The Secret Agent (25 page)

S
ompong Suwannathat intended to wait for darkness before he returned to the airport and his ministry plane.

In the hours of sunlight that remained, Wu Fat put the men through their drills and set up target practice and offered Sompong a young Akha girl after their lunch of roasted kid.

As night fell he visited the General’s shrine. It sat on a slight rise near a trickling stream, and prayer scarves hung from the nearby trees, saffron and scarlet. Sompong thought of the ashes melting deep into the alkaline soil. He thought of a gun butt, warm in his hand on that night fifteen years before. Then he tossed his cigarette aside and whistled for Wu Fat.

The six men wore Royal Thai Army uniforms Sompong had borrowed from a friend at Defense. Wu Fat had a colonel’s stripes. The uniformed men fell into correct military line near the baggage hold, swinging the heroin sacks hand over hand from the Jeep into the plane. Wu
Fat directed them and inspected each wooden crate of missiles and grenade launchers himself. The whole operation required only eighteen minutes, which was five minutes less than the first time they had done it.

“I will return soon,” Sompong told Wu Fat. “Tomorrow night or perhaps Saturday morning. Prepare the hut for trial.”

He saluted on the tarmac. Wu Fat raised his right hand and offered a blessing in Chinese. The plane’s engines roared and the men dropped backward into darkness.

Twenty-three minutes after takeoff, Sompong drew a report out of his briefcase and found the page where he’d stopped reading that morning.

Her hallmark is a short attention span. She’s intrigued with Max Roderick’s legacy in about the same measure as she was intrigued with Roderick himself. Give her a few weeks. She’ll move on.

“You’re slipping, Mr. Krane,” he said softly into the shadows. “I never give a woman more time.”

The hollow-eyed man
in the Hard Rock T-shirt and the drawstring pants was staggering slightly as night began to fall on Khao San Road. He had not slept in thirty-six hours, he was jet-lagged and giddy on cheap beer, but his singing head kept terror at bay as long as the daylight remained.

There’s a fascination frantic, in a ruin that’s romantic; do you think you are sufficiently decayed?
Lines from
The Mikado,
executed in falsetto. There was another phrase Jeff Knetsch was searching for—the name of the operetta he could not remember: something about black dogs howling at the moon, and the ghosts’ high noon.

The ghosts’ high noon.

He came to rest by a public telephone kiosk, and fished aimlessly in his trouser pockets for a coin that might work in the machine. He could not find one.

Was it envy, he wondered, of a life whose high points he’d never quite equaled? No, envy was too petty an emotion to warrant the absolute destruction of a man he’d loved. As he leaned against the booth in the fading heat of a tropic day, he remembered himself, suddenly, at the age of thirteen, teeth chattering with fear as he stared down the racecourse from the starting gate. The ice, perhaps, had shaken him—or was it the brutal falls of three previous competitors, one of them carried screaming off the course? Max at his elbow, impatient, incredulous. “The clock’s running! The buzzer sounded!
Get off your ass, Knetsch!”
He was still not sure whether Max pushed him, in the end.

Max lived without hesitation. He never second-guessed. Knetsch controlled for every possible variable and only then moved forward. And he had risked too little. Until the final gamble: Sompong’s money on the table, his dearest friend’s life on the line.

There was a shadow lurking beyond the corner of his eye, a shadow that vanished the instant he turned to stare.
Go away,
he pleaded, and heard a child’s shrill voice. Accusing him of something.

What he needed was a drink. His hands were shaking and darkness was falling. Darkness cut both ways—it hid the predators as well as their prey.

As he worked his way among the plastic chairs and metal tables of Joe’s Fish & Chip, it happened: a burly Asian with sleek black hair and dark glasses clipped his shoulder clumsily. The lawyer fell backward against a table, caught in the grip of claustrophobia so intense it bordered on panic. The Asian steadied himself with a
hand at Jeff’s hip, and muttered some words in Thai. A second later he was gone.

Jeff sucked in a shallow breath, sweat beading his forehead. The crush of bodies, the constant noise of
tuk-tuk
engines—he groped for a vacant seat at a table already occupied by two boys and sank into it.

He was nursing his ninth beer of the day when the shadow at the corner of his eye materialized.

Solid, immovable, blocking his view of the street. The boys sitting opposite—two Germans on holiday—looked alarmed.

“Are you Jeffrey Knetsch?”

“I used to be.”

A gloved hand descended upon his arm. The police officer should have smiled at him, Jeff thought—he was, after all, an American. The two Germans pushed back their chairs. Jeff stumbled to his feet.

“Is there something wrong?”

“You’re under arrest.”

“For having a drink?”

Like a conjurer, the officer pulled a small plastic bag of white powder from Jeff’s hip pocket. “Heroin possession. Please—come with me.”

The main corridor
of the Garden Wing was always empty, despite the fact that at least twenty guest rooms lined the hallway and each had a butler dancing attendance. They danced, Stefani presumed, well out of sight; and the guests themselves were too busy to spend much time in transit from elevator to luxury suite.

It was the dinner hour at the Oriental, but Stefani intended to order room service. She needed quiet and privacy. Her visit to Spencer’s office that afternoon had
given her too much to consider. She knew, now, that Sompong Suwannathat had run two agents in Courchevel the previous March: Jeff Knetsch and Ankana Lee-Harris. Either might easily have sabotaged Max’s skis and caused his crippling fall. Knetsch had been in France again when Max died. And now both Ankana and Knetsch had arrived in Bangkok—to watch her claim Max’s inheritance?

The battle lines had shifted. Yesterday she’d assumed she was in charge of this campaign—but Sompong had anticipated and outmaneuvered her. She could feel him at work in Jo-Jo’s shadow, behind Ankana’s shrewd eyes; she could sense his malevolence as she had once glimpsed, fleetingly, the man’s profile in the depths of his limousine. She would have to step lightly if his net was not to close upon her.

Where the hell is Oliver Krane?
Rush Halliwell had been right to warn her. She needed to watch her back.

She thrust her key into the door. As it swung open, a hand closed around her neck like a vise. The room was plunged into complete darkness.

The iron hand at her neck dragged her across the threshold; the door slammed shut. Wildly, she swung out as a second hand gripped her hair, forcing her head back. There was no sound but the tearing gasp of her breath. From the power of the gloved hand and the thickness of the fingers, she guessed her attacker was male. She scrabbled at the wrist nearest her throat, nails clawing.

Useless. She couldn’t breathe. There was a soft metallic click—a sound she recognized sickeningly—and she knew instantly how it would be: the switchblade unerring through the darkness, the spurt of blood bubbling at her neck. Over in a matter of seconds.

She reached back with both hands, gripped the man’s
shoulders, then bent double with such sudden force that her assailant was thrown off balance. He flipped over her head, landing heavily on his back. Something skittered over the carpet—the switchblade, with any luck. Stefani lunged for the man’s chest, her hands driving for his throat. The C-clamp Oliver had taught her: shove inward, upward against the Adam’s apple. The black-clad Ken doll shrieked. She had to silence the alarm.
She had to turn it off—

His windpipe moved beneath her fingers, then collapsed like a soft-boiled egg. The man gave one choking sigh and lay lifeless on the floor.

Gulping air, Stefani scrambled to her feet. Her hand jabbed at the lights.

He lay face upward, a woman’s stocking grotesquely flattening his features. In that instant she knew.

She had expected Jo-Jo. This man was a stranger.

Chiang Rai Province,
1955

J
ack Roderick had been on the road for the first three weeks of June 1955. He’d lurched in a borrowed Jeep over the dirt tracks of Khorat and up into the mountains of Laos. Everywhere he saw the poverty and hardscrabble existence of the Asian countryside, but on this trip—his first in months—there was a new and more sinister presence: guns. Boys as young as ten carried rifles jauntily on their backs; they fired bullets at makeshift targets the way they had once lobbed stones at the river. When Roderick tried to learn where the weapons came from, he got vague or mendacious answers. The boys clutched at his hands, pleading for coins, but they told him lies.

He guessed the guns filtered down from China—the cast-off treasures of Mao’s victorious troops, bartered for bread. Why did the hill-country boys want weapons? Who was the enemy, and who the friend? Disquiet soured in him like an ulcer as the Jeep lurched on.

He broke his trip in Vientiane, talking to laconic men
assembled in the back rooms of shops that had closed for the night. There was his old friend Tao Oum and others like him, their ageless hostility toward the French overlords of l’Indochine fueled now by a new religion-Mao’s Communist text had spread like the guns. The Laotians, too, had revolvers they wore near their hearts and concealed under their bamboo mats at night. He promised the friendship of President Eisenhower and the prosperity of free trade; promises as old as Roosevelt and Truman, promises that were as arid as the borderlands of Khorat.

“We need antiaircraft guns,” Tao Oum told him. “We need Washington’s assurance that America will not intervene in our fight for independence from France.”

Roderick listened uneasily and remembered Eisenhower’s command of the Allied landings on French beaches in ’44. He could not say the words Tao Oum hoped to hear.

He began to have the sort of nightmares he’d suffered only once before in his life, during July and August 1945, in Ceylon. Roderick, walking alone through the densest jungle, snipers training their sights from the trees. But a decade had passed since his OSS days and the conflict in Korea had ended in stalemate and Ike was now playing golf on the greenest fairways in the free world. What could possibly go wrong?

One night in Laos, he woke in the grip of a scream, dressed hurriedly in the dark and turned his car toward the Thai border.

He could have gone on into Burma and taken soundings in Rangoon. He could have prolonged the moment of reckoning. But he had grown bone weary of guns and death and pointless conversations. He felt heartsick and old. He missed his home and the weavers who bowed to Mecca across the khlong and the way the wind tossed
handfuls of rain on the old brick terrace. It was time to make his final call.

The road into Thailand was unguarded. No one in Bangkok cared very much about the Far North, the Golden Triangle, where the hill tribes mingled freely with wild bands of Chinese soldiers who had once fought against Mao. The Far North was a place of exile, ungoverned and crude, and yet almost a kind of Eden. There were teaks with massive trunks, and higher against the backbone of the hills, rainforest conifers rose black and silent. The lush growth was alive with insects and vermin. Snakes and glorious birds tangled along the riverbanks. The soil was little good for farming—but opium poppies had thrived there for nearly a century, and they danced like butterflies over the terraced fields. Along the flower beds, more men with guns patrolled.

He entered Sop Ruak just as the sun rose. The town was a collection of hovels that had existed from time immemorial. The people were a blend of Lao and Burmese and Thai Lue hill tribe; lately something of the Chinese lurked in the children’s faces. As the Jeep creaked to a halt on the settlement’s edge, Roderick saw the doors of the houses were already flung open, and a clutch of women half-knelt, half-lay in the dust of the main street, keening hopelessly over the fallen bodies of their men. Flames seared through the roof of one hut. A baby girl toddled unsteadily down the street, screaming in terror. Her hair was on fire.

Roderick seized his suit jacket, leapt out of the car and beat at the flames with the fabric. He was panting with fear and horror and bitterness, the child rolling at his feet, no longer screaming. A woman clutched his arm, shrieking pleas he did not understand, and when he stepped back she curled over her baby, wailing.

The steel orb of the rifle’s mouth nipped at the skin
below his skull, where the cords of his neck met the spine. He stiffened, gulped for air, then raised his arms.

“You cannot walk like a prince into the hills of Chiang Rai,” a voice said softly in English, “whatever you may risk in Bangkok, my friend.”

Roderick closed his eyes and said:
“Carlos.”

“They come across
the river from Burma near the town of Fang, or perhaps Mae Sai. Bandits and renegades, ruled by one leader. The point of entry varies, depending upon the season; but it seems that whichever fording place we patrol, they find another.”

“What’s their reason?” Roderick asked. “Plunder?”

Carlos shrugged. “They want the poppy fields that belong to my men. I refuse to give them up. And so the fields burn at night and the scent of opium drifts across the hills on the smoke, and good men die for bad reasons.”

“Burmese?”

“National borders mean nothing in this part of the world.” Carlos studied him grimly. “The opium wars between Burma and the Chinese—and my men are nearly all Chinese—are of ancient origin. You might credit the British, who fostered the trade and farmed it out all over their empire, if you were prone to blame only white men for Asian troubles; or you might credit instead the overlords of Burma and Thailand, who starve their peasants. Whatever the cause, we live with fire and bloodshed in the night. Guns and vigilance are a fact of northern existence.”

“But you, Carlos?”

He shrugged again, his canny eyes half-lidded. They had hunkered down near the river two miles out of town, in the shade of a teakwood tree, to trade stories and eat
longan fruit. “My fate turned on a gun, Jack, as you may recall.”

As if the murder of King Ananda had been yesterday, Roderick saw a younger Carlos standing dazed, a pistol in his hand. The elderly nurse screaming. Ananda’s face turned toward the open window. The neat round hole, and the welter of blood. Nearly ten years ago.

“You were never just a victim of circumstance, Carlos.”

“No?” He reached for one of Roderick’s cigarettes. “What do you hear of Ruth? Does he carry on the fight?”

“I hear that Pridi Banomyong has traded his soul for a Mao jacket. He sits in a place of honor in Peking.”

“Then you hear lies.” Carlos spat into the dust. “It is good to see you,
farang.
I had forgot that men dressed like that, in places like these.”

Roderick smiled, the first grin he’d managed in days. Carlos was dressed in the faded garb of a Kuomintang soldier, distinguished by a general’s stripes. Roderick’s silk suit jacket was burnt in several places and stank to high heaven. He rolled it in a ball and handed it to Carlos. “Be my guest.”

“With thanks,” he said gravely, and placed it in his pack. “My wife can do anything with a needle. And the boy is always growing.”

“How is Chao?” Roderick asked.
Chao.
The Thai word for
river.
She had been a charming woman when he’d last seen her, in 1948—as fragile as blown glass, with a cunning mind that had made her indispensable to the Free Thai during the war. Boonreung’s final journey in Roderick’s service—the last before the failed ’49 coup and the boy’s execution—had been to smuggle Carlos’s family into the north.

“Chao endures, like the waters after which she is named.”

“You were always a poet.”

“But no longer.” The General buckled the straps of his pack and rose. “We shall have to build funeral pyres for those men before nightfall. It is required of our honor.”

“You run this village, Carlos.”

“Much worse,
farang.
The peasants think I’m a god.”

It had been
no exaggeration, Roderick thought ten minutes later as he watched Carlos enter his camp. A crowd of men, some grizzled and some mere boys, came to attention as the General approached. Three Burmese raiders had been captured during the night; the trio were gagged and tied to posts thrust into the dirt a hundred feet from the door of Carlos’s bungalow. Chao stood in the doorway, her arm resting on the shoulders of a young boy; at the sight of Roderick her once beautiful face lit up with joy. Then she glanced at the three captives, and all expression was extinguished. She turned back into the house, her son herded in front of her.

Carlos barked a question in what Roderick guessed was pidgin Chinese. A soldier on guard near the prison posts shouted a reply.

“They’ve been tried and found guilty of murder,” Carlos told him casually. “We’ll carry out the sentence in due course. But first, a real breakfast! You will eat with us, of course.”

Roderick felt his skin prickle where Carlos’s rifle had rested earlier, inches below his brain. A hearty meal before the execution. And the boy within earshot. He thought of his own son—of the Rory who was nearly eighteen. Then he followed Carlos into the bungalow without a word.

Chao sank to her knees before him, her palms lifted
high in the ceremonial
wei.
There were tears on her sunken cheeks. He bowed in return. She dissolved in a deep and painful coughing.

“We have rice and fruit and a fish done over charcoal,” Carlos said. “And while we eat, you will tell us all the news, Roderick.”

“You know the news before I do.”

“Informants, Jack. They will save us both, one day.”

“Or murder us in our sleep.”

Carlos did not reply. He motioned him to a chair, then sat in one himself; the boy had disappeared into the loft above, and could be heard singing to himself as he played. But Chao, before she turned back to the brazier and the earthenware bowls, said, “Jack—”

“Yes, oh river goddess?”

She bowed her head. “I wondered … You must know the minister, Vukrit Suwannathat.”

“The only minister who matters.”

“He is married to my sister, Li-ang. I have had no word from her in more than two years, and I thought—”

“Your sister has forgotten you,” the General broke in harshly. “Her husband makes sure of that. You are dead to Li-ang, Chao. She should be dead to you also.”

“I believe,” Roderick interposed quietly, “that Madame Suwannathat has lost her husband’s favor. She has left Bangkok, and lives in a family villa on the coast near Pattaya.”

“My parents’ house,” Chao murmured, “where we stayed as girls. Li-ang must be happy if she has returned to that place! Did Vukrit shame her?”

“Vukrit shames himself.”

Chao glanced around the hut. “There are some who would find my present life an embarrassment. But I have been happy here. Carlos is a good man.”

“I know that, Chao. I will learn what I can of your sister, and send you news.”

She bowed again, and busied herself over her fire.

“I do glean some information about Bangkok now and again.” Carlos pried the cap from a beer bottle with the blade of his knife. “I hear that Vukrit is more entrenched than ever. That the Pibul government will never fall. That the powers of the West shall feel the anger of Indochina, and die upon their swords.”

“That is Communist propaganda.”

“It is also truth. This part of the world is like a paddy that is drained and baking in the sun. It is ready to burn at the slightest spark.” He drank deep of the warm beer and brushed his hand across his mouth. Carlos’s hand, Roderick thought, had changed as much as his uniform. It was brown and hard and had the permanent stain of gun-barrel grease embedded under each fingernail. “But I remain loyal to the West, Jack, and so do my men. They are Chinese Nationalists who hate Mao and all his works. They have sworn a blood vengeance. When the time comes, they will know how to fight—and upon which side.”

“I believe you.”

Carlos offered him the bottle. Roderick sipped and felt the bitter aftertaste. Chao placed a platter of fruit and seared fish upon the table, and his appetite unexpectedly surged, despite the three Burmese prisoners strapped like sides of beef to the posts outside the threshold.

“I also hear,” Carlos continued, “that Roderick no longer sleeps alone. A dancer, they say, as lovely as jasmine flowers that bloom in the night. Are you happy?”

“A man who loves is never happy, Carlos.”

“No. Love blinds our reason. It brings death into
the house. You are rarely stupid, Jack—only once that I can think of, when you gave your hand to Vukrit Suwannathat long ago, on the Western Coast.”

“He sank in his fangs, my friend.”

“And yet you take his Flower into your bed. Are you insane? Have you not considered what use he finds for her there? Do you choose this wound so willingly, Jack, that you thrust in the knife yourself?”

Roderick flinched and closed his eyes. Immediately she was there: black hair gleaming in the moonlight, dressing gown trailing. With his sleepy gaze he followed the curve of her back, outlined in silk, and the movements of her hands. She was a dancer in this, as in everything. They had made love and fallen together into sleep: he had awakened before dawn to find her sifting through his private papers. What risks she had taken—

What was she searching for? What did she need? The price of her freedom from both of them—Vukrit and Jack alike?

“I am a fool, my friend.” He said it wearily.

“You must be indeed, to ignore so fine a breakfast,” Carlos returned. “Now it is time for the execution. Come, Jack!”

When it was
done, and the Burmese pirates lay like crumpled clothes in the dust of the camp, Roderick made his farewells.

“You did not meet my son,” Chao said, as he bowed to her. She coughed into her hand and turned away. “I am sick, Roderick. I have not much time left.”

He looked at the faded woman who had been named for a river, and said, “You will live as long as the Chao Phraya itself.”