“No comment, and what the fuck’s it got to do with Bradley? Warren didn’t kill Bradley.”
“I know. But that doesn’t mean Warren’s not the culprit, karmically speaking.”
As we turn into Asok, a shake of the head: “Just like my fucking brother.”
The traffic coagulates halfway down Asok. I’m pretty sure I know where we’re going now, and of course the Colonel knows I know. He glances up to look at me in the rearview mirror. “Just out of interest, what were you doing at that hospital?”
“None of your business.”
“Did Warren ever use it?”
“Not that I know of.”
He shifts his eyes from the mirror. “Why do I not like that answer?”
38
Just as I suspected, we are heading for the Rachada Strip. Think Las Vegas with a different vice at its center. Think also neo-Oriental wedding cake architecture of blinding vulgarity. Think about wearing sunglasses after dark. In daylight the neon competes with the sun and most of the signs include the word MASSAGE. We slink into the forecourt of the Emerald Hotel where each of the Lexus’s four doors is opened simultaneously by lackeys who have been trained to do that for little Japanese guys with towering bank accounts, for this is not normally a Western haunt at all. But then, I have begun to wonder if Sylvester Warren is really a Western man.
I watch and wait with my two minders while the Colonel crosses the vast lobby to speak to one of about twelve receptionists, who wais to him. Even over the distance one can sense the reverence when Warren’s name is mentioned. A jerk of the Colonel’s head brings us across the floor to the bank of lifts. We choose the one which reaches the penthouse suite, and when the LED flashes 33, we step out into another lobby. A young woman in a blue and gold silk sarong wais to us and leads us into a room the size of a school hall with floor-to-ceiling windows, five-seater sofas, an undergrowth of orchids in cut-glass vases and a tall slim man standing in profile to us with his hands thrust into a twenties-style padded smoking jacket. We lost the minders at the ground floor so it’s just the Colonel and I who wai to the Khun, who to my surprise wais elegantly back, with the proper moment of mindfulness. Under the rules a man of his exalted status is not supposed to wai to minions like us at all, but the gesture has a charm which is not lost on the Colonel. For all his cursing in the car, Colonel Vikorn is all smiles and deference before this unique source of wealth and power.
“Welcome to Shangri-la,” Warren says with a generous smile which contains many things, self-mockery being one of them. I feel my spirits sink at such impenetrable subtlety. His perfect poise also is intimidating, and seems to go with his perfect tan, the filigree gold chain on his left wrist which I remember from the presidential photographs, the nuance of an expensive cologne-and those implacable gray-blue eyes which seem to acknowledge that all affectation is merely a means to an end, adornment a form of jungle camouflage. We are so enthralled by the Khun’s aura it takes both the Colonel and me more than a minute to realize there is someone else in the room. “You know Colonel Suvit of course, superintendent of District 15?”
I wai dutifully to the stocky man with shaved head in police colonel uniform while Colonel Vikorn, not entirely surprised, gives him a nod. Colonel Suvit’s presence here is deeply shocking to me, not least because it amounts to an insolent confirmation of my worst fears: I will never be permitted to progress beyond this moment, professionally, even personally. I will be the bird flying against the window until I fall from exhaustion and join all the other bird corpses lying on the floor. I feel more than a little dizzy.
“I asked Colonel Suvit to come because I understand his beat covers the spot where the late William Bradley was found. The Colonel and I have known each other many years so it’s also an opportunity to enjoy his company.” The sentence is a little flowery because he has spoken in Thai and we’re like that. At the same time I know that Warren has taken me in, absorbed the entirety of what I am, and relaxed. As he expected, I’m no threat at all. Now he looks me in the eye. “Unfortunately, my time here on this trip is very limited.” He pauses and seems genuinely to hesitate between a number of options. His eyes flicker across to Colonel Suvit, who remains inscrutable. I have no intuitive grasp of this American at all, even his vibrations are carefully, masterfully controlled, like those of one who lives behind a protective shield. “I wonder therefore if it would be in everyone’s interests if I spoke, and then if I’ve left anything out, Detective Jitpleecheep can ask anything he likes?”
“I’m sure you won’t leave anything out, Khun Warren, and the detective won’t want to ask a single thing.” Colonel Suvit does not trouble to look at me. He raises half an eyebrow at Vikorn instead, who leans his head to one side, dubiously. The hostility between these two men is my only source of comfort in this palace of privilege.
“First, I must apologize to you, Detective, I really should have contacted you directly instead of putting you to the trouble of seeking me out.”
The biggest surprise here, after the apology, is that Warren has switched to English, neatly cutting out the two colonels, who are reduced to dumb observers. His accent is soft and almost British. While I’m trying to think of an elegant reply to his elegant opening, he carries elegantly on. “I heard about Bradley’s death probably not long after you found him. Let me be frank and admit I have many friends in your country, many of them in high positions, and, being Thai, they look after me. They knew that Bradley and I were friends of a kind, brought together by our quite irrational passion for jade.” He pauses to search my face before continuing. “As Hemingway said about big-game hunting, either you understand it or you don’t. To those who don’t, the jade craze must seem ridiculous in this modern world where silicon rules. To those who do, a friendship between a marine sergeant and a jeweler is not unthinkable; on the contrary. Hobbies bring people of different walks of life together-wine, horses, pigeons, falcons-gems. When people find a common passion they overlook social barriers. Not that a jeweler is necessarily an exalted personage. My trade obliges me to cultivate the truly exalted. Who will buy gems if not the rich? My friends and clients are the movers and shakers of this world, I myself am no more than a humble merchant.”
This last sentence, delivered without a trace of humility, but without irony either, marks the end of the beginning. He takes a cigarette holder out of a pocket of his smoking jacket and walks to one of the coffee tables where a packet of cigarettes awaits. Ignoring the colonels, he offers me one. I refuse, speechless. I think I am receiving the kind of special treatment a condemned man receives the night before his execution. He resumes whilst fitting the cigarette, waving it to make his points. The cigarette holder is jade.
“I’ll cut to the chase. The best nephrite and jadeite in the world come from an area in the Kachin Mountains in Burma and have for thousands of years. During every one of those thousands of years, the political situation in Burma has been volatile, the human cost of mining the jade appalling, the greed of the Chinese middlemen-they have always been Chinese-outrageous. This is no less the case today than it was in the warring states period. At the present time a corrupt and probably insane military junta, desperate for hard currency, sells the jade in parallel with opium and methedrine. The miners are encouraged to shoot up on heroin to help them endure the disgusting conditions, and there is a high incidence of HIV, often developing into full-blown AIDS. The mortality rate amongst the miners is extremely high, which suits the junta, who don’t want the miners returning to Rangoon to gossip. Word has got out, however, and a few Western journalists have published accounts of the situation, along with the usual sort of photographs showing destitute Third World people dying in conditions of extreme squalor. Everyone has their own views about political correctness. Is it a sign of a new high-mindedness in humanity, or has it produced a society of blamers, second-guessers and tiny-minded, self-righteous bigots? You can guess where my own answer lies. In any event, as a merchant whose customers need to be seen to adhere to the highest public morality, I have to be careful. I cannot afford for it to be obvious where my jade is coming from. In a nutshell, I have not been able to visit Rangoon for nearly a decade.” He shrugs. “If I cannot be seen to sell new jade, I must sell old jade. Fortunately, there is some around. Not all the stone plundered from the Forbidden City was of the highest workmanship. One can take a piece and improve it, according to demand. One can also disguise the new jade by making it look like something that has been around a long time. By imitating a piece from the imperial collection, for example. There is no fraud involved. The customer knows very well what she is buying and is delighted to be able to dodge the pseudomorality of these strange times. If she doesn’t really like the design of the piece, she can always ask me to have it reworked by my craftsmen. We’re not talking about whales or baby seals, after all, jade is not about to become extinct. Nor is the Burmese government about to stop selling it, so if I don’t buy it while the price is really quite reasonable, my Chinese competitors certainly will. As I say, there has never been a time when a person of delicate conscience could purchase jade from Burma. I can’t afford to have a delicate conscience. I made a decision early in my career that I wasn’t going to try to compete with people like De Beers, Boucheron, the whole Vendôme clique. My bag was going to be East Asia and I have spent a lot of my time and money protecting my territory. The media might pretend to follow the rules of heaven, down on the ground nothing has changed since the turf wars between Neanderthals and Sapiens. The Sapiens won because we know how to fight dirty.”