going to say no?”
“No to what?”
“A couple of freelancers who preferred to do their own organ removal in order to maintain quality control for their gweilo — sorry, farang — clients.”
I watch a local make her way to the counter, to see how it should be done. She uses her head as a wedge to break apart clumps of humans-none too gently as far as I can tell. “You mean they saw a business opportunity in the resale value of organs of executed felons, constructed a five-year plan, then borrowed money to set up shop, purchase equipment, and develop contacts-generally followed the capitalist blueprint for wealth down to the last detail?”
“Exactly right,” Chan says. “Except, as usual, you have a bourgeois medieval running dog tendency to miss the macro point.” He shakes his head at the crowds.
I think about his hidden meaning. “You mean it wasn’t-isn’t-just executed felons whose organs the Yips find irresistible? It’s the freshly dead in general?”
“Do you think it is only the legally condemned that national and regional governments execute?”
I have not stopped staring at the crowds. Now I gulp and nod. The full ambit of the Yips’ empire has begun to dawn. “Regional governments as well? Political rivals? Self-financing executions by a crack two-girl team?”
“Even Mao couldn’t run China without allies. For allies, read ‘regional warlords.’ If Beijing is making money out of executed criminals, d’you think the regional bosses restrain themselves?”
I shrug.
“And have you thought what a perfect alibi a twin can generate-assuming nobody knows you’re a twin? How intimidating that might be to an eyewitness, to hear respectable, independent witnesses from another hemisphere say, ‘Yes, I definitely saw her in Paris or New York or San Francisco on that day when such and such an atrocity was committed in Beijing, or Shenzen.’ ”
“They made themselves irresistible to the wet department of every national and local government ministry?”
“Now you’re getting close.”
Chan seems to be silently urging me to work out the rest. The clue, again, comes from the crowds, who now look twice as desperate as before. “There are business rivals?”
“Worse. Take it a little further. Bear in mind, the Yips have been doing what they do best for almost a decade. They know how to turn ‘I win, you lose’ into win-win.”
“You don’t mean… a whole profession of competitive organ extractors using the Yips’ business model, cutting corners and cutting prices, but needing to pay off the Yips for-expertise, foreign contacts, offshore surgeries?”
“Correct.”
“All of them contractors to national and local government?”
“Not exclusively, but it’s a good way to start, the way a lot of lawyers start their professional lives working for government prosecution departments, before they go private.”
“And by selling the organs, of course-”
“You make your victim pay for his own assassination. The Yips had to stop charging for nonjudicial killings, which were thrown in as a loss leader.”
“Because of the competition?”
“You got it.”
“But they stayed way ahead of the game because of their superior access to Western markets, their perfect upper-class English and other linguistic skills, their contacts in high society?”
Chan looks toward the sidewalk, which is invisible due to the number of people on it. “But with a whole army of consortia breathing down their necks. Look how good Sun Bin’s English is, and he’s never had a native teacher, or even a lesson. Learned it all from books and television. It’s despair that creates genius.”
“Geniuses like the Yips?”
“Correct. But none of it stacks up unless you posit something special the Yips have to offer-something that makes them attractive to their competitors.”
“The luxury ‘offshore’ clinic?”
“Right.”
“So nobody really knows who removed the organs from those three on Vulture Peak?”
“I know who I think didn’t do it.”
“The Yips. What makes you so sure?”
“They took you to Monte Carlo. Suppose we speculate that somehow they heard about an atrocity that had occurred on Vulture Peak. The timing of the deaths is unknown-the bodies could have been lying there for days. What better witness to an alibi than the cop who would likely be investigating the case? That’s why I thought you were such a sucker. There’s also the added advantage of maybe being able to find out from you how the case stands from moment to moment. Expect more invitations to exotic jaunts.”
“So why did they need an alibi? No Thai cop knew anything about them.”
“Because they run Vulture Peak,” Chan says, watching me watching the crowd, which has now ground to a halt in front of the cafe, blocking the exit right up to the door itself. “They knew that if you were worth ten cents as a cop, you would find that out sooner or later. That banker, To/Wong, had guanxi with the top brass of the Ministry of Correctional Services. He was in the Yips’ own camp. On the other hand, anyone who wanted to set them up…”
“You mean they got word of the murders, but at that moment had no idea who did them? All they knew was that they would be suspects if anyone found out about their ownership of Vulture Peak?”
“It’s a theory that fits.”
“But they didn’t invite me to Dubai. Vikorn sent me there to meet Lilly Yip.”
“Exactly,” Chan says.
Throughout this conversation an intense frown has appeared and disappeared on Chan’s face. It is less than thirty minutes since he took the lithium, so I suppose the medication has not yet reached the bloodstream. I have a feeling that he is going to lose coherence any minute.
“Are you okay? You keep frowning.”
“I already told you I’m nuts. I’m frowning to stop myself talking. If I let go of my will for even a second, I’ll be babbling like a madman. You’ll start to hate me.” He gives me a look. “No wonder I can’t find a partner, huh?”
“Well, before you lose your mind, tell me something. How is it that these warring tribes from the most populous nation on earth are interested in my boss, Colonel Vikorn? Why would anyone in China care so much? Why him for governor?”
Chan stands. I think he is going to the bathroom to talk to himself until the lithium starts to work. “You really think they would stop at governor of Bangkok?” he says, and starts to push through the crowd to reach the bathroom.
I sit with our half-drunk lattes for five minutes, taking in his last words. Then ten. I suppose I should go to the bathroom to check on him, and in any other city I might have done, but here the effort of crossing the jam- packed room is daunting. After fifteen minutes a man in a black suit and white shirt with a thin black necktie emerges from the throng. I think he might be the manager, but I’m not sure. “Your friend needs help,” he says in English. He has enunciated the words perfectly, as if he consulted a talking dictionary before approaching me.
When I reach the bathroom, I hear a voice coming from one of the stalls. When I stand outside the stall, I can hear Chan talking to some invisible person with passionate intensity. He’s speaking in Cantonese interspersed with English phrases like top secret, damn and blast, I’ll blow your fucking head off, terribly sorry old boy. I knock. He forces himself to silence for at least a minute, then continues with his monologue. When the man in the black suit enters, I explain that the inspector has recently taken his medication, and he’ll be fine in ten minutes. He takes fifteen before he emerges. He reestablishes dignity by ignoring me, steps up to the trough, and begins to pee. I take the hint, leave the bathroom, and wait for him by the glass door at the entrance to the cafe.
While I’m waiting, I’m watching the crowd: everyone except me has adjusted to the reality out there: men, women, and children, all have mastered the art of cramped behavior. I think: a state that executes its own people, having presold their organs to the highest bidder-it’s like Moctezuma meets Margaret Thatcher. Or should we say that, thanks to the supreme power of the profit motive, state and antistate have become one? From Washington to New Delhi to Beijing we let gangsters bleed us white and the newspeak calls it freedom. Now that’s modern.
