Up three flights of stairs with everyone sweating in the tropical heat, then we’re in Turner’s apartment. A quick look, and it is obvious that Mitch Turner is not here. They seem to be on the lookout for something specific, which I would guess to be Turner’s laptop, and don’t take much interest in anything else. Mustafa and I watch them rummage around in a wardrobe. They pay some attention to the empty silver picture frame but soon give it a shrug. Finally the older one, Hudson, gives me a brief smile. “Well, he’s not here, and there are no signs that he left in a hurry.”

Mustafa, though, has stationed himself by the front door, blocking it with his big shoulders. A mean look has come over his features. “They palmed something,” he snaps at me in Thai. “Something they found in that wardrobe in the bedroom.”

I’m doing Disappointment and Consternation when I take up a position next to Mustafa and engage Hudson ’s eyes. “Come on, guys, we saw you palm it.”

An exchange of glances between the two. “I’m afraid we can’t do that,” says Bright, the younger one. He makes a face of muffled triumph: Clark Kent has disrobed. Hudson seems less sure. I think he’s seen through me, at least to the extent of not making any assumptions.

“I brought you here in good faith,” I say. “I can’t let you steal anything.”

“Well, you see,” Bright begins, but is silenced by a gesture from Hudson.

“We’re here on government business,” Hudson says in a reasonable tone. “ U.S. government.”

Bright checks my face: isn’t that enough?

“How do I know that?”

“You don’t,” says Bright. “You’ll just have to take our word for it.”

“Oh? Well, the Royal Thai Police might have a different view.” I take out my police ID to show them. Bright is nonplussed in the way of Caucasians: he turns crimson, his mouth makes strange shapes, and he throws repetitive glances at Hudson, who is carefully studying my ID. “Nothing will be removed from this room.”

Hudson and Bright do an eye-shift, which means I don’t know who I’m dealing with (i.e., the most powerful blah blah blah…), so I go into Thai Malicious. My suddenly cynical expression says that Third World Revenge starts here: sure you can invade, but then whatchagonnado? This tar baby just gets stickier and stickier, and you really don’t want to spend even a week in a Thai jail, much less the year or so I have in mind. The threat of quagmire focuses Hudson, who nudges Bright, who takes the cue and fishes something out of his pocket and hands it to me. (We’ll get it back once we have your ass kicked by someone who understands who we really are.) I still don’t know what the hell it is. It’s a kind of slim oval about two and a half inches long, three-quarters of an inch wide, half an inch deep in smooth gray plastic, with the words SONY MICRO VAULT stamped on the end.

The atmosphere is strained as I lead the CIA out of the apartment and let them watch while Mustafa the dark-skinned Muslim locks the door to Turner’s apartment and pockets the key with a proprietary air. It occurs to me that this incriminating move is the last thing his father would have wanted, but it has discomfited the two spies. We find ouselves out in the street, where the vehement heat and Islamic costumes further disorient them. They walk away without saying goodbye.

15

It’s lunchtime, but Mustafa and I have different tastes. He leaves me to go off to a Muslim restaurant, while I seek out a Thai canteen that is famous for the heat of its grataa rawn, a sizzling variety show of marine life. Actually, I could just as well have eaten some lamb with Mustafa, but I wanted to be alone for a moment. I pull out the picture of Chanya while I’m waiting for the grataa rawn. I would almost have preferred the simple case I first assumed it to be: an irrational outbreak of violence from an overstressed whore. Now the complexity seems infinite and infinitely impenetrable. I really have no idea what’s going on or where it all will lead.

I’m in a pretty somber state of mind when Mustafa arrives at the restaurant in a pickup truck. It’s a Toyota four-by-four with three young men in the back. I guess from the bulges they are armed guards. Mustafa and I sit in the front of the truck with the driver while the guards, scarves covering their heads and faces against the dust, bump up and down on a bench in the open back.

The road out of town leads northeast, and we soon leave the paved highway for a rutted track. There is no air-con in the cab, so we drive with the windows open. The heat down here is always a few degrees higher than in Bangkok; it doesn’t sound like much, but when you live at the upper limit of what the human frame can tolerate, it makes a difference. When we slow down to accommodate the rutted terrain, I feel like we’re in a mobile oven. The terrain is lush, though, even for Thailand, because they have a lot more rain down here. When the driver finally stops the truck and we get out, the intensity of the silence hits us all between the eyes. We’ve been rattling up and down in a noisy vehicle for more than half an hour; suddenly there is only a single cicada with the energy to rub its legs together.

Mustafa beckons to me, and I follow him down a footpath that leads into a tranquil valley in which the only buildings are a large wooden house on stilts and a tiny mosque, apparently made of wood that has somehow been fashioned to produce a dome. He tells me to stay with the guards while he checks on his father. He emerges from the house with joy in his face and beckons for me to climb the stairs to join him. Inside the house the old imam with the fire in his black eyes welcomes me with his usual hospitality. We sit on mats drinking peppermint tea. My report is brief but welcome. Of course, in light of the photograph of Chanya in Mitch Turner’s bedroom in Songai Kolok, no responsible cop could avoid the conclusion that Chanya killed Mitch Turner, for whatever reason. They knew each other; she went back to his hotel when he came to Bangkok. Whatever happened in the hotel room, only she came out alive.

The imam has been examining my face while I speak. “But your Colonel is strangely keen to protect this prostitute. Why is that?”

“She’s a key worker. These things happen from time to time. I guess he’s just protecting the club and its reputation.”

“You will put your report in writing?”

“I can’t do that without permission.”

Silence. Mustafa looks angry.

The old man says: “If Colonel Vikorn changes his mind under pressure from the Americans, will you warn us?”

“Yes,” I say. “Okay.” A long shot comes to mind. I’m shy to ask the question, considering its mystic origin, but what the hell? “Does the name Don Buri mean anything to you?” Blank glances.

The interview is over, and I go back to town in the truck with Mustafa, who is wrestling with some karmic obsession and says nothing throughout the journey. Indeed, he hardly manages to say goodbye.

Back in my hotel room I call Vikorn with my heart in my mouth. “I’m just about finished down here.” I tell him about Hudson and Bright, the picture of Chanya.

“So?”

“I’m convinced Chanya did it.”

Impatiently: “Well, what else is new?”

“So it wasn’t a Muslim assassination.”

A pause. “I hope you’re not resurrecting that bleeding heart of yours?”

“It’s not a bleeding heart, it’s practical politics. If we try to blame Al Qaeda, it could have repercussions down here.”

Even more impatiently: “Nobody’s blaming Al Qaeda. You wrote her fucking statement yourself. Chanya acted in self-defense.”

“She knew him from the States. He had a picture of her in his apartment. She sent me a copy of the diary she kept when she was over there. They were longtime lovers.”

A longer pause. “You better get back here.”