The Ambassador's Wife (28 page)

“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 attachés, 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. He leaned next to her, resting his forearms on the low wall, studying the hopeless gridlock in the streets below. Tay wondered if the traffic in Bangkok required motorists to carry around emergency supplies of food and water when they drove. Maybe even a chemical toilet. He waited quietly, knowing Cally was struggling with some kind of decision.

“There’s something else I didn’t tell you,” she finally said.

Tay stayed silent.

Cally twisted around and rested her back against the low wall.

“Marc Reagan and I met the ambassador at the residence the morning after he came back from Washington.”

She paused, thinking.

“He said there were two things we needed to know about his wife’s death. The first was what he told you at your meeting, that he and Mrs. Munson were discussing a divorce. The second was something he didn’t tell you.”

Cally took a deep breath. She made Tay think of a surgeon who was reluctant to cut. But then she took another breath and just did it.

“Elizabeth Munson was a CIA intelligence officer. She was working under what is called non-official cover, developing informants in terrorist groups in Southeast Asia. According to the ambassador, he was the only one at the embassy who knew it.”

Tay was silent for a moment. He didn’t know exactly how far out on a limb Cally had gone by telling him that, but he suspected it was a very long way indeed.

The day had faded nearly into darkness and the stationary streams of traffic below glowed like strands of pearls stretched between the city’s buildings. The temperature had dropped and the air tasted like a mouthful of coins.

“Okay,” Cally went on before Tay could decide what to say. “Then let’s see what we’ve got here.”

She leaned back against the wall and folded her arms, crossing one ankle over the other. “Exactly what did the two murders have in common?” she asked.

Tay assumed the question was rhetorical so he said nothing.

Cally held up one finger. “Both women were killed by a single shot into the ear with a .22 caliber handgun and both women were restrained in some way when the shot was fired.”

She held up a second finger. “The faces of both women were beaten into pulp, both probably postmortem, and both bodies were posed in exactly the same way.”

A third finger. “Both crime scenes were sanitized after the killings.”

A fourth finger. “One victim was an American ambassador and the other victim was an American ambassador’s wife who was working under cover for the CIA.”

Now Cally held up five fingers, spreading her entire right hand, palm outward, like a cop stopping traffic. “And both of the murders occurred in places where American embassy personnel met intelligence sources.” Cally cocked her head at Tay. “That’s it, right? That’s all the two cases have in common?”

“Not quite,” Tay said.

Then Tay told Cally about his conversation with Lucinda Lim and repeated her story about Elizabeth Munson having a female lover for whom she was planning on leaving her husband.

“Come on, Sam, surely you’re not saying that Elizabeth Munson and Ambassador Rooney were—”

“I guess they could have been,” Tay interrupted. “Although that’s not what I’m telling you.”

“Then what are you telling me?”

“It can’t be a coincidence that two women prominent in American diplomatic circles, both of whom had sexual involvements with other women, were both brutally murdered in American embassy safe houses within a few days of each other.”

Cally shifted her eyes to Tay’s. “You think somebody in one of our embassies is responsible, don’t you?”

There was a loud sound from somewhere just then, a sound that Tay couldn’t immediately identify. He wondered briefly if it was the sound shit made when it hit the fan.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I do.”

Cally uncrossed her ankles and crossed them back again in the opposite direction.

“Goddamn,” she murmured in a low voice. “Goddamn it all to hell.”

The setting sun was a bright orange ball burning through a thin haze streaked with purple and green.

“It may not be that easy,” Tay said. “Something about the two crime scenes doesn’t feel right to me.”

“You mean they aren’t really alike?”

“No. They are. That’s the problem. They’re too much alike.”

“I don’t understand.”

Tay paused and organized his thoughts. “Take the gun, for example. How could it be the same gun? The killer couldn’t have flown with it from Singapore to Bangkok. He would have had to bring it by train or car and even that would be risky because he might have been checked by Thai customs. Why take that chance?”

“It’s probably not the same gun,” Cally said. “Just the same caliber.”

“Exactly,” Tay nodded. “But then why use exactly the same caliber gun? And why shoot the ambassador exactly the same way Mrs. Munson was shot? It’s as if the killer consciously tried to match up the details of the two scenes to make sure we thought the same person murdered both women. Then, there was that business with the flashlights, too.”

“What business?”

“In the case of Elizabeth Munson, the flashlight was already in the hotel room. Using it on her was strictly opportunistic. In the case of Ambassador Rooney, surely it wasn’t just lying around. It’s too much of a coincidence to believe that exactly the same kind of flashlight that was in a room at the Marriott was also in your safe house here in Bangkok. The killer must have brought it with him.”

“I get it,” Cally nodded. “He was duplicating the first crime scene. So we would know that both women were killed by the same man.”

“Or woman.”

It was nearly dark and the damp air had turned far too cool for them to stand around any longer in their bathing suits. At least, Tay thought it was the air that suddenly made him feel cold. Maybe it wasn’t.

“What does the posing of the bodies mean, Sam? What is the killer telling us?”

Tay shook his head. “I have absolutely no idea.”

Cally must have felt cool, too, because all at once she pushed herself away from the wall and walked back to where she had left a pool bag on the grass beneath her lounge chair. She pulled out a T-shirt and shorts, slipped them over her bathing suit, and slid her feet into a pair of rubber thongs.

Tay walked over just as she finished.

“I hate to go now, Sam,” she said turning around, “but I have to. I promised some friends I’d have dinner with them tonight.”

Tay hadn’t really thought much about it, but he had just been assuming that he and Cally would spend the evening together. Probably have dinner. Maybe even check out a little of Bangkok’s famous nightlife. Apparently not. Tay hoped the disappointment didn’t show on his face.

“I’ve got some meetings at the embassy tomorrow morning,” Cally added. “But I can be back by early afternoon. Maybe we can have another swim then and decide where to go from here.”

“I told my boss I’d be back in Singapore tomorrow. He wasn’t all that happy about me coming to Bangkok in the first place.”

Cally didn’t say anything.

“I guess I could always poke around a little on my own while you’re in your meetings,” Tay ventured tentatively.

“You could.”

“It might be useful.”

“Probably would be.”

“I could give the Chief a call, and tell him—”

“I think that’s the best thing for you to do.”

Cally swung her bag over her shoulder.

“Now you be a good boy tonight, Sam. It’s easy to get into trouble in Bangkok.”

She gave Tay a little wave and walked away through the dim lights of the pool deck.

When Cally had gone, Tay pulled his shirt on over his bathing suit and sank down on a lounge chair where he sat for a long time without moving. He thought back through what he had told Cally and what she had told him. He pushed and pulled on everything, turning it first one way and then another. He looked for different ways it could add up, ways that might be less scary.

He did not find any.

Tay could feel everything starting to come together now. He did not like how it was coming together and he wasn’t yet certain what it might all mean, but it still gave him a lift to know he was getting close.

Tay reached for his Marlboros and lit one. He was exhaling his first mouthful of sweet, sharp smoke when he looked off in the distance and saw a crescent moon rising very slowly between two buildings. It was burning like kerosene against the dark sky. As he sat and smoked and watched the moon, he felt an extraordinary silence settle around him and spread even to the city down below. It was a silence deeper and more profound than any other he had ever experienced. It was as if the whole world was holding its breath.

Tay shivered, stubbed out his cigarette, and went back to his room.

THIRTY-TWO

THE
next morning Cally was up before her wake-up call came. She had some coffee and toast from room service and flipped through the copy of
The Bangkok Post
that came on the tray with her breakfast. She found no mention at all of Ambassador Rooney’s murder. Either the blackout was holding or the Thai press was too lazy to bother digging out any real news. Quite possibly both.

Just before nine, Cally entered the embassy through the main gate on Wireless Road. She went to the cafeteria to get another cup of coffee and took it with her to the security office on the second floor.

Jack Tanner was sprawled in a chair waiting for her.

“That was very subtle yesterday, Jack,” she smiled. “I loved the high-pitched voice.”

“Just looking out for you, Cally girl. Old Uncle Jack likes to know who’s screwing around with his girls.”

“Three things, Jack. First, I’m not one of your girls, whatever that means. And second, Sam and I are not screwing around.”

Cally took a long hit on the coffee and settled in behind a desk that looked unoccupied.

“What’s the third thing?” Tanner asked.

“Oh yeah, the third thing. I almost forgot. Go fuck yourself, Jack. That’s the third thing. Go fuck yourself.”

Tanner started out to mime a laugh, but the gesture turned into a yawn before it was done.

“Damn,” Tanner said, stretching his arms and rolling his shoulders. “I guess I must have been up a little late last night.”

“Please don’t tell me what you were doing, Jack. I’m sure I’d really rather not know.”

“Why, Cally girl, Uncle Jack’s adventures in Bangkok are the stuff of which legends are made. You would be fortunate indeed to—”

“Have you got something for me, Jack, or are you here just to bask in the unparalleled pleasure of my company?”

Tanner shifted his body around in the chair and swung his feet up onto the front edge of Cally’s desk. Crossing them at the ankles, he knitted his fingers together behind his head.

“I wanted you to know that the Agency is in the clear on this, Cally. We haven’t used that apartment in a couple of years.”