Big Mango (9786167611037) (13 page)

Eddie reflected on that for a moment.
“Sometimes, Winnebago, I fail to credit you for the simple wisdom
you bring to life’s larger dilemmas.”

Eddie walked over, cracked open a bottle of
Tanqueray, and put a generous measure into one of the glasses along
with a couple of ice cubes. Winnebago brought a can of Carlsberg
and a bag of chips over to the coffee table. He popped the tab on
the can and ripped open the bag, scooping out a handful of the
chips and stuffing them into his mouth. Sinking back into the soft
cushions of the couch and propping his feet up on the table, Eddie
sloshed the gin around and watched the clear liquid bounce between
the tiny blocks of ice, making little pools and curls as it
collided with the crystal walls of the glass. Then he looked up and
for the first time fully absorbed the elegance and refinement of
their surroundings.

Is some yo-yo really going to show up here
tomorrow and hand me $100,000?

It sounded too good to be true, and in
Eddie’s experience it was axiomatic that anything that sounded too
good to be true always was.

What the hell? Just have fun while it all
lasts
.

Eddie took a long hit of the Tanqueray and
thought about how good it tasted, about how good everything tasted
right then. He flipped a few more pages in the Bangkok Post while
he sipped at his drink and then folded over a page and held the
paper out to Winnebago.

“Here’s the guy I’ve been telling you
about.”

Winnebago glanced at the tiny picture at the
top of the column. “He looks kind of old.”

“Well,” Eddie admitted, “he’s not young, but
neither are we anymore, my friend. Bar’s been around Bangkok
forever. He’s the guy to call if you want to know where they bury
the bodies.”

“Oh, man,” Winnebago sighed and waved the
paper away. “I wish you had put that some other way.”

“Yeah.” Eddie took the paper back and looked
at the picture some more. “Sorry.”

“So what now, Eddie?”

“You do what you want. I’m going to
crash.”

“Oh, come on. Let’s at least get some food
first, huh?”

Eddie took another hit on the Tanqueray and
felt his resolve begin to weaken.

“What do you feel like?”

“Poontang!”

As Eddie began to laugh, he realized that a
sort of giddiness was threatening to engulf both of them, a
lightheadedness that might just have been jet lag but he didn’t
think so. It was too much like a feeling he remembered clearly from
a long time back.

When he had been in law school, he would
sometimes hitchhike down to LA on weekends and sleep in a cheap
motel on Hollywood Boulevard. At night, about nine or ten, after
napping all day in his room with the drapes closed, he would walk
out into the hard, sweet-smelling desert air. He remembered how
much he had loved it then, just standing there, doing nothing but
breathing deeply in and out, getting a little buzzed on the
inexhaustible adventures drifting on the night, wallowing in the
limitless possibilities that stretched in front of him.

He had thought so many times that feeling
would never come to him again, but suddenly it had.

Against all understanding, here in this
bewildering place halfway around the earth, that very same feeling
was coming back to him again.

PROMPTLY
at noon the
following day the suite’s doorbell sounded. It was a chime so
discreet that for a moment Eddie couldn’t figure out what it was
supposed to be. When he finally worked it out and opened the door,
he found a young man of about thirty carrying a leather briefcase
and wearing a dark, expensive-looking suit..

“Mr. Dare?”

Eddie grunted noncommittally.

“My name is Geoffrey Morse. May I come
in?”

Eddie waved the young man toward a couch in
front of the big windows overlooking the river and then settled
into a chair opposite him. Morse’s accent was obviously English,
Eddie noticed, as Marinus Rupert’s had been, but he had no idea
what significance that might have.

“Nice suite,” Morse said after a moment.
“Wonderful view.”

“I don’t deserve any credit. You’re paying
for it.”

“Only in a manner of speaking.”

Morse reached into an inside pocket of his
jacket. He produced a business card and was about to hand it to
Eddie when Winnebago walked in from the second bedroom. Morse
stopped, the card suspended in the air, and looked at Eddie.

“I wasn’t told you were traveling with
anyone, sir.”

“Until two days ago, I wasn’t told I was
traveling at all.”

Winnebago took an empty chair and Morse
played with the business card, rubbing it between his fingers. He
was obviously uncomfortable that something unexpected had occurred
and wasn’t sure what he should do.

Everyone just sat and looked at one another
for a while, waiting, until Morse finally broke the silence.

“I’m only following instructions, sir. I had
no idea anyone else would be here. I’ve been asked to brief you,
and only you, on the situation.”

That expression had a familiar ring to Eddie.
“The situation?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You don’t happen to work for the Secret
Service, do you?”

Morse looked bewildered. “I’m sorry, but I
don’t—”

“Never mind,” Eddie interrupted.

Eddie leaned back and folded his arms. Morse
shifted his weight uncomfortably in the chair and cut his eyes at
Winnebago again. He hesitated another moment and then flicked the
business card out toward Eddie.

“I’m an associate in the Bangkok office of
Fairfields.”

Eddie took the business card and examined
it.

When he didn’t say anything, Morse added
helpfully, “You have heard of us, haven’t you? We are the largest
firm of solicitors in the United Kingdom.”

“Of course you are.”

“Then you
have
heard of us.”

“No.”

“I was told you were a lawyer in
America.”

“I am.”

“You’re a lawyer, but you’ve never—”

“No. Never.”

“Ah.”

Morse let the single syllable hang there in
judgment of Eddie’s stature in the world’s legal community. Eddie
had never liked English solicitors very much and it was coming back
to him exactly why that was.

“Anyway…” there was something like a shrug in
the young man’s voice, “we represent the general.”

“The general?”

“Yes, sir. The general.”

“General who?”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t talk about that.
Anyway, you may not believe me, but I couldn’t tell you even if I
was ethically permitted to. I really don’t know.”

“You’re right,” Eddie said. “I don’t believe
you.”

Morse looked at Eddie and then at Winnebago
and they both gazed back silently. He inclined his head slightly
toward Winnebago, but spoke to Eddie.

“I mean no offense to your traveling
companion, Mr. Dare, but what I have to tell you is extremely
confidential.”

Eddie just nodded. “No problem. Go
ahead.”

Morse examined Winnebago carefully again, and
then returned his eyes to Eddie.

“As you wish.” He cleared his throat
unnecessarily. “The general has asked us to make arrangements to
wire the amount of $100,000 immediately to whatever bank you
designate.”

The young man unsnapped his briefcase,
extracted a single sheet of paper, and handed it to Eddie.

“If you would just fill in your account
information at the bottom of this transfer instruction, the funds
will be sent by the close of business today.”

Eddie took the piece of paper, but he didn’t
look at it.

“What’s your connection with the man who came
to my office?”

“Who was that?”

“The name he used was Marinus Rupert.”

The young solicitor looked genuinely
puzzled.

“Is that a code or something?” His eyes
twitched nervously and licked his lips. “I don’t know anyone by
that name.”

“Then let’s get back to who this general
is.”

“I already told you that I can’t talk about
that, and even if I could, I don’t know what I would tell you.”

Morse sounded exasperated and embarrassed at
the same time.

“Look, I was instructed by our Hong Kong
office to bring you this wire transfer order to complete.” He
gestured at the paper Eddie was holding, still unread. “And I am
also to give you a message. That’s all I know about whatever is
going on here, and it’s all I want to know.”

“What’s the message?”

“The general wishes you to join him for lunch
today at the Four Seasons.”

When Eddie didn’t react, the young man added
helpfully, “It’s a hotel.”

“I know it’s a hotel,” Eddie said. “I’m a
lawyer, not an idiot. In America at least, they’re not always the
same thing.”

THERE
was another Mercedes
waiting for Eddie when he went downstairs. The driver looked like a
local and apparently didn’t speak any English since his only
response to Eddie’s greeting was a vague smile. Eddie leaned his
head back against the butter-soft leather and closed his eyes as
they drove at a stately pace from the Oriental up Silom Road, under
the massive Rama IV overpass, and past the parched, dusty space
referred to with a remarkable show of local optimism as Lumpini
Park.

A white-uniformed doorman wearing a pith
helmet waited at the top of the Four Season’s long, arcing
driveway. When the Mercedes glided to a halt, he opened the rear
door with a snappy salute and Eddie stepped out. It all happened so
smoothly that Eddie didn’t realize until after the car pulled away
that no one had told him where in the hotel he was supposed to
go.

He strolled between the two ponds covered
with floating lilies, entered the Four Season’s vast lobby, and
took a couple of laps around it to see what struck him. He didn’t
spot anyone he recognized and no one seemed to be paying the
slightest attention to him either, so he sat down in a lounge area
and ordered a San Miguel.

Eddie scanned the crowds that drifted in and
out of the lobby and finished his beer without seeing anything
remotely interesting. When he thought about it, he wasn’t even sure
what he was looking for. He guessed he was half expecting Marinus
Rupert to appear suddenly in a puff of smoke, maybe dressed as
Beelzebub and wearing a red suit and carrying a pitchfork. When
nothing happened and no one appeared at all, let alone Marinus
Rupert in a puff of something, he waved down a waiter and ordered
another San Mig.

“Mr. Dare?”

The soft voice had come from just over
Eddie’s shoulder. When he turned, Eddie saw it was the man who had
driven him from the Oriental.

“The general asks if you would please join
him in his private dining room. Would you come this way, sir?”

Eddie left his beer and followed the man
through the crowd to an elevator manned by a uniformed attendant
who didn’t appear to have anything to do except push the lighted
buttons, which he did very competently. The elevator whisked them
quietly to the top floor of the hotel and the man led Eddie down a
long, teak-paneled hallway past several doors, finally stopping at
one, knocking softly, and then swinging it open. He gestured for
Eddie to enter.

The room was not large, but it was opulently
appointed. A walnut dining table set with china, crystal, and crisp
linen stood in the middle of the carpeted room. Along one wall
there were several cushy-looking chairs and two white-jacketed
attendants stood in rigid and respectful silence awaiting
instructions. The room’s fourth wall was mostly glass and it looked
out on a terrace where two large and comfortable chairs flanked a
wicker table on which a bar had been arranged.

The man who in San Francisco had called
himself Marinus Rupert was standing alone on the terrace. He was
near the railing, watching something through a pair of large field
glasses. When he noticed Eddie, he waved him out.

“Are you a racing man, Mr. Dare?”

He didn’t offer his hand.

“No,” Eddie answered, not offering his
either.

“Ah…pity. I love thoroughbred racing more
than almost anything.”

The man gestured toward a large racetrack
that was across the street from the hotel. Eddie saw that the
grandstand was packed and a mob of Thais was jammed along the white
railings that separated the raw concrete of the public areas from
the expensively-watered, unnaturally green oval of the grass track.
The sound of the crowd drifted up to the terrace through the humid
afternoon air and Eddie could see the bright silks of the jockeys
as they maneuvered their mounts onto the track for the next
race.

“Anyway…” the man nodded toward the bar.
“Drink?”

“Just a beer, thanks.”

One of the attendants had followed Eddie
outside. He took that as his cue to step forward and fill a tall
glass with San Miguel, handing it to Eddie.

“That’s the real stuff,” Eddie’s host said,
“from the Philippines. Not that shit they make in Hong Kong like
you were drinking downstairs.”

Eddie raised his eyebrows at that, but said
nothing. Instead, he sipped at his supposedly genuine San Mig and
settled himself into one of the big chairs.

“Calling you Mr. Rupert seems a little
awkward,” he said.

“Why is that?”

“You’ve already told me that’s not your
name.”

“Just call me general then, if you like.”

The man returned to studying the track
through his glasses.

“And are you a general?”

The man lifted his right hand without taking
his eyes away from the field glasses and wiggled it in a gesture
that could have meant anything.

“On whose side?”

The general lowered the glasses and smiled at
that.

“On my side, Eddie.”

There was a sudden roar from across the
street as a race went off and the general lifted the field glasses
again to watch it. Eddie stayed where he was and, when the race was
over, the general settled into the other chair and looked intently
at him.