John Burdett - The Bangkok Asset

“But the killings?”

“Dy yang sia yang,” he says in a perfect Thai accent. Roughly translated: You can’t make omelets without breaking eggs. “If I killed them, it must have been the will of God, mustn’t it? The Doc and I talked about that a lot. ‘Transcend killing by turning it into an art form,’ he advised. ‘Everyone has to die, but not everyone dies in the form of a handcrafted masterpiece-think of your victims as privileged to be killed by you. Above all, the Messiah is an artist.’ ”

“Dr. Christmas Bride said that?”

“Mm, when he was on acid, the old devil.” He gives me a grand smile. “Anyway, I don’t do violence anymore, I’m bored with it.”

“Since when?”

“Since I killed Sakagorn and Goldman. Just one little murder of the right person in the right place at the right time did the trick. What a liberation! My evolution has speeded up, just as the Doc predicted. You must have noticed. In a couple of months I’ll be the type who bursts into tears at the sight of a dead sparrow. But there is one thing I owe you, isn’t there? One more gesture before I slouch over to Bethlehem to be reborn.”

“What’s that?”

“This,” the Asset says, and reaches behind his head to remove his graphene mask. It is a striptease: slowly a wide brow emerges, then eyebrows, then the eyes…He completes the unveiling with a quick pull, and now, finally, I am looking into the face of the devil, who could also be Christ. I cover my mouth. “Oh, no!”

It is simply too much. The poor mind eternally misled by everything thanks to the myth of the normal, the ordinary, is now confronted by the impossible, the extraordinary-and does its best to turn off. I’m holding on to the swing, white-knuckled with stress, wonder, and horror, for it is the face of Dr. Christmas Bride ! Not, to be sure, aged eighty-plus, but that Bride of the ancient photo taken with a Kodachrome more than fifty years ago: young, godlike, brilliant, and mad.

“God made me in his own image,” the Asset says, a tad forlorn. “I’ve never shown anyone before, only you and the Doc know. What do you think?”

“How did he do it? Plastic surgery isn’t that advanced. Are you sure that’s not another mask under the mask?”

“Genius always finds a way,” he says, still in that slightly doubtful tone. He shrugs, smiles, and replaces the graphene mask. Just then the doorbell rings.

“Ah!” he says.

We return to the house and he uses a remote to open the front door. Footsteps in the hall.

–

I am able to guess who it is, for the occasion, which is religious, calls for a specific kind of devotee, one whose dedication is blind and therefore absolute.

“Matthew,” the Asset says with a smile. “On time as usual.”

The FBI is not Thai and yet he offers that most perfect expression of local devotion known as the high wai. He raises palms pressed together as high as his forehead and smiles at the Asset with uncritical adoration that seems to say, Kill me if it be your pleasure, I will never know a greater god than you.

Or something like that. It’s a little embarrassing, but also impressive. He gives me the high wai, too, I guess to acknowledge me as God’s half brother. This is heady stuff. I find my imagination channeling what one knows about the origin of churches: a small group of dedicated followers with a message so powerful it redirects humanity. The sort of community, in other words, that pariahs like me never join. The Asset flashes me a look as if he knows what I’m thinking.

“Matthew,” he says and puts an arm around the FBI, “there’s one special little thing I’d like you to do for me, right now. I want you to tell my dearly beloved brother your story-in that succinct lawyer’s way of yours. Just the essential parts. He is a very quick study, essentials only will do.”

I do not think the moment has been rehearsed; it didn’t need to be. Fanatics have only one song to sing, and they don’t need much prompting.

“I was lost,” the FBI confesses. “A man, my father, escapes the corrupt, criminal, despotic, repressive police state of China and lands in the corrupt, criminal, despotic, repressive police state of the USA. What formula for survival does he pass on to his son? It is this: Above all, be impeccable in your hypocrisy, let not a drop of the human seep out of the polythene with which you have packaged yourself. Replace affection with Teflon, love with ambition, fairness with ruthlessness, the milk of human kindness with the acid needed to burn your way to the top. And never let your agony show. ”

He pauses and gives a quick glance to the Asset, who nods, smiling.

In a trembling voice the FBI continues: “This was excellent advice. Without it I never would have lasted. But what is the use of lasting? As the spirit was slowly crushed in me, it responded by burning all the hotter. I was sure I would explode. I became fascinated by stories of young men who stockpile firearms before their terrible coming out. I recognized a godseed in me that was violated with every conforming thought or act, that was drowning in the superficial. No matter how much the world rewarded me, I condemned me for the coward and slave I had become. But where was the real message? Who was speaking words of truth? Who had the strength and the vision to show the way out?”

He stops shyly. There is great courage and sensitivity in the way he forces himself to look at me with tears in his eyes. “I once was lost but now I’m found,” he says and turns away.

I see in him what, I suppose, most people would see: a man, no longer exactly young, who has chronically failed to find love. My mind flashes to my darling, if wayward, Chanya. Compared to him, I am lucky.

“See what I mean?” the Asset whispers to me out of the corner of his mouth. “See the hunger that drives him? There are billions burning in silence just like that. Humanity festers in its clingwrap.”

Now the Asset says something to the FBI. The FBI nods, shakes his head to clear it, and smiles at me with evangelical warmth.

“Matthew will take you to see some friends who will help with your initiation,” the Asset says. He turns on his heels and abruptly returns to the garden.

I have become used to sudden changes in my half brother; this is the first time he has been quite so open in his arrogance, like one who perceives that the need for patience and civility is almost over. Like a man whose time has come.

I do not recall consenting to any initiation; nevertheless, I follow the FBI out of the house and sit next to him in the back of the sky-blue Rolls-Royce. The driver knows where to go, and within about ten minutes we arrive at the old Siamese house on stilts in the middle of the jungle of high-rises. During the ride I send SMSs to Chanya and try to call her several times, but as before there is no reply. The first, sly suspicion that the Asset has sent me away from him so that he can abduct her enters my vulnerable heart.

Matthew waits in the limo while I climb the stairs to the front door. I have no doubt all has been arranged and choreographed and that Krom will answer.

The door does open on the first press of the bell, but it is Madame Gloria Ching who opens it. Her eyes stare sightless at the sky while she sniffs me. We wai each other politely and she invites me in.

“You’ve just missed Krom, who popped out on an errand,” she says in those hyper-English tones and adds a smile as she leads me clicking down the corridor.

“I don’t believe you,” I say, mimicking her smile.

The contradiction startles her for a moment, then she relaxes. “Of course, I should remind myself, a detective is not an ordinary human being.” She turns her blind eyes to me and breathes deeply. “You’re right, it was decided that I would have a few words with you first.”