The Bangkok Asset

31

Next day I’m at the cooked-food stall opposite the station, my gun jammed down the back of my pants, eating khao kha moo and continuing to absorb my meeting with Roberto da Silva, who looms in my memory like a crippled hero from a time of giants. Then my phone vibrates and I pull it out of my pants pocket. The message from Chanya is simple enough: HE’S HERE. FOR BUDDHA’S SAKE HELP.

For a long moment I blink at the phone, unable to take it in. Now I realize who he is and I’m trying to get her on the phone. No answer. I’m sweating, I can feel my face twitching with fear and rage. I put money on the table for the food, stand in the street to stop a cab that already has a passenger, a farang. I flash my police ID: “Emergency.” The farang gets out grudgingly at first, then speeds up when he sees my face. He starts to say, “I’m not paying-”

I cut him off, push him out of the way, tell the cab driver to ignore the rules, just get me there. I sit beside him, frantically trying to get someone on the phone, anyone who knows her: my mother, her mother, her closest friends. Finally, I have the brilliant idea of calling our next-door neighbor.

“Someone came about half an hour ago, I happened to be looking out the window.”

“Man or woman?”

“Man.”

“So what did he look like?”

“No need to shout. He was tall, young, a farang.” A snicker. “Very good-looking, blond, a real pinup.”

“Is he still there?”

“I don’t know. I only looked out for a moment. I’m not a nosey person.” She adds, “Don’t worry, she’s a good girl, you know, very kind and devout, I’m sure-”

I cut her off.

–

At the hovel I throw some twenty-baht bills at the cab driver, run to the front door, knock, ring, and fumble with my keys at the same time. It doesn’t help that someone has closed the drapes so I cannot see inside. When I enter it’s quite dark. I switch on the lights. A flood of relief: Chanya is there, sitting on her chair by her computer. A flood of terror: she isn’t moving. A flood of relief: I can see she is breathing. There is something strange about her, though. She is rigid. When I touch her I feel a vibration. She is shivering in a way I’ve never seen before: a constant shaking of her whole body, but high-frequency shortwaves as if she is plugged into some machine. I turn her face to look at her. Her eyes are open windows to the terror within. I tap her gently on the shoulder, grab a bottle of red wine I’ve been meaning to drink one happy evening when this damned case is over, open it, pour her a mugful. She opens her mouth, allows me to pour some in. When it starts to drip down her chin she snaps out of her coma, swallows, reaches for the mug, downs it. I pour some more.

“He was here,” she gasps. “That thing of yours. He came.”

“What did he do?”

She shakes her head. “Nothing. Sonchai, that’s what is so incredibly scary. He didn’t need to do anything. He just stood there. Oh, Buddha, I’ve never known anything like it. This big, slim, gorgeous man with the most beautiful hands and Hollywood good looks simply stood there and scared the living shit out of me. He’s not human. Whatever it is he gives off, it’s not human. You can’t be around him. I saw that at the fight, but I was too far away to understand. I thought he was just some super soldier the CIA had created-I had no idea what it really meant, that something like that could actually exist. His eyes.” She gulps some more wine.

“He didn’t say anything?”

She shakes her head. “Oh, yes, he did.”

“What?”

She stares at me and starts to shake again. I try to hold her, but she pushes me away. She is not shaking with terror, but with a kind of high, disbelieving laughter. “He said, ‘Happy birthday to you.’ For tomorrow.” She shakes her head at me as if to say, Can you believe this? “You forgot, so did I. He remembered.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“That you had to meet him for your birthday lunch. You must not tell anyone else. And you must not bring a weapon. If you told anyone or brought a weapon, he would know. But otherwise you would be perfectly safe. He did not want to hurt a hair on your head.”

“That’s all?”

“Then he said, ‘Tell my brother I’m sorry if I’ve been rude.’ ” She looks at me. “That was the weirdest of all. Like he just appears from nowhere, scares me to death, then worries that he might have offended you. Like he’s broken some minor social rule, when he’s, you know, the living walking image of something totally alien that doesn’t belong, like something that just got off a spaceship-and he says it again, in a polite tone, quite apologetic as if he was really concerned: ‘Tell my brother I’m sorry if I’ve been rude.’ But at the same time the psychic gouging was deliberate, he started to feed off my terror and had to control himself. I could feel him doing things to my guts, just by staring, boring straight into my womb. He knew what he was doing. He kind of paralyzed me with perverted lust that twisted my guts. He had to literally snap out of it, or he would have had his fun with me. I would have been like that poor girl whose murder you’re investigating, body parts all over the house.” She poured herself some more wine. “That’s beyond screwed up, Sonchai, that’s way beyond psycho. And I could tell, he has perfect mental organization-I bet he would come out sane and well-balanced in any test. Probably a model citizen.”

“A model citizen,” I repeat, grabbing the bottle and swallowing some wine before she drinks it all. We stare at each other.

“I forgot,” Chanya says, drunk now. “He left you this.”

She takes a packet from the table. “I wondered if it was a bomb and if I should leave it outside. But he’s not like that. He’s much more intimate than that. He fucks you with his mind before he tears your head off.” She hands it to me. It can only be a book, a paperback, wrapped in satin with red, white, and blue stripes. I pull off the wrappings and show the book to Chanya: The Gospel of Judas. I heft the gift for a moment while Chanya watches. When I open it the inscription reads:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

To my dear brother, long lost, found now.

I show Chanya the message and open the book. The central argument of The Gospel of Judas is that it was Judas Iscariot, not John, whom the Christ loved most. Judas, the only disciple with any worldly sense, is set up by Jesus as the fall guy for the most brilliant piece of theater of all time called the Crucifixion. In other words, it turns Christianity on its head.

Now my phone bleeps:

Birthday lunch tomorrow, Dear One? Do you know Nandino’s? It’s on the river. They have a private room. I’ll book. Twelve forty-five for one o’clock? Smart casual.

“You won’t go, will you?” Chanya asks. “He could just kill you on a whim, rip your head off like-”

“Of course I’m going,” I say, staring at the book and the neat handwriting. “How can I not?”

“Because you’re a cop?”

“No. Because I’m a lost soul.”