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“Explain why you were at that women’s holding prison with your geek and you can go.”
“He’s not my geek. He’s my assistant, and whatever you’re up to, he has nothing to do with it. Are all your men queer? They seem to have fallen in love with him.”
The question seems to amuse him. Some laughter lines open around his eyes. “Suppose they are, is it against the law? Are you going to arrest them?”
“No,” I say, “might is right. Obviously.”
“Obviously.” He nods in agreement. “A great pity your boss Colonel Vikorn still doesn’t understand that after all these years.” He takes a couple of steps back to assess me. “I think you went to see that Australian cunt.” He pronounces the word with a contempt you can taste. “Are you the one who busted her?” When I don’t say anything he yells to his secretary on the other side of the door and a private soldier in his thirties comes in. That he is more than six feet tall and built like something made of iron is not as disturbing as the mind behind the body. This is not a mischievous young recruit; this is a killer who enjoys his work.
I cough. “Look, I think I can cut this sh-, sh-, short,” I say. “You think Colonel Vikorn busted your mule to get an edge because your ten-year agreement with him is coming to an end and you’re both maneuvering for position. Well, you’re wrong. Vikorn would never be that crude, and anyway it’s not the kind of strategy that could succeed against a man like you. Everyone knows that. There’s a third party involved here.”
I have raised a flicker of interest. “Oh, really? Who?”
“A Tibetan.” The word produces a strange effect. The General exchanges a glance with his enforcer, then draws up a chair to sit down and watch me. More than five minutes pass without anyone saying anything. Finally, Zi
“Dr. Norbu Tietsin.”
I have the most curious impression that both Zi
“No. I’m not talking until I see my assistant in good health standing on the other side of your window.”
“Are you giving orders here?”
“You can get the answer by torturing me, but it will take a while and Vikorn will feel obliged to retaliate. It would be a much more efficient use of your precious time if you just put Lek outside the window. It would also make negotiations for the next ten-year treaty that much smoother, don’t you think?”
Zi
During the interval, Zi
Both men were in their fifties at the time, at the height of their power and eager to demonstrate prowess in the most extravagant pissing contest I have ever seen. The negotiations took place over the border in Burma, where Zi
I replay the fragments I have retained while Zi
“Close one,” Vikorn sang out after a beautiful corkscrewing incandescent missile (which put me in mind of a fully realized soul zooming back to nirvana and made me kind of jealous) went shooting past.
But when the chopper tilted the other way, I could see the Hmong women below collecting their little packets of opium sap in piles for other women to hump back to the village by means of a bamboo rod across their shoulders, as they had done for a thousand years.
“Never saw Vikorn move so fast in my life,” Zi
Zi
Now I’m so angry I’m fantasizing about kicking Zi
“Well?”
I force my attention back into the five senses. “The day the Australian Rosie McCoy was arrested, we got a tip-off. The call came from Kathmandu in Nepal. We checked the origin of the call. Apart from the fact that it came from the Himalayas it was the standard sort of thing. Ninety-nine percent of the time it’s a trafficker stabbing a former partner in the back. When the tip-offs are specific we notify Immigration. This was very specific, so I showed up and assisted with the bust. That’s all I can tell you.”
“But you went to see her today?”
“Of course. I wanted to see if I could get any more information. I’m a cop.”
Zi
“We didn’t know anything.” I scratch my ear. “But she was carrying a lot of smack. Since she wasn’t one of ours, we did rather think she might belong to you.”
I’m waiting for Zi
“The informant, he actually gave you his name. A Doctor Tietsin?”
I raise my palms. “Anyone can invent a name.”
The General stares at me with u
“Maybe it’s some kind of joke in Tibetan,” I offer. To his skeptical frown, I add, “You know, like someone might say Mickey Mouse or Napoléon Bonaparte-a joke in Tibetan culture, I mean.”