I enjoy the ride because I’m sure the kid is on some drug or other-if not yaa baa, then ganja-and on quite a few occasions I am certain I am about to die and join Pichai sooner than expected. It is with disappointment and some surprise that I see the white walls of the American embassy as we turn off Phloen Chit, and find myself still in the prison of the body.
I pay the boy, then make his eyes widen when I say: “Get me some yaa baa. Come to my room tonight.” Excited all over again, he makes wheel squeals as he rides away. Now I am face to face with a bronze eagle in a plaster medallion, a stainless steel turnstile and some heavily armed Thai cops lounging against the walls. I show my ID and tell them I have an interview with the FBI. This is relayed to the American behind the bulletproof glass at the turnstile, who takes my name and makes a call.
In meditation there is a point where the world literally collapses, providing a glimpse of the reality which lies behind. I am experiencing the collapse but not the salvation. The city falls and rebuilds itself over and over while I wait in the heat. I wonder if this is a message from Pichai? Meditation masters prepare us for the shock when we finally experience the fragility of the great out-there. It is supposed to be a very good sign, although for the untrained it presages certain madness.
Fritz was a bastard whom my mother and I both loved for a moment. The others were kinder but somehow we never managed to love them.
6
While I wait I remember the embassy was rebuilt in 1998, soon after the bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The ambassador appeared on TV to explain, in not-bad Thai, that although America saw no threat from the Thai people, she feared those long porous borders with Cambodia and Myanmar where explosives and heavy armaments could be bought by just about anyone. Now the walls are massive reinforced concrete, capable of withstanding an assault by a ten-wheel truck, and if the truck did succeed in breaching the walls, there is a moat. In the twenty-first century the American ambassador works in a medieval castle. What is the karma of America?
Suddenly the American in the cabin, who might be a marine in plain clothes, decides to let me through the turnstile. One has to adjust to the jerkiness of farangs; this one has replaced his first jerk of suspicion with a jerk of hospitality. Through his microphone he says: “The Bureau is expecting you. D’you want to wait in here, in the air-conditioning?”
Something bleeps as I cross the threshold and I see a colorful image of myself and every metal object in my pockets displayed on a monitor on the desk. In the cabin I shiver at the blast of cold air. The young man at the desk, his hair so close-cropped he is almost bald, stares at the monitor for a moment, then asks me for my ID, the number of which he taps into his computer. I see my name appear on the screen. The marine grunts. “You’ve never been here before.” This is not a question, it is what the computer says. “Next time we won’t have to go through all this rigmarole.” As he speaks he nods in the direction of the main buildings as if it were the rigmarole who is now walking mannishly toward us, a gigantic ID tag swinging from between her small breasts. Even from this distance I see that the rigmarole’s name is Katherine White, deputy chief of security. About thirty, brunette, intense, athletic, frowning. I feel very Thai, despite my straw-colored hair and sharp nose.
“You have Detective, lemme see, Jiplecreap, for the FBI legal attaché?” Her voice is squeaky over the voice transmission system.
“Yep.”
“I wasn’t expecting him to be in there. Do I come in or do you bring him out? I forget which.”
“I guess I can bring him out. Probably he could make it out all on his own.”
The woman nods gravely. “Okay, let’s do it.”
The marine raises his eyebrows, I nod, the young man opens the door of the cabin and I step out onto the moon.
“You are Detective Jiteecheap of the Royal Thai Police? Can I see your ID please? Sorry about this, but I have to sign for you. Thanks.” She establishes that I have not been substituted by someone else in the past five minutes and leads me across the forecourt toward the main buildings.
Katherine White is blithely unaware that she once accompanied me across a courtyard of startlingly similar dimensions, thousands of years ago. My Egyptian incarnation is the furthest I’ve been able to trace my lineage. A priest who abuses his power pays the heaviest karmic price. I spent three thousand years locked in stone before emerging as the most wretched slave in Byzantium. Pichai also recalled those far-off days when travel to the other side and back was commonplace. We occasionally relived those power-filled moments together: the escape from the body, the black night under our wings, the wonder of Orion.
7
Now I am standing in the office of the FBI legal attaché and his assistant, Jack Nape, who has just given me one of those gigantic smiles which are hard to believe in, and make one feel guilty for not believing in. Surely this is exactly how a man should be: positive, generous, optimistic, with a smile to swallow the world? He is average height for an American. I am tall for a Thai, so we are pretty much eye to eye.
“That was pretty fast. I wasn’t expecting you for another hour.”
“ Bangkok helicopter.” I look around the office. There are two desks of identical size facing each other next to a window, a computer monitor on each, a set of filing cabinets with an American football on one, bookshelves against one wall with a set of dark legal tomes, a sofa, a coffee table, some spare chairs against a wall, an American flag standing in a corner. I’ve seen this office before, surely, hundreds of times, in movies?
“Jack?” A voice calls out from behind a door. “That detective here?”
“Yep, just arrived.”
A sound of water in a washbasin, and the door opens. This man is older, perhaps in his mid-forties, with graying hair, broad shoulders, a heavy walk as he crosses the floor with his hand out. “Congratulations, I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone cross town so quickly. Tod Rosen. How d’you do it?”
“He got the Bangkok helicopter,” Jack Nape says.
“ Bangkok helicopter, huh?” Rosen looks uncertainly at Nape, who shrugs.
A moment of silence. Too late I realize I am supposed to explain. Unforgivably, I let the beat pass without doing so. Jack Nape comes to the rescue. “Could it have been a motorbike?”
“Yes,” I say brightly.
Still Nape has to rescue the moment. He turns to Rosen. “Sounds crude but those motorbike taxis really do beat the traffic.”
“Oh, right.” Now I understand that Rosen is new to Krung Thep. “Whatever works, I guess. Great city, lousy traffic.”
Again I miss the beat. Normally I do better than this. The problem is that suddenly I cannot look at a man without seeing a cobra gnawing at his left eye. I’m sure if I looked in a mirror I would see the same thing. This vision has wrecked my social skills.