The Ambassador's Wife (31 page)

A concrete guardhouse stood between a large drive gate and a smaller walk gate. It had a heavy Lexguard window with a steel tray beneath it. The arrangement reminded Tay of the drive-up window at a bank. A man who looked Thai glanced out at Tay and opened the tray. Tay removed his warrant card from his wallet and placed it inside, then watched as the tray closed again. The man in the guardhouse examined the card carefully.

“Who you here for?” he asked, leaning toward a microphone that was curled in front of him on a long gooseneck. Through the background hissing of the intercom his voice was thin and metallic, like the sound of a telephone answering machine that no one had bothered to program.

“Cally Parks.”

“Who, please?”

“Ms. Cally Parks. P-a-r-k-s. Parks.”

The man pulled a clipboard from a hook that was somewhere outside of Tay’s field of vision.

“What office?”

“She’s a security officer from the embassy in Singapore, but she’s here today.”

The man looked at the clipboard, flipping through several pages.

“Not here,” he said with finality and returned the clipboard to wherever it had come from.

Tay arranged his face into what he hoped was a friendly and cooperative expression.

“She came to the embassy this morning.”

“You have appointment?”

“No, no appointment. I’m just trying to find her.”

“Not here.”

There was a slight squeaking sound and the tray opened again. Tay’s warrant card lay in the bottom of it, but he did not pick it up.

“I am Inspector Samuel Tay of the Singapore police. I am in Bangkok with Ms. Parks to investigate a murder. I know she is here at the embassy. It is very important that I speak to her and I would like to see her now, please.”

The Thai man inside the guardhouse looked unimpressed.

“You not on list. Must have appointment.”

“Then she
is
here?”

“No,” the man said. “Not here.”

“Then exactly how would you suggest I make an appointment with someone who isn’t here?” Tay snapped.

The man in the guardhouse did not reply. He only pointed to Tay’s warrant card still lying in the bottom of the tray.

Further argument was obviously useless so Tay collected the warrant card and put it back in his wallet.

The steel tray made a squeaking noise as it closed again.

There was another click and a hiss from the intercom.

“Have nice day,” the man said.

THIRTY-SIX

TAY
found a taxi and told the driver to take him to the Marriott. As soon as he was in the back seat he pulled out his telephone and dialed his direct line at the Cantonement Complex in Singapore. No one answered and he found himself listening to a disembodied metallic voice instructing him to leave a message for Inspector Tay.

“Shit,” Tay mumbled.

He hung up, dialed Sergeant Kang’s cell phone, and watched the Bangkok sidewalks through the window of the taxi as he listened to it ring. A group of uniformed schoolgirls passed through his field of vision and Tay glanced at his watch. He wondered if children in Thailand actually went to school. Perhaps just wearing uniforms and walking around in the middle of the morning was good enough to satisfy the local culture. After a half dozen rings another metallic voice started up, different from the first voice but again instructing Tay to leave a message.

“Call me immediately, Sergeant,” he snapped. “You know I wouldn’t be talking to this fucking machine if it weren’t important.”

Tay pushed the phone into his pocket, tilted his head back against the seat of the taxi, and closed his eyes. He supposed he would just hang around the Marriott, order something to eat from room service, and wait until Cally got in touch or Kang returned his call. It wasn’t much of a plan, but he really couldn’t think of what else to do.

Twenty minutes later he was back in his room at the Marriott and Tay had already changed his mind. Something was wrong here, he was sure of it, and he damn well wasn’t going to sit around and watch CNN until somebody told him what it was. He fished out his phone again and dialed the OC’s office. He had to get into that embassy building and find Cally.

“Is he in?” Tay blurted out the moment he sensed signs of life on the other end of the telephone. “This is Inspector Tay.”

“Hello, sir, this is Nora Zaini. How is Bangkok?”

The OC had a new secretary the last time he went up to his office. He remember that, but was Nora Zaini her name? Yes, now that he thought about it, it probably was.

“Ah…fine. Look, is he there?”

“I’m sorry, no. Is this urgent?”

“Yes.” Tay reconsidered. “No, maybe not.”

“I could probably get a message to him if you like.”

Tay could only imagine how that would go down.

“No, don’t do that. I’ll just call back. Do you know when I might be able to talk to him?”

“He won’t be back until the end of the day, I’m afraid.”

“Okay.” Tay thought a moment. “Have you seen Sergeant Kang in the last few hours?”

“He’s taking personal leave, sir. This afternoon and tomorrow. Didn’t you know?”

Tay wondered if Kang had mentioned taking some leave when he called this morning and that maybe he had just forgotten.

“Ah, yes, I remember now,” he said, just to be on the safe side. “I was thinking it was next week.”

“No,” Nora Zaini added helpfully, “this week.”

Tay thanked her, mumbled some pleasantries without being too specific just in case he wasn’t talking to the woman he thought he was, and hung up.

He walked to the windows and looked outside, although he had no idea what he hoped to see. He glanced at his watch again, although he already knew the time. Where the hell
was
Cally? He picked up his cell phone and tried her again, but her number still didn’t answer. Tay sat down on the bed and then immediately stood up again.

All right, stop jumping around like a fool and think this thing through
.

Tay got a Coke out of the minibar, turned on the television for company, and sat down again on the bed. He pulled two of the pillows out from under the bedspread, propped them against the headboard and sank back against them. He tilted the Coke up to his lips and, forgetting for a moment that he wasn’t entirely upright, poured a big slug of it straight down his shirt front.

“Shit,” Tay mumbled as he stood up and wiped the Coke away with his free hand. He went into the bathroom and studied the stain in the mirror. Judging it too big to wash out, he pulled off his shirt and dumped it on the floor. Opening a drawer in the bureau, he took out the last fresh shirt he had brought with him and put it on. He sat back down on the bed and shook a Marlboro out of the box on the bedside table. He lit it and took a long, hard pull.

However he looked at things, he kept coming back to DeSouza. Was DeSouza himself the killer? No matter how much he would like that to be true, he really doubted it. For someone disturbed and unstable enough to murder two women to go unnoticed in the ranks of the FBI seemed unlikely to the point of utter impossibility.

Still, DeSouza knew something. Tay had no doubt about that. He would bet DeSouza either knew who the killer was or thought he did; and either way, he was trying to bury Tay’s investigation. So why would he want to do that? Because the killer was someone prominent? Possibly. Because the killer was someone who would embarrass the embassy if he got caught? Probably.

Tay started running through the obvious candidates in his mind. Who would embarrass the American embassy most?

Ambassador Munson would certainly have to be at the top of the list. The first person you look at when a wife is murdered is the husband, of course, and Ambassador Munson’s involvement in his wife’s murder would be a natural nomination for a cover-up. But what about the murder of Ambassador Rooney? Munson might very well have wanted his wife dead, and he seemed to have no difficulty admitting to Tay that quite a few people knew it, but he appeared to have no motive at all for killing Ambassador Rooney.

Then there was a practical problem, too. An ambassador who was intent on shooting two women in two different countries would have a number of logistical problems to solve, not the least of which would be figuring out a way to slip around quite a bit without anybody noticing him. Even if Tay could somehow break Munson’s alibi for the time his wife had been murdered in Singapore, could Munson have made a quick trip from Singapore to Bangkok on the Tuesday after he returned from Washington, killed Ambassador Rooney, and then flown back to Singapore again without anyone missing him? No, of course he couldn’t.

Tay was just scratching Ambassador Munson off his mental list when his cell phone rang. He snatched it up and punched the green button.

THIRTY-SEVEN

“INSPECTOR
Tay?”

Not Cally. Not Kang. A man’s voice. One Tay didn’t recognize.

“Yes?”

“This is August.”

Yes, it was indeed August and next month would be September. So fucking what?

“What are you talking about?” Tay snapped.

“This is August, Tay.” Now the voice had an edge in it. “John August. Cally introduced us in Pattaya.”

Tay’s irritation was quickly replaced by surprise, and then almost immediately by embarrassment.

“Oh…of course. Sorry.”

“We need to talk.”

Tay wasn’t expecting anyone to call other than Cally or Sergeant Kang, but if he had been expecting someone else it certainly wouldn’t have been John August. They hadn’t exactly hit it off the one time they had met, had they?

“How did you get this number?” Tay asked, thinking as he did what an insipid thing it was to say.

August snorted. He didn’t even try to answer him, which Tay recognized was pretty much the kind of response his question deserved.

“Where are you?” August asked.

“In Bangkok. At a hotel. The Marriott.”

Tay cleared his throat unnecessarily. “Look, Cally was supposed to be back here by now and—”

“What room?” August interrupted.

“Why do you want to know?”

“Cut the crap, Tay. I don’t have time for it now. What room are you in?”

“Six thirty-four.”

“Two hours,” August said.

Then he hung up without another word.

TAY
was sitting in a chair staring out the window and watching construction cranes turn on a distant building when he heard the knock on his door. He looked at his watch. Two hours, very nearly to the minute.

When he opened the door, August nodded and came in without saying anything. He didn’t offer to shake hands and neither did Tay.

August was carrying a large manila envelope which he dumped on the bed. Then he took the chair Tay had just been sitting in. It was the only chair in the room so Tay sat on the bed next to the envelope.

“Can I get you something to drink?” Tay asked automatically.

August shook his head. “She’s dead,” he said.

Tay didn’t need to ask August whom he was talking about.

He was surprised, of course, but not shocked. Some part of him was already prepared for something, even if he was not really prepared for this, not exactly. He let the weight of knowing take him and didn’t fight against it. In the most rational part of his mind, he couldn’t understand why he felt it so much. He had hardly known Cally, he supposed, but perhaps he really had.
What is that supposed to mean?
Closing his eyes, he lay back across the bed and rubbed at his face with his open hands.

“I’m sorry, Sam.” August’s voice sounded as if it was coming from a television set playing in another room. “I’m really sorry.”

Tay sat up again. “What happened?”

“She was on a raid out in Ratchaburi. The Thai police had a suspect in your murders and surrounded a house where they thought he was. She went in with them and the suspect shot her.”

Tay struggled to understand what August was telling him.

“She was just going to the embassy. She didn’t say anything about—”

“She didn’t know,” August interrupted. “DeSouza didn’t tell her about the raid until she got there this morning. That’s when she decided to go.”

“DeSouza?”

“Yeah. He was there, too.”

“Why?”

“It was his operation really. The Thai cops were just along to make it look good.” August pointed to the envelope he had dropped on the bed. “There are photographs if you want to see them.”

Tay reached over and pulled the envelope over. He was oddly conscious of the way it felt as it scraped across the bedspread. The flap was unsealed and he lifted it and pulled out the thin stack of 5x7 color prints. The photographs looked as if they had been made with a phone, then emailed to a computer and printed. They were lousy photographs, poorly framed and a little blurred, but they did the job.

Tay glanced up at August.

“Who are you?” he asked. “I mean…who are you really?”

“Why do you care?”

“CIA? FBI? Defense Intelligence Agency? What is it?”

August shrugged and looked away.

“Let’s try it this way then,” Tay said. “What do you do here in Thailand?”

“I do what I can.”

“Which is what?”

“Whatever is necessary.”

“This isn’t going to get me anywhere, is it?”

“No,” August said, shifting his eyes back to Tay. “It isn’t.”

Tay shook his head and went back to examining the stack of photographs.

The first three showed the exterior of two shophouses with some men in Thai police uniforms standing around in front of them. They were all carrying automatic weapons and had their faces covered with balaclavas. The next two photographs showed the interior of a building, presumably one of the shophouses, and either the same men or men who were similarly dressed were running up a flight of bare concrete stairs.

The final five photographs were the hardest for Tay to look at. In two of them, a man he did not know lay spread-eagled on a concrete floor. The man was wearing a wrinkled T-shirt, dirty jeans, and one sandal. The front of the T-shirt had been shredded by what looked like a shotgun blast. Although Tay couldn’t see the chest wounds clearly, it was obvious the man was dead.