Salty (4 page)

The embassy building on Wireless Road in Bangkok is built like a cross between a corporate headquarters—USA, Inc.—and a kind of fortified bunker. The windows are sealed shut for your protection. All the air comes through secure, massive, air-conditioning units. Great for keeping a large building ice cold in the boiling tropics, terrible if you're trying to sneak a cigarette or get a funky stench out of your office.

Ben told Roy to take the reeking fruit outside; he'd taste it later. He wanted the smell to go away before he barfed. He was a special agent for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. An ICE agent—he always liked the sound of that—stationed in Bangkok who right this second would've preferred a canister of sarin gas to be released than to smell the aroma reeking off that ripe durian.

But at least it was something to do.

Ben had joined Immigration and Customs Enforcement for some excitement. A little action. Some patriotic terrorist hunting. But the job consisted of sitting on his ass behind a desk scrutinizing visa applications—just in case a dangerous individual might try to enter the United States—and looking at flight manifests for any Arab-sounding names. If he found one, he'd check it against the terrorist watch list. In other words, Ben spent his day, increasingly bleary-eyed from the computer screen, sifting through hundreds of names on lists.

On the rare occasion something did come up, he'd spring into action and ride with the Thai police to the airport to intercept a suspected terrorist. This inevitably meant keeping some innocent Saudi businessman in a holding room for hours on end while his documents were checked and
rechecked against various databases in Washington, D.C. Of course, Ben didn't speak Thai or Arabic, and the Thais didn't speak English or Arabic, and the suspected terrorist only spoke Arabic and some random language like Urdu or Farsi, so much of the day was spent trying to communicate basic things like “I'm hungry” and “I need a toilet.”

But it got him out of the office. When he first took the posting, Ben had thought he'd be tracking down Muslim separatists in Malaysia and Indonesia. He'd be the eyes and ears of Homeland Security in Southeast Asia.
Keeping tabs on the hot spots
. It didn't work out that way. The regional security officer, the legal attaché, and members of the Diplomatic Security Service—Ben was sure they were CIA—all had dibs on the exciting stuff. Even though he was told when he signed up that ICE agents had “broad powers” to do all kinds of crime-busting terrorist tracking, the reality was that he was given broad powers to sit behind a desk and look at lists of names.

Still, it was better than his previous job. He'd been bored out of his mind as a “service consultant” at the Land Rover dealership in Pasadena. Day in, day out, listening to rich people whine about how important they were and how they needed their car. Ben wondered why they didn't buy a reliable car, a Mercedes-Benz or a Toyota. Even Ben's Honda Accord never had a problem like those glamorous SUVs.

Sometimes the cars had real problems—like a leaky transmission or a malfunctioning door—and sometimes the problems were due to the car owners' overactive imaginations. Ben never heard the phantom rattles that drove the well-heeled Land Rover owners to threaten litigation. He never
saw the mysterious “gaps” in the rear door that allowed carbon monoxide to leak in and reverse the Botox treatments that the ladies had paid a fortune for. It never bothered him that the air conditioner took five minutes to turn the car from an oven to a walk-in freezer. Five minutes was too long?

But he couldn't say that. He had to cock his head like an obedient Labrador and nod. He had to make them all feel listened to and special, to soothe and coddle the rich and spoiled. It was horrible. He hated it. Ben Harding was not a coddler.

He was a fairly good-looking kid with sandy blond hair and all-American features: the milky pink skin of the suburban Caucasian, blue eyes that would've been attractive if they weren't a little too close together, big ears, and a cartoonishly squared-off jaw. Ben looked like a football player, only he wasn't particularly athletic, never played any sports; he was just big and chunky.

He'd joined the Army right out of high school, hoping to use the G.I. Bill to pay for college when his enlistment was up. He'd wanted to be a helicopter pilot; he liked their cool helmets, and they had awesome insignias on their flight suits. But he didn't score high enough on the test for that, so instead he trained to be a helicopter mechanic. It wasn't that glamorous or exciting, but it was okay. He liked to tinker and he learned a lot.

When his time in the Army was up he didn't feel like going back to school. Who wants to sit in classrooms all day listening to some old fart drone on and on? So he took a job working at a car dealership. He had learned a lot about engines, electrical systems, and hydraulics; it seemed like a good fit.

But the coddling, the ass-kissing, killed him. He wasn't even at the dealership for a year before he sent in his application to the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and, because he was ex-military and single, was hired, and sent to Bangkok.

Ben was happy to go somewhere exotic, but he didn't have the slightest idea why they picked him to go to Thailand. He didn't speak Thai. Couldn't begin to tell you what the signs on the buildings and streets said. He knew nothing of the customs, food, history, or political situation. He knew there was a king, but was surprised to learn it was also a democracy. Once a guy from the Defense Attaché Office told him they always sent single guys to Bangkok. Too many wives complained when their husbands were stationed there. It was all that sex.

Sex and Buddhism, Buddhism and sex. It was everywhere you looked.
Wats—
Buddhist temples—their strange winged roofs and odd spires jutting skyward, dotted the landscape, monks walked around in red and orange togas, and it seemed like every house, every business, even the United States Embassy had some kind of altar heaped with flowers, fruit, and cookies as offerings for the Buddha. Ben figured that the insane traffic of the city was directly related to Buddhism. As if a fervent belief in reincarnation was all that was required to get a driver's license. You don't make it across the street? That's okay, you'll come back in another life.

The other striking characteristic of the city was all the massage for sale. Foot massage, Thai massage, hot oil massage, scalp massage, fifteen-minute massage. This was a place where people wanted to touch you. Sometimes they wanted to do more than that.

Ben had been to Patpong, the notorious red light district; he'd seen the sex shows. But watching a woman shoot Ping-Pong balls out of her vagina kind of freaked him out. Not that it wasn't an impressive feat. If he hadn't seen it with his own eyes he might not have believed it possible. Yet there she was, doing splits on the bar, picking up a ball with her labia. Slowly rising off the bar with the ball in her grip, she'd hula-hoop her hips around and shoot the ball across the room with deadly accuracy. Ben was mesmerized by this trick. Imagine the muscle control, the hours of practice needed to do that. Even though he felt embarrassed by what he was seeing, he couldn't take his eyes off her.

But that evening took a terrible turn when one of the Ping-Pong balls splash-landed in his glass of beer. His friends and coworkers immediately insisted he drink it. That was the last thing Ben wanted to do. His mind spun with various germ warfare scenarios he'd studied during his training. Horrible photographs of smallpox and anthrax attacks, viral infections, leprosy, Ebola, and influenza; not to mention HIV. But his friends didn't care. They chanted for him to chug it. Ben broke into a cold sweat as he imagined all the thousands and thousands of penises that had penetrated that Ping-Pong ball launch pad. No way did he want to drink his beer; he'd rather drink elephant piss. But his friends were obsessed, and continued to chant and cheer him on to victory. What was Ben going to do? Punk out? Become a laughingstock? The reputation of Immigration and Customs Enforcement was riding on his shoulders. The last thing he wanted was for the State Department and the FBI to think ICE agents were pussies. So he did the heroic thing—he removed the Ping-Pong ball and chugged the beer down in
a couple of massive gulps. Then he excused himself, went to the bathroom, and puked all over the floor.

He never went back to Patpong again. He realized that he was just too square to be carousing in sex clubs. The clubs were humid, sticky, and moist. Humans were copulating in various ways in every corner of the place, the smell of spent semen mingling with cigarettes, beer, sweat, and the faintly sweet and floral smoke of burning opium. The air was laden with germs, free-floating microorganisms just waiting for a host to come along and inhale them.

Ben had felt vaguely queasy ever since the Ping-Pong ball flew out of the Thai prostitute's pussy and splashed into his beer, as if he'd become infected by some mysterious pestilence or parasites had taken up residence in his body. If he got too hot, he thought it was the first sign of disease. If he felt a chill, that was evidence of something going horribly wrong. He had become a tropical hypochondriac, supersensitive to smells, tastes, any sensation at all different from what he knew. For Ben, Bangkok had become a festering bacteria breeder, a plague incubator, a virus-producing apparatus bent on destroying him. It all just creeped him out. Which was why he wanted the smelly durian out of his office.

Ben reached for the antiseptic hand cleaner that he kept in his pocket at all times and began to rub his hands together in a frenetic effort to rid them of deadly germs.

Normally he hated being stuck as the duty officer at the embassy, but the regional security officer was at a conference in Tokyo and the legal attaché was on maternity leave, so he had no choice. But when the phone rang and the Thai police commander on the other end told him about the kidnapped
tourists, Ben realized this was an opportunity. If he handled this right, he could make a name for himself, a reputation within the Homeland Security community. Maybe he'd get a promotion. Maybe he'd get transferred to a country where you could drink the water.

Sheila had never seen a dead body before. But there he was, the whiny cheapskate from Seattle, his head bashed in by the butt of an AK-47, his body dumped on the ground like the proverbial sack of shit. Hundreds of black flies were already swarming around the blood-spattered gash on his head, laying their eggs in his nostrils and eyelids.

A lean and muscular Thai man, his hair cropped into a thick flattop, his eyes hidden behind a stylish pair of Ray-Bans, identified himself as Captain Somporn.

“Please cooperate. We don't want to kill anyone else.”

He was deadly serious, scary even, and yet there was something about him that disarmed Sheila. Maybe it was because he was handsome.

Sheila looked over at the dead man's wife. The woman sat on the ground in shock, staring at her feet, rocking slowly back and forth. Sheila noticed that the woman had shit herself, soiling her expensive safari shorts. She thought about going over and comforting her, but then she remembered the grotesque sweat stain the woman had left on her shirt
and her husband's indignant howls of outrage that an American should ever be subjected to anything but gratitude and servitude by the inhabitants of the “third world.” He'd even had the audacity to say, “Don't you know who I am?” to the kidnappers. Totally uncool. No wonder they bashed his head in.

“We are holding you for ransom. Please inform us of the proper contacts.”

Captain Somporn stood in front of them, going through their wallets and purses one by one. Asking what hotel or resort they were staying at, dutifully writing down the information in a little notebook with a pink “Hello Kitty” picture on the cover, developing mini-dossiers on each hostage. Sheila was surprised that he had a vaguely British accent, like he'd been schooled in London or, perhaps, Hong Kong.

When Somporn got to Sheila—and this is where she noticed that he had a mischievous twinkle in his eye behind those stylish shades, as if he were an actor pretending to be a kidnapper—he stopped and lifted the sleeve of her shirt to reveal her Metal Assassin tattoo.

“You like Metal Assassin?”

Sheila nodded.

“I was very disappointed to hear they broke up.”

Hoping for favorable treatment, Sheila said, “My husband was in the band.”

She realized instantly that she'd made a mistake. She could almost see the dollar signs ka-ching in Somporn's eyes.

“Which one? Is it Steve?”

She shook her head.

“Bruno?”

Somporn winked at her and added, conspiratorially, “He's my favorite.”

“It's Turk. Turk Henry.”

Somporn stepped back, impressed, and studied her intently.

“You are the famous model he married? Yes?”

“I'm not that famous.”

Somporn smiled.

“You're too modest. I had your calendar. The one with the dirt bikes.”

Sheila was surprised. That was a pictorial she'd done in Holland where she posed nude and seminude with various Husqvarnas and Bultacos at famous motocross tracks around Europe. The photographer was a young German, a demanding sadist and a protégé of Helmut Newton's, who insisted on her crouching, doggy style, in the dirt with mud smeared provocatively on various parts of her body and a helmet covering her head. Despite feeling demeaned and exploited, she had to admit that the photographs were interesting, and it hadn't hurt her career at all. In fact, she realized, the calendar would be a collectible now, worth hundreds of dollars auctioned over the Internet.

“‘Maiden of the Motocross.'”

Somporn laughed.

“Yes, that's the one. I used to have it on my wall.”

He leaned in close to her. She could smell the strong scent of fresh tobacco on his breath.