Lalita smiled at the story and felt a great fondness for Phra Tanatika, for she saw he was trying to take the edge off of her problem with sex. Surely he was right: It was just an agricultural function, why did she take it so seriously?
“What can I do to help my karma along in this regard and find the right man?”
“Imaging,” the monk promptly replied. “You make an image in your mind of the kind of man you could give everything to — then when you see him you will know him.”
Which is exactly what she did. Every night before she went to sleep, every morning when she woke up, she painstakingly built up an image of a farang man to whom she could happily give her heart and body and enthusiastically perform all those dreadful things that Japanese whore was doing in the porn video.
The image she built up in her mind was surprisingly detailed: tall, slim, handsome, probably American, wealthy, a strong jaw, beautifully dressed in expensive casual clothes, with a telltale look in his eyes that most men don’t have: the look of a conquering dragon, to go with her own inner drag which very few people ever saw. She even imaged his favorite color: crimson.
All that happened over the past week. Now she is taking Magnus’s photograph to Phra Tanatika at Wat Tanorn, using the sheet of paper as a makeshift fan in the hot, steamy bus that costs only two baht because there is no air-conditioning.
“Is this him?” she asks the monk. Phra Tanatika stares at Magnus’s picture, complete with crimson neck tie and suspenders. What he sees there he dares not tell her.
“What do you think?” he asks her. “Is it him or not?”
“I’m sure it is,” says Lalita.
“Then it is your karma, you cannot alter it.”
When she leaves, the monk looks after her with a worried expression. He knows that we humans are in reality a spaghetti junction of intertwined influences, called samscaras, from previous lifetimes. Some of the samscaras we bear date back to reptilian lifetimes and simply lie in wait indefinitely, like tics, for an opportunity to assert themselves, even in the most pure and gentle souls.
Bangkok, by the Chao Praya river, Tuesday, March 1, 2005
Magnus watches while Tallboy and a dozen Thai men set up the giant plasma TV monitor in the warehouse in Bangkok’s Chinatown, near the river. Every now and then Tallboy receives a call from Colombia on his cell phone. Sometimes he’s the one to make the call to Colombia.
“How’s your link?” Tallboy asks. “Everything in place?”
Tallboy is talking to his opposite number in the enemy camp, but practical issues force a polite, even genial tone. War will resume as soon as they have fixed the glitches.
“I know, the technology is never as advanced as they claim, there are always problems. How good is your satellite link? I mean, you’re on the top of some stone age hill in the Andes, right? I’m in the middle of a modern city, so most likely you would be the one with the problem, right? Okay, let’s do another trial run.”
The giant screen, hung on the back wall of the ware-house, is joined to a box of technological tricks from which a dozen cables emerge. A Sony digital movie camera points at an empty gurney. When a technician flicks a switch, the screen fills with a kind of energetic fuzz, billions of pixels in some chaotic state.
“Tell me something,” Tallboy says into his cell phone, “you got rain over there? Looks like rain on the screen. No, wait, okay, we’re receiving you. Shit, you weren’t supposed to start yet.”
Lacking Tallboy’s finesse, the Colombians have already pointed their camera at Hercules Lee, who is tied to a chair and gagged and looking very sick.
“Is Samson linked in to this?” Magnus asks Tallboy.
“Sure,” Tallboy says, looking worried.
“Better bring in the kid brother,” Magnus tells Tallboy.
“Right.”
Felipe Maria Jesus González Escaverada is swarthy, unshaven, in his late twenties, cuffed hand and foot. Maybe they tranquilized him, or simply beat the hell out of him already; he’s not fully conscious, anyway. But Magnus knows Tallboy has adrenalin and testosterone on hand: If necessary, the kid brother could be very alert in seconds. The boys dump the kid brother onto the gurney and strap him in with hospital-style restrainers. Now the screen splits: One half is Hercules Lee looking very sick on some hill in the Andes, the other half is Felipe Maria Jesus González also looking very sick strapped to the gurney in Bangkok. In Colombia they are watching the same split screen.
“Ready?” Tallboy asks.
Ready.” The thick Hispanic accent booms over the sound system.
Tallboy looks to Magnus for strategic advice: What do I do now?
“Ask if they’re ready to talk. Tell them what a childish waste of time this all is — waste of money too. It’s ridiculous in this day and age.”
Talking into a microphone, Tallboy repeats what Magnus has said, word for word.
It’s a matter of honor,” the Hispanic voice says from the speakers.
“It’s a matter of two little kilos of coke,” Tallboy corrects. “What’s to get macho about? Are you in business or do you spend all your time playing with yourself?”
Don’t get cheeky, flatnose.
“At least I don’t have a whole forest growing out of my nose. Do you grow coca in there?”
“You’re not a man. Men do not talk like that. Only boys, women, and Chinks.”
Tallboy, fuming now and picking up a pair of pliers: “Okay, I’m starting with the left ear.”
“Me too,” says the Hispanic voice.
Magnus cannot stand to watch. This is a preliminary skirmish; no new stage in the negotiations will be reached before both victims are properly softened up with a few minor body parts ripped to shreds, gags off, screaming the place down. McKay needs a drink, preferably where he will not hear the screams.
He leaves the warehouse and passes between ten of Tallboy’s men who are on guard outside. Magnus knows the area and heads toward the river. Small shops sell beer, basic provisions, and cigarettes. Magnus buys a pack of Marlboro Red and a can of Singha beer. He checks his watch. His experience with these kinds of negotiations suggests that a good ten minutes of terror on both sides is needed before anyone starts to see sense.
Halfway through his cigarette, he hears a sound both muffled and tremendous, then the sky above the river lights up for a moment, illuminating the water, the opposite shore, his hand holding the can of beer, and the face of the old lady who owns the shop. Little stars rise and dance amidst the acrid stench of plastic, the crude fragrance of petrol, the primeval aroma of burning wood. He stands and turns to watch the conflagration, less than a block away, quickly diminish to a massive blaze.
With the lightning reflex of a pro, Magnus realizes he misjudged the timing. Obviously the Colombians knew the location of the warehouse, and as soon as Pablo Escaverada, the godfather, decided the torture would have to be taken all the way, he preferred to kill his own kid brother along with Tallboy Yip and his men. He still held Hercules Lee, of course, and therefore had brilliantly gained the upper hand in the incomprehensible war.
Badly shaken: How the hell did a bunch of Colombian bums find out a secret address in Bangkok? Fighting an adrenalin rush: He needs to hide. If the Escaverada family know about the warehouse, they must know about him too. Maybe the bombers saw him leave the warehouse and know he’s still alive?