John Burdett - The Bangkok Asset

“They’ve drugged you, they must have done. This isn’t you talking.”

“But this is me. I just dumped my liberal left-wing conscience with all its bullshit. It’s time, Sonchai, it’s high time. We did our best. As it happens we are smarter than the rest and don’t deserve to rot with the masses. We are just not second-class people. Let’s be real here.”

“What you’re actually saying is you can’t love me if I don’t become a mutant?”

Our voices have been rising and my last remark was almost a shriek. It caught us both off balance. The M word in particular carries quite a kick.

She glares at me, her lower lip trembling. “Then I’ll have the implants myself. They’ve offered. I don’t have your talent, your genes, the operation could kill me or send me to a mental hospital, but I’m willing to give it a try, anything to get off this dirty, stunted, petty, squalid, empty level we live on.”

We are a bloody, glaring couple now, fresh out of words to yell. In the silence I see that she has expressed her base values as a human being-and for me the disappointment is distilled bitterness. Without a hint of drama I turn, leave the room, and close the door behind me. Depression hits.

At the top of the double staircase I look down on the polished marble of the ground floor and the two figures who have appeared there. They are waiting near the bottom of the staircase, too polite to look up. I descend slowly. Very slowly. This is the dead point, after all, the evisceration. I am quite sure I have nothing left with which to resist. No soul’s night gets any darker than this. I hardly have the strength to walk.

They wait until I’ve reached the last step before locking eyes with me. I surmise from the way they examine me that they are deeply interested in my mental state. Have they gone too far in presenting me with grim truths about life on earth and the future of man? Or not far enough? The transfusion of one form of consciousness with another is a delicate task, apparently. They step back to assess me for a moment, then point to three armchairs set together in the middle of the hall. Dr. Christmas Bride, with that extraordinarily mobile face that endlessly processes every human thought and emotion from Adam to Mickey Mouse, is wearing a cream tropical two-piece suit with white flannel shirt and a lemon silk cravat.

He says in that charming Brahmin accent, “Sonchai, my dear fellow, how wonderful to see you again. Have you been well?” His handshake is warm while mine is limp. “Shall we make ourselves comfortable?”

We sit in a circle of three. I have no idea why I am playing their game now, except that I’m too empty to think.

Up close to the Doc, I become aware that this is not quite the same charming old Brit I spent time with in the jungle. I suspect him of ascending to level seven.

“The Spirit rules,” Dr. Christmas Bride says in a solemn voice, as if saying grace.

“Amen,” the Asset says. I don’t know if Bride is on LSD or not; I am certain, though, that the demon of Angkor has taken him over.

The Doctor smiles faintly while he takes out a packet of Camel cigarettes, fits one to his ivory holder, and lights up. “We are all truly sorry that your final initiation should involve heartache, but that’s the way it is for everyone in the end. To be entirely free we must all break-and break utterly-from the endless torments of biology.” He stares into space. “You think you love your wife, but you are advanced enough to be aware of the illusion. What does woman mean to you? A false promise that with enough groveling and emotional dependence you will, somehow, acquire intermittent rights of readmission to amniotic bliss. Do I need to tell you that the price is your freedom and your manhood? You are very smart, but even you have a problem relinquishing that fallacy.” He stops, nods at something invisible, then starts again. “Our path is merciful, however. You can have her back-is that not so?”

The question is addressed to the Asset.

“You can have everything you want, dear one-practically everything at all. Money, enhancements, fame, longevity, that woman or some other woman. For the enhanced shall inherit the earth-is that not so, Father?”

Bride nods.

“So why me?”

“Your genes,” Bride says.

“Because Jesus Christ is my half brother?”

“Sort of,” Christmas Bride says with a smile. “You see, he alone survived of all the original…ah…”

“Lab rats?”

He coughs. “If you will. But the point is the genes. He and all your half siblings were uniquely gifted with regard to the program.”

“But you killed all the others by pushing them too far?”

“Brother, they were incredibly smart,” the Asset says. “Way ahead of all the others. Our father’s genes must have something special they haven’t been able to locate yet.”

“So, why-”

“Adolescence,” Bride says, taking a toke on the Camel. “You may think me a brute, but I assure you I did all I could. Mid- to late teens is inherently unstable-I took every possible precaution. Don’t you think I wanted them to live more than anything in the world? Your brothers and sisters were all brilliant, like you, and in much the same way, a speed of apprehension that one can enhance with the most modest of surgical inserts. They possessed a latent talent that the others could not come close to. Of course, it is deeply regrettable they could not carry those gifts through to adulthood-the transition from prodigy to mastery is notoriously difficult, only five percent make it in any profession.”

“So why would I-”

“Because you have the stability of a grown man. You could pass the program with flying colors, you’re so clever and amazing,” the Asset says.

All the time I feel the intensity of their combined psychic focus, like a steel band tightening around my skull. When I cease to respond, we sit in silence for a minute, then the Asset leaves his throne to stand behind my chair and embrace me. I twist around and he gives me a big dopey smile that would be pathetic on anyone less sinister.

“I understand your reluctance, brother,” he says. “Do you know I have my doubts, too? And I’m changing, changing, changing. You wouldn’t believe the worlds upon worlds that open up, once the ALE kicks into high gear. I do believe I’m entering the realm of the divine. I’m receiving visions of flawless four-dimensional symmetry, it’s like living inside perfect crystals, gateways to a higher heaven. I really don’t think I want the job anymore-I mean the Messiah thing. Too much admin.” He sighs. “But karma is karma, is it not?” He caresses my head and chucks my cheek. “We could ramp you up into Buddhahood in a year, isn’t that so, Doc?”

Bride smiles and nods. “It’s just a case of tweaking the inserts.”

It is difficult to convey the effect the Asset is having on my head while he stands behind me. He is very charming in this mood, and quite comical with his crack about too much admin, but it’s the dynamic disconnect that somehow penetrates to the medulla oblongata. I am being seduced by a killer clown, a sociopathic god on the Greek model who must win not because he is good but because he is of a higher order of being: quite irresistible. All the while he is smiling and teasing there is a relentless will bending my mind. I cannot help remembering that moment in the tennis ball video when he turned demonic with an ugly expression on his face before he mastered the game. And he is invisibly supported by the others, including Chanya, who form a kind of chorus in my head, adding their silent wills to his. I remember the young man in the boat at the beginning of all this: a Thai boy who killed his mother under just such relentless pressure. Now the Asset stands in front of me and fixes his gaze on the area of my navel and I’m racking my brains for a way out of here.