Her devastation at the manner of his death, though, caused a seismic shift in her state of mind. She and Mitch had already been naked, about to make love, when Ishy burst in with that huge military knife, his face distorted with an insane jealousy. It happened so quickly. She was still lying next to the American when Ishy jumped him, plunged the knife into his guts, tore upward with the blade, then made her watch while he severed the penis, held it in her face, then chucked it on the bedside table. Ishy the artist had been totally eclipsed by Ishy the monster. There was even a righteousness in the tattooist’s rage: a face bursting with self-justification as he held up the severed member. Here was a tortured mind that had given up the last shred of resistance to its demon. Here indeed was the demon in purest form. Her face expressed total revulsion: she was not afraid to die. Clearly Ishy had misunderstood. For her, this could never be an expression of love. Further enraged, he grabbed the telephone and stretched the cable until it was close enough for her to use. Go on then, call the cops, his expression said.
But she turned her face away. She dared not; her humiliation was complete. She would have let Ishy kill her without complaint, but the thought of spending the rest of her life in a Thai jail was more than she could face. (She was a whore and Ishy’s former lover, of course the cops would charge her too.)
With an expression of contempt, Ishy turned the American over and began expertly to remove his tattoo using the knife. Next to her on the bed, Mitch gave his last groans: she watched the light fade from his eyes, which fixed on her in eternal sadness.
Ishy’s face was a hideous caricature, like something from Japanese demonology, as he carefully rolled up the tattoo with both hands and placed it in a plastic bag that he dumped on the table. He picked up the knife again, held up her left breast for inspection, and traced the outline of the dolphin with the tip of the blade-then abruptly chucked the knife on the bed and left.
Shock set in, spasms invaded her body. She forced herself from the bed, staggered around the room like a drunk until she found Mitch’s pipe and smoked some of the opium before she could control herself sufficiently to leave. Tripping a little on the drug (entering the smoker’s world of symbols), she picked up the rose she had discarded on entering the room, put it in a plastic beaker that she filled with water from the bathroom, and placed the beaker at the opposite end of the bedside table to that where the penis lay. Somehow these two icons now balanced each other.
She had nowhere to go but our bar. On her way out, she caught sight of the key to the hotel safe box, where she expected Mitch had stashed more of the opium. She did not consider the IBM ThinkPad until she saw it there in the box the next day. She bribed the hotel receptionist to keep his mouth shut.
When the opium dream began to melt, a great black cloud of guilt gathered in its place; the terror of the kind of karma that her involvement in this hideous crime might involve (there was no doubt, surely, that this murder sprang directly from her lust for Ishy?) produced in her soul a colossal struggle that seemed to take place in the region of her guts. Little by little she began to resume sovereignty of her mind.
She adopted a mask of nonchalance, but her inner life was quite otherwise: faced with hell, she found the strength for one desperate attempt to make amends and was prepared to risk anything. She revived her plan and went to Vikorn with it. The intensity of her advocacy, together with the political benefits from Vikorn’s point of view-and the chance finally to get one over on Zinna-for once overcame the old man’s greed. Yes, he would forgo all profits if she would use the CIA’s laptop in the way she suggested. He would personally arrange the hijack, once the coordinates of General Zinna’s next shipment were known. His only stipulation: that he would retain naming rights to her grand project.
The thing turned out to be quite amazingly simple. She studied the e-mail chatter on the CIA encrypted line until Zinna’s name came up, together with information about the size, direction, and likely destination of this new shipment. She called Vikorn, told him where the drug haul was presently located according to CIA information, and monitored the e-mail while Vikorn made his move. With a troop of plainclothes cops under Vikorn’s personal direction, the sting went off like clockwork. As luck would have it, the haul consisted of a massive amount of newly processed heroin from finest-quality Burmese opium refined to professional-level purity in labs up in the Northwest in the no-man’s-land where the Karen tribe have been warring with the Burmese for more than fifty years. (According to the beat on the street, Zinna no longer touched morphine.) Using his own network, Vikorn was able to sell the haul wholesale within days and use the dough for Chanya’s project, which Vikorn now took over with enthusiasm. Naturally, there was no obvious scream of outrage from Zinna, and for the time being he could only remain in a state of muted eruption. Of course, once Chanya’s plan was fully realized, there would be no doubt about who stole the dope or what he did with it. That suited Vikorn, who was in the mood for some in-your-face revenge.
“Look,” Chanya says, pointing to the stream of instant messaging passing over the screen:
“The latest we have about that Zinna shipment is that it was hijacked by the cops.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, the rumor is pointing at his archenemy, Colonel Vikorn.”
“You’re kidding me?”
“Nope, there’s quite a lot of anecdotal evidence.”
“Like what?”
“Like they are breaking ground on a big site just outside Surin, for a massive general hospital.”
“I don’t get it.”
“It’s gonna be called the Colonel Vikorn Memorial Hospital.”
“Right. Now I get it.”
I stare at Chanya. “A hospital?”
She takes out a large calculator and shows me how quickly her negative karma will be eclipsed by the number of lifesaving operations the hospital will perform. In less than a month after the hospital is fully operational, she’ll be free of all defilements.
My jaw has dropped. “You were the one with Plan C, not Manny?”
“Who?”
“Lieutenant Manhatsirikit?” She looks at me blankly. “Did Vikorn give you the hundred-thousand-dollars’ reward that he was promising to anyone who successfully needled Zinna?” This is not a disinterested question; for more than a week now we have not used contraception.
“I gave it away to a charity that helps rehabilitate prostitutes. I want clean karma. I don’t want any dirty money.”
So she’s even a better Buddhist than me? Well, at least I can see the funny side.