“To your own mother’s funeral? You’re not going?”
Tay looked away.
“I wasn’t close to my mother and I don’t like funerals,” he said. “I have something to do here that matters more.”
Cally nodded at that, but she didn’t say anything.
“How are you doing?” she asked him instead.
“I’m good.” Tay scratched his cheek and examined the horizon briefly. “No, I’m not. I’m not good at all. I may not have been close to my mother, but she was the last connection I had to the rest of the world. And now she’s gone.”
“You’ve never had any children of your own?”
Tay looked at Cally as if she had suddenly gone mad.
“So you’re not married?” she plowed on.
“No.”
“Divorced?”
“No.”
“
“No. Never.”
“Wow.” Cally thought that over for a moment. “Why not?”
“I…”
Tay wondered, not for the first time, how to answer that question and decided to stick with his newfound policy of telling the truth.
“I just don’t know.” Tay looked at Cally. “And I don’t know where that leaves me now.”
“I do. With your life in front of you.”
Tay thought about that while Cally continued stroking his hand.
“Yes, you’re probably right,” he said after several minutes had passed. “But right now I need to find the man who killed these two women. I need to do that.
“Okay,” Cally nodded slowly. “I can help you.”
“I wish you would.”
“Do you trust me, Sam?”
The question stopped Tay. It wasn’t because he didn’t know. He did know. To his astonishment, the answer was yes. He did trust Cally. Still, all at once just saying yes didn’t seem enough somehow. He had to tell her exactly what yes meant. And that was what he didn’t know exactly how to do.
“Okay,” she said after long moments had gone by without Tay saying anything. “Then let’s take it this way. I am going to trust you and then I am going to ask you to trust me in return. I guess we’ll see if you can do it.”
Tay was losing control of the conversation, if he ever had any control of the conversation, which he doubted. More and more he felt like he was just along for the ride.
“You asked me whose apartment Ambassador Rooney’s body was found in. Remember, Sam?”
Cally’s sudden shifts of direction were giving Tay a serious case of whiplash. First it was the deeper meaning of his life, after that it was having sex, then it was the death of his mother, and now she was on to two murdered and abused women. If he didn’t tell her to cut it out, she was going to drive him crazy. But he didn’t tell her to cut it out.
“I remember,” was all he said.
“Well then, here’s my offering of trust, Sam. I know who owns that apartment. And I’m going to tell you.”
THIRTY-ONE
Cally’s eyes slid away from Tay and she sat looking silently out across the pool. Tay wondered if she was going to change her mind.
“You’re not supposed to know,” she said after a minute or two had passed, “but I’m going to tell you anyway.”
Tay waited.
“The apartment is owned in the name of a shell company, but the company is just a nominee for the American embassy. The apartment is one of a number of safe houses owned by the embassy and used by embassy personnel.”
“Do you know exactly who?” Tay asked.
“A number of different agencies. Bureau of Diplomatic Security, the military attaches, DEA, FBI…”
Cally paused.
“You know,” she finished.
“The CIA?” Tay asked.
“Yes,” Cally said, “them, too.”
Tay sat up on the lounge chair, which caused his hand to pull away from Cally’s. He started to say something, to tell her that he hadn’t really meant to take his hand away, but he didn’t. It would have sounded clumsy, even desperate, and he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
“What do you mean exactly?” he asked Cally instead.
“That apartment is a place where we meet sources so they don’t have to come in to the embassy.”
“Sources?” Tay asked.
“Intelligence sources. Locals who’ve been recruited to pass along various kinds of information.”
“Mostly, I would guess, because you pay them.”
“Does it really matter, Sam? Regardless of their motivation, they can hardly stroll into the embassy and have a Coke with us when they have something to report. We meet them in places like that apartment, places where they aren’t likely to stand out or be noticed. There are several other apartments just like it around Bangkok that I know about, and I have no doubt there are others I don’t know about.”
“Who was using this particular apartment around the time Ambassador Rooney was murdered?”
“There’s no way to know that. It could have been anybody.”
“No records are kept?”
Cally sighed in exasperation. “Sam, for God’s sake, these are intelligence operations. What do you think happens? Somebody calls the embassy travel office and asks to book a nice safe house for a couple of days? Maybe one with a sunny outlook and a Jacuzzi?”
Tay rubbed at his face, but he didn’t say anything. Then he shifted his weight on the lounge chair and rubbed some more.
“What is it, Sam?”
“The Singapore Marriott was being used for meetings connected to the embassy there, too. It was certainly being used by the CIA, maybe by others as well.”
“How do you know that?”
Tay told Cally about Ramesh Keshar and how the Singapore Marriott’s spare security card had been loaned out to a Mr. Washington at the American embassy whenever he was asked for it.
“I didn’t understand what that meant until you told me Mr. Washington was a State Department euphemism for the CIA,” Tay finished. “It seems obvious now the Singapore Marriott is used the same way you said the apartment here is used. Do you have any reason to think I’m wrong about that?”
“No,” Cally said. “I don’t.”
“Did anyone at the embassy tell you about that after Elizabeth Munson’s body was found at the Marriott?”
Cally’s eyes flickered for a moment and then met Tay’s.
“No,” she said, “they didn’t.”
Abruptly, Cally stood up and walked to the edge of the pool deck. Tay hesitated for a moment, then followed.
