“They’ve decided the main point,” Ishy calls out to me. “It’s only details they’re discussing now. Copyright, merchandising, that kind of thing.”
Simultaneously Chanya, who has understood more than I have been able to, from some Japanese she picked up in the course of trade, has collapsed in another great torrent of sobs, taking frequent moments to stare disbelievingly at Ishy, her eyes great saucers of horror and disbelief. When both the Italian and the Japanese surgeon make toward us, she clasps her breasts possessively.
But they pass by us just as Ishy removes his shirt, then the rest of his clothes.
“The yakuza are very humane,” he explains while the surgeon takes a syringe out of his pocket and a small vial out of another. He pulls the hygienic paper off the syringe, pulls the protective cap off the needle, and plunges the needle into the vial. “They said I could die first. I said no, I want to preside over the removal of my masterpiece. One wrong move by that wop, and I’ll curse him for eternity.” Shaking his head at Chanya: “Don’t worry, love-it’ll pay for everything. There’s nothing more to worry about. This way you get to keep your tits.” He pauses while one of his countrymen ties a white scarf with black Japanese characters around his head in the tradition of kamikaze, then watches while the surgeon injects him in the arm: “It’s one of those new brain drugs. I’ll be able to follow everything painlessly, like a great fog of consciousness looking down on my exfoliation. I see this as a personal triumph-like the snake I am, I’m shedding my skin, my ego, and my life in praise of Buddha and for the love of man. After all I’ve been through, I think that’s heroic. You may not want to witness this, though. You’re free to go. I told them you won’t tell anyone.”
I tell Chanya to get the hell out while she still can, even though these men seem to pose no threat to her and indeed have more or less ignored her since they cut their deal. Am I protecting her, or is there some other motive? Perhaps I’m ashamed of my morbid curiosity. Perhaps I don’t want her to see how fascinated I am by what will happen next. (Maybe I don’t want to see how fascinated she might be.) I take her to the door, kiss her, and push her away. By the time I have returned, the drug is already taking effect-Ishy is losing control of his legs. The surgeon barks orders in Japanese, and five men immediately surround the artist and lower him gently onto the long table. Already he has lost all control over his body, there is no connection between his mind and his nerves, but light remains in those unblinking eyes. I would love to know what he’s thinking.
Under the direction of the Italian, the surgeon makes some deft strokes with a scalpel from armpits to hips and along the length of the underarms. He makes light circular incisions at the ankles and wrists and along the length of the penis. With quite astonishing speed, assisted by the Italian and one other man, they unpeel him. As with any masterpiece, the Italian carefully rolls up the hide to take it upstairs for curing. All the others follow, leaving me alone in the cavernous room with his brilliantly colored work glowing from the walls, while Ishy, finally naked, presides inscrutably over his own slow dying.
SEVEN. Plan C
47
Well, we’ve received the final official lab results,” Elizabeth Hatch says in that level, hypercontrolled way of hers. Nevertheless, she casts a slightly sheepish glance at me. (I have my spies: I heard on the grapevine she went on another tour last night and ended up with the same girl. This could be love-I have a feeling she’ll be back.) “It seems the DNA is identical in the Stephen Bright and the Mitch Turner case. The only problem: the DNA, according to our database, belongs to the terrorist Achmad Yona, who was killed in the bomb blast in Samalanga in Indonesia a few weeks before Bright.”
“So he killed Mitch Turner, died in the bomb blast, came back to kill Stephen,” Hudson says.
I’m not totally convinced of an ironic intention. The conversation, in the CIA’s suite at the Sheraton, possesses the surreal quality of a rehearsal. These two officers will be filing their own individual reports, of course; this is a practice session.
“So you narrow down the possibilities. One, Achmad Yona had nothing to do with any of the slayings. He distributed hair from his beard and two of his fingers to colleagues in order to create a red herring and/or to enhance his reputation. Two, Yona did both killings and the DNA evidence found at the Indonesian bomb blast was a plant.”
“The way to handle it,” Hudson declares, straightening his back (he has miraculously mutated into Paper Warrior First Class), “is to play down the Indonesia thing. So they found DNA belonging to him in that bomb blast-so what? They burned all the other remains before we could get to them, so we don’t know for sure what they actually found, if anything. We can’t rely on the Indonesians to play totally straight with us. They’re Muslim, after all-under the skin they’re not totally unsympathetic to the radical cause.”
“That’s it,” agrees Elizabeth. “We finesse the Indonesia thing into a footnote.”
“That’s the way to play it,” from Hudson.
The two suddenly remember my presence. “Oh, we brought you over here because we wanted to make sure we’re all singing from the same hymnbook.” Elizabeth smiles. “Anything we’ve said so far inconsistent with your understanding of what went on?”
Tired of lying for Vikorn and suddenly haunted by an image of Mustafa and his father, I experience a reckless, liberating, and profoundly Buddhist compulsion to tell the truth. “Actually, Mitch Turner and Stephen Bright were killed by a mad Japanese, a tattooist with a terrible personality problem who confessed before he died. The killings had nothing to do with Al Qaeda.”
I am more than a little curious at the effect this bombshell will have on these two professionals. Which only goes to show I’m not so smart; I should have remembered that farang inhabit a parallel universe. The two suffer from a moment of collective deafness. Or are they embarrassed? Third-world cops do come out with the most ridiculous crap after all.
“Well, that’s great,” says Elizabeth after a long moment when no one looks me in the eye. “We can report that local law enforcement agrees with our initial report.” She gives me one of her superior-librarian looks as I make for the exit. “I know his Colonel sees it our way, too.”
When I glance back from the door, Hudson mouths an apologetic explanation: “GS Eleven.”
The Sheraton is only a short walk from our primitive love nest. We should probably have moved out by now, Chanya and I, but we’ve both got used to being what we really are: a couple of third-world peasants grabbing a sweet moment, favoring quality of life above standard of living. We’re both particularly fond of the big water trough in the backyard, where we wash each other down like elephants. She has to cook in the yard, too, and I’ve become fond of watching her pounding chiles with the mortar and pestle wearing nothing but a sarong. A couple of beers, the odd spliff, the sounds of the street at night while we cuddle up under the fan-what more could a sane man want?
Well, there is just one gigantic loose end that troubles me. I wait for the moment-we’ve just made love, and Chanya, who has morphed into traditional Thai wife, goes to bring the beer from the cooler. I clear my throat. She glances at me. I’m tilting my head in the cutest possible imitation of a question mark. She’s way too smart not to get the point. She puts the bottle down next to my arm, goes to rummage in one of her bags that she dumped in a corner of the room, and returns with a late-model IBM ThinkPad. My eyes turn to saucers while she expertly switches it on, connects the modem to our landline, and types in a code.