And he would give everything he’s ever owned and might ever own in the future to be in that room right this moment. Bored, irritated, apprehensive, hungover, angry-it wouldn’t matter. It would be the three of them. It would be his world, back again.
“Wake up,” Ming Li says.
He opens his eyes, and she’s standing there under a new black umbrella. She hands him another, still rolled up, purchased two doors away.
“You know what?” he asks.
“I know how,” Ming Li says. “I know whether. But I don’t know what. Sorry, Frank used to say-”
“Here’s what.” He pushes himself away from the window and opens his umbrella. He takes her by the arm and turns her, and they step out onto the sidewalk. “Murphy can’t do this to me. The son of a bitch isn’t going to know what hit him.”
At yet another Coffee World, he types everything he knows about Murphy, except for the names of Thuy and Jiang, on the keyboard of Ming Li’s little computer, and she pays a few baht to get the boy behind the counter to print out two copies for her. Following Rafferty’s instructions, she picks them up with a napkin, avoiding both the paper’s surface and the boy’s curious gaze, and takes them back to the table. Using the napkin, she folds one of the copies and opens a boxful of envelopes that she bought when she bought the umbrellas. She uses the napkin to take the envelope out, too, and when she’s gotten the printed page into it, without touching either, she dips one of the napkins into a glass of water and slides it over the mucilage on the flap. With the napkin she pushes it across the table, untouched, to Rafferty, who uses another napkin to pick it up and yet another to wrap it. Then he slips it into the pocket of his jacket.
She says, “Now what?”
“Now we take that one with us,” he says, indicating the second copy, “in case it becomes useful.”
“How might it become useful?”
“I have no idea,” he says, standing up for what feels like the ten-thousandth time that day, “but humor me.”
“Who was that?” Ming Li asks as he shuts off the phone. They’re side by side, umbrellas overlapping, as the rain pounds down.
“Floyd Preece, a reporter at the Bangkok Sun. I gave him the best story of his life three years ago, about beggars and gangsters and a baby-selling ring, and it made his career. I just gave him another one.”
“You kind of misled him. All those witnesses you were throwing around.”
“I’ll get Thuy and Jiang to talk to him. If he calls me back and says his editor is interested, I’ll leave a message for the two of them to call me, and we’ll work it out. He’ll do anything they want, including not mentioning their real names or their locations, to get them to tell the story. This is front-page stuff.” He frames the words in the air with his free hand. “ ‘PROMINENT AMERICAN BUSINESSMAN TIED TO VIETNAM MASSACRE.’ And under that, in upper- and lowercase, ‘U.S. War on Terror Connection Suspected.’ ”
“That’ll make the American embassy happy.”
“Fuck them,” Rafferty says. “If a government can’t carry out its policies in the light of day, it should make new policies.”
Ming Li stops walking. “Do you know how many people would be put out of business if that happened?”
“Well, at the risk of being repetitive, fuck them, too. My wife and child and I are threatened by all this nonsense because we’re too small to matter.” He takes her arm and tows her along. “It’s like some clodhopper with thick boots stomping on a bee. ‘Oh, you mean lots of little things that don’t sting got killed, too? Well, gee, too bad. They’re collateral damage. How do they expect me to tell the difference from way up here?’ This is not what America was supposed to be.”
“I don’t talk politics,” Ming Li says. “It’s a principle.”
“Politics is supposed to be a delivery system for food, security, and freedom.”
“Oh, my God,” Ming Li says. “No wonder you’re so disillusioned.”
“What time is it?”
“Look at your watch. Okay, okay, sorry. Male prerogative and all, ask the little woman. It’s about seven to one.”
“Perfect. Keep your eyes open for a very skinny American in a dark suit. Short hair, glasses, walks like his spine won’t bend.”
“We’re on a sidewalk in Bangkok, which has fourteen million people in it, and you think we’re going to run into a single, specific person.”
“I’m in the zone.”
“Well, warn me next time, and I won’t ask stupid questions.”
“It’s the end of lunch hour. For this guy lunch hour is sixty minutes, minus ten for walking, five in each direction. He absolutely will be back at his desk one hour after he left it. And when he first came to Bangkok, I searched his suitcase and he had a stack of receipts from the restaurants on our right.”
“Then this is the Secret Service guy, right? Poke, I know him. He’s the one Frank bargained with, the one who got him out of here.”
“Sorry.” Rafferty lifts his shoulders and lets them drop, then turns his head from side to side. “I’m forgetting things. This isn’t a good time to be-”
She puts her fingertips on his arm. “You’re not forgetting anything that matters, so relax. You’re just focusing. It’s like taking a test in school. You don’t need to remember your math if the question is about history.”
He looks down at her and is surprised all over again at how young she looks. “I hope Frank appreciates you.”
“He does. Of course, he thinks he created me.” She gives him a sharp elbow. “There’s your boy.”
Ten feet ahead of them, Elson has come out of the door to an Italian restaurant and is fighting with his umbrella, which seems to have a broken rib.
“You stay back,” Rafferty says. “I don’t want him to know you’re here.” He picks up the pace. “Here, fellow American,” he says, coming alongside Elson and offering half of his umbrella. “No point in getting wet. That awful suit might shrink.”
“Poke,” Elson says, his lips even thinner than usual. His eyes scan the street. “I can’t talk to you. I can’t be seen talking to you. You know that.”
“Not Poke,” Poke says. “Frank. Frank Rafferty. You know, news organizations tape their incoming calls. And these days even someone like me can order up a voiceprint, if he’s got the money.”
“Lower that umbrella,” Elson says, moving away. Rafferty brings his down in front of him, and Elson continues to fight with his own until they’ve got their backs to a building and he succeeds in opening it. He holds it beside Poke’s, effectively masking both of them from view.
“I had no idea you’d be involved in this,” Elson says. He’s almost whispering. “You were the furthest thing from my mind, or I’d never have used that name. I didn’t like the way things were shaping up, and I thought having a news crew or two on hand would keep them from going too bad. When the woman at the station asked my name, I blanked.”
“ ‘The way things were shaping up,’ ” Rafferty repeats.
“You know.” Elson lowers his umbrella a couple of inches, does a quick survey, then brings it back up. “With Murphy. I don’t like Murphy. I don’t trust him. I had a feeling he was out to kill that man.”
“Sellers.”
“Yes. He told us Sellers was operating in the south with the insurgents, that he’d been engaged with militants in three countries-here, the Philippines, Indonesia. All countries that Sellers had traveled to, according to the records. But I didn’t like the way things smelled. I wanted to talk to the guy, but Murphy said he didn’t have a location. Just said he-I mean, Sellers-was guaranteed to come to the demonstration because he was organizing it, so Murphy got Shen to put his guys out there, and they charged the demonstrators, or so they said-this is how it got back to me anyway-and fired tear gas at them, and in the melee Sellers got shot.”