The Windup Girl (39 page)

Hock Seng wants to tear out the last of his hair with frustration.

He glares at the checkpoint, willing the white shirts to go away, to look somewhere else. Wishing, praying to the goddess Kuan Yin, begging to fat gold Budai for a little luck. With those manufacturing plans and the support of the Dung Lord, so much would be possible. So much future. So much life. Offerings for his ancestors again. Perhaps a wife. Perhaps a son to carry on his name. Perhaps. . .

A patrol stalks past. Hock Seng eases deeper into shadow. The enforcers remind him of when the Green Headbands began patrolling at night. They started out looking for couples holding hands in the evening, displaying immorality.

At the time, he told his children to watch themselves, to understand that the tides of conservatism came and went and if they could not live as freely and openly as their parents had, well then, what of it? Didn't they have food in their bellies and family and friends whose company they enjoyed? And within their high-walled compounds, it was irrelevant what the Green Headbands thought.

Another patrol. Hock Seng turns and slips back down the alley. There is no way to sneak into the manufacturing district. The white shirts are determined to shut down Trade and hurt the
farang
. He grimaces and begins the long circuitous route back through the
sois
toward his hovel.

Others in the Ministry were corrupt, but not Jaidee. Not if anyone is honest about the man. Even
Sawatdee Krung Thep!,
the whisper sheet which loved him most, and then denigrated him so completely during his disgrace, has printed pages and pages in praise of the hero of the country. Captain Jaidee was too well-loved to be cut into pieces, to be treated like offal that is dumped in methane composters. Someone must be punished.

And if Trade is to blame, then trade must be punished. So the factories are closed along with anchor pads and roads and docks, and Hock Seng cannot squeeze out. He cannot book passage on a clipper, cannot ride upriver to the ruined Ayutthaya, cannot flee on a dirigible to Kolkata or Japan.

He makes his way past the docks and, sure enough, the white shirts are still there, along with small knots of workers, squatting on the ground, idled by the blockade. A beautiful clipper ship lies anchored a hundred meters offshore, rocking gently in the water. As beautiful a clipper as he ever owned. Latest generation, switch hulls and hydrofoils, palm oil polymer, wind wings. Fast. Capable of hauling plenty of cargo. It sits out there, gleaming. And he stands on the dock, staring at it. It might as well be docked in India.

He spies a food cart, a vendor frying generipped tilapia in a deep wok. Hock Seng steels himself. He has to ask, even if he reveals himself as a yellow card. He is blind without information. With the white shirts at the other end of the dock, if the man calls out, he should still have time to flee.

Hock Seng eases close. "Is there any way of passengers crossing?" he murmurs. He tilts his head toward the clipper. "Over there?"

"No transit for anyone," the vendor mutters.

"Not even a single man?"

The man scowls, nods at the others in the shadows, squatting and smoking cigarettes, playing at cards. Huddled around the hand-crank radio of a shop keeper. "Those ones have been there for the last week. You'll have to wait, yellow card. Just like everyone else."

Hock Seng fights the urge to flinch at being identified. Forces himself to pretend as if they are all equals in this, to create a hopeful fiction that the man will see him as a person, and not as some unwelcome cheshire. "You haven't heard of small boats, further down the coast? Away from the city? For money?"

The fish vendor shakes his head. "No one's going either way. They've caught two different groups of passengers trying to make their way ashore from the ships, too. The white shirts won't even allow a resupply boat to go out. We're betting on whether the captain will weigh anchor or the white shirts will open up first."

"What are the odds?" Hock Seng asks.

"I'll give you eleven to one that the clipper leaves first."

Hock Seng makes a face. "I don't think I'll risk it."

"Twenty to one, then."

A few others seem to have been listening to the exchange. They laugh quietly. "Don't bet unless he gives you fifty to one," one of them says. "The white shirts aren't going to bend. Not this time. Not with the Tiger dead."

Hock Seng makes himself laugh with them. He pulls out a cigarette and lights it, offers more to the people around him. A small gift of good will for these Thais, for this moment of shared brotherhood. If he were not a yellow card with a yellow card accent, he might even try a gift of goodwill for the white shirts, but on a night like tonight it will earn him nothing but a baton on the skull. He has no interest in seeing his head splintered against paving stones. He smokes and studies the blockade.

Time is passing.

The idea of a sealed city makes his hands shake.
This isn't about yellow cards,
he tells himself.
We are not the reason for this.
But he has a hard time believing a noose isn't tightening. It might be about Trade right now, but there are too many yellow cards in the city and if trade is cut off for long, even these friendly people will begin to notice the lack of work, and then they will drink, and then they will think of the yellow cards in the towers.

The Tiger is dead. His face is on every gaslight pole. Pasted to every building. Three images of Jaidee in a fighting pose stare out from a warehouse wall even now. Hock Seng smokes his cigarette and scowls at that face. The hero of the people. The man who could not be bought, who faced down ministers and
farang
companies and petty businessmen. The man who was willing to fight even his own ministry. Sent to a desk job when he became too troublesome, and then put back on the street when he became even more so. The man who laughed at death threats, and survived three assassinations before the fourth felled him.

Hock Seng grimaces. The number four is everywhere in his mind these days. The Tiger of Bangkok only got four chances. How many has he himself used up? Hock Seng studies the docks and the clustered people, all unable to make their ships. With the sharpened senses of a refugee, he smells hazard in the wind, sharper than the sea air that sweeps across a clipper and presages typhoon.

The Tiger is dead. Captain Jaidee's painted eyes stare out at Hock Seng, and Hock Seng has the sudden, horrified feeling that the Tiger is not dead. That in fact, he is hunting.

Hock Seng shies away from the poster as if it is a blister-rusted durian. He knows in his bones, knows as surely as his clan is all dead and buried in Malaya, that it's time to run. Time to hide from tigers that hunt though the night. Time to plunge into leech-infested jungles and eat cockroaches and slither through the mud of the rainy season as it gushes in torrents. It doesn't matter where he goes. All that matters is that it's time to flee. Hock Seng stares out at the anchored clipper ship. Time to make hard decisions. Time, in truth, to give up on the SpringLife factory and its blueprints. Delays will only make it worse. Money must be spent. Survival secured.

This raft is sinking.

27

Carlyle is already waiting anxiously in the rickshaw when Anderson comes out of his building. The man's eyes flick from right to left, cataloguing the darkness around him in a nervous rotation. The man has the trembling cautiousness of a rabbit.

"You look jumpy," Anderson notes as he climbs in.

Carlyle grimaces. "The white shirts just took the Victory. Confiscated everything."

Anderson glances up at his own apartment, glad that poor old Yates chose to locate far from the rest of the
farang
. "You lose much?"

"Cash in the safe. Some customer lists that I was keeping away from our offices." Carlyle calls forward to the rickshaw driver, giving directions in Thai. "You'd better have something to offer these people."

"Akkarat knows what I'm offering."

They begin rolling through the humid night. Cheshires scatter. Carlyle glances behind them, scanning for followers. "No one's officially going after
farang
, but you know we're next on the list. I'm not sure how much longer we'll be able to keep a toehold in the country."

"Look on the bright side. If they go after
farang
, Akkarat won't be far behind."

They spin across the darkened city. Ahead of them, a checkpoint materializes. Carlyle mops his forehead. He's sweating like a pig. The white shirts hail their rickshaw and they slow.

Anderson feels a prickle of tension. "You're sure this will work?"

Carlyle wipes his brow again. "We'll know soon enough." The rickshaw coasts to a stop and the white shirts surround them. Carlyle speaks rapidly. Hands across a piece of paper. The white shirts confer for a moment, and then they're giving obsequious
wais
and motioning the
farang
forward.

"I'll be damned."

Carlyle laughs, relief obvious in his voice. "The right stamps on a piece of paper do wonders."

"I'm amazed that Akkarat still has any influence."

Carlyle shakes his head. "Akkarat couldn't do this."

The buildings turn to slums as they near the seawall. The rickshaw swerves around pieces of concrete that have fallen from the heights of an old Expansion hotel. Anderson supposes that it must have been lovely in the past. The terraced levels rise above them, silhouetted in moonlight. But now slum shacks lap all around it, and the last bits of its plate glass windows glimmer like teeth. The rickshaw slows to a halt at the foot of the seawall's embankment. Paired guardian
naga
flank the stairs to the top of the seawall. They watch as Carlyle pays the rickshaw man.

"Come on." Carlyle leads Anderson up the steps, his hand trailing along the scales of the naga. From the top of the levee, they have a clear view of the city. The Grand Palace shines in the distance. High walls obscure the inner courts that house the Child Queen and her entourage, but its gold-spiked
chedi
rise above, gleaming softly in the moonlight. Carlyle tugs Anderson's sleeve. "Don't dawdle."

Anderson hesitates, searching the darkness of the shoreline below. "Where are the white shirts? They should be all over this place."

"Don't worry. They don't have authority here." He laughs at some secret joke and ducks under the
saisin
that strings along the levee's top. "Come on." He scrambles down the rubbled embankment, picking his way toward the lap of the waves. Anderson hesitates, still scanning the open area, then follows.

As they reach the shoreline, a kink-spring skiff materializes out of the darkness, hurtling toward them. Anderson almost bolts, thinking it's a white shirt patrol, but Carlyle whispers, "It's ours." They wade out into the shallows and clamber aboard. The boat pivots sharply and they cut away from shore. Moonlight glints on the waves, a blanket of silver. The only sounds in the boat come from the slap of waves on the hull and the tick of kink-springs unwinding. Ahead of them, a barge looms, dark except for a few LED running lights.

Their skiff bumps up against the side. A moment later, a rope ladder lofts over the side, and they clamber up into the darkness. Crewmen
wai
respectfully as they come aboard. Carlyle makes a motion for Anderson to keep quiet as they are led below decks. At the end of corridor, guards flank a door. They call through, announcing the arriving
farang
, and the door opens, revealing a group of men at a large dining table, all laughing and drinking.

One of the men is Akkarat. Another Anderson recognizes as an admiral who harries the calorie ships going to Koh Angrit. Another he thinks is perhaps a southern general. In one corner, a sleek man wearing a black military uniform stands watching, eyes attentive. Another. . .

Anderson sucks in his breath.

Carlyle whispers, "Get down and show some respect." He's already falling to his knees and making a
khrab
. Anderson drops as quickly as he can.

The Somdet Chaopraya watches expressionless as they pay obeisance.

Akkarat laughs at their bowing and scraping. He comes around the table and brings them to their feet. "No need for so much formality here," he says, smiling. "Come. Join us. We're all friends here."

"Indeed." The Somdet Chaopraya smiles and raises a glass. "Come and drink."

Anderson
wais
again, as deeply as he is able. Hock Seng claims that the Somdet Chaopraya has killed more people than the Environment Ministry has slaughtered chickens. Before he was appointed protector of the Child Queen, he was a general, and his campaigns in the east are the brutal stuff of legend. If it weren't for the accident of his common birth line, it is speculated that he might even think to supplant royalty. Instead, he looms behind the throne, and all
khrab
before him.

Anderson's heart is pounding. With the Somdet Chaopraya backing a change of government, anything is possible. After years of searching and the failure in Finland, a seedbank is close. And with it, the answer to nightshades and
ngaw
and a thousand other genetic puzzles. This hard-eyed man who toasts him with a smile that could be friendly or feral holds the keys to everything.

A servant offers wine to Anderson and Carlyle. They join the assembled men at the table. "We were just talking about the coal war," Akkarat supplies. "The Vietnamese have given up on Phnom Penh for the moment."

"Good news, then."

The conversation continues, but Anderson only half listens. Instead, he furtively observes the Somdet Chaopraya. The last time he saw the man was outside the Environment Ministry's temple to Phra Seub, as they both gawked at the Japanese delegation's windup girl. In person, the man appears much older than in the pictures that adorn the city and depict him as a loyal defender of the Child Queen. His face is mottled with drink, and his eyes are sunken with the debauch he is rumored to like so well. Hock Seng claims that his brutal reputation on the battlefield is matched in his private life, and though the Thais may
khrab
before his image, he is not loved as the Child Queen is. And now, as the Somdet Chaopraya looks up and catches Anderson's gaze, Anderson thinks he sees why.