Snakehead

T W E N T Y - F O U R H O U R S L AT E R , Alex touched down at Suvarnabhumi International Airport in Bangkok. Even the name warned him that he had arrived at the gateway to a world that would be completely alien to him. For all his travels, he had never been to the East, and yet now, following the thirteen-hour flight from Sydney, he was on his own. Jack had wanted to travel with him but he had decided against it. He’d found it easier to say good-bye to her at the hotel. He knew that he needed time to prepare himself for what might lie ahead.

He had met once more with Brooke and Damon the night before. There hadn’t been much more to say. Alex was booked into a room at the Peninsula Hotel in Bangkok. A driver would meet him at the airport and take him there. Ash would meet him as soon as he arrived.

“You realize we’ll have to disguise you,” Brooke said.

“You don’t look anything like an Afghan.”

“And I don’t speak their language,” Alex added.

“That’s not a problem. You’re a child and a refugee.

No one will be expecting you to say anything.” The flight had seemed endless. ASIS had booked him in business class, but in a way that made him feel all the more alienated and alone. He watched a movie, ate a 74

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meal, and rested. But nobody spoke to him. He was in a strange metal bubble, surrounded by strangers, being carried once again toward danger and possible death. Alex looked out the window at the gray-pink light glowing at the edge of the world and wondered. Was he making a mistake? He could get another plane at Bangkok and be back in London in twelve hours. But he had made his decision. This wasn’t about ASIS or the snakehead.

“He was the last person to see your parents alive.” Alex remembered what Brooke had told him. He was about to meet his father’s best friend. His godfather. This wasn’t just a flight from one country to another. It was a journey into his own past.

The 747 rumbled into its gate. The Fasten Your Seat Belt signs blinked off and the passengers stood up as one, scrabbling for the overhead bins. Alex had one small suitcase and quickly passed through immigration and customs and out into the hot, sticky air of the arrivals area. Suddenly he found himself in a crowd of shouting, gesticulating people.

“Taxi! Taxi!”

“You want hotel?”

It felt strange emerging from business class into this.

He was suddenly back in the noise and chaos of the real world. Down to earth in more senses than one.

And then he saw his name, being held on a placard by a Thai man—black-haired, short, casually dressed like almost everyone around him. Alex went over to him.

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“Are you Alex? Mr. Ash send me to collect you. I hope you had a good flight. The car is outside . . .” It was as they made their way out of the airport that Alex noticed the man with the poppy in his buttonhole. It was the poppy that first drew his attention. Of course, it was November. Remembrance Sunday, when the whole of England wore poppies and held two minutes’ silence for those killed in wars, would be taking place in England sometime around now. It was just strange to see any sign of it out here.

The man was wearing jeans and a leather jacket. He was European, in his twenties, with dark hair cut short and watchful eyes. He had very square features with high cheekbones and narrow lips. The man had stopped dead in his tracks and seemed to be staring at something on the other side of the arrivals area. It took Alex a moment to realize that the man’s attention was actually fixed on him.

Did the two of them know each other from somewhere?

He was just asking himself the question when a crowd of people moved between the two of them, making for the exit. When the floor cleared again, the man had gone.

He must have imagined it. Alex was tired after the long flight. Maybe the man had simply been one of the other passengers on the plane. He followed the driver to the parking garage, and a few minutes later they were on the wide, three-lane highway that led into Bangkok—or, as the Thai people called it, Krung Thep. City of Angels.

Sitting in the back of the air-conditioned sedan, gaz-76

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ing out the window, Alex wondered quite how it had gotten that name. He certainly wasn’t impressed by his first sight of the city, a sprawl of ugly, old-fashioned skyscrapers, blocks of apartments that were like discarded boxes piled up on top of each other, electricity and satellite towers. They stopped at a toll booth where a woman sat in a cramped cubicle, her face hidden behind the white mask that protected her from the traffic fumes. Then they were off again. Next to the road, Alex saw a huge portrait of a man: black hair, glasses, open-neck shirt. It was painted on the entire side of a building, twenty stories high, covering both the brickwork and the windows.

“That’s our king,” the driver explained.

Alex looked again at the figure. What would it be like, he wondered, to work at a desk inside that office? To pound away at a computer for eight or nine hours a day but to look out at Bangkok through the eyes of a king.

They left the highway, driving down a ramp into a dense, chaotic world of shrubs and food stalls, traffic jams and policemen at every intersection, their whistles screaming like dying birds. Alex saw tuk-tuks— motorized rickshaws—bicycles and buses that looked as if they had been welded together from a dozen different models. He felt a hollow feeling in his stomach. What was he letting himself into? How was he going to adapt to a country that was, in every last detail, so different from his own?

Then the car turned a corner. They had entered the C i t y o f A n g e l s ?

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