The Windup Girl(39)

Beyond the veranda, nothing with any intelligence is moving. Tantalizing beads of sweat run down Lucy's neck and soak her shirt as she complains about the state of the coal war with the Vietnamese. She can't hunt for jade if the Army is busy shooting anything that moves. Quoile's sideburns are matted. No breezes blow.

Out in the street, rickshaw men huddle in thin pools of shade. Their bones and joints protrude from bare taut skin, skeletons with flesh stretched tight on their frames. At this time of day they only sullenly emerge from shadow when they are called, and then only for double fee.

The entire ramshackle structure of the bar is scabbed to the outer wall of a wrecked Expansion tower. A hand-painted sign leans against one of the stairs up to the veranda, with the scrawled words: SIR FRANCIS DRAKE'S. The sign is a recent addition, relative to the decay and wreckage around it, painted by a handful of farang determined to name their surroundings. The fools who did the naming long ago disappeared up country, either swallowed in the jungle as blister rust rewrites swept over them, or torn apart in the tangle of war lines over coal and jade. Still, the sign remains, either because it amuses the owner, who has taken the name on as a nickname, or because no one can summon the energy to paint over it. In the meantime, it peels in the heat.

Regardless of provenance, Drake's is perfectly placed between the seawall shipping locks and the factories. Its dilapidated wreckage faces off across from the Victory Hotel so the Farang Phalanx can drink itself stupid and watch to see if any new foreigners of interest have washed up on the shores.

There are other, lower, dives for those sailors who manage to pass Customs and quarantine and washdown, but it is here, with the snapping white tablecloths of the Victory on one side of the cobbled street, and Sir Francis' bamboo slum on the other, where those foreigners who settle in Bangkok for any length of time eventually sink.

"What were you shipping?" Lucy asks again, prodding Quoile to explain his losses.

Quoile leans forward and lowers his voice, encouraging all of them to rouse themselves. "Saffron. From India."

A pause, and then Cobb laughs. "Good airlift product. I should have thought of that."

"Ideal for a dirigible. Low weight. More profitable than opium on the uplift," Quoile says. "The Kingdom still hasn't figured out how to crack the seedstock, and all the politicians and generals want it for their household kitchens. Lots of face, if they can get it. I had solid pre-orders. I was going to be rich. Unbelievably rich."

"Are you ruined then?"

"Maybe not. I'm negotiating with Sri Ganesha Insurance, they might cover some." Quoile shrugs. "Well, eighty percent. But all the bribes to get it into the country? All the payoffs to the Customs agents?" He makes a face. "That's a complete loss. Still, I might get out with my skin.

"In a way, I got lucky. The shipment only falls under insurance guidelines because it was still on Carlyle's dirigible. I ought to toast that damn pilot for getting himself drowned in the ocean. If they'd unloaded the cargo and the white shirts had burned it on the ground, it would have been classified contraband. Then I'd be out there on the street with the fa' gan beggars and the yellow cards."

Otto scowls. "That's about the only thing to be said for Carlyle. If he wasn't so interested in touching politics, none of this would have happened."

Quoile shrugs. "We don't know that."

"It's damn certain," Lucy interjects. "Carlyle spends half his energy complaining about the white shirts and the other half cozying up with Akkarat. It's a message from General Pracha to Carlyle and the Trade Ministry. We're just the carrier pigeons."

"Carrier pigeons are extinct."

"You think we won't be? General Pracha would be happy to throw every one of us into Khlong Prem prison if he thought it would send the right message to Akkarat." Her gaze swings to Anderson. "You're awfully quiet, Lake. You didn't lose anything at all?"

Anderson stirs himself. "Manufacturing materials. Replacement parts for my line. Probably a hundred fifty thousand blue bills. My secretary's still evaluating the damage." He glances at Quoile. "Our stuff was on the ground. No insurance."

The memory of his conversation with Hock Seng is still fresh. Hock Seng first played at denial, complaining of incompetence at the anchor pads, before finally confessing that everything was lost, and that he had failed to pay all the bribe money in the first place. An ugly confessional, almost hysterical, the old man terrified of losing his job and Anderson pressing him further and further into his fear, humiliating him and shouting at him, making the old man cower, making a point of his displeasure. Still, he can't help wondering if the lesson has been learned, or if Hock Seng will try to be tricky again. Anderson grimaces. If the old man didn't free up so much of Anderson's time for more important work, he'd ship the old bastard back to the yellow card towers.

"I told you this was a stupid place to run a factory," Lucy says.

"The Japanese do it."

"Only because they have special arrangements with the palace."

"The Chaozhou Chinese do just fine, too."

Lucy makes a face. "They've been here for generations. Practically Thai at this point. We're more like yellow cards than Chaozhou, if you want to make comparisons. A smart farang knows not to keep too much invested in this place. The ground's always shifting. It's too damn easy to lose everything in a crackdown. Or another coup."