Bangkok 8

What is shocking is the way the story has marked me without my realizing it, and Jones’ effortless reading of me: yes, that must be why I’ve never slept with a farang woman. If I didn’t know that about myself, what else don’t I know?

When I reach my room I call Jones. She is half asleep, surprised to hear from me and intrigued by the tremor in my voice. “According to the principles of profiling, how long has Fatima got?”

“Before she flips completely you mean? There’s no way of knowing that. Profiling is like predicting share prices. You know what the market will do eventually, but you never know when. A day, a month, a year-who knows? Why is it suddenly so important?”

“Surichai,” I say, and hang up.

There was something else too-something to which only a Thai cop would have attached significance. A couple of tables removed from Vikorn’s group: five well-dressed Chinese men in business suits. Vikorn must have been aware of them. Likewise Warren.

47

Professor Beckendorf, in volume 3 of his masterwork Thai Culture Explained, turns almost Thai himself in the final paragraph of chapter 29 (“Fate and Fatality in Modern Siam”) in the way he lurches without warning into metaphysics:

Whereas your average Westerner does all he can to direct and control his fate, the latter-day Thai is no closer to adopting this attitude to life than were his ancestors a hundred or two hundred years ago. If there is any aspect of modern Thai psychology which continues to accept in toto the Buddhist doctrine of karma (so close to that Islamic fatalism often expressed by the phrase: It is written) it is surely in the conviction that que sera, sera. At first glance such fatalism may seem backward, even perverse given the dazzling spectrum of weapons Westerners now have in their arsenal against the vicissitudes of life; but anyone who spends much time in the kingdom quickly finds themselves questioning the wisdom, and even the sincerity, of Western attitudes. When he has paid up his taxes, his life insurance, his medical insurance, accident insurance, retrained himself in the latest marketable skills, saved for his kids’ education, paid alimony, bought the house and car which his status absolutely requires he buy within the rules of his particular tribe, given up alcohol abuse, nicotine, extramarital sex and recreational drugs, spent his two-week vacation on some self-improving (but safe) adventure holiday, learned to be hypercareful of what he says to or does with members of the opposite sex, the average Westerner may-and often does-wonder where his life went. He may also-and invariably does-feel cheated when he discovers existentially that all the worrying and all the insurance payments have availed him not a jot or tittle in protecting him against fire, burglary, flood, earthquake, tornado, the sack, terrorist activity, or his spouse’s precipitate desertion with the kids, the car and all the spare cash in the joint bank account. True enough, in a kingdom without safety nets a citizen may well be brutally flattened by accident or illness, where a Westerner might have bought himself a measure of protection, but in between the bumps a Thai still lives his life in a state of sublime insouciance. The standard Western observation is that the Thai is living in a fool’s paradise. Perhaps, but might the Thai not reply that the Westerner has built himself a fool’s hell?

One ca

I called the FBI after I put the phone down on Fatima, and Kimberley made the same point she’s been making for days: Why is Fatima working for Warren, after she killed Bradley? It simply doesn’t fit with our hypothesis or Fatima’s mind-set when I went to see her in her apartment. In fact, it’s so out of whack with our suspicions that we’ve discussed twenty different theories which make Fatima a hit woman for Warren, but for the life of us we ca

The shop is shut with the chain-link curtain down, but Fatima is in there dusting the six-foot wood sculpture of the Walking Buddha. She is wearing a pearl blouse, open at the neck, her large pearl necklace and Vietnamese black three-quarter-length silk pants. I stare at her between the links. She senses my eyes behind the glass, gives me a warm smile as if I’m an old friend, and presses a button to raise the chain-link. After I enter the shop she presses another button and the chain curtain descends again. She slips me a grin, which almost seems to say: Now we’re all cozy.

“I thought you were fantastic the other night,” I say with total sincerity. “I’ve never heard that song sung so well.” She laughs modestly and makes a comic little flutter with her eyelashes.

While this has been going on the Khmer who owns the Uzi appeared from a side door. He is not wearing his gun at this moment but might as well be from his attitude. He leers at me and slouches against the back wall. Fatima picks up a telephone, dials a number. “Mr. Warren, Detective Jitpleecheep is here to see you,” she says with the smile of a competent P.A. “He’s in the warehouse,” she tells me in Thai. “He’ll be along in a minute. Can I get you something to drink? Green tea? Coke, whisky, beer?”

I shake my head. We keep locking eyes, for long seconds, then breaking the contact. I am uneasy and ca