The Bangkok Asset

12

Krom sent separate SMSs to Chanya and me to remind us that we were invited to supper tonight. In the cab on the way to Heaven’s Gate Tower, generally known as the HGT, Chanya suffers from an attack of nerves. Despite her former success as a hostess and escort, it has been a while since she worked.

“It’s going to be awkward, isn’t it?”

“How so?”

“You must have thought about it. This invitation comes from on high, through Vikorn’s PRC connections. Vikorn has let this Professor Chu think he’s going to lay a dazzlingly attractive inspector who is also a high-tech whiz kid-a woman totally up his alley-all on the Colonel’s tab. It’s one of those male transactions in which women are the currency, don’t try to pretend otherwise.”

“Women aren’t the currency, lust is. It’s like the Buddha said, it’s lust, fear, or indifference with humankind.”

“That’s right,” she says with a grin. I still admire the way she can flip her moods in a second. She has flown across an internal abyss like a lama, now she’s on the other side, laughing. “On that retreat I went on two years ago, we turned it into an exercise. We used the imagery of a clock face with an arrow and three positions: attraction, aversion, indifference. In our meditations we had to observe which one the arrow was pointing at, from second to second. Then from split second to split second. The arrow moves automatically according to the thoughts in your head, there’s no control. In the end the whole universe amounts to that: lust, fear, boredom. Unless you’re enlightened.”

She looks me in the eye. “I called her. I forgot to tell you?”

“Krom? Today?”

“Yes. After you went to work. There have been rumors. There were a bunch of cops from your police station at the khao kha moo stall when you were having that intense little chat together that lasted quite a while. I called to tell her about the gossip. She apologized and said there was nothing between you. I said I knew that. It was one of those totally civilized girls-being-tidy things.”

I’m amazed and stare at her. “How the hell-?”

“Pi Tai told me. You know, she runs the typing pool. I’m not totally without sources.”

“Really?”

“Cops are just amazing gossips-the men more than the women.” She looked me in the eyes. “It’s okay, I know she doesn’t fancy you, she probably couldn’t get wet for a man anyway. Lust, aversion, indifference. When she looks at you her arrow points to indifference. When she looks at me it points to lust. When you look at her your arrow points to fear. You’re scared of her.”

“Why?”

“She’s smarter than you.”

I let that pass. “And you-where is your arrow pointing, these days?”

She holds my hand for a moment, as if to soften a blow. “I’ve been stuck on indifference for too long, Sonchai. I’ve done it for you. You marry a man to tame him, because his virility scares and unsettles you. Allowing yourself to be tamed in turn is only fair, part of the deal. So you end up with two very tame humans. Apparently Mother Nature set it up that way. But I can’t keep it up, darling. I really can’t. And neither can you.” She removes her hand and looks out of the window. “You do know where your arrow points when you look at me?” It’s my turn to look out the window. She pronounces the word softly, tenderly, kindly, deftly: “Boredom.” The moment hangs. “There is something about Inspector Krom that seems to offer a cure, isn’t there?”

“She’s dangerous.”

“That’s what I mean.”

Sometimes the only way out of a conversation is to take it somewhere else. “I don’t think I’ve come across a brain like hers before,” I say. “I’m going to feel sorry for the Professor if he thinks he’s going to sleep with her tonight-or ever.”

“Should I give him the come-on instead? Would it be good for your investigation? I wouldn’t have to fuck him, I could just string him along until you told me to stop. Maybe that’s the only contribution I can make.”

I groan. “For Buddha’s sake, Chanya. Please.”

She laughs again, that free and troubling lama laugh from the other side of the abyss.

We emerge from the lift lobby and look up: Orion and his belt; the Big Dipper; bit of Moon; Pegasus. Whichever poet first called it a black velvet canopy encrusted with diamonds was right: you can’t improve on that, although in the tropics it can also resemble a wet blanket with holes in it. Chanya is charmed. She stares into the heavens, willing a crew of aliens to send a ladder for her to climb up.

–

We were the first to arrive. Stars aside, it was a bar so expensive and successful it could afford to place its tables far apart. Baristas-all men-wore quick-draw holsters where electronic menus and credit card machines nestled. They were intense, focused, professionally polite, and quite ruthless in pursuit of a place in the mixologist’s (do not call them barmen) hall of fame. Trained by aliens and very un-Thai, in other words. We ordered a couple of piña coladas, because that’s what we order in bars like this, checked out the other customers: a group of young upper-middle-class New Yorkers getting louder drink by drink; a blond couple sipping white wine who looked German; a Chinese couple probably from Hong Kong; a British family, obviously wealthy, with a teenage son and daughter. Now a single Chinese man appeared and the maître d’ ushered him to our table. Chanya and I stood up.

First thing I have to report, R: he was tall. No one was expecting tall. Well, you don’t, do you, when you’re told you will meet a Chinese professor who works out of offices in Shanghai? Let us be honest here about our species-wide addiction to stereotypes: short, plump, mid-fifties with male pattern baldness was the first image that came to mind, not a five-eleven northerner in his early forties, lean with strong harmonious features like a film star and a full head of jet-black hair coiffed by an expert. This only created another layer of complexity. Suddenly Krom might not be the victim of cynical male humor; she might be the evening’s big winner. Except that she was a dyke, of course.

“Detective Jitpleecheep? I’m Chu.” He turned chivalrously to Chanya, to whom he offered a Hollywood smile, circa 1950. This was going to be an interesting evening. Chanya mastered herself to return a finely honed smile designed to acknowledge his beauty and importance without in any way compromising her status as a chaste married woman. Of course, it was just a posture and we were not legally married and her pupils were opened a little wider than was entirely appropriate considering she had known the newcomer for less than a minute, but face is everything in the East. When we sat and he looked expectantly at the empty chair, Chanya, now on her best behavior, told him that “Ms. Krom will be here any minute.”

Now our vulgar piña coladas with the great hairy lumps of pineapple sticking out of extravagant glasses with cocktail sticks sporting white paper hats seemed bannock, or country bumpkin, especially when he ordered a coupe of Dom Perignon-vintage, naturally.

Then it was nothing but small talk until the other star arrived. The Professor had studied trivia, probably as a survival skill essential in cultures without depth or mahjong, and was horribly good at it. He tried us out with politics, philosophy, and economics, then slipped naturally into Chanya’s preference for women’s issues: is the West actually behind China?

Chu was too sophisticated to give a standard-issue critique of the hypocrisy and double-talk of the Western model that had never done better than half deliver on any of its promises to anyone, ever, especially its own people-although he hinted as much. He dealt instead with the conflict in China between the modernizers, who are the survivors and inheritors of Mao’s revolution, and the closet imperialists who secretly assume that China will return to its former splendor, decadence, and inequality; indeed has already done so in Shanghai and Beijing and all along the east coast. Did we know there already existed a breed of wealthy merchants who have stopped cutting their fingernails to prove they never do manual work, just like under the Empress Dowager? Chu balanced the various arguments skillfully, taking care not to omit anything relevant even if prejudicial to his case, then concluded that, yes, China is streets ahead of the West in terms of women’s issues-and most of the other issues, too, although he conceded a certain attitude problem when it came to pollution. Now Krom arrived.

Who ever would have guessed? She came as Charlie Chaplin. Well, that was my first thought, because of the hat. It was not a bowler-not quite-but that kind of shape, pushed rakishly back. I had to admit it went well with the pearl satin shirt and trademark bootlace tie, the black pantaloons and the laddish lace-up black boots, but it was the hat that said, Careful, I’m different. I was proud of her. Chanya, though, felt upstaged. The exclusive eye contact she had enjoyed with the handsome professor had now to be shared with this startling and fascinating newcomer. She tried, but could not compete with the hat. Our eyes met. She looked away.

To make matters worse, Krom, who I’d considered incapable of small talk, immediately opened up the conversation by referring to the Jade Rabbit. BTW, R, Jade Rabbit was the Chinese Moon buggy who kept a diary on the PRC’s social media sites. The poor thing ran out of energy while stranded on the Dark Side and left his two billion fans in Greater China with a touching farewell message:

If this journey must come to an early end, I am not afraid. Whether or not the repairs are successful, I believe even my malfunctions will provide my masters with valuable information and experience.

That did sound a tad like the heroic self-sacrifice of early communist mythology, and I was waiting to see how the very urbane Chu would respond.

“Believe me,” he said to Krom with a smile, “I despise Chinese infantilism as much as you probably do. But Jade Rabbit has been a great success with the masses-like Mickey Mouse in the West. Except that JR is doing a real job. That must constitute progress, no? Imagine a world where Donald Duck, Tom and Jerry, Mickey and Minnie actually do something useful instead of mindlessly beating each other up?”

“That’s so true,” Chanya said.

“So much depends on how technology hits the private citizen,” the Professor explained. “Computing power among the masses is already extraordinary-there was a degree of paranoia about that in the Party, but it turns out the little people prefer to share porn, gossip, and insults and listen to junk music. It’s a fantastic way of shutting them up, like a voluntary electronic gulag. No danger at all except from organized Islamists.”

Chanya had now decided she didn’t like the Professor after all, and took this last statement as clear indication of his male chauvinist totalitarian soul, which, she had already intuited, was not attracted to her anyway. Krom, though, looked at it differently. She agreed that the amount of computing power out there among the people as a whole was amazing-like a source of uranium nobody has yet seen how to harness. Suppose, for example, a village of a couple thousand people all linked up their computers in pursuit of a common cause? Of course, when that does happen, the world will cease to be recognizable.

It was conversation as cover, in other words. Krom had the attention of the alpha male that Chanya had lost, despite the fact that Krom didn’t want it. For my part I did not banish from my mind the possibility that the irresistible Professor might be hors de combat by reason of being gay. He didn’t give a single clue about which way he swung until, at the end of the meal when the ladies went off to the bathroom together, he changed seats and shifted closer to me than is normal at this kind of supper and began to whisper sweet nothings in my ear.

The sweet nothings, though, were yet another cover in this hall of mirrors. In between seductive smiles along with a hand placed on my shoulder, he managed to convey a quite different message. I confess I had not noticed the arrival of two Chinese men during the course of the meal who had installed themselves at the far end of the restaurant on seats facing us.

“They’re from the ministry,” he whispered. “I wonder if you would help me lose them?”

I used my best quick flick to take them in. My mind went back to that morning on the river. “Are they photographers?” I asked.

“They’ve been using miniature video cameras all night. They’re the latest, better than anything the West has. Quite invisible unless you know what to look for.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Pat Pong-but I don’t dare with them on my tail.”

“No problem,” I said and took out my cell phone to call Sergeant Ruamsantiah.

“No problem,” the Sergeant said. “I’ll call Colonel Wanakan. He’ll have a couple of his boys check their passports when they leave the restaurant. Where are you?”

“Heaven’s Gate Tower.”

“I went there once. Hated it.”

“The food?”

“No. The height. It gave me vertigo.”

–

But on the way to Pat Pong the Professor received a phone call that altered all our plans. I watched the change in his expression as someone spoke on the other end of the line: playtime postponed, this was a work moment; adulthood returned with a thump. “Tell the driver to go to this address,” he said to Krom in the back of the cab, using a stern tone we’d not heard before. “We’re going to a demo,” he told us.