Crackdown Page 15

  SIXTEEN

  “I shut my eyes and she was again the same as she used to be: she was the hiss of steam, the clink of a cup, she was a certain hour of the night and the promise of rest.”—Graham Greene, The Quiet American

  CALVINO CAME BACK from the ferry terminal at Port Klong Toey and uploaded his photos. Leaning with his elbows on the desk, he shifted his weight toward the computer screen. He compared his photos with the Street View images in Google Maps, zooming in on the buildings near the ferry terminal. Google Maps couldn’t pick up the spot inside the terminal where he’d waited for Ballard that day he’d been killed. He’d stood at the end of the pier looking up the river for Ballard’s private launch. Ballard had said in the note he’d left at the condo that he’d be arriving at the terminal by boat, and then they would set off together for the restaurant, where they could dock. No Ballard, no boat, no French meal. Calvino had paced up and down the pier until it was clear Ballard had stood him up.

  He concentrated on the Street View photos. Each time he saw the same row of flat-roofed two-story concrete buildings, a 7-Eleven sign stretched across one, a dozen motorcycles parked in front, the green and white striped awnings, a red pillar postbox and a woman vendor behind her stainless steel cart selling sausages. Time stood still. The traffic and people were motionless. The street-level picture looked much as it had on the day he’d gone to the ferry terminal, only at the time of the failed rendezvous it had been after dark. Streets and lights from the buildings left large shadows. Google Maps only showed the daytime scene. What the photos couldn’t tell him was whether Ballard had reached the pier before him. Maybe one of the motorcycles on the Google Maps images belonged to Ballard’s killer. Calvino studied the photo, thinking the embassy’s intel staff would have examined the same images, looking for a valuable detail in the snapshot of the past, wondering if Ballard had been part of that past and left some trace of a connection.

  What Calvino needed was a Google Map of the river. There were only Google cars; as far as he knew, there were no Google boats. He clicked through Street View to the ferry dock entrance. The images stopped there. Maps had their limits, and computers had theirs. In Calvino’s mind Ballard’s story started to fall apart. Something about his inquiry felt counterintuitive—the more information he had about the man, the less he knew and the more questions remained. Calvino was realizing that he hadn’t fully absorbed that Ballard—which probably wasn’t his real name—had worked undercover running covert ops for the DEA. He must have been working some angle at the jazz festival too. Or had he just been a jazz lover? Calvino looked at Christina Tangier’s famous photo of him, Elite John Number 22. Like Ballard himself, the title of his photo had a certain anonymous feel of the gulag about it, an impression that fitted the image of the man sleeping on the bed. “What in the fuck were you doing at the jazz festival?” Calvino asked out loud, as if the man in the photo would wake up and give him an answer.

  Nothing about Ballard’s behavior at the Bali Jazz Festival had been exceptional. Dead end, thought Calvino. What about Alan Osborne? He had a reputation of hating drug addicts and had forced Rob, his son, into rehab twice before he ran off to Rangoon. Did Osborne think that his friend was DEA? Why would Osborne be involved in a yacht deal out of Phuket, connecting the potential buyer with Ballard? Had the deal turned sour? Why had a hit man been sent to kill Osborne just when Ballard was staying at his condo? Which side was the hit man working for? Calvino leaned back from his computer screen and looked out the window at Sukhumvit Road in the distance, lighting the night sky. With so many unanswered questions, Calvino told himself he needed some advice. One person came to mind.

  He auto-dialed Yoshi Nagata’s number and listened to it ring. On the computer screen he stared again at the Google Street View photo of the terminal—the Thais captured there, a taxi, its registration plates easy enough to read, and vans, trucks and buses all frozen in the amber of Google time. He glanced at Al-Idrisi’s Tabula Rogeriana hanging on the wall as he waited for Yoshi to pick up the call. Calvino lost track of how long his phone had been ringing before Yoshi answered.

  When he did, Yoshi said that he had nearly finished meditating as the ringing started.

  “Vincent, I was waiting for you to call,” Yoshi said calmly, “and I knew it was you before I answered.”

  How many times had someone said that to him, Calvino thought. Except this time seemed different.

  “You saw my name on your phone. That’s how you knew.”

  “If you wish,” said Yoshi.

  “Why were you waiting for me to phone?”

  Yoshi laughed.

  “Marley has arranged a surprise for you. Of course, she hasn’t told me precisely what she has in mind. As you are aware, there is no point in pressing her.”

  “Why doesn’t Marley phone me directly?”

  “If I could look inside her mind, I might be able to provide an answer. But I can’t.”

  “She once told me that you were a good influence and I should keep in touch,” said Calvino.

  “That’s not unusual. She once said the same thing to me about you.”

  “So you have no idea what kind of surprise?”

  Yoshi read her invitation: “Please ask Vincent to come to your condominium on Thursday at 8:30 p.m. I have something for him.”

  “Her message came in only a few minutes ago. She insisted on that time.”

  It was an odd hour. And it was also the anniversary of the last day and time they’d been together in Banglamung. Her clothes had lain scattered on the floor of the stateroom of her yacht, her breasts pressed against his chest. He’d stroked her hair. Shifting her weight, she’d looked up in the dim light, the sound of the sea breaking against the hull, a gentle rocking motion, comforting, promising a secure passage. One of her legs had been wrapped around one of his. She’d pulled him in tightly.

  Afterwards, she’d judged Calvino not to be sentimental. Sex and the lapping of the sea had synchronized like a perfectly constructed block of code inside an algorithm that allowed her to read his thoughts. He’d felt her inside his head that night, opening doors and windows, climbing into memories of places he’d forgotten. One thing he was sure about: she was aware of things inside his mind no one else had seen. No one ever forgot the significance of that kind of experience of body and mind. She had never really left that space. He felt her presence even now and couldn’t explain how or why she was never far away. So much time had passed since she’d vanished from Calvino’s life. Like a magician, Marley had made herself disappear. No place on the map had enough gravity to hold her for long. It was the way of Marley’s world—paths converging, diverging and running in parallel.

  “I’ll be there,” he’d said. “This is Thursday, and 8:30 is an hour from now.”

  “Yes. I only received the message just before I started my meditation.”

  “Marley doesn’t give people a lot of lead time.”

  “She exists inside Marley time. That’s true. Can you make it?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be there.”

  They didn’t exchange another word. The retired professor ended the call first. Calvino wondered if Yoshi smiled as he looked at his shrine of deities. They had power, much as Marley had power over Calvino. He had received his invitation to Yoshi’s condo and that had been the purpose of the call. It didn’t matter that Marley had made it easy; there had been no need for him to invite himself. Deep down, he thanked Marley for her remarkable timing. Marley time—he liked Yoshi’s phrase.

  Calvino checked his cell phone apps for an update on Fah’s movements. He located her inside Osborne’s compound. He put away his phone and thought about how to play along with whatever Marley had waiting, and with that business out of the way, how he’d ask Yoshi to guide him through the maze of questions that Ballard had left behind.

  Calvino’s taxi pulled up to Yoshi’s condo. The front-desk security buzzed him in as he reached the door. He was expected. As his name was checked off the guest
list and he was escorted to the lift, he thought about Marley, who was living proof that a super-intelligent, beautiful woman with a fortune at her disposal was indistinguishable from a god. Most children figured out by the time they reached eight years old that it was pointless as well as exhausting and fruitless to waste time bonding with a personal god. Gods didn’t do well in relationships. Marley was no exception. When she’d left Thailand, Calvino had happily rejoined the world of women who were ordinary mortals. He liked that world, belonged to it. But nonetheless, when an old god summoned, he was quick to become a relapsed worshipper for his private audience.

  The lift doors opened on Yoshi Nagata’s floor. Calvino wondered whether others in the building knew that a famous retired mathematician lived there. He walked the few steps to a large wooden double door. As he reached for the recessed brass doorbell, the door opened and Yoshi greeted him.

  “Vincent, hello. We can talk later. Marley’s little show is about to start.”

  Calvino took off his shoes and followed Yoshi into the condo. In the large main living space, the yoga mats were rolled up neatly and stored near the ceremonial table and shelves of statuettes of deities. Yoshi sat down on the floor cross-legged in front of a massive TV screen hanging from a wall. Calvino squatted on a mat beside him. On his left a Mac computer screen had gone to a screensaver photograph of Hong Kong Harbor. Yoshi positioned the mouse as his left hand tapped on the keyboard. A live cam shot of Hong Kong Harbor filled the TV screen. A stream of boats and ships crossed the water, along with several tugboats and an old-fashioned junk, its distinctive red sails visible. Beyond the waterline, on the Hong Kong side, stood a forest of high-rise structures adorned with large letters and logos fashioned from neon. It was like a Street View map of the seats of the city’s economic, social and political power—the signs reading HSBC, Jardine House, Bank of China and Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre—with the ridges of the low hills rising behind.

  “You’re about to see the nightly performance of the Hong Kong Symphony of Lights,” said Yoshi.

  “Why don’t I hear any music?” asked Calvino.

  Yoshi touched Calvino’s arm.

  “The lasers and LEDs are the notes in this symphony.”

  “If it’s nightly, what’s so special about tonight?”

  “Patience is rewarded. Trust her a little, Vincent.”

  Calvino sat on the floor beside Yoshi, trying to think of the last time patience had sent him a reward. As the third scene in the show started, it became apparent that there were three cameras on different boats in the harbor, each focusing on one of the luminous high-rise structures.

  “This part is called ‘Heritage,’” said Yoshi.

  The laser lights created on the front of one of the high-rise buildings projected an image from Calvino’s own life. The lights had been programmed to reproduce Galileo Chini’s 1913 painting The Last Day of the Chinese Year in Bangkok, the best-known artwork of Calvino’s great-grandfather. The painting in light hung, so to speak, over the Hong Kong cityscape—a blaze of glowing lanterns against the sky, a man running through a stationary crowd of lithe, pigtailed figures in black pajamas, one of them in a conical bamboo hat. The digital image erupted in a fire show that captured the painting’s fine detail, spilling its reflected light across the harbor as it filled the TV screen. Then the painting’s title appeared.

  The image dissolved a couple of minutes later, replaced by a rainbow of lights, dragons and lions. Once, in a long conversation about his family, Calvino had told Marley the story about how during the day of the 2006 coup, he had come into his great-grandfather’s inheritance, including the man’s paintings. Pratt, a colonel at the time, had ensured their safe passage. Calvino had no means of updating her on the differences between the 2006 and 2014 coups. He’d become suddenly wealthy in one, and a person of interest in a murder investigation in the other.

  “Someone once said the medium is the message,” said Calvino.

  “Marshall McLuhan,” said Yoshi.

  “My great grandfather’s painting splashed across Hong Kong Harbor. I am impressed. But she could have sent a postcard and saved a lot of money. So many people are competing for my attention—Pratt, Osborne, Ballard, each one inside my head, knocking me around. Now Marley comes into the ring to finish the head job?

  “Help me understand, Yoshi. I am trying. First she spends a fortune on an old map and has you deliver it. Now she’s produced a huge light show in Hong Kong, reproducing my great-grandfather’s most famous painting. And again, you’re the middleman. What are you two planning next?”

  Calvino waited for an answer as Yoshi switched off the TV. When he decided Calvino had calmed down enough, he spoke.

  “She expected you’d have questions. Let’s start with the 1154 map. A map doesn’t have any intrinsic meaning. What matters is its use. What you want to use it for gives it a function. Where you want to start, and where you want to finish—those decisions are up to you. The business of a mapmaker and a painter are the same. They create the space you wish to play in, spend time inside, eat, sleep, make love and die in; it’s a representation of a location in space and time. Where is time on a map or in your great-grandfather’s painting, The Last Day of the Chinese Year in Bangkok? It’s there. Infused in every aspect of the space, pigment, design, lines and details. It invites you to enter.”

  Calvino looked at Yoshi’s collection of deities.

  “Like your bronze and gold gods?”

  Yoshi smiled.

  “They are other portals into the realm of imagination, companions with which to explore the regions and borders. Maps, paintings, idols remain caught in particular times and spaces, but you possess the power of movement inside time and space. An ancient map, like an old painting, is a fossil of a unicorn, presenting us with a contradiction: we never have found a fossil of a unicorn, and yet people—many people—believe they exist. They can point to drawings and paintings and stories of unicorns and argue that the images prove the correctness of their belief. The time and space of Bangkok in your great-grandfather’s day is no longer accessible except through art. His painting transports you back to 1913.”

  “In 2006 the great hope of the coup makers was to find passage to the mystical world of my great-grandfather’s art. They failed,” said Calvino.

  “This is their second chance. There won’t be a third one,” said Yoshi. “Their belief in unicorns is difficult to extinguish. They keep searching for a way back to that past Chinese New Year. That’s a challenge. Like finding MH370, the Malaysian plane that vanished over the south Indian Ocean. We forget that large uncharted parts of our planet remain as inaccessible as in the past. We have no map to guide us. Such searches are hit and miss. Each time it appears that success is around the corner, and then…”

  “They start over again, covering the same territory with the same result,” said Calvino.

  “Like the man running against the Chinese New Year’s sky lit with fireworks. Dramatic, colorful—and he will never be a step closer to his goal no matter how long we look at the painting.”

  “I have a similar problem, Yoshi.”

  Calvino explained how he’d found Osborne with a gun and a dead body in the doorway, and how Ballard had been found dead on the night they had agreed to have dinner. He also told him how Pratt had been promoted to the rank of general, and now his superiors, along with the American embassy, the DEA, DARPA and no doubt others, had taken a sudden interest in Calvino, his movements, activities and associations. There had been a lunch at the Happy Bar, and McPhail and he had arrived to find Ballard inside, and after lunch the military and police had arrested the owner, carted him out on a cot and loaded him into the back of a police van. Finally Calvino showed Yoshi the graffiti art in the style of Banksy that Osborne’s girlfriend had engineered with her friends.

  “It seems that you are caught in the same cycle of karma as your great-grandfather. He tried to paint his way out. When I see his great painting, I se
e him making a run for it. The Thai generals live inside their world and try to reconcile it with the larger one outside, but the two don’t match. They don’t accept the contradictions between Galileo Chini’s painting and the modern world. They believe they can bring the society in that painting back to life. But they can’t quite manage it. And you, Vincent, are in the middle of the scene, the man running as the others wait.”

  “Where exactly am I running?”

  Yoshi Nagata smiled and bowed his head slightly.

  “Where is the man running to in your great-grandfather’s painting?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We have no reason to believe that your great-grandfather had the answer either. There is no hint of a destination. To our eye he’s running blind. Or you can infer whatever you want. The Thais love to say, ‘Up to you,’ though they don’t really mean it literally. It makes them uncomfortable if someone is running off the grid. It means he’s lost or without purpose, but when you closely examine his stride you feel a rising panic is moving him forward.

  “Don’t get lost, Vincent. Don’t panic. Keep your wits. Isn’t that Marley’s message? You aren’t alone. She’s there beside you. She has faith you will find the way and discover the place the runner is sprinting toward. It’s off the border of the canvas. The runner’s forward motion is forever captured in the painting. What if his painting isn’t a finished thing but a dynamic work that comes to life inside your own heart? It’s your turn to take the baton through a Bangkok skyline aglow with fireworks.”