The Bangkok Asset

34

At night when I’m working on a heavy case I switch to the vibrate function on the smart phone before I sleep. I leave the ringtone on, but turn it down low so as not to disturb Chanya. Even so, when it goes off it makes quite a display, lights flashing, the vibrations sending it on a circular navigation of the floor and, of course, the subdued ringtone (the Stones: “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”). I block it before it vibrates its way over to the bookshelves, then I pick it up. I am only one-third awake. The screen tells me it is two twenty-four in the morning and that the caller is anonymous-except that the freshly washed voice is familiar to me.

“A car will be outside your house in three minutes. It will wait thirty seconds. Do not bring your gun, you will be protected.” He hangs up.

Three minutes, as it happens, is exactly how long it takes to pull on some shorts, grab a T-shirt that I hold in my hand, slip on some flip-flops, leave the house, remembering to bring my wallet, keys, smart phone, and police ID, and walk to the road. The car is rolling up to our front door as I’m pulling on the T-shirt.

The driver is none other than Matthew Hadley-Chan of the FBI, looking very fit in shorts and sweatshirt as if he has been jogging. He owns a gun, a large combat rifle made of high-tech materials lying across the backseat. I sit in the front. We do not speak but drive off at high speed toward the police station at District 8. We do not stop there, though, but penetrate farther into the market area. I am aware that we are only one street away from where the Asset wrenched the head off Nong X, so that I am casting more and more glances at my driver.

“Can’t tell you anything, sorry,” he says. “Looks like they’re gonna bag the big one tonight. The Captain will explain soon as you’re there.”

“Captain?” I say.

“Yeah. The bright shining star himself.”

I am puzzled by the casual reference made in the offhand American style. “You don’t mean the Messiah, do you?”

His expression turns serious. He puts a finger to his lips.

–

The market is not open at night, but the framework of iron poles that provides support for tarps during the day is left intact, along with the bare wood boards. As I look I see that there are men and women with blackened faces under some of these stands, all with combat rifles, all lying very still on their stomachs. As I pass I count eight humans-some are Caucasian, some are black, a couple are Thai, three are female. The FBI leads me quickly to a corner where an alley leads onto the square. It is quite dark. At the same time as the FBI whispers, “Here he is, Captain,” a fine, slim hand reaches out, grasps my upper arm with unexpected strength, and pulls me into the darkness.

“We’re about to catch me this time,” he whispers. “I’m two minutes away,” he adds with a giggle. “Watch.” In the darkness I can just make out those perfect teeth when he smiles. “You do still think it was me who killed that poor girl and wrote your name on a mirror in blood?”

“Yes,” I say. Then, looking around at the carefully laid trap: “Okay, no.” I must be confused, because then I say “Yes” again.

“Watch. The perp will be heading for a specific building about thirty feet from where we stand, where the bait is waiting.”

Bait? I want to know if the bait is a professional and a volunteer-or not? Now that fine manicured hand grasps my arm again and a faint nod causes me to look across the silent market. A tall figure has appeared, a farang with hair so blond it could almost be white. He is young, springy on his legs, at an unusually high level of physical fitness. His face is obscured by a baseball cap. I think, Two? There are two of them? Two Assets? Identical twins? Why didn’t I think of that? Asset II sniffs the air a lot, sometimes bending down, sometimes reaching up nose first to catch whatever olfactory information is hanging around.

“He’s had the olfactory App,” my half brother explains with a sneer. “Guides himself through his nose, like a dog. Disgusting.”

We watch while the intruder works swiftly, moving from side to side but always heading toward one particular front door. He tries it, it is not locked. He turns the handle. I feel an urge to rush him, but a hand restrains me. He is allowed to enter the building. Seconds later there are two bangs that are too loud and too special to be shots from an ordinary gun. A child or young woman screams. We all move in a rush toward the building. A farang woman in combat dungarees emerges running with a young Thai girl in her arms, about twelve years old, horror in her eyes. The woman takes her to a van parked on the other side of the market. Everyone else makes for the front door. There are about ten of us now, entering one by one.

Inside, it is a typical local shop house, with cheap electrical and household goods for sale on the ground floor, family accommodation upstairs. I am thinking this is not like any rescue I can remember. Everyone is focused on the body of the perp.

Two shots from marksmen waiting in ambush inside the house have brought him down. Their guns are propped up against a wall, high-tech and capable of firing exotic shells. The body on the floor with two big holes in it has everyone’s attention, but no one wants to preempt the Captain. He is behind me as we enter; I am aware of everyone looking toward us.

“Listen up,” the Asset commands. “The three scientists-using our color coding that’s Drs. White, Black, and Pink-will have exclusive use of the body for exactly eight minutes for preliminary research. Sergeants Purple and Violet, you did the shooting, you stay with the doctors in case they have questions. During that time, the women lieutenants, that is, Gray and Cream, will form the first line of resistance: anyone coming within fifty yards of ground zero is warned off. Use polite feminine firmness on local people, any nonlocals are to be treated with suspicion. Your line is: Please accept our apologies, we are protecting American government property for the moment, and we will release the area in less than ten minutes. Soldiers Brown, Blue, and Charcoal, you are the second line of defense. No outsider gets to look at this body. Lethal force is authorized as a last resort. At the end of eight minutes an old black Toyota covered van will arrive. Do not shoot at it. It will be traveling fast. If you keep to the timing, at the moment when the body is being rolled up in the tarp, the van will arrive, and the body will be placed in the back of the van, which will drive off. There will be no American personnel within a hundred yards of ground zero after two minutes of the van being gone. Understood?”

The Asset in this mode has a natural authority. Everyone holds him in awe; at the same time, he is polite and friendly. I cannot tell if this group has worked with him before or if they have come together for this case alone. He is so polished in his performance, so much the highly trained pro, that his people simply follow his orders. The three scientists do not wait but instantly start on an examination of the body. I’m left wondering if this Captain really is the crazy I had lunch with only days ago. I think the Asset tonight is neither acting a part nor being himself; I think transhumans learn to select personalities to fit with the moment and cover the void that way. Like humans, only more so.

Blood-splatter patterns and large dark deposits on the floor show how the perp was shot twice before he could reach the girl: I think the first shot was a hollow-nose bullet of large caliber, and the second an exploding bullet that destroyed his chest. He lies facedown with arms and legs spread in classic shot-man position, his face pointed away covered by a forearm and invisible to me, his bright blond hair catching the light.

Sorry, R, it looks as if I’ve misled you: I’ve been wrong all along. He didn’t do it after all. I turn to the Asset and say in disbelief, “It really wasn’t you who killed Nong X here in the market ten days ago?” Not the most elegant question I’ve ever asked; he graciously ignores it.

“Let’s get this straight,” Dr. Pink, a woman, says to the gunmen. “You shot him through the gut with a hollow-nose round?”

“A JHP, ma’am, jacketed hollow-point forty-five with high-velocity propellant. Right through, hit his spine round about L1 or 2, but he kept coming on. No point giving him a warning. Something like that, you don’t give margin, you just shoot while you’re still alive. Sergeant Violet then hit him with an HE, ma’am.”

“HE?”

“High Explosive, ma’am.”

“I had no choice,” the other shooter said. “Never seen anyone recover from a JHP before.”

“I’m not interested in legality, soldier,” Dr. Pink says in a gravel voice. “It’s the technology that’s sending green balls down my pants leg.”

“Me, too, ma’am,” Dr. Black says. “He was still walking after you cut his spine in half?”

“Still running.”

The three scientists kneel over the body. “Damn it, will you look at this.”

“It’s a graphene sheath,” Dr. Pink says. “I saw it right off.”

“They’ve learned how to encase the nerves in graphene?”

“Might be worse than that,” Dr. Black says.

“Yeah, that thought crossed my mind too,” Dr. White says.

“How’s that? What could be worse than that they’ve worked out how to encase nerve fibers in graphene sheaths?”

“That they’ve worked out how to make the nerve fibers out of graphene rods,” Dr. Pink says. “That they’re about a decade ahead in nanotechnology.”

“Oh,” Black says. “Oh no. That is bad news, if it’s true. That puts us way behind.”

“Of course we’re way behind,” Pink says. “They get to do vivisection on humans. If they let us do that, we’d be ruling over America’s second empire by now with the world at our feet. It would be 1945 all over again.”

“Yes, but with that kind of progress they must suffer a failure rate of two in three.”

“Either you have Darwinian capitalism or you don’t,” Dr. Pink says, probing around inside the carcass. “I bet ol’ Polonium doesn’t lose any sleep over his casualties. He would probably use Chechens anyway.”

“Is it true that Polonium himself has been enhanced?”

“I heard that. I don’t know if it’s an urban myth or not. All that superman junk he’s into, though…maybe.”

“And if Polonium is in deep now, you can bet the rest of the world apart from the U.S. and Western Europe will be doing it in ten years’ time.”

“So we find ourselves at the end of the food chain and have to play catch-up. So we have to break the rules in the end anyway and everyone gets to call us hypocrites.”

“Our people do some cheating too,” White says as he examines the abdominal cavity. “On the quiet. You know that. What the Corporation won’t allow is vivisection on human children, because the scandal if it broke would close them down. Comparisons would be made with Hitler and Mengele. That’s where these guys beat us every time. They don’t worry about a free media.”

“I know that,” Dr. Pink says. “We have this taboo, but we’ll have to break it sooner or later. Kids don’t necessarily suffer as a result of the research. Anyway, who in hell would ever find out? This program is SECRET, in capitals. I had to go through five hoops, they tapped my phone, talked to my friends and colleagues and everyone who’s known me since high school, followed me around for six months-and that was just to get on the consultancy list. I’ve had five different identities in as many days, and tonight I am Dr. Pink. No, no, nobody is ever going to bust us. Not only does the President not know about what we do, ninety-nine percent of the CIA have never heard of it.”

“Well, they put us all through the same rigor. The military isn’t subtle, but the money’s good.”

“You got that right. Why do you think I’m here? I earn more in three days than I get in a year on civil research projects.”

“Anyway, going back to what you were saying, you’re right, the kids don’t suffer at all for the most part. You start to put synthetic cable in a kid’s spine at age about seven, by age seventeen you have a superman with an unbreakable back. Where’s the suffering?”

“Like this one,” Black says. “Shot through the spine with a hollow-nose and he was still walking. We’re gonna have fun with the reverse engineering here. I’d sure like to know how they did it.”

“Running,” the gunman says, as if he has an inner need to keep repeating the story. “Running at full speed. I guess he was about a yard from me when I hit him with an exploder full in the chest and he finally went down. I was sweating it, I can tell you.”

“Well, let’s turn him over, let’s see how well they’ve done here.”

The body it seems is quite heavy. It takes the three of them to turn it over so the face is staring at the ceiling. We all groan, myself more loudly than anyone. I cannot believe it.

“Wow!” Pink says.

“They’re winning,” White says. “As good as won, I would say.”

“Will you look at that?”

Everyone in the room is constantly switching their attention between the creature on the floor and Captain Asset.

“Damn it!”

“Can you believe it?”

Dr. White is so shocked he wants to check with me, as if I am a fellow scientist. “Have you ever seen anything like that?” he asks, stabbing his finger toward the Asset then back again at the creature on the floor.

“No,” I say. “Never.”

The Asset also is transfixed. The face of the perp is a perfect replica of his own, as is the near-white hair and the crew cut. “Does it come off?”

“It must,” Dr. Pink says. “He sure wasn’t born like that.”

“It probably fits by suction or glue,” Black says.

The Asset kneels beside it. “I’m going to touch it,” he says.

“No gloves?”

“No. I did a program. I can tell what material it is, skin to skin. Yes, a graphene trellis,” he says, caressing the dead one’s cheek. “I think they’ve grown skin and hair follicles on top of it.”

Dr. Black examines further, wearing surgical gloves. “I think you’re right, Captain.”

Pink shakes her head. “If they’ve gotten that far, they’ve as good as won the contract,” she says. “We can only do masks using the living original. We can’t copy or imitate like this in graphene-they must have done it from photographs. Probably thousands of pictures fed into a software program to get this kind of accuracy. We can’t model this material at all except on a living face, that’s way beyond our capabilities at this point in time.”

“So they’ve won already,” Black says.

“Except for the control thing,” White says.

“We don’t even know that,” Pink says. “This HZ is not here on a private debauch. This baby came here tonight for commercial sabotage-right, Captain?”

“Correct,” the Asset says, “to discredit me. The Russian lobby in Beijing have already started a campaign. I’m an uncontrollable child murderer, a tearer-apart of innocent kids, an undisciplined mutant.”

A certain frisson passes through the group. I guess only the Asset is allowed to use the M word.

“The control thing was our best selling point-now they’re using it against us?”

“Sure,” the Asset says. “We would do the same. Three years ago they nearly clinched a deal with the ministry, until we pointed out how bloodthirsty these guys are. And how ugly. Now they’re turning it around.”

“That mask, though. It worries me a lot more than the unbreakable spine. I haven’t studied it yet, but from what I’ve seen, there can be no doubt they are way ahead in the manipulation and shaping of graphene. You all see the implications, right?”

“If that mask can pass a standard isometric test, which it probably can, and they already know how to fake fingerprints and DNA, which they do, then say goodbye to identity. Sure, they’re ahead of us. We can’t impersonate like that-we wouldn’t even know where to start.”

“Face is everything. If someone can steal that, you’re done. As a person and as a society. You produce a spy identical in every way to a spy on the other side, who behaves in every way like that spy, whose wife and kids are even fooled, who in the end actually becomes that other spy-so who in the world is who? You don’t just get social chaos, you get a full-blown psychic winter. People walking around in circles like broken toys.”

“You spent time in L.A. lately? What else is new?”

“Take it off,” the Asset says.

“Take off the mask here? Now?”

“Yes,” the Asset says. “Take it off now.”

The instruction has a strange effect. No one wants to be the one to take off the mask. “It is probably a full hood, including ears and eyes.”

“Including? Oh, man! I was thinking-”

“We saw it on the other example,” the Asset says. “They preserve the ear/eye nerves and cords, extend them and cut off the original organ, use a synthetic replaceable. Looks like they would have no trouble making ears and eyes out of graphene.” He jerks a chin at the team. “I need that information now,” he says. “Pull off the mask. Do it.”

Whatever is under the mask, even a seasoned team like this doesn’t want to see it. The Asset nods. “Amazing, isn’t it? Nobody can bring themselves to look. Only a freak can face a freak, right?”

He bends over the body again then plunges a hand down under the T-shirt at the back of the neck. “I was right, it is a full hood, stops just above the shoulders, I can feel the graphene trellis. Okay, I’m going to pull.”

He manipulates the material between a thumb and forefinger, as you would open a very thin plastic bag, then pinches something and starts to lift. The material is so fine as to be invisible at first, then as the light catches the dust and the Asset lifts farther, I cannot see but have to deduce a transparent sheet so thin it is two-dimensional, rising from the face. It is also very strong. He is holding the amazing material in a fist and pulling until some of the perp’s face has gone, but it is not possible to tell what lies underneath. The mask is stuck. Now I have some idea what to expect, and so do the others. We all move back as the Asset pulls harder. It will not come away, though, because the material is trapped under ears and eye sockets.

“Those will be artificial organs,” one of the team says. “You could probably pull them up with the mask. That graphene isn’t going to break, that’s for sure.”

The Asset pulls still harder, things pop. Now the mask is a tiny crumpled piece of material mixed up with two ears and two eyes embedded in it.

What lies underneath? R, you don’t want to know, really you don’t.

Okay, you do, but it’s hard to describe. If it were simply animal, it would be easier. If I could report to you that the new artificial humans are some godforsaken splicing of ape and man, with an ape head and long hairy arms and a British accent, etcetera, it would be easier for you to deal with. What we have, though, is definitely not animal. And it’s not human either. Neither is it a space alien. With a huge domed fishlike forehead, two high-tech cables for eyes and another two for ears, a thin face, cruel mouth, and a set of teeth like a baboon’s…No, R, I simply cannot do justice to it, because to describe the surface is to miss the point. When you look at it, you experience a feeling deep in your gut that the Neanderthals must have felt when they first set eyes on Homo sapiens: This hideous thing is smarter and more ruthless than us. This thing is taking over. There goes the neighborhood.

I must have started to talk to myself or mumble out of shock, because the rest of the team has stopped to look at me.

“It’s okay,” Dr. Pink says. “I was like that the first time.”

“Our whole species suffers from hubris because we have no experience of creatures mentally superior to ourselves. This is the beginning of payback,” Dr. White says.

“Imagine how a dog feels, having to live in a world full of humans with superior cunning and intellect who keep tricking and fooling and exploiting and tormenting it. Well, that’s how humans are going to feel when this thing takes off. When the artificial intelligence becomes self-evolving and independent of us.”

“Accelerated learning enhancement? ALE has taken off already,” the Asset says, and everyone falls silent. “And by the way, you wouldn’t want me to remove my mask, would you?” He checks his watch. “Three minutes to go.”

Three minutes later the team has rolled the cadaver up and four men are lifting the tarp exactly at the moment a battered black Toyota Carryboy screeches to a halt outside. The six-foot roll is placed carefully in the back, the rear door closed and locked, the car squeals away-and I’m alone at the crime scene, which has been cleaned and tidied. Even the Asset has silently disappeared. I step out onto the marketplace and understand without a shadow of doubt that sometime over the past decade the world changed radically forever-but the event was top secret and may be classified for the next fifty years.

When I take out my phone I see it is three zero-five a.m. There is only one person I know who might just be awake at this time. But I don’t much care if she’s awake or not, I need to call her anyway. I press the autodial button and let it ring. She answers after about three minutes. I tell her what has happened.

“There in ten,” she says and hangs up.

–

The streets are pretty much empty except for a predawn garbage truck and some drunks in an alley with a flashlight. It takes Krom no more than ten minutes, as she promised, and now here she is in her own battered little white two-door. She has pulled on a pair of shorts and T-shirt. Close up in the front passenger seat I become aware of how muscular her legs are. They are elegant enough, but firm, like an athlete’s. She lets a couple of beats pass until we are half a mile away from the market area.

“So, you saw an HZ-a humanzee? I’m jealous.” I stare out of the window, watching the silent city go by, working my jaw. “Is it true that they’re too ugly to look at?”

“Yes,” I say.

“But is that because, you know, we’re just not used to seeing that kind of being?”

“The opposite. We’ve all seen them before, in our worst nightmares-something tells you: this is the future you’ve been running from all your life.”

“Tell me more, tell me everything.”

“You tell me everything,” I say. “It’s time. You know a lot more than me. What is that creature? Who is that creature? How is that creature? Why is that creature? And why did you refer to the Asset as Messiah when you spoke to the FBI?”

“I’ve been promoted. Thanks to you. In the top circle we refer to the Asset that way. It’s the protocol. You’ll see.”

She flashes me a glance while she changes gear at an intersection. The glance resembles the way a woman might take a quick look at a cake baking in an oven, to see if it’s done yet. “Okay,” she says. “Okay. But you must have guessed most of it.”

We have come to a set of red lights. Stopping is optional at this time of night, especially for cops, but she brakes anyway, her hands resting on the steering wheel. “The new technology is not expected to change the way wars are fought. In the future, security will mean controlling and suppressing the have-nots of a global economic system that has collapsed. For that you need transhumans: THs. According to all the experts, that is the most economic and probably the only way of doing the job. A TH can wait like a sleeper until needed, collecting information on neighbors, friends, and employers, then use his or her special skills in conjunction with conventional security services when revolutions start. A TH has no loyalty to any normal human because a TH is a superior order of life. In a riot one trans could hold off as many as ten rioters indefinitely, but it’s exponential. Ten THs could hold off not a hundred but a thousand, by acting in perfect coordination. The problem all along was how to inject enough ferocity in the product without having a rogue mutant on your hands. It became a problem of personality.” She flashes me a look. “Which is kind of funny, if you think about it.”

“Why?”

“Because from the military point of view, the personality is one of those little vanities that only nonmilitary wimps worry about. That’s what threw them fifty years ago in Vietnam. It’s what drove Goldman crazy and the reason why he teamed up with Dr. Christmas Bride. You’ve guessed that, right?”

“Through a glass darkly.”

“So Goldman took the children of those spaced-out vets who were born at the camp. But he screwed up. That’s one of the things most freaked Richard Helms, who was running the CIA at the time: records of disastrous interventions with children. No wonder he blatantly destroyed the files right in the middle of the inquiry. Dr. Bride’s point was that the human personality is the product of a hundred thousand years of evolution based on archetypes: what our forefathers called gods. Although we like to be cynical about it, those dead deities are actually very important to our functioning, like enzymes in digestion. We simply don’t want to be a part of the world if we can’t dream about transcending it. What he gave to those kids was the transcendent. And it worked. You’ve met the Asset. For many in the transhuman community he is the most accomplished, advanced being on the planet.”

“You really believe he’s Jesus Christ?” I mutter in disbelief. I had not realized how much I had come to rely on her cynicism.

“He is,” Krom says, that incongruous tone of reverence in her voice, the same she used when talking to the FBI. “You just have to see it right, as a historical mandate.”

“He also kills people, scares the shit out of them, plays with their emotions.”

“You can’t make omelets without breaking eggs. Save your judgmentalism. How was he tonight?”

“Functioning perfectly.”

“See? That’s what I’m getting at. In a dangerous fix with an HZ killer who could easily take out a dozen trained men, he functioned perfectly.”

“Maybe you should fill me in on the HZs,” I said.

“Look at it like this: transhumans are the only way to go. Americans and Russians both experimented in the last century, failed, and in the American case caused a huge scandal. Naturally, the experiments continued in the USSR based on Professor Ilya Ivanov’s work with apes, and the Americans continued with vets and volunteers in secret in various locations, mostly in Southeast Asia. Both had breakthroughs at the same time. Both found the funding to be difficult since it was extremely expensive and officially was not happening. The country that most needs to bolster its internal security is China, with a population that soon will reach nearly two billion. China has a minor TH program of its own based on chemicals, but is way behind the other two. The PRC is very interested in breeding transhumans rather than producing them through specially designed drug regimes they already have, most of which were sold to them by Dr. Christmas Bride. They let it be known they would be interested in buying into someone else’s research, which means Russia’s or America’s, but they need reassurance that the assets produced by such a program are stable and reliable. So Russia and America are in competition. The one who succeeds in selling to China will inevitably grow close to the PRC, with all the commercial and economic benefits that implies. They will also receive a massive injection of nonstate funding from sale of the system. Naturally, the U.S. doesn’t want Russia to be close to China, and Russia doesn’t want the U.S. to be close to China, and neither party wants the other to race ahead thanks to an injection of billions of tax-free nonaccountable dollars. There’s more than just commerce at stake.”

“So the competition is fierce and deadly.”

“You saw it tonight. The way the Russians tried to discredit the Asset by making it look as if he is a child molester and killer-just what the Chinese are afraid of with this program. Polonium’s people even knew you are the Asset’s half brother and that you long to find your father-hence the writing on the mirror in a murder in the center of District 8.” She pauses. “But the point is the technology you witnessed. That will get everyone excited, including the Chinese when they are briefed. Nobody knew the Russians had gotten that far. You said one of the scientists thinks they’re further ahead with graphene technology than America? That’s going to get a lot of people’s attention. You see, masks turned out to be key. The human being in its evolution sacrificed almost everything to vanity. Soft beautiful skin instead of protective hair, large seductive and vulnerable eyes, muscles and tendons allowed almost to degenerate for the sake of producing shapely limbs, etcetera. You want to put primate intensity back into the mix, you have to sacrifice aesthetics-big time. This results in a product that is too ugly for anyone to look at; even hardened military men can’t stand to look at a full HZ without its mask on.” She scratches her ear. “Amazing, isn’t it, the one thing nobody thought of: beauty. It tripped them up big time. But graphene masks are the way to go. That’s why you had three world-class specialists there tonight. Some ass is going to get kicked in Virginia soon as they realize they’re so far behind Polonium. It’ll be the space race all over again.”

I grunt.

“What’s the matter, is all this too much for you?”

“I’m just a simple cop.”

She laughs cynically.

“But I am a cop and so are you, and I’m wondering why we’re conveniently ignoring the main point.”

“Which is what?”

“Which is how you know so damn much.”

She lets quite a few beats pass. “Didn’t I tell you I was recruited?” she says simply. Then adds, “Look, why don’t you come back, see how I live, we’ll talk some more?”