“I know you’ve already met, but let me make the introduction anyway,” Vikorn said. “Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep, this is Inspector Krom. Inspector Krom, this is Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep.” He turned to me. “Inspector Krom is our new head of technology,” he said.
If he had not spoken her name, I might not have recognized the drenched and hooded inspector in the black coveralls from the day before. Today she wore the regulation white blouse with blue shoulder boards and a navy skirt that reached below her knees. Vikorn normally treated all young women the same way: with impeccable chivalry based on the assumption that his power and charisma would be sufficient to bed her were he crass enough to use them, which he never did. After all, he owned clubs full of women younger, more voluptuous, and less challenging; but Krom stumped him. Part of the problem was that Vikorn was too old-fashioned-and the Inspector a tad too good-looking-for it even to occur to him that she was gay. I had radically to revise my view of the young woman who yesterday had seemed so fascinated by a hunk straight out of Hollywood. It seems I had misread her, for, in the Thai vernacular, it was plain to me that she was most definitely a tom. Of course, the requirements of survival in a man-dominated profession in Thailand demanded that she dissimulate: it was a little embarrassing the way she turned girly, to give the impression that the phallic force of Vikorn’s power and money were overwhelming her inner command center. (Are there any women who don’t know how to do that where you come from, R?)
It was a tired ritual, though, that neither party believed in. I think she would have liked to stand with legs apart, chest inflated, one hand in her pocket, the other brandishing a cigar. Trying to explain the technology while keeping up femininity and deference was quite a strain. Vikorn, on the other hand, looked like he needed to put his feet up in a comfortable chair at home.
“The red are pickup points and the green are delivery points.” She looked me carefully in the eye through those very cute black-framed spectacles that sat on the end of her tiny nose. Now she paused, waiting for me.
“And the yellow?” I obliged.
She checked with Vikorn, who nodded for her to answer my question. “They are…I don’t think there’s a word for it in Thai, and my English doesn’t stretch that far.” She checked with Vikorn again.
“Listening posts,” he said with a groan.
“Right,” she said. “The Colonel is correct as always. Listening posts.”
“But they’re almost all in China?”
“Correct.” Now it was him and her against me. They both stared into my eyes for a moment, then looked away.
“May I ask why?”
“Because they are Chinese listening posts.”
“Listening to who?”
“Me,” Vikorn said, then added, “and the Americans. And all the other Asia Pac countries. But it’s okay.” He shrugged. “The Chinese are our friends.” He glanced at Krom and added, “Apparently.”
He and Krom were staring at me now, waiting. Why would they be waiting for something from me, the lowest-ranked of the three of us? I looked at Vikorn for an answer.
“Sonchai, what would you like to do?”
Does that sound like a normal, civilized question to you, R? Well, over here it’s not, it’s damned strange for someone like the Chief to ask me in social-worker tones what I would like to do. It’s never been my place to do what I like, my business is to do what he likes.
“What would I like to do? I’d like to arrest those bastards from yesterday, of course. Especially that damned Asset who somehow induced a Thai boy to kill his mother. I don’t have to tell you what that must mean. They’ve developed some kind of military technique for taking over a person’s mind. I don’t care what anybody says, no Thai boy that age is capable of killing his mom. Thai mothers instill total and absolute obedience in their children, a dependency that death itself cannot break. Everybody knows an emotionally enslaved male child is a lot more reliable in old age than social security. No, that Thai boy was poisoned by farang mind, no doubt about it.” I paused. “And most of all I would like to find the perp in the Market Murder case. I want whoever killed that girl and plastered my name in blood all over the mirror.”
Vikorn scratched his chin. “You can’t arrest the Asset or Goldman. They both have diplomatic cover, and anyway the CIA would never allow it. If you made too much fuss, they would take you out.”
“Then I want to arrest Lord bloody Sakagorn of Senior Counsel,” I yelled. “He’s clearly guilty after the fact and knows what’s going on.”
I uttered this last outburst quite certain that no one was going to give me authority to arrest the aristocrat lawyer whose connections went all the way to the top of government. To my surprise Vikorn smiled, though a tad wanly. “That’s what I thought you would say. Leave it with me for the moment. I’ll, ah, have to check.”
“With the Chinese?”
He frowned. Then, as if in a senile change of heart, Vikorn suddenly dismissed us: “Well, that will do for now. I’m sure the two of you will catch up in your own time. I’m afraid I have a meeting with the Director in an hour and the traffic is gridlocked on Rama IX. If you’ll excuse me?”
Krom and I immediately waied and left the room, now known as the Communications and Command Center, or CCC.
–
The door had no sooner closed behind us, leaving us in the hall together, than Inspector Krom reverted. She hunched her shoulders and lowered her head, giving the impression of serious, if narrow, intent. At the same time she walked next to me slightly bowlegged, like a man with swollen testicles, and used a kind of rolling rhythm with her arms, as if she were readying herself for a fight. She was chummy, though, in her natural form, and chatted to me in a matey way, making use of the latest-and most masculine-street slang.
“What are the girls like over at your mother’s bar?” she wanted to know. “Great tits and ass, I bet.”
“We pay over the odds.” I wrinkled my brow. “You’re not a feminist?”
She wrinkled hers in turn. “Do I look that old? Want coffee?”
We left the station to cross the road to the cooked-food stalls. I’d already eaten so I ordered a coffee. Krom ordered extra-spicy somtam salad. She stared at me, waiting for me to speak first.
“I’m a homicide detective,” I said.
“I know. And yesterday you witnessed a quadruple homicide, and no way will they let you bring in the perps. Like Vikorn said, they have diplomatic immunity.”
“Fuck immunity, this is matricide.”
She nodded. “I understand. But the key is Vikorn who takes his orders from a ministry in Beijing these days. What did you think of that new high-tech meeting room?”
“I think it’s weird, like an alien installation.”
“But that’s exactly what it is. The aliens are Chinese. That display on the map, that is an electronic gun held to the Old Man’s head. It’s a naked statement of how much-how very, very much-he owes the Chinese. Basically, he screwed up.”
“How’s that?”
“They tricked him. He was allowed to move a lot of stuff out of Myanmar-I mean huge loads-through Yunnan and all the way across to Hong Kong and Shanghai. He was already a billionaire, and he doubled his fortune. Sure, he bribed. He bribed and bribed and made a lot of regional bosses very happy-the mistake he made was to underestimate Beijing. Since they never lifted a finger to stop him, he assumed either they didn’t know or they were getting kickbacks from the regional bosses. Being a cop and a crook, he didn’t quite have the sweep and depth to figure out what Beijing was up to. Now it’s too late.”
“So what is Beijing up to?”
“Research and development. Of humans. But they’re way behind.”