Page 48 of The Big Fix

“Well, Garland wouldn’t be able to stop that anyway,” she pointed out. “So he goes with you, and I’ll go with Jared.”

“And I’ll stay here,” Chris said, opening another beer. “Someone has to guard the safe house.”

Dante groaned, and somehow, I felt better.

A short while later, we were gliding across the Chao Phraya River, heading back to Bangkok in a different boat than the Demon. Somehow, without any of us knowing, Darius had the boats switched out in the night. It made sense. If we were seen in the same one—and a bullet-riddled one at that—it would make it pretty easy for the police to pick us up. But that was Darius. He didn’t miss much.

Dante gave voice to my concern. “Okay, now this is scary,” he grumbled, getting on the new boat, one made for fishing, not running from mobsters. “How did I not hear the boats being swapped out?”

We were supposed to be on edge, but apparently, when we fell asleep last night, all of us slept like the dead.

“Who was on guard duty?” Dante asked me.

“Fuck,” I groaned.

And of course, moments later, the worst was confirmed as Darius sent Dante and me pictures and video taken by Lee Tae San, who’d been there last night.

“That flight from Ankara is long,” I complained to Dante. “How was Lee with Darius in Ankara but then here in such a short amount of time?”

“He sent him back a day ago to check on us and—what the hell,” Dante grumbled looking at the photos on his phone.

There was one of Dante, drooling, spread-eagled on his bed, looking like a drunk starfish. Lee, taking the selfie with him, was making a peace sign. Mine was worse because there was audio of me snoring as Lee stood over me, giving a thumbs-up.

“I really hate that guy,” Dante said.

I knew the feeling.

“Hey,” Garland said from the other end of the boat, “who the fuck is this guy next to my bed giving a rock ’n’ roll salute?”

I got a text from Darius: Perhaps you people might sleep in shifts?

The day was already starting out bad.

NINE

Back on land, we split up. Dante took off looking for answers, taking Garland with him, because after the pictures from Darius, compliments of Lee, we were both feeling our age. Jing and I went to meet the ambassador, as requested.

The US embassy in Bangkok was a remnant of a Beirut truck bombing in ’83, when security was an overriding concern for US foreign missions. The five-story prestressed white concrete structure sat behind a double blast wall with a forbidding bunker-like appearance that even the lush and elegant tree-shaded street of Bangkok’s Embassy Row couldn’t soften. Bangkok was the second-largest American mission after Cairo, with the sprawling embassy estate resting on a ten-acre oasis of stately rain trees suffusing the property with lush greenery amid the urbanity surrounding it.

“Wow, that’s ugly,” Jing summed up nicely.

A uniformed security officer came out and asked me my name, and after I handed him my passport, Jing did the same. The guard scrupulously checked the photograph against each face before giving us visitor passes.

Inside, a woman approached, dressed in a dark gray suit, her jacket unbuttoned to suggest the presence of a sidearm, her hair tucked behind her ears. “Colonel Colter,” she greeted me, “I’m Taylor Clark, station chief here in Bangkok.”

“Good to meet you,” I said, taking her offered hand and noting that her handshake was firm and she didn’t smile. She wasn’t trying to be friendly, instead simply being professional, which I appreciated.

She shook Jing’s hand as well, and then her gaze met mine. “Please follow me.”

She led the two of us briskly to the elevators. She pressed the button for the fifth floor, and the door opened a minute later to a private corridor. Clark led us to a private office at the west end of the building, stopped in front of a red door, opened it, and went through.

Ambassador Daly was sitting behind a beautifully carved teakwood desk, in a high-backed swivel chair, reading a report. When I stepped closer, his head lifted, and he looked startled.

“I know, I know, I look like hell,” I told the man I knew from our time at West Point. We were in the same graduating class, and while we had never been friends, we weren’t enemies either. “But I’ve been busy since I got here.”

“I should say so,” Daly agreed, examining me with dark eyes that missed nothing.

“You look great,” I complimented the man, and he smiled and shook his head before rising and coming out from behind the desk.