romans.

Control [bemused]: Yeah?

Goldman: Apparently it was total chaos, with new cults sprouting up all over the place. The search for meaning was universal and a powerful political force in itself. Apparently even a lot of Roman soldiers became Christians, even while he was alive.

Control: Who was alive?

Goldman: Jesus fucking Christ.

Control [sounding interested]: So what if that is true today as it was two thousand years ago, which it might be. What does it have to do with the price of false tits? What does the Brit magus intend to do?

Goldman: Send his only begotten son to take over. The only one left, anyway. Same as last time.

Control [disgusted]: You need a vacation, G8. You need a long vacation.

Goldman: You’re cutting me loose? That’s a death sentence, you know that?

The line is cut.

So I’m in the canteen at the station grabbing my evening meal, holding the phone to one ear listening to the Colonel while I’m loading up a plastic plate with pad Thai, and at the same time there’s a bleep that tells me that I’ve just received a message, but I don’t know my phone well enough to risk checking the message while the Chief is talking for fear of cutting him off.

“But that’s Satorn,” I’m saying, “that’s not District 8. I have no authority to investigate.”

“I know. But it’s a special address. I’m not saying more over the phone. Inspector Krom is already there. Let’s say you’re both to give specialist counseling without taking over the case.”

So now I’m forgetting the pad Thai and leaving my plastic plate on the counter, rushing through the swing doors and down the steps to the street trying to decide which would be quicker, a cab or a bike, and thinking Satorn is a long way on a bike but there’s so much traffic on Sukhumvit I could be sitting in the cab for an hour so I decide on the bike and stride to the end of the bike line and tell the jockey where to go and he doesn’t want to go that far because it encroaches on other bikers who are known to protect their patch with ferocity and knives so I have to promise to pay him double as danger money and we’re on our way before I remember the message on the phone:

How can one as talented as I ever consent to be a mere soldier or policeman? I felt degraded in front of you the other night. What in heaven’s name were they thinking when they tried to bend me that way? Don’t they know by now how negatively I react to such indignities? I put up with it, then when I can’t stand it anymore…

If you don’t know, Sakagorn’s principal residence is off Soi Langsuan, and Bully Boy Goldman’s is on Soi 24, Sukhumvit, which I think you once visited. I have tried to amuse you with a reference or two to Caravaggio: a brute but a genius for whom I have a soft spot. You will see immediately how well I have channeled his Goliath. For the lawyer, though, how could I not reference that propagandist David? (I do so adore teasing you with clues, it’s such fun.) Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow.

A lot of the houses on Sakagorn’s soi are of the old-style wedding-cake type, built by millionaires before the local rich learned to imitate the international rich and built super-modern homes designed by hip international architects. Most, though, are large mansions pretty much in the European high-bourgeois style: complex and elegant roofs, gables, five-car garages, plenty of bedrooms, attached guest cottages de rigueur, CCTV everywhere, guards and electronic gates. No prizes for guessing which is Sakagorn’s; the road outside is already blocked with police vehicles and media rats with video and sound equipment. Black cables thick as anacondas lead to humming vans. A female reporter for one of the local channels is talking into one of the cameras, holding a microphone. When she sees me she tells the viewers the “famous detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep has just arrived,” then she calls out. I smile automatically, shake my head and mime, Not my patch. The cop at the gate presses a button. I squeeze past as soon as the gap is wide enough. The cop presses the button again and the gate closes behind me. What is that weird music?