Paradise Burning (21 page)

Okay, so he was a bastard. A self-righteous
bastard. Because there was no way he was going to admit it was all
his fault. It just wasn’t so. Wasn’t a wife supposed to cleave to
her husband? No, that was the good old days. He was clutching at
straws. And self-justification. He’d gone off, seen the world, had
not even considered celibacy an option. And when he came home,
planning to revive his marriage, he’d fallen into a hot, really
stupid affair practically under Mandy’s nose. He was lucky she was
speaking to him, let alone serving him lunch.

“
Peter?”

She was still there. Mandy usually slunk away
as silently as she had come, careful not to disturb his train of
thought. She couldn’t know that, at the moment, his book was the
farthest thing from his mind.

“
Um–m?” Peter mumbled, peering at his
screen, though not a word on it registered in his brain.

“
Did you know you could get sex menus
for brothels on the Internet?”

It took a minute. Peter’s head was filled
with a fantasy of swinging around, grabbing his wife, making mad
love right there on the floor, hard tile or no. And painfully aware
he wouldn’t have trouble rising to the occasion. “Sex menus?” he
repeated blankly.

“
You know,” Mandy said, “all the
different kinds of services available in a brothel. Some with
pictures,” she added softly.

His only recourse, Peter decided, was a
retreat to his old status as Big Brother. “Are you just getting
around to that, Mouse? Old news, kid.”

“
Just because that’s the way
your
mind runs . . .”

“
And every other male, and a lot of
curious women.”

“
It’s disgusting! “I mean, there are a
lot of listings I don’t even understand.”

And thank the good Lord for
that!
“Jesus, Mouse, just because you come from Boston
. . .”

“
I also looked up Russian brides,”
Mandy announced, her voice heavy with significant
overtones.

“
Euphemism.”

“
Huh?”

“
Brides. Euphemism.”

“
Oh. Well, I thought it might be, so I
tried
Russian women.
Believe
me, that category made
Russian
brides
look classy. Peter, they’re actually selling
women over the Net.”

“
Not in so many words.”

“
No,” Mandy admitted. “It’s a bit more
subtle than that.”

Subtle. She was wearing that damn lemon scent
that was so much a part of her. Nothing cloying or sweet about his
Mouse. She was his plain, tight-assed, tart-tongued electronic
wizard. The computer screen seemed to have gone into a tailspin, a
vortex of colors swirling where only black and white should be. He
was hard as a rock. Holding his breath.

He hurt.

“
Peter . . . I’m really sorry to
disturb your work, but I need to know why you’re writing this book.
It’ll never make as much money as your fiction, so . . . why? I
mean, you must really care, and I would have sworn Eleanor’s
obsession with trafficking was half the reason you ran
away—”

“
I didn’t run,” Peter interjected. “I
resigned, giving due notice, and expecting my wife to come with me.
Sorry. Old argument, but you know damn well it’s true.”

“
From your viewpoint.” Mandy pulled up
a chair and sat down, her knees nearly touching the side of his
rolling office chair. “Why a book on trafficking, Peter? You’ve got
me researching the whole world, and I need to understand why. It’s
not like you were ever Mr. Missionary. What’s so urgent that you
have to break off a lucrative career to write about something
people don’t want to know? Something so pervasive there’s not a
prayer of stopping it?”

“
Have to.”

“
You know,” Mandy said slowly, “I once
had a husband who was Mr. Super Investigator, always up for the
toughest assignments, full of wit, charm, and an ego as big as Mt.
Washington. Before too long, AKA wasn’t enough. He had to surf the
world’s hotspots in high profile, writing about what he saw.
Feeding his ego on his bylines. I’m not saying that’s bad,” Mandy
added hastily, “just that you were ambitious, always moving on and
up, becoming famous. Making more money. Pausing your career to
write about trafficking doesn’t fit the profile. Things are getting
a bit dicey, so I’m asking why. You must have a reason.

“
Peter . . . Peter . . .?”

A reason. Hell, yes, he had a reason. Even if
his book managed the impossible and made a small dent in the
heinous trade of selling women and children into sexual slavery,
the images of eleven exquisite elfin-like faces would haunt him for
the rest of his life.

He had been on alert from the moment he
slipped off his shoes and entered the dimly lit room. His
invitation to the inner sanctum of the Thai business community was
as intriguing as it was unexpected. Foreigners, particularly
kahrangs
, Western foreigners, were
seldom allowed access to the private pleasures of the wealthier
Thai males. But Peter had done a Thai exporter a particular favor,
easing a younger son’s way into the United States, complete with
genuine green card. And now the favor was being
returned.

Or so Peter assumed as he padded in paper
slippers across the mirror-polished floor in the wake of the young
Thai who was guiding him to the room where his host, Khun Udom, was
waiting. As they wound their way past the main room of one of
Bangkok’s most exclusive nightclubs and down a maze of hallways to
what was obviously a gathering place for private customers only,
he’d been wary, the telltale hairs on the back of his neck on the
prick, tingling in nameless warning. Peter knew just enough about
the sprawling Thai city to be fairly certain he was not in the
Patapong, Bangkok’s infamous red light district. Or if he was, the
restaurant where he’d been deposited was part of a discreetly
elegant outer fringe. Yet, still he was wary.

Hell, yes, he was wary.

In Bangkok sex was a major industry.
Men came from all over the world to sample what the Thais so
cheerfully offered. Not even rampant AIDS had kept Thai men from
their customary three or four nights a week at a brothel. A classic
shrug and an attitude of
mai pen
rai
—never mind—prevailed. Death happens. The world
goes on. A good Buddhist could always hope to be reborn into a
better life.

Therefore, Peter reasoned, it wasn’t
illogical to suspect that Thun Udom’s invitation to supper might
include more than Thai cuisine. Peter had already prepared several
excuses, including sudden illness, which would get him out of the
restaurant without insulting his host. Unfortunately, none of them
would uphold the dignity of macho Western male civilization.

Talk about a rock and a hard place!

And now, as Peter eyed this opulent,
all-male inner sanctum, he felt as if he had been dropped into a
Thai version of
The Arabian
Nights
. The room, spacious without losing an air of
intimacy, shimmered in red and gold from the silk brocade on the
walls to swaths of gold gauze suspended from the ceiling. Delicate
gold wind chimes tinkled softly under the pulse of woven bamboo
fans. Beneath the graceful draperies in the center of the room was
a raised dais twice the height of the low dining tables set against
the outside walls of the room. A shallow step surrounded the dais,
allowing it to be approached from any direction. At the moment the
stage was empty.

Just entertainment, Peter told himself.
Dancers maybe? But he had a bad feeling about that dais.

A canopy of intricately carved teak,
supported by equally elaborate wooden columns, ran along all four
sides of the room, providing an illusion of sheltered privacy over
low teak tables set on a bed of colorful fringed carpets. Peter
shot darting glances at the tables as he followed his guide across
the room. Men in western business suits, men in colorful batik
sarongs, men in cowboy boots, men who had failed to remove their
telltale Aussie hats. He thought he spotted an Israeli he had met
at the hotel.

Peter was conscious of disappointment.
In spite of his vague fears, he had hoped for an insider’s look at
an exclusively Thai world. Now it seemed he might be in the
Patapong after all. And yet . . . these men were not your typical
Patapong audience. In fact, he saw no one of any nationality he
could label
tourist
. These
were men in town on business. Just relaxing? Or were they here for
something more?

Khun Udom, the proud father, was
waiting, a broad smile of welcome lighting his thin, fine-boned,
ageless face. Peter sketched a polite, if slightly awkward,
wai
to his host—palms together, bow
head, touch nose, graceful wave outward—before sinking down onto
the thick carpet where Thun Udom was waiting. Peter smiled, forced
the proper Thai response past his lips, even as his skin crawled.
Somehow he found the room’s effect more decadent than
opulent.

Among the low murmurs of conversation he
sensed an air of expectancy, almost like the blood scent that
seemed to stir even the most phlegmatic Englishman while milling
about in a swirl of hounds and horses before the start of a hunt.
Peter did not care for fox hunting. Nor did he like the odd feel of
tension permeating this room. A tension, almost an avidity, he
couldn’t quite place.

Although his journalist’s instincts
were aroused, Peter sharply reminded himself of the Thai philosophy
of
mai pen rai.
He was here to
have a good time. The words defined the way of life in Thailand.
Polite, charming, non-aggressive, live-and-let-live. If he were
given to manufacturing trouble, Peter mused, he’d be living with a
small, yappy dog on the fortieth floor of a condo with a
twenty-four-hour security guard. Instead, he was a highly respected
freelance journalist, published in magazines and newspapers around
the world, and a man who was about to see his first novel make it
into the bookstores.

Short of an incoming RPG round, Peter
Pennington didn’t turn tail and run. He was, after all, in a
country where a man’s correct reply to the Thai equivalent of “How
are you?” was
“Khrap
.” Peter
grinned, hunkered down on the costly piles of carpets, and prepared
to enjoy himself.

The food which shortly filled the low teak
table was well worth the swallowing of his qualms, although Peter
was careful to avoid the colorful array of whole red and green
chilis that topped many of the dishes. The shrimp soup with lemon
grass and mushrooms went down easily, but when he thought to
relieve the spicy snap of green curry chicken with a bit of a
tempting-looking shredded fruit salad, his eyes popped. He choked,
coughed; tears streamed down his face.

“
Som-dtam
,”
Thun Udom explained, his brown eyes brimming with apology.
“
Even our own people make tears over
this,” he said, handing Peter a large bright red
handkerchief.

When the shattered pieces of Peter’s
head had finally coalesced, he heaped his plate with bland white
rice which he topped with small portions of grilled pork, shrimp,
and a dish whose main ingredient appeared to be squid. Not even a
series of toasts in
mekong
,
the potent Thai whiskey, could make him careless enough to return
to the mango salad. He left that to braver men.

As Peter bit into a second colorful
confection from a tray presented at the end of the meal, his teeth
suddenly clunked together, his stomach churned. Slowly,
deliberately, not caring what his host might think, Peter laid the
candy down onto his intricately patterned plate. He was far too
mellow. The
mekong
alone could
not account for the sluggishness tugging at his mind, nor a
disturbing tendency toward moments of euphoria. He was not himself,
and nothing he had done could explain it. Hell, it wasn’t the first
time he’d drunk too much, yet the vast quantities of food should
have countered the alcohol. What he was feeling was not at all what
he usually experienced during an evening of
overindulgence.

With a conscious effort to steady himself,
Peter straightened his back and surveyed the room, experiencing a
sudden flash of danger as he realized he was squinting in a room
which had been clearly visible an hour earlier.

It wasn’t his vision. Or was that, too, as
messed up as his mind? He refused the insidious thought. It must be
smoke. But no one was smoking. Yet wispy tendrils of something had
gradually turned the room’s air to the consistency of smoke around
a campfire. He had eaten his meal, smiled, talked. And not noticed.
The smoke filtered through the intricately patterned teak, swirled
around the chugging blades of the bamboo fans, danced around the
gold gauze swooping down from the ceiling. Beautiful. The patterns
of light and shadow were really quite beautiful. Funny. He usually
didn’t notice things like that.

No way, Pennington. You’re not that far gone.
Think, you stupid idiot. Think!

Incense. Strong and sweet and powerful.
And thoroughly doctored with hashish. Had to be. That was the only
explanation.
Fuck!

Something intruded on Peter’s shock, even as
he realized he was already too far gone to be angry. Thun Udom,
brown eyes gleaming, pupils wide, was lifting the tray of colorful
candies toward his face, urging him to try more. Hazily, Peter
tried to recall how many candies the proud father had consumed.
Three, at least. The Thai exporter appeared to be quite happily
stoned. Because it wasn’t just the braziers merrily burning in the
four corners of the room; it was that deceptive plate of delicious
little candies that had added the decided afterglow to the
evening.