Grandad, There's A Head on the Beach

10.

As we were already in Pak Nam, I diverted us via the Internet shop. It was the worst possible time to be there. The place was crammed with Zelda warriors and online car-jackers and big-eyed Japanese searchers. We needed subterfuge, and my task force hounds needed exercise. Grandad Jah walked in first, like the head reservoir dog, and flashed his ID, putting it back in his pocket before anyone had a chance to notice it was his Lotus supermarket discount card. Arny and Waew fanned out behind him to make it look like a raid.

"All right. Everyone away from the computers," said Grandad.

Chair legs scraped and teenage arms rose.

"Who are-" began the owner.

"Haven't you been warned, son?" Grandad asked, looking rudely through the documents on the young man's desk. Waew began facing all the kids against the wall. Arny…looked menacingly uncomfortable.

"You think we don't monitor what goes on in places like this?" Grandad asked. "You want to see a list of all the illicit Web sites accessed from right here? Don't you know there are laws in place to prevent minors looking at filth and radical rantings?"

"I don't-" began the owner.

"No, you don't. But ignorance doesn't keep you out of prison, boy. Come on. Outside, the lot of you."

You'll notice Grandad hadn't actually claimed to represent any official body, but he had that presence. While everyone was marching out, I snuck inside and hijacked a computer that was already online.

Alb, I wrote. I desperately need an NGO working with Burmese that has some political and financial clout. Funding from overseas preferred. Urgent.

While I waited, I printed out Sissi's class lists on the communal printer. As I looked casually through them I noticed something odd about the names. Most of them were followed by an "m" or an "f" to denote gender. In the first semester, the Chaturaporn that Sissi had spotted on all Noy's lists was tagged as male. But in the second and subsequent semester, that had been changed to female. Given my own family history, it wasn't unthinkable that Mr. Chaturaporn had opted for gender reassignment, but I doubted anyone would leave a country with the best sex-change clinics in the world and go to Washington for a snip. It could have been a mere clerical error, but I'd get Sissi to follow up on it later. I was checking the weather forecast for the Gulf when Alb's reply arrived.

Contact Piper Porterfield at Hope for Myanmar, he wrote. I hear she's been sleeping with George Soros, the philanthropist. Lot of aid money to spread around for the Burmese cause. She's got nice tits too.

Men. Was there any hope for them? Fortunately, rather than a bra cup size, he'd added her phone number. I called. She picked up almost immediately.

"Piper."

I told her who I was, where I was, and what was happening. I didn't know whether she could speak Thai, so I did this in my pronunciation-challenged English. All the time she kept quiet, and I wondered whether she'd put the phone on her desk and gone out for dinner. But I kept going all the way to Sawee and the seven incarcerated Burmese.

"Can you hear me OK?" I asked.

There was a pause and a sound like the tap of a keyboard.

"Just the seven?" she asked.

I think I preferred her when she was quiet.

"Yes."

"It's just that that is rather small fry."

She had a Lady Di accent.

"Just how many people need to be kidnapped and killed before we can increase the size of the fry?" I asked.

"Thousands disappear every year," she said. "Refugees wiped out by the junta on their way to Thai camps. Children nabbed from construction site slums. And lots of et ceteras. I get reports such as yours every day. Your situation is every bit as tragic, of course, but the resources needed to resolve the matter would far exceed the benefits."

I didn't know whether I admired her honesty or hated her for it.

"Benefits obviously meaning something more important than keeping people alive," I presumed.

"Yes, look, I'm sorry. In my line of work I tend to trivialize death. It helps. The benefits I'm referring to are the factors which help to change world opinion. Burma has no natural oil to rescue from tyranny, so we have to rely on slowly creating a mood of outrage at the social level before we can hope for international intervention. Once we have political support, we may be able to save more lives than we can with a small police action in the forgettable south."

"I thought you had a budget for things like this."

"We do. But our directive is to maximize these situations. To take an issue and humanize it at an international level. Touch as many hearts as possible. We did a sea rescue once, but it was so isolated and over so quickly that we barely made a ripple in the world press. It was a very expensive failure."

I was punched numb for a few seconds. When I came around, I asked, "Do you have a counterpart at the Thai Police Ministry?"

"Certainly. We fund their Division of International Day Laborers."

With all that money you'd think they'd come up with something more catchy than DIDL.

"And what do they do there?" I asked.

"They distribute information to the press. Collect relevant reports from the police data bank."

"Any of them have guns?"

"What are you getting at? They're all qualified police officers."

"I mean, do they ever leave the office and go out and shoot people?"

"Not…no, not shoot. There are officers attached to the unit who are involved in casework."

"But they could be called upon if massive public outrage was being waged. They could rush to a scene if it was in the public eye and guaranteed a world audience?"

"I suppose…yes."

"Good. Then this conversation wasn't a complete waste of time. I'll get back to you."

The trouble with a cell phone was that if you slammed it down, you'd break your own jaw. It seemed the bigger the organization, the less they dealt with actual people. And don't even get me started on the UN. All I needed was a few thousand dollars for high-powered weaponry, and we could do the rest ourselves. Blow those slavers out of the Gulf. But no, I suppose that would be just too difficult for the silly cow to write up in the annual report.

I collected my printouts and my family and Captain Waew, abandoned all the street-bound nerds, and returned to the truck. We were on our own, tactically, but I didn't want to break that news to the task force. It was a desperately lonely feeling. Giving up suddenly felt like such a good idea. While Grandad drove us very slowly home through the drizzle, I looked around at my cohorts. Arny had joined up because he wanted to impress his girlfriend. Grandad and Waew were on board because they wanted to get revenge on a couple of hoods. None of us was particularly fond of the Burmese. Once the Viagra had worn off, I doubted I'd have any personal interest at all. So what was it? Why could I not shake this urge to do something suicidal? The rain smudged my side window, and I looked into its patterns. I saw the posturing of the rat brothers and the homophobic bullying of Lieutenant Egg, and I thought back to why I'd become a crime reporter. If the crooks were crooked and the cops were crooked, who was there left to bring justice to our corrupt world? Who could we respect? Where was the shoulder angel who twanged on the conscience of the undecided youth? Who else might argue that the words graft and dishonesty and selfishness were not necessarily inspirational? Who else but the press? That's why I'd become a journalist, and that's why I'd turned to crime writing. To shore up our flimsy status quo. To challenge the view that the bigger the crime the lower the chances of arrest.

Victims of trafficking and imminent execution shouldn't be on their own with no hero to fly in and rescue them. But out there on the high sea there were only the seagull and the prawn to witness the crime. It was a vast lawless outback. It was impossible for a criminal not to be overwhelmed by that feeling of invincibility. Who cared what he did?

Me.

I'm not sure anybody noticed that explosion of moral dignity inside the cab of the Mighty X. I felt it was time to inspire a team spirit.

"OK, everyone," I said. "Let's get serious. What do we have to go on?"

I'd forgotten all about the old boys and their afternoon detective work. As they hadn't mentioned anything I assumed they'd had no success with the Thai boat owners. So I was surprised when, with a twitch, Captain Waew said:

"Common opinion is that it's the Bangkok boats doing all the illegal stuff. There were two new concessions added out of the blue last year by senatorial decree, or whatever it's called. That means that despite long-standing agreements with the Fisheries department limiting the number of contracts, every now and then you get some influential figure handing out deals to this or that nephew or cousin. They'd lease big boats and take them deep into the Gulf. They'd reap as much profit as they could before the next election when the contracts were revoked by the next minister, who'd go on to replace them with his own relatives."

"Did you manage to get the names of any of the boats?" I asked.

"The contact didn't know any specifics, so I phoned the Department of Fisheries. They'll fax me a list of all the newly registered boats over the past year. The local trawler owners aren't at all happy about outsiders coming in, ignoring all the no-fishing zone markers, using dragnets over young coral and just generally making assholes of themselves. The big-boat captains that come from down here in the south, they aren't averse to bending the odd rule, but they've all learned from experience what overfishing has done to their industry."

"This might be a stupid question," I asked, "but isn't there anyone policing the sea at all?"

"I found an old seafarer who told me all about the Coastal Patrol," said Grandad. "Except he called them the

Postal Patrol. They have two boats to police an area of two thousand square kilometers. And they don't have much of a budget for fuel, so they rely on donations."

"Don't tell me," I said. "From big-boat owners."

"That would be correct."

"So if they don't go after the big boats, what do they do?"

"Splash around in the shallows hassling the small-boat fishermen, from what I can make out. Fine them for minor infringements."

"While the big boats break the law with impunity," said Waew.

"It all seems…I don't know…too big for us," said Arny. Never one to pass up an opportunity for pessimism.

"I think it's doable," I said.

"How?" asked Grandad, turning to give me a prolonged Grandad Jah glare, even though he was driving.

The Mighty X really shouldn't have had a back seat. The expression "4-Seater" was only a selling point. I suppose if you had two mine-victim passengers, it would be the perfect vehicle. But anyone with legs had to wrap them around the seat in front. With Arny taking up half the cab all by himself, we were an intimate foursome in that small space. You could smell the lack of confidence.

"I don't know what it is yet," I said. "But I know there has to be a way."

When we got back to the resort, the sea had retreated somewhat, but the Neo-Mekhong river out back was wide enough for paddle steamers to ply their trade. Only the side walls of the bridge were visible above the surface. A hundred years ago all this water would have found its way unimpeded to the sea, but idiots like our predecessors had built for sea views and filled the land and limited the runoff from the hills to ninety-centimeter pipe segments that burrowed under driveways and palm plantations and houses. Monsoon water didn't have that type of patience. If you've gotta go…

We parked the truck on the hump in the road fifty meters from the resort, and I splashed down to the kitchen. I was on dinner duty, of course. With the tide at its lowest, I no longer had to wade from the larder to the stove. The power had been off all day, so the menu was decided on what smelled best in the dark refrigerator. I was just one step ahead of putrefaction. The day's events had caused me to be absent for the Noys' return on the postal motorcycle earlier. I'd called Mair from the truck, and she told me the two had eaten sparingly and were sorry they'd tried to escape. So I decided to create an evening meal that was both nutritious and welcoming. Thankfully, gas was not subject to the whims of nature. I was halfway through my famous spicy ginger chicken when Sissi phoned.

"What's happening?" I asked.

"I'm into the semi-finals of the table tennis tournament. It appears it's one of those skills you never lose."

"I thought all your muscles had atrophied from years seated in front of a computer."

"You're so yesterday. For six months I've been seated in front of the computer on a stationary cycle. I've probably been to Shanghai and back since May. I had to get in shape for Seoul."

"You bored?"

"It isn't quite as intense as I'd hoped."

"Is your flight canceled?"

"Everybody's flight's canceled."

"Are you allowed to leave the airport?"

"They have a fleet of yellow-shirt shuttle buses. You can go anywhere you choose in Bangkok free of charge."

"So, why are you still there?"

"Where would I go in Bangkok? It's an awful place."

"You're still banking on having something to tell the grandchildren, aren't you?"

"I'm keeping a notebook diary. So far, the only excitement has been the barging and yelling from the disgruntled passengers and my table tennis victories. I might have to embellish."

"So, are you free now?"

"I have another match in twenty minutes. A baggage handler. Strong wrists. Lovely smile."

"All right. Never mind the table tennis. You remember the coverage of the Iraq war? A journalist a million miles inside the desert. Not a communication tower in sight. And he charges up his laptop computer and files a live report. And it's all wobbly and the words don't all connect up, but there he is, live in the middle of nowhere."

"Technology's come a long way since then."

"So, would it work if you were, say, in the middle of the ocean?"

"Same principle. As long as you're on the BGAN network with multiple voice and data interfaces, including WLAN connectivity."

"All right. I have no idea what you just said. I don't actually need the serial numbers and stock codes. Where do I get hold of one?"

"Can't you just video it?"

"No. It has to be live."

"Then you'd need a multi-user satellite phone with extensive functionality. Thane and Thane do a really top-"

"All right. Where do I find one?"

"You don't just stroll into an appliance store and pick one up. You certainly won't find one on the shelf at Tesco Lang Suan. They usually have to be ordered. When do you need it?"

"Tomorrow. Maybe sooner."

"I sense another menopausal, heterosexual mad rush to the head. Take a deep breath and tell your old sister exactly what you have in mind here."

Dinner was served with a very fine cardboard cask of Chilean red in the room of our friends from Bangkok. Because I didn't want to overwhelm them with too many annoying visitors, I told the rest of my family they weren't invited. This was my game. Beneath the shuddering light of an oil lamp, with the rain still pattering against the glass of the windows, the Noys looked drained of their natural beauty. Since there was no electricity, they hadn't showered or blow-dried or freshened up from the day's ordeals. They'd assumed an unmistakably helpless demeanor, like the last two polar bears on the last block of glacier. They didn't attack their ginger chicken with the enthusiasm I thought it deserved. I felt like I was eating for the three of us.

Between bites, I asked, "So where did you think you'd go from here?"

Neither answered.

"You realize how insulting today's little drama was, I suppose?" I added. "It was a bit late to stop trusting us. If we'd been likely to turn you in, you'd have been busted long ago."

"That wasn't the reason," said Noy. "We did. We do trust you. We love you, even. We feel safe here. We didn't want to leave."

"Then…why?"

"We were afraid for you," said Mamanoy. "We were afraid they'd find us, and harm would come to you because you'd been sheltering us."

I so desperately wanted to know who "they" were, but I was supposed to know the whole story already. If I admitted ignorance now, they'd clam up.

"They're not as powerful as you think," I guessed.

"How would you know?" asked Mamanoy.

Good question.

"Because power is an illusion. Most people who act tough are just…acting."

"Not these. They have people looking for us. Professionals."

"How could you know that for sure?"

"It's the way powerful people work. You lose face, so you have to let your associates know you've 'fixed' the problem. Not doing so would be a sign of weakness."

"So you think running and hiding is the answer? When would it all end?"

"When somebody's dead," said Noy, calmly.

None of us was eating.

"You really think…?"

"Yes. I know what they want me to do. When I refuse, they'll have no choice."

Whatever happened over there in the States had followed them back home and traumatized them.

"They've already sent a message," said Mamanoy.

"What sort?"

"We left two cats behind. Before we fled, we asked the neighbors to take them in. We thought they'd be safe. But som-somebody went to the neighbors' house and killed our cats."

"What? But that could have been some random psychopath," I said.

I knew no end of people who would gladly torture cats.

"The neighbors had three cats of their own. They weren't touched. The next day some people went to their house claiming to be local police officers investigating the cat killings. But the neighbors hadn't reported it to anyone. They told the men they didn't know us. They said they just noticed the cats weren't being fed and took them in. The officers left a phone number and told them to get in touch if they had any contact from us."

"How do you know this?"

"The neighbors are actually close to us. The husband is in e-mail contact with my husband. He writes from his office."

"And what machine does your husband write from?"

"He uses Internet cafes," said Noy. "We all have notebooks, but we've agreed not to use them with cell-phone dongles. Neither do we use our cell phones. Once every two days we call him from a pay phone. Here we used the one at the end of the lane. It's underwater now. We usually call him at a land number in-"

"Shh," said Mamanoy, and blushed immediately.

I smiled.

"I'm so sorry," she said.

"No problem," I replied.

Once paranoia sets in, it's hard to keep it under control.

"We knew they'd be looking for a mother, father, and daughter, so we went in different directions," said Noy. "We came down Highway 41. After Hua Hin we started traveling at night on back roads to avoid highway cameras. We'd find small resorts like yours to rest in in the daytime. We'd drive past, remove the plates, then drive back. We didn't want anyone reporting our registration details. We only stayed at places that didn't insist on seeing our IDs. On the day we came here, we'd been driving all the previous night. We'd stopped at two resorts where they said they had to write down our citizenship card details. They said it was the local regulation."

"Well, you're here now," I said. "And I don't want you pulling any more stunts like today. Now think back. Did you do anything in Pak Nam to draw attention to yourselves?"

"No," said Noy.

"Tell me exactly what you did there."

"We waited for the passenger truck and realized we didn't have money. We'd given your mother the last of our cash for the room here. We hadn't taken the car because we couldn't buy petrol."

"Where was the last place you used your credit card or ATM?"

"Hua Hin."

"That's four hundred kilometers away. Technically they could have traced you to there. All they'd need is someone at the bank to check the records. Either way they'll probably have assumed you were heading south. So, since Hua Hin?"

"All cash."

"We underestimated the costs of food and petrol," said Mamanoy. "We should have taken out more. Enough to get us to Malaysia. We hoped we could use the ATM today and be on a bus before they could trace it."

"So in Pak Nam, you tried the ATM and it was down. You tried to get money on your credit card, but they needed a guarantor. The bank phoned us. At no stage did anyone note down your card number or ask for personal details?"

"No," said Noy.

"Good."

"Not at the bank."

I gasped.

"Somewhere else?"

"I did send a letter EMS while we were waiting to be delivered back here."

"How did you pay for that?"

"We didn't. I told the manager I'd left my wallet at your resort. When we arrived, I borrowed the money from your mother. We'll pay you back."

"I hope you didn't put your actual name in the sender box."

"I left it blank on the EMS form."

"Good. The post office can track that. That's why it costs extra. When the power comes back on, they'll type the details onto the computer."

I was getting as paranoid as them. I mean, who was going to hack the post office express delivery details?

"Tell me you didn't give this resort as your return address."

"Of course not," said Noy. "I put c/o the post office."

"Well, that's something, I suppose."

"Mair!" I shouted. I could hardly hear myself. There was a backhoe twenty meters away digging an escape channel for the flooded river. The local administration had decided my vegetable garden would be the perfect spot for it. Mair was on the veranda of her hut surrounded by creatures like some kindly lady in an old Disney animation. The three dogs were wrestling with her. Sticky had taken an immediate liking to little Beer and seemed to be unaware of how diseased she was. Even antisocial Gogo was tag-teaming with Mair. The monkey lounged on the rattan table above them, unpeeling tiny lady finger bananas. A toad hopped unimpeded across the deck. Two daring parakeets sat on the railing opposite, waiting for dropped bananas, and a whole parliament of ceiling lizards hung above, ever hopeful that the electric light might be switched on. The paraffin lamp attracted, then fricasseed any insects that made it through the drizzle.

"Mair!"

Gogo growled. The others ignored me.

"Yes, child?"

"Do you have the number for your friend at the post office?"

"Nat? Of course I do."

"Can I have it?"

"It's in my phone."

"Where's your phone?"

"Phuket."

"Phuket?"

"I'm assuming so. I contacted the gibbon rehabilitation center at Bang Pae. I'd taken some pictures of Elain here, and I wanted them to see her. See if they'd agree to take her on."

"So naturally you put the phone in the envelope so they could take a look."

"There's probably a way to send the pictures separately, but I couldn't for the life of me get them out. So I'll let them sort it out in Phuket."

"Did you, at least, turn it off?"

"The phone? Naturally. Do you think I'm completely useless? I'm sure animal activists will be able to work out how to turn on a telephone."

Sticky was mating with Mair's foot. He had an impressive erection for a young fellow. I had to turn away.

"Mair, I think the dogs are getting too excited."

"Well, somebody didn't take them for their evening walk, did somebody?"

"Mair, I'm a little bit bogged down here with stuff."

"I forgive you, darling."

"Have you seen Captain Kow around?"

She twitched.

"No. Why should I have?"

"I just want to talk to him."

"He won't tell you anything."

I tell you. Weird is a difficult concept to get your head around. If I ever wanted to waste a few years on a Ph.D. I'd probably look at signs in early life that point to the inevitability of Alzheimer's. Mair had always been that fringe character. Like me, her school and university mates had liked her, I suppose. She was funny, friendly, but too odd to join those cliques that linger later in life. The old school network didn't have a seat for Jitmanat Gesuwan. Her communist jungle years put her in touch with like-minded outcasts, most of whom sought respectability once the armistice was agreed.

Mair never really lusted after respectability. That's what I'd loved about her. Her joy. Her total disregard for Thai etiquette. Not caring what people thought of her. She'd been so unlike all the other mothers. She'd turn up at parent-teacher meetings in shorts and a T-shirt and boots. Unmade up. Unadorned. Unencumbered by shallow considerations. No show at all. And if the headmistress said something stupid-and they all did and everyone in the hall would know it-it would be Mair's hand in the air.

Mair's voice saying what everyone thought. Damn, I loved her at those meetings. I didn't care that I was the daughter of the odd woman. I'd push it to its limits. My trademark dark brown nail varnish, for example. If anyone else had tried that, they'd be dragged in front of the discipline mistress. But me? I was "the daughter." I needed tolerance. They probably had teachers' meetings just about me. I was top in most subjects, so the mother-daughter relationship hadn't retarded me at all. It just made me culturally dubious. If Mair had been Chinese or farang-a white foreigner-the faculty would have had no problem at all in labeling me. Ostentation was commonplace in foreigners. My defect lay in the fact that I was Thai, born of Thai parents from a long, inexhaustible line of Thais. They put the accident of me down to my mother. Neither of us fit. We'd gone our own ways. Me, into the unquenchable fascination of study. Her, into-wherever she was now. She came back to visit us on Earth from time to time, but I knew she had a happier place. I just wondered whether I was headed there too.

The monkey, aka Elain, climbed down from the table and started to pick imaginary ticks out of my mother's hair.

"I've rented a room," said Mair.

"For what?"

"Our Burmese school."

"Mair, we don't have-"

"Don't worry. It was only a hundred baht a month."

"Oh? What type of room can you rent for cheaper than a three-pack of toilet rolls?"

"Well, when I say room, perhaps I mean space. It's the unused back corner of the ice works down at the docks."

The same factory I'd visited earlier.

"Wouldn't that be a bit noisy?"

"It's a start. And to start badly is better than never to start at all."

That was, of course, so not true.

I doubted whether my TV would have been much more entertaining had there been power. I lay on my bed staring at it anyway. The screen reflected the tiny glow of the mosquito coil burning on the floor beside me. Beyond the window was a sort of final blackness. It suited my purpose: a clean slate.

Here we go.

The Noys. An upper-middle-class family. Father a successful businessman. Mother, the head of a large suburban middle school. Daughter, as bright as the Big Dipper. She gets a scholarship to study in the U.S. She struggles right up until the final year, when suddenly she outscores everyone on her finals. Far from being elated, she runs away without collecting her degree and reappears in Thailand, where her entire family is forced to flee, pursued by some mysterious "they." If I didn't have such a problem with cliches, I might, at this point, have told myself I was missing something. So I didn't. Even though I obviously was. I wondered whether the father's gambling debts had something to do with it. But how would that follow Noy to the States? I wondered whether Noy really was hooking to pay her way through school. What if, suddenly, she got serious about her studies and-I don't know-missed a date with some Saudi oil sheik? But how many D.C. pimps had a network that would hound the Noys all the way back to Thailand? And what about the mysterious sex-change boyfriend? How did the clerical department of one of the country's top universities stuff that one up so badly? That, I decided, was the place to start.

I flicked on my all-night rechargeable electronic hurricane lamp-made in Taiwan. Guaranteed eight hours of almost daylight. The picture on the box showed Saddam Hussein and his officers in an underground bunker, plotting by the light of the Shinomax. It momentarily bathed my room in an impressive warm light before fading down to dim. It was just enough to help me thumb through the pile of handouts Sissi had e-mailed me from Chiang Mai. She'd pretty much cleared out the Georgetown files. There were financial records, course registrations, and what I was looking for, the student lists. I found the name Chaturaporn on all of Noy's class files. He did indeed begin his academic life as a Mr. before reappearing as a Ms. by semester two. That would have remained a mystery to me had I not come across the list of deposit receipts from overseas students. I paused only to boggle at the cost of overseas study. No wonder my local education department sent me to Sydney Tech. Financial records rarely thrilled me, but that one list provided two fascinating discoveries that sent shudders through my knees.

First was the reason the clerks had initially classified our Ms. Chaturaporn as a man. They had condescendingly assumed that anyone from Thailand couldn't spell. Admittedly, we can't. But that wasn't the case in Chaturaporn's fee receipt. The name was not Mr. Chaturaporn but ML, Chaturaporn. The clerks had taken the liberty to adjust the spelling, but anyone who grew up in my country would know there was no error. The ML was an important clue. It painted the scenery an entirely different color.

I was about to put down the bank transfer details and move back to the lists when I noticed the second startling piece of information. According to the receipts, ML Chaturaporn had received her deposit via the Bangkok Bank Corporation. It made me curious about who had funded Noy s study. But I certainly wasn't expecting what I found. The wire had been from exactly the same account. The bank details for both girls were identical. And there, like that first ever orgasm from a totally unexpected donor, the stars burst before my eyes. I had it. I wanted to shout. I wanted to call the Chiang Mai Mail to remind them what a great head of the crime desk I would have made. But, of course, I could not announce what I had learned. I could, however, confront the lawbreaker.

My Shinomax offered little more than a gray puddle of light to guide me to the Noys. It felt like midnight in Transylvania, but my phone told me it was only 8:37 P.M. Candles still flickered behind the Noys' curtains. I knew what crime they'd committed and had an idea who was after them. I had to admit they were totally screwed. I didn't bother to knock. The Noys were on their beds, reading by candlelight. With no fan to cool them, they wore the flimsiest of sleepwear. But I didn't let their gorgeousness distract me from my task. They didn't seem at all flustered by my arrival.

"Sorry, ladies," I said, and sat down at the end of Mamanoy's bed. They both knew the story, so I guess my purpose there that night was to confirm that I knew it as well.

"Here's the drama as I see it," I began. "A straight-A student is hired by a family to be a study friend to their eldest daughter while overseas. Of course, they didn't employ you for your social skills. You were there to attend every class together with your new friend. Perhaps we should call her…the duchess. I was confused that the registrar's office had her listed as a male in the first semester, then changed to female in the second. It didn't seem like the kind of error a university clerk would make But our Ms. Chaturaporn had indeed intended to write ML. As you know, it had nothing to do with gender. It was the abbreviation of Mom Luang. ML Chaturaporn was a member of the aristocracy. Her father, I imagine, is a very powerful man, I'm sure you know that. You were a shadow student to a little duchess. And in return for you kindly keeping their daughter company, they agreed to pay off all your father's gambling debts, unmort-gage your house, and rescue you all from the threat of poverty."

"Jimm, I don't think-" Noy began.

"And all you had to do was switch ID cards before the tests or when you handed in the papers. I wouldn't even be surprised if you switched names for the entire time you were there. Your faces were similar enough. And heaven knows, we Asians all look alike. Now, the rest of this-you can just stop me if I'm wrong. Your duchess was an average student with no motivation. But her family expected excellence from her. It's a system that goes way back. So many of her ancestors had traveled the same route. Brain-box study buddy. No risk. The daughter passes with honors. The shadow either fails in the end or, if she's very lucky, squeaks through with poor grades. The sponsor has to do the very least to keep the shadow in class right up to the final semester. She can't fail too many courses before then or they'd send her classmate home. But in that final term she doesn't need the shadow anymore, so if she's of a mind, she could just not attend any classes. Send the shadow home with no degree at all. No problem. Who cares?"

The Noys said nothing. Their faces contorted in the candle flickers.

"But, Noy," I said, "you cared. You were an excellent student. The material was easy for you. You loved the courses. You devoured them. But at the end of each semester, you'd reluctantly hand over your student ID card and accept whatever grade she'd deign to eke out for you. And what was she doing while you slaved over books? She was in the nightclubs, wasn't she? Driving the BMW around with her high-society friends? And I bet she didn't show any respect at all. Not a word of thanks after those A grades. You were the maidservant. You labored for her. You and your family were taken care of financially, so why give thanks, eh?

"And it built up in you," I continued. "All this injustice. You knew the duchess was intent on failing you. She hardly attended classes that final semester. You were a brilliant student, yet people looked down on you as a dunce. And after three years of it, you were Mount Etna. The humiliation bubbled up inside and you blew. You marched into those exam halls, turned up with your term papers, and brushed past the outstretched ID card of your duchess. And you hammered everything that final semester, just like you did the entire course, but this time the honors were in your name. You'd stayed on for the Honor Council inquiry, passed the extra oral tests, suffered the humiliation of the lie-detector test. And all because your foolish courage would have meant nothing if they'd stripped you of your degree. You were in a red funk. A mad rush of blood. And it wasn't until it was all over that you realized what you'd done. What danger you'd put your family in. You probably called your parents then and told them. It was no small matter. You'd broken a contract. But, more important, you'd broken the face of a dynasty. You'd destroyed a century-old tradition. And, Noy, do you know what?"

"What?"

"Good for you, is what. Screw the tradition. You're a bloody heroine. It was one in the eye to the classes who believe their heritage allows them to break the rules. Left to her own devices, the little duchess probably failed the final semester, and they're still conducting an inquiry to see where she went wrong. As far as they're concerned, she was a top student who suddenly went bad. They'll invite her to resit those last finals, but for reasons you and I know, she'll have to decline. She still doesn't have her degree, does she?"

Noy blushed and sighed. There was a long period of silence that seemed appropriate.

"They came to see me in the dormitory," she said. "A couple of Thai goons in safari shirts…in the middle of D.C., I tell you. They asked me if I wanted to see my parents hurt. It would be a shame, they said, if they were to have an accident. The goons were very matter-of-fact about it. They told me all I had to do was go to the dean and confess that I'd switched my ID card with the Mom Luang's. She hadn't noticed I was a cheat. That, in fact, all my final semester scores should have been hers. Of course, I would have been thrown out of Georgetown in disgrace. My name…my family name would have been dirt. So I ran. I jumped on a Greyhound bus and headed south. I don't know why. It was all a little bit overwhelming. I was starting to get paranoid that they were after me. I was certain there'd be some way of checking passenger lists on aircraft out of the country, so I decided to leave overland. I met up with a tour group of Taiwanese students, and somehow, in the confusion that happens at borders, I got lost in the chaos when a large group came up against an underpaid immigration officer, and I arrived in Mexico in a tour bus. There was no record of me entering the country. I flew home from Mexico City. I think that was what gave us the time to get away from our house. They were still looking for me in the States."

"I respect her for what she did," said Mamanoy.

"You lost your jobs and your house," I said.

"We'd already lost them," she said. "My husband's debts…Noy's time in America gave us a sort of stay of execution. That was all. They paid off our bills as part of the deal, but they're in a position to put more pressure on us. My husband would never get work in his field again. He has accepted full responsibility."

"Oh, what a wonderful man. Frankly, I'm amazed that you're still together," I said.

"Love is-"

"Yeah. Don't bother."

"Being a family is all we have."

"Being a family's really going to make everything so much better on the road and in hiding for the rest of your lives."

"Do you have a better solution?"

"I can fix this," I said, with more confidence than I was actually generating.

"How?"

Good question.

"I'll get back to you on that," I said. "We have time. You'll be safe here for the foreseeable future. We can work together on a strategy."

They didn't look inspired. They still saw me as the cook. They didn't know I had contacts beyond Maprao. I had skills. But I did not reveal my secret identity just then. When the time was right, they would see my super-self.