The Bangkok Asset: A novel Read Free Page B

a knotted rope wrapped just under his gut. This he unwound as he walked. When the swimmer was near enough to the bank for the American to predict where he would make contact with the wall, Goldman secured one end of the line to a steel upright and let the other down the side of the bank. The swimmer reached the wall about twenty yards upstream and allowed the current to bounce him against it until he reached the rope, which he immediately wound around himself. He paused for a couple of minutes before hauling himself up.
    Now I was sure he was not human. The swim was impressive enough, but to retain the strength to haul his considerable bulk up the vertical rope quickly and easily for about thirty feet without a pause, even with the help of the knots…that spoke of something else.
    “Like something out of a superhero comic,” I muttered to Krom, who gave me a curious look.
    When the swimmer popped his head over the embankment I expected the two Americans to embrace to celebrate the athlete’s survival, or at least make high fives, but as soon as Goldman saw that his man was safe on the bank he beckoned him to follow as he returned with long, hurried strides to the first rope that was holding the boat with the Thais on board. I could not help staring at the physical prodigy on the screen who had just swum across our wildest river in a rage. I wondered why he didn’t lie down on the sidewalk, or at least lean against the railings breathing heavily. He simply followed the huge American at a kind of warm-up trot until he joined him at the stanchion to which the line was tied fast.
    A sudden squall began to tear the mist into floating filigree. The Satnav machine fired up those pixels as it switched automatically to color. The definition of the Chinese gadget was amazing in its precision: every shade, every facial expression, every detail was better than the best HD I’d seen. There was even a touch of the surreal in its precision, as if we had those people in a box right on the dashboard of the van.
    Goldman stood upright and seemed to yell something at his Asset at the same time as handing him some object that looked like a Swiss Army knife from his pants pocket, then clapped his hands. I frowned in disbelief. Inspector Krom played with the controls to zoom in on what he was doing.
    What I retain of that moment is the precision with which the swimmer cut the rope. He sawed away while bending over it, like a man who is determined to do a perfect job. He stepped back the instant the rope started to fray of its own accord. The strands unraveled: the rope and the boat were gone.
    “We’ll have to get out of here before they see us,” the Inspector muttered. “This isn’t meant to be a demonstration. Now it’s all over, they might start looking around. It’s important they don’t know we’re here.” But she made no effort to move just yet. Instead we watched the huge old American and his young prodigy giving the raging torrent one last glance. “I guess even if they do look this way, all they’re going to see is a wet van.”
    The younger man was stunning in his beauty, with a perfect physique, about six two with Hollywood good looks and cropped hair so blond it was almost white. Still soaked in shorts and T-shirt, he didn’t even shiver. When he looked up at the sky for a brief moment I saw eyes of mystic cornflower blue. But he seemed to give off nothing in the way of vibrations or mood, like someone emotionally invisible.
    Inspector Krom, her tongue pressing against her front teeth, began to pan across the scene until she found what she wanted and grunted in satisfaction. Now we were looking at a camera team of two huddled on a bridge upstream. Their camera with giant zoom on a tripod was focused like a cannon on the point at which Goldman and his disciple were standing. They were so done up in padded waterproofs that they were bloated spheres; no mistake about it, though, they were both Chinese. What kind of