The Windup Girl (36 page)

Anderson smiles slightly. "Well, I don't feel like waiting until the monsoons for the white shirts to come to their senses. Set up a meeting with Akkarat. We can offer him all the help he needs."

"You think you'll just swim out to Koh Angrit and lead a revolution back in? With what? A couple clerks and shipping captains? Maybe some junior trade rep who sits out there drinking all day and hoping the Kingdom will have a famine and drop its embargoes? Pretty threatening."

Anderson smiles. "If we come, we'll come from Burma. And no one will notice until its too late." He holds Carlyle's eyes until the man looks away.

"Same terms?" Carlyle asks. "You're not changing anything?"

"Access to the Thai seedbank, and a man named Gibbons. That's all."

"And you'll give what?"

"What does Akkarat need? Money for bribes? Gold? Diamonds? Jade?" He pauses. "Shock troops."

"Christ. You're serious about the Burma thing."

Anderson waves his glass toward the night beyond. "My cover here is blown. I accept that and move forward or I pack up and head back to Des Moines with my tail between my legs. Let's be honest. AgriGen has always played for keeps. Ever since Vincent Hu and Chitra D'Allessa started the company. We're not afraid of a little mess."

"Like Finland."

Anderson smiles. "I'm hoping for a better return on investment, this time."

Carlyle grimaces. "Christ. All right. I'll set up the meeting. But you better remember me when this is over."

"AgriGen always remembers its friends."

He ushers Carlyle out the door and closes it behind him, thoughtful. It's interesting to see what crisis brings out in a man. Carlyle, always so cocky and confident, now harried by the realization that he stands out as if he were painted blue. That the white shirts could begin interning
farang
or executing them at any time, and no one would mourn. Suddenly Carlyle's confidence is stripped away like a used filter mask.

Anderson goes to the balcony and stares out at the darkness, to the waters far beyond, to the island of Koh Angrit and the powers that wait so patiently at the Kingdom's edge.

Almost time.

24

Amid the wreckage of white shirt reprisals, Kanya sits, sipping coffee. In the far corner of the noodle shop, a few patrons squat sullenly, listening to a
muay thai
match on a hand-cranked radio. Kanya, monopolizing the customer bench, ignores them. No one dares to sit beside her.

Before, they might have hazarded the companionship, but now the white shirts have shown their teeth and she sits alone. Her men have already proceeded ahead of her, ravening like jackals, cleaning out old history and bad alliances, starting fresh.

Sweat trickles off the owner's chin as he leans over steaming bowls of rice noodles. Water beads on his face, glinting blue with the flare of illegal methane. He doesn't look at Kanya, probably rues the day he decided to buy fuel on the black market.

The radio's tinny crackle and the faint shout of the Lumphini crowds competes with the burn of the wok as he boils
sen mi
for soup. None of the listeners look at her.

Kanya sips her coffee and smiles grimly. Violence, they understand. A soft Environment Ministry they ignored or scoffed at. But this Ministry—one with its batons swinging and spring guns ready to cut a body down—elicits a different response.

How many illegal burn stands has she already trashed? Ones just like this one? Ones where some poor coffee or noodle man couldn't afford the Kingdom's taxed and sanctioned methane? Hundreds, she supposes. Methane is expensive. Bribes are cheaper. And if black market fuel lacked the additives that turned the methane a safe shade of green, well, that was a risk they all took willingly.

We were so easy to bribe.

Kanya pulls out a cigarette and lights it on the damning blue flame under the man's wok. He doesn't stop her, acts as though she doesn't exist—a comfortable fiction for both of them. She is not a white shirt sitting at his illegal burn stand; he is not a yellow card that she could throw into the towers to sweat and die with his countrymen.

She draws on her cigarette, thoughtful. Even if he doesn't show his fear, she knows his feelings. Remembers when the white shirts came to her own village. They filled her aunt's fish ponds with lye and salt and burned her poultry in slaughter piles.

You're lucky, yellow card.
When the white shirts came for us, they didn't care about preserving anything at all. They came with their torches and they burned and burned. You'll get better treatment than we did.

The memory of those sooty pale men, demon-eyed behind biohazard masks makes her want to cower even now. They came at night. There was no warning. Her neighbors and cousins fled naked and screaming ahead of the torches. Behind them, their stilt houses erupted in flames, bamboo and palm roaring orange and alive in the blackness. Ash swirled around them, scalding skin, sending everyone coughing and retching. She still carries scars from that burning, pale pocks where flakes of burning palm landed hot and permanent on her thin childish arms. How she hated the white shirts. She and her cousins had huddled together, watching in awe and terror as the Environment Ministry razed their village, and she had hated them with all her heart.

And now she marshals her own troops to do the same. Jaidee would appreciate the irony.

In the distance, shouts of fear rise up like smoke, as black and oily as farmers' hovels burning. Kanya sniffs. It's nostalgic, in a way. The smoke is the same. She draws again on her cigarette, exhales. Wonders if her men have gotten ahead of themselves. A fire in these WeatherAll slums would be problematic. The oils that keep the wood from rotting ignite easily in the heat. She takes another puff of her cigarette. Nothing she can do about it now. Perhaps it is only an officer torching illegally scavenged scrap. She reaches out to sip her coffee and eyes the bruise on the cheek of the man who serves her.

If the Environment Ministry had anything to say about it, all these yellow card refugees would be on the other side of the border. A Malayan problem. The problem of another sovereign country. Not a problem for the Kingdom at all. But Her Royal Majesty the Child Queen is merciful, compassionate in a way Kanya is not.

Kanya snuffs her cigarette. It's a good tobacco, Gold Leaf, local engineering, better than anything else in the Kingdom. She pulls another cigarette from its switchgrass-cellophane box, lights it on the blue flame.

The yellow card keeps his expression polite as Kanya motions for him to pour more sweet coffee. The radio crackles with the stadium's cheers and the men huddling around it all cheer as well, momentarily forgetting the white shirt nearby.

The footsteps are almost silent, timed with the sound of pleasure, but the yellow card's expression gives the arrival away. Kanya doesn't look up. She motions for the man standing behind to join her.

"Either kill me or sit down," she says.

A low chuckle. The man sits.

Narong wears a loose black high-collar shirt and gray trousers. Tidy clothes. He could work as a clerk perhaps. Except for his eyes: his eyes are too alert. And his body is too relaxed. There is an easy confidence to him. An arrogance that has difficulty fitting into his clothes. Some people are simply too powerful to pretend a lower status. It made him stand out at the anchor pads as well. She bottles her anger, waits without speaking.

"You like the silk?" He touches his shirt. "It's Japanese. They still have silk worms."

She shrugs. "I don't like anything about you, Narong."

He smiles at that. "Come now, Kanya. Here you are, promoted to captain and not a single smile in you."

He motions to the yellow card for coffee. They watch the rich brown liquid splash into a glass. The yellow card sets a bowl of soup down before Kanya, fish balls and lemongrass and chicken stock. She starts fishing out U-Tex noodles.

Narong sits quietly, patiently. "You asked for this meeting," he says finally.

"Did you kill Chaya?"

Narong straightens. "You always lacked social grace. Even after all these years in the city and all the money we've given to you, you might as well be a Mekong fish farmer."

Kanya looks at him coldly. If she's honest with herself, he frightens her, but she won't let that show. Behind her, another cheer from the radio. "You're the same as Pracha. You're all disgusting," she says.

"You didn't think so when we came to you, a very small and vulnerable girl, and invited you to Bangkok. You didn't think so when we supported your aunt through the rest of her years. You didn't think so when we offered you an opportunity to strike at General Pracha and the white shirts."

"There are limits. Chaya did nothing."

Narong is as still as spider, regarding her. Finally he says, "Jaidee overstepped himself. You even warned him. Be careful that you don't dive down the cobra's throat yourself."

Kanya starts to speak, then closes her mouth. Starts again, keeping her voice under control. "Will you do the same to me as you did to Jaidee?"

"Kanya, how long have I known you?" Narong smiles. "How long have I cared for your family? You are our valued daughter." He slides a thick envelope across to her. "I would never hurt you," he says. "We are not like Pracha." Narong pauses. "How is the loss of the Tiger affecting the department?"

"Look around you." Kanya jerks her head toward the sounds of conflict. "The general is enraged. Jaidee was almost a brother to him."

"I hear he wants to come after Trade directly. Maybe even burn the Ministry to the ground."

"Of course he wants to go after Trade. Without Trade, our problems would be halved."

Narong shrugs. The envelope sits between them. It might as well be Jaidee's heart laying the counter. The return on her long-ago investment in revenge.

I'm sorry, Jaidee. I tried to warn you.

She takes the envelope, empties the money and stuffs it into a belt pouch as Narong looks on. Even the man's smiles are sharp with cutting edges. His hair is slicked back on his head, sleek. He is both entirely still and entirely terrifying.

And this is the sort you consort with,
mutters a voice inside her head.

Kanya jerks at the voice. It sounds like Jaidee. It has the telltales of Jaidee, of his humor and his relentlessness. The hint of laughter along with judgment. Jaidee never lost his sense of
sanuk
.

I'm not your kind,
Kanya thinks.

Again the grin and the chuckle.
I knew that.

Why didn't you simply kill me if you knew?

The voice is silent. The sound of the
muay thai
match continues to crackle behind them. Charoen and Sakda. A good match. But either Charoen has radically improved, or Sakda has been paid to fail. Kanya's bet will be a losing one. The match reeks of interference. Perhaps the Dung Lord has taken an interest in the fight. Kanya makes a face of irritation.

"Bad match?" Narong asks.

"I always bet on the wrong man."

Narong laughs. "That's why it's so helpful to have information ahead of time." He hands her a scrap of paper.

Kanya looks through the names on the list. "These are Pracha's friends. Generals, some of them. They're protected by him as the cobra sheltered the Buddha."

Narong grins. "That's why they will be so surprised when he suddenly turns on them. Hit them. Make them hurt. Let them know that the Environment Ministry is not to be trifled with. That the Ministry views
all
infractions equally. No more favoritism. No more friendships and easy deals. Show them that this new Environment Ministry is unbending."

"You're trying to drive a wedge between Pracha and his allies? Make them angry at him?"

Narong shrugs. Doesn't say anything. Kanya finishes her noodles. When no other instructions seem to be forthcoming, she stands. "I must go. I can't have my men see me with you."

Narong nods, dismissing her. Kanya stalks out of the coffee shop, followed by new groans of disappointment from the radio listeners as Sakda is cowed by Charoen's newfound ferocity.

On the street corner, under the green glow of methane, Kanya straightens her uniform. There is a blotchy stain on her jacket, residue of the destruction she has wreaked tonight. She frowns with distaste. Brushes at it. Again opens the list that Narong gave her, memorizing the names.

The men and women are General Pracha's closest friends. And they will now be enforced against as vigorously as the yellow cards in their towers. As vigorously as General Pracha once enforced against a small village in the northeast, leaving starving families and burning homes behind him.

Difficult. But, for once, fair.

Kanya crumples the list in her hand.
This is the shape of our world,
she thinks
. Tit for tat until we're all dead and cheshires lap at our blood.

She wonders if it was really better in the past, if there really was a golden age fueled by petroleum and technology. A time when every solution to a problem didn't engender another. She wants to curse those
farang
who came before. The calorie men with their active labs and their carefully cultured crop strains that would feed the world. Their modified animals that would work so much more efficiently on fewer calories. The AgriGens and PurCals who claimed that they were happy to feed the world, to export their patented grains, and then always found a way to delay.

Ah, Jaidee,
she thinks.
I am sorry. So sorry. For everything I have done to you and yours. I did not set out to hurt you. If I had known how much it would cost to balance against Pracha's greed, I would have never come to Krung Thep.

Instead of going after her men, she makes her way to a temple. It is small, a neighborhood shrine more than anything, with only a few monks in attendance. A young boy kneels before the glittering Buddha image with his grandmother, but otherwise, the place is empty. Kanya buys some incense from the vendor at the gate and goes inside. She lights the incense and kneels, holds the burning sticks to her forehead, raises them three times in the Triple Gem:
buddha, damma, sanga.
She prays.