Breathing Water: A Bangkok Thriller

12

You guys do this often?” Rafferty asks.

“Often enough,” says the man on his right, the one who spoke before.

“The driver must be built like a sumo wrestler. When he got in, it felt like the car was going to tip over.”

“You hear that?” the man asks in Thai. “A sumo wrestler.”

The man in front makes a sound that Rafferty identifies as a chuckle. Despite having read countless novels in which characters chuckle more or less continuously, this is the first time Rafferty has actually heard someone do it.

Rafferty says, “He chuckled.”

“He’s a merry soul,” says the man to his right.

“It’s important to be happy in one’s work,” Rafferty says.

“Do you always chatter like this when you’re frightened?”

Rafferty says, “I’d be frightened if you hadn’t put the hood on.”

“That just means we’re not going to kill you. It doesn’t mean we’re not going to beat the shit out of you.”

“When I’m frightened, I shut up,” Rafferty says.

After a moment of silence, the man to his right chuckles.

“You chuckled, too,” Rafferty says. “Did somebody teach all you guys to chuckle?”

“The chuckle,” the man to his right says, “is a perfectly acceptable form of laughter.”

“You speak very good English.”

They ride in silence for a few moments. Then the man says, “Here’s the problem: It doesn’t matter whether I like you. I’ll do anything to you that I’m told to do. Kill you without a thought. So go ahead and entertain us, but it won’t make any difference.”

Rafferty says, “Why waste good material?”

Down a ramp and over some speed bumps. The car stops, and a hand grasps Rafferty’s arm.

“Let’s go. And don’t suddenly get stupid.”

“I don’t suddenly get stupid,” Rafferty says, sliding across the leather. “I have to work up to it.”

A few short steps, a wait, and then a bell rings. Rafferty hears the doors slide open, and he’s guided in. The man says, “Use the key for express. No stops.” Rafferty counts his pulse as the elevator rises, not because he thinks it’ll be useful but because it seems to be the only information available. At the count of seventy-three, the elevator does a stomach-churning deceleration, and at seventy-seven it comes to a full stop. An amplified woman’s voice with a fruity, phony-upper-class British intonation, says, “Thirty-six.” Then she repeats it in Thai.

“Shit,” says the man who has been doing all the talking. “I forgot about that.”

Rafferty says, “I didn’t hear it in either language.”

“No, you didn’t. And you don’t mention it while you’re talking to the man, understand? If you want to get through the day alive, you’ll forget all about it.”

“It’s gone.”

“Good.” Hands take his elbows as the doors slide open and a wave of cold air rolls at them. “You’re going straight now. I’ll tell you when we’ve got to turn.”

Four turns later he is stopped. He hears a very faint tapping sound that could be fingers on a keyboard. Several keyboards. A secretarial pool? It’s easy to envision one of those big open rooms with chest-high walls. A secretarial pool, in the kind of office where a hooded man doesn’t invite speculation.

So an office suite. On the thirty-sixth floor of some building, almost certainly in the Sathorn district.

A door squeaks open to his right, and hands grasp his shoulders and turn him ninety degrees to point him toward it.

“Walk four or five steps directly forward and then stop. When you hear the door close, take the hood off.”

Rafferty counts off five steps, feeling thick carpet underfoot. The door closes with the same squeak. He removes the hood.

He is in a conference room. A single glance makes it clear that what is conferred about here is money, gobs and gobs of money. The table, at least sixteen feet long, is teak. It doesn’t look like a veneer. It looks like twelve hundred pounds of extremely valuable, endangered hardwood. Surrounding it are eight high-backed teak chairs with sky blue woven-silk cushions, the precise color of the carpet. Dead center in front of one chair is a bright yellow legal pad and a single ballpoint pen.

Other than the pad and pen, the surface of the table gleams empty except for a squat black high-tech object at one end, an obviously expensive Whole Geek Catalog item that looks to Rafferty like it might spring a set of pincers and decide to crawl across the table toward him. The walls, covered in a cream-colored fabric, host large rectangular pale patches, announcing where pictures or posters were probably removed for his visit. Near the top of the wall to his right are two small square windows: a projection booth.

Rafferty takes a couple of steps, and a tinny voice says, “Sit.” The voice comes from the techno-thing on the table, which Rafferty belatedly recognizes as a conference-call terminal. He glances up at the windows of the projection booth, but the glass is dark. Whoever is watching him is sitting well back in the gloom.

“Here, I assume.” Rafferty pulls out the chair in front of the legal pad and sits. “Listen,” he says. “I appreciate you sending the car and everything, but if this is about the book, you should know that I’m not going to-”

“Of course it’s about the book,” the man says. “I want it written immediately.”

Rafferty parrots, “You want it written.” He feels like a man who’s just been shown proof that two plus two is a subtraction problem.

“Beginning today. You’ll be paid a substantial advance, which will be transferred into your account at Thai Fisherman’s Bank, the Silom branch, in ninety minutes. It’s account 044-35-11966, is it not?”

“I’ll take your word.”

“Look under the legal pad.”

Rafferty says, “No.”

A pause, just long enough for Rafferty to swallow.

“Excuse me?”

“I’m not going to write the book.”

“You’re mistaken. You’re not only going to write it, you’re going to file regular reports on your progress. You’re going to share the chapters with us as you finish them. We’ll have suggestions. You will accept them.”

“It’s not going to get that far. I’m not going to write it. So, with that out of the way, you can go back to standing behind the screen and working the levers or whatever it is you do with your time.” He starts to get up.

“If you go through that door before I excuse you, you’ll have a very brief time to regret it.”

Rafferty analyzes the sentence for a moment and lowers himself back into the chair.

“Mr. Rafferty. Has someone told you not to write this book?”

“No. Actually, I’ve decided to write a children’s book. Mr. Bunny’s Bow Tie. It’s about a little rabbit who’s frustrated because her husband wants to wear bow ties and she can’t tie bows. You see, her paws-”

“And were there threats involved?”

“The problem is that rabbits don’t have fingers-”

“Against your wife and daughter, perhaps?”

Rafferty says nothing.

“I’ll take that as a yes. Two things you need to know. First, we can protect you and your family better than anyone else in Bangkok. Second, whatever you may have been threatened with, I promise you that it would be a feather bed compared to what we will do if you don’t cooperate with us.”

Rafferty realizes that he has crumpled the top sheet on the yellow pad.

“So let’s not waste time. Lift the legal tablet. Look beneath it.”

He does as he’s told, forcing his hands to be steady. He finds two sheets of paper, stapled together.

“Those are names,” the man says. “Most of those people will talk to you willingly. The book will also require some investigative work, nothing you can’t handle, judging from what you’ve already written. The last number, at the bottom of the second page, is the one you call to communicate with me. Is all that clear?”

What’s clear to Rafferty is that he needs to get out of the room. He can’t do anything until he’s out of the room. “What else?”

“Now and then we’ll have people watching you, just to make sure you’re giving us the time and energy we expect. Occasionally an addition to that list will probably occur to us, and we might call to tell you about it. Your cell phone number is 012-610-2230, isn’t it?”

Cell phones aren’t listed. Rafferty says, “Don’t showboat.”

“This is Wednesday. You’ll get the advance in your account today. You’ll leave most of that in the bank. We’ll know how much you withdraw, down to the last baht. We don’t want you running around with so much cash it gives you stupid ideas. I’ll expect the initial report on Monday, and it will be substantial if you don’t want things to get uncomfortable. Your family will be under continuous surveillance, which you should find reassuring.”

“Not exactly.”

“Well, you’re right. It’s a two-edged sword. But as long as you’re doing what you should, they’ll be better protected than the prime minister.”

“And when this is over,” Rafferty says, “how do I find you?”

“You won’t have to worry about that. If you’re foolish enough to try, we’ll find you.”

Rafferty says, “I’ll look forward to it.”

“Don’t waste energy being angry. You have work to do.”

“So,” Rafferty says, holding up the two pages, “I take these with me?”

“Of course not,” the man says. “You copy the information onto the legal pad and take it away in your own handwriting. And you leave the pen on the table.”

“I like the pen.”

“Fine. One of my men will buy a box of them and then, when no one is in your apartment, he’ll pick your locks and put them on your daughter’s pillow. That’s the bedroom to the left of the front door, I believe. Before you get to the bathroom.”

Rafferty sits for a long moment, feeling the blood pound in his ears. Then he picks up the pen and begins to write.