A tuk-tuk driver swerved past, swigging from a Leo beer can. Jake looked at his phone, ritualistically. But Chemda was not going to call. She was gone. Maybe for good. The phone was silent.
Jake leaned and poured himself a glass of the Mekong whiskey. It was harsh and sour and necessary. He drank it fast, poured himself another. The mosquitoes were biting, the women in burqas waddled past the whores in their hot pants.
Julia was talking.
“I have one final query, Marcel.”
“Eh?”
“You said to that guy in the lab, in Abkhazia, ‘The Chinese took it much further.’”
The Frenchman was gazing nervously down the crowded street in a reverie of half-hidden fear. He alerted himself, and turned.
“Aii. Yes. Yes. That’s right. I did.”
The American woman leaned forward, serious. “How do you know this? How do you know they carried on?”
Barnier had maybe his sixtieth cigarette of the evening poised, unlit, between his fingers. He cracked open a Zippo lighter and flamed the tobacco. Then he plumed a blue maribou feather of smoke and said: “About a year ago I got an e-mail, out of nowhere, from my old colleague Colin Fishwick. My old comrade in arms from Democratic Kampuchea. Fishwick!”
“The neurologist!” Julia said. “The other survivor, from the photo.”
“The only one alive, apart from me. We e-mailed about the killings. The way we were all being… knocked off? One by one. He wanted to know what I reckoned, how dangerous it was. I said I was damn terrified and I was looking into the mystery and I was going to flee if it all got too close. Fishwick said the killer was probably coming for him, too, but he was so hidden away he felt safe. For the moment.”
“OK.”
“The e-mail exchange ended soon after that,” Barnier added. “But Fishwick let one thing slip. I asked what he was doing. And then he confessed. He said he had been recruited again by the Chinese. He’d been enticed back — big money — to develop things. He hinted it was the same stuff he had done thirty years ago. Whatever that was — I hadn’t guessed at the time. Now we know. Anyway, he said he was still working at a lab in Yunnan, in a very obscure, very remote place. Balagezong, quite near Zhongdian. It’s in the lower Himalayas. Hard by Tibet.”
Jake stared across the dirty table.
“You say he is… still working?”
“Yep.” Barnier nostriled smoke. “Right now, in this remote corner of China, Balagezong — it seems they’re still wielding the scalpel, they are still chopping out guilt and conscience. They are still doing the operation. The only difference is…” He paused and gazed warily around, then added: “This time, apparently, according to Fishwick, this time they’ve got it right. And that—”
He stopped abruptly. His face was a cold-sweated mask.
35
The Frenchman was standing.
“I just saw Chemda! Over there. By the kathoey bar.” He hesitated. “Unless—!”
Jake was already running down bustling Sukhumvit, barging past the white men and their miniature girlfriends; but he felt a surprisingly strong hand pull him back.
Barnier’s whiskey breath was hot in his face.
“Think — this cannot be your girlfriend — think — it must be the killer — why would Chemda be skulking around. Jake?”
The good sense was chilling. But Jake didn’t care: he had to take the risk. It might be her. He wrestled himself free of Barnier.
“I’m going to look. Where was she, exactly?”
Barnier puffed his exasperation.
“Idiot. There. There. Fucking madness. She was there. I am going back to my apartment, lock myself in — get my bags — and then I am fucking gone.”
He turned and paced away, joining the crowds, another older white guy among the younger Asian girls and the he shes. Jake found Julia at his side.
“Let me help.”
She helped, but it was swiftly obvious the search was fruitless. They searched up and down Soi 2, and Soi 4, they ran past Beer Garden and Foodland Supermarket, they pushed past the freelance hookers and the Saudi wives and the blind karaoke singers warbling their terrible songs.
Nothing.
“Maybe,” Julia suggested, “maybe Barnier imagined it. Probably. He is drunk.”
“He is delusional.” Jake spat his disappointment. “Fucking drunken lunatic. Ah, fuck… Fuck it.” He rubbed the tiredness and despair into his face with weary hands. “Come on. I don’t believe he saw anything. Let’s go to my hotel. See if Chemda left a message.”
This was, of course, pathetically hopeful, as he knew: but he had no hopes left.
The American woman was silent as they paced down hot, busy, nocturnal Soi Nana.
“Jake, I’m sorry. For what happened in that bar. Chemda.”
“It’s OK. I believe you. And I also know the killer just can’t be Chemda.”
They were at the corner of Soi 6. A whore in a microskirt was bowing to a small shrine, a spirit house, erected in front of the Shakerz Coyote Tavern.
“So who is it?”
“A clone?” Jake sighed. “Who knows. If they can cut your conscience out of your head, what can’t they do? Clone you? Multiply you? Your guess is better than mine.”
Julia put a hand on his tensed, muscled, angry shoulder.
“We’ll find her.”
“Yeah. Of course we will. Somewhere in Asia. Where shall we start looking? India?”
They walked quickly down Soi 6, past the Sukhumvit Grand with its saluting guards, where a snicket of a side road led under papaya trees. It was a cloistered spot in the kineticism of the city: two Thai kids were sitting on stools playing guitar, softly, like troubadours in the moonlight. Another spirit house lurked in the very darkest corner.
Julia said, “What about her family?”
“Speak to them? Sure. That’s the obvious solution, isn’t it? I even tried. But I don’t think they trust me, they already think I kidnapped her, whisked her away into danger. Can I blame them—”
“But she was already in trouble when you met her, in Laos, right?”
“Yes, but…” Jake sighed. “Since I met her she’s got into a lot more trouble. And I wonder. Maybe it is my fault? Blundering into situations I don’t understand? That’s the thing with Cambodia, Thailand, all these countries — you think you have grasped a situation, then it turns out it was entirely the opposite, it all meant something different.” He gazed at the lobby of his hotel, the Sukhumvit Crown. Desolate. “Jesus, what are we gonna do?”
As if it was an answer, he felt a buzzing in his pocket.
His phone, blinking an American cell number. Tyrone. Tyrone.
He eagerly clicked ACCEPT.
“Ty?”
“Hey. You OK? Any news of Chemda?”
“So you heard. You got my message?”
“Yes, but—”
“We don’t know where she is, Ty. Just gone. I’ve been trying to ring you. Do you know anything? Just… desperate.”
“I’m trying to tell you. Look…” Tyrone’s drawl hinted at something. A revelation.
“What, Ty? What?”
The silence was sharp. Then Tyrone answered: “I have good and bad news. I think I know where Chemda is.”