The Ambassador's wife

“A place down on Walking Street. It’s called Baby Dolls.”

Tay gave Cally a long look.

“I’m asking the favor, Sam. The least I can do is meet the man wherever he wants me to meet him.”

After that they sat for a while without talking. It was a companionable silence and neither of them seemed to be in any hurry to break it. Off in the distance, Tay could hear faint music on the ocean breeze and the distant sound of voices from somewhere. He tried to decide where the music was coming from and what the voices were saying, but he couldn’t.

“This is the first time I’ve had a meeting like this,” Tay said after a while.

“What kind of meeting is that?”

“One with somebody whose name I’m not allowed to know.”

Cally chuckled and he glanced over, but it was too dark to see the expression on her face.

“You can just call him George,” she said after a moment, “if that will make you feel less awkward.”

“Like George Bush?”

“No,” Cally chuckled again. “Like George Washington.”

Tay could no longer hear the music. The voices were gone, too.

“Why would I call him that?” he asked quietly.

Cally caught something in Tay’s tone and glanced over before she answered. “It’s just a euphemism. The State Department has a lot of euphemisms. That’s what makes us the State Department.”

“What is George Washington a euphemism for?”

Cally hesitated, then smiled. “Oh, I guess it doesn’t really matter if I tell you. It’s hardly a matter of national security.”

Tay waited.

“It’s our all-purpose expression for the Agency guys who are posted in an embassy,” Cally said. “I’ll have to check with Mr. Washington. Send it to Mr. Washington. Like that.”

Tay nodded slowly.

“Anyway, it doesn’t really matter,” Cally said, waving the conversation away with one hand. “He may give you a name. He may even give you his real name. He probably will, now that I think about it, but if he doesn’t, call him anything you want to. He won’t care.”

This doesn’t prove anything at all, Tay told himself. It could just be a coincidence.

Who was he trying to kid? A coincidence? What were the chances of that?

Tay now knew where Ramesh Keshar’s spare security card for the Singapore Marriott had been going. It was going to somebody at the American embassy in Singapore who worked for the CIA.

Could the CIA have duplicated the security card and then had access to the Singapore Marriott any time they wanted without showing up on the security tapes? Yes, of course they could. Tay didn’t have the slightest doubt of that.

But that wasn’t really any of his business, was it? What was his business was whether a duplicate security card had anything to do with the murder of Elizabeth Munson. That was another matter altogether and Tay knew full well jumping to any kind of conclusion about that on the basis of as little as he knew right then was foolish.

How could a duplicate security card in the hands of the CIA have anything at all to do with Elizabeth Munson’s murder? It couldn’t, not unless he was ready to believe the CIA had committed the premeditated murder of the wife of the American ambassador, and that for some reason whoever had handled the job had beaten the woman’s face to a pulp in a post-homicidal rage. Tay might not like Americans very much, but there was a limit to the things he was prepared to blame them for.

“What are you thinking about?” Cally asked.

Tay felt like a little boy who had been caught in the bathroom with a copy of Playboy.

“What do you mean?” he asked a bit too quickly.

“You’re fidgeting around on that chair like you’ve come down with hives.”

Should he tell Cally the story about Ramesh Keshar’s arrangements with Mr. Washington? No, at least not yet. Better to hold on to something than hold on to nothing, even if he wasn’t entirely certain what value there was in what he had. He could always give it up later. If he gave it up now, he could never get it back again.

“I’m not fidgeting. I’m fine.”

“Okay, if you say so,” Cally said. “But you are fidgeting.”

Tay didn’t defend himself any further, but he made sure he stayed absolutely still.

A few minutes later Cally glanced at her watch and stood up.

“Ready?” she asked. “It’s not far. Maybe a fifteen-minute walk.You don’t mind walking, do you?”

“No,” Tay shook his head. “That’s fine.”

The stroll was pleasant enough; at least it was at first. They followed a broad walkway bordered with spindly palm trees along the beach side of the main road. A light breeze off the water stirred the sodden air and thinned the brackish clouds of automobile exhaust. After a few hundred yards, the traffic turned to the left and they continued walking straight ahead into a wide street closed off to vehicles and filled curb to curb with pedestrians. The street was lined on both sides with bars, more bars than Tay had ever before seen in one place.

The ocean breezes, now blocked by the buildings, were just a memory, and a sense of languid sleaze filled the still, heavy air. A mix of sour smells hung over the street. Rotting garbage, stale beer, vomit, and sweat. It was a carnival of the lost and misbegotten. There were underage prostitutes on the hustle, over-aged hookers on the stroll, and incorruptible cops on the take. There were bar touts, flower peddlers, cigarette sellers, and vendors of genuine Rolexes for only five dollars. There was everything Tay ever dreamed could exist anywhere, and a lot he had never imagined could exist at all.

By the time they shouldered their way through the crowds to Baby Dolls, Tay’s shirt was soaking wet and sticking to his back and chest. Pattaya, God help it, was even more humid than Singapore. Baby Dolls was a blue two-story building outlined with flashing tubes of white neon. Just in front of the entrance, half a dozen young girls stood beckoning people toward the heavy black curtains covering its doorway. They were all dressed in uniforms prim enough to mark them as high-school students and they looked so young that, for all Tay knew, maybe they were.

He stopped in front of the building and stood with his hands on his hips.

“It’s a go-go bar,” he said to Cally, “What did you think it was going to be, Sam? A public library?”

“You come inside, sir and madam!” one of the girls shouted and made a grab for them. “Happy hour now! No cover charge!”

Tay evaded the girl’s clutches, but Cally let the girl take her hand and lead her to the curtain. Not knowing what else to do, he followed. From inside, unseen hands pulled the curtain open and suddenly they were through it and inside a dimly lit room vibrating with the over-amped base of a disco beat.

“There he is!” Cally shouted into Tay’s ear.

She pointed toward an open balcony so large it amounted to a second floor, but Tay lost track of where Cally was pointing when his eyes found the stage. At least two-dozen good-looking young girls were dancing right there in front of him. They swung from chrome poles, shuffled their feet and tossed their heads, and every one of them was as naked as the day she was born.

Tay’s mouth was just starting to drop open when Cally grabbed his hand and towed him toward a staircase. At the top there was an alcove over the stage with a single round table in it. Sitting alone at the table was a good- looking man wearing khaki trousers and a white shirt. He seemed to be in his mid-forties, which surprised Tay.

“I thought you said he was retired,” Tay screamed into Cally’s ear. “I was expecting an old guy.”

The man pushed himself away from the table and stood up as they climbed the stairs. There was a sense of world-weariness in the way he did it that Tay had to admit seemed to suit him very well.

He was very tall. His face was deeply tanned and he wore round eyeglasses with what looked like steel frames. His dark brown hair was quite long and brushed straight back against his head in such a way that it made him appear a bit old-fashioned.

The man looked like he might have been a university professor on vacation. Tay gathered he probably wasn’t.