I look up. “For Bradley’s craftsmen to copy Warren’s pieces properly, they would have to have the original?”
“We thought of that,” Kimberley Jones says. “We talked about Bradley absconding with some priceless piece from the Warren Collection, but it just doesn’t fit. There was nowhere Bradley could hide from Warren, and probably nowhere he could have sold the piece at a halfway decent price. These artifacts are matters of public record, experts know who owns what down to the date of purchase. Only Warren could sell something from the Warren Collection, real or fake.”
“Anyway,” Nape adds, “is Warren going to use snakes in a revenge killing? With his money and contacts here, he could have snuffed Bradley and made it look like natural causes. Why would he want the heat?”
A moment of communal reflection. I say: “What does the word ‘tranche’ mean?”
“Slice. What it probably means here is that Warren was financing the experiment, giving Bradley installments of cash through one of his agents in Bangkok. Like a lot of very wealthy people, Warren is notoriously tight with money. We don’t think he was giving much away. Big bucks was the carrot he was offering only when Bradley had produced a perfect copy of one of Warren’s pieces.”
“A strange game for Warren to play, if he’s so rich.”
Rosen rumbles, “Welcome to American capitalism. It’s a great system, except that no one ever has enough.”
I say, “The horse and rider?” and draw only blank expressions. My strength is fading. I allow myself the luxury of forsaking human consciousness for the bosom of the Buddha.
25
Using the Net and station gossip as tools, it wasn’t too difficult for Pichai and me to piece together our Colonel’s drunken ramblings, even though their deeper meaning continued to elude us.
REMFs were Rear Echelon Mother Fuckers-a standard epithet used by U.S. combat troops for the despised officers who stayed back in Saigon and ran the disastrous war. The Other Theater was Laos, where America was forbidden by international treaty from waging war, and where it waged the most ferocious bombing campaign in history. Ravens were exceptionally gifted American aviators who had come to loathe REMFs and volunteered to fly O-1 spotter planes on secret missions out of Long Tien in the green Laotian mountains to locate the positions of the North Vietnamese regular army, which was steadily encroaching into Laos. The more obscure references to American Breakfast, eggs over easy and Pat Black proved impossible to track down.
Somehow Vikorn had made a small fortune in Long Tien. A good part of this money he used to buy his commission in the Royal Thai Police Force. There were rumors of contacts in the CIA, dark secrets known to our Colonel which the Americans didn’t want to get out.
It takes more than two hours for Nape and Jones to reach Bradley’s teak house and call Rosen to report that the horse and rider is gone. Rosen thrusts his hands in his pockets and goes to the window. “Looks like we found the motive for the attack on you.”
“But he didn’t get away with the horse and rider. He never got further than the corridor.”
Rosen shrugs. “Because you kicked him in the balls. So he came back later, or sent someone else.”
I know what Rosen is thinking. If the horse and rider is an original that Bradley was copying, it’s going to be difficult to keep Warren out of the case. I see the weight of a controversial investigation bear down on his thick shoulders, sloping them still further, driving him more deeply into the negative karma which dogs him. I say: “Did you take pictures, or would you like to borrow mine?”
He makes a face. “Sure, we took pictures.”
By the afternoon my hospital room is turning into a library. Somehow the FBI have got hold of every illustrated book on jade available in Krung Thep. They have also e-mailed the picture of the horse and rider to Quantico. A wonderful hush envelops my room, the hush of concentrated minds following clues as we work carefully through the books, checking the color plates against our photograph of the horse and rider. Is investigation normally like this in the West? I have never done things this way before and I’m finding a subtle pleasure in this novel approach to law enforcement, with no one to shoot, intimidate or bribe.
Almost at the same time Nape and Jones emit deliciously triumphant aahs. Trying not to let his enthusiasm run away with him, Nape shows Rosen a page from the book he is using, while Jones tries to show him hers. Rosen looks at both and turns to me. “What did I tell you?” He shows me the page in Nape’s book, which is a beautiful picture of the piece carrying the cryptic caption: Horse and Rider from the Warren Collection, formerly from the Hutton Collection, believed to be one of the pieces the last Emperor Henry Pu Yi took with him when he fled the Forbidden City. Procured for Hutton by Abe Gump.
At that very moment, Rosen’s mobile starts to ring. I note that he has chosen the theme tune from Star Wars for his ringing tone, whereas I myself opted for “The Blue Danube” (thereby demonstrating that I am no more than an impostor in Western culture, a naÏve tourist anyway, with the musical taste of a grandmother; I can’t think why I didn’t choose Star Wars, which I actually prefer). The voice on the other end is someone he calls “sir”; it causes a gray and haggard look to dominate his features.
“We’re not investigating him, sir… That’s correct, we did e-mail that picture, which was taken from the scene of a murder attempt on the local detective who is investigating… I know the Bradley case looks like a narcotics vendetta but… The piece was stolen from Bradley’s home, sir… Mr. Warren exchanged a number of e-mails with Bradley… No, there’s not necessarily any connection… No, I don’t want another screwup… That’s right, I agree, neither I nor the Bureau need the heat… Well, I don’t know that I can do that, we don’t have any investigative powers here… Leave it to the local police? That’s exactly what I am doing, sir… Goodbye sir.” He folds the telephone and his eyes are glittering when he looks at me. “Quantico has no comment on the picture. They say it didn’t come out clearly enough on the e-mail.”
Cynicism has distorted Nape’s face, but I’m most sorry for Kimberley Jones, who looks ashamed and cannot meet my gaze. She says to Rosen in a quiet voice: “This man nearly died.”
“But I’m not American,” I say with a cute twist of my lips.
A long pause. Rosen says: “Looks like you’re on your own. Kimberley here will accompany you whenever you feel you need her. She’ll… she’ll help with anything that doesn’t lead to Warren.” He shrugs.