Your Face in Mine (34 page)

He glances at his watch and stands up. When I hold out my hand, he grasps it between his tiny palms, cradling it more than shaking it.

In any event, he says, staring not quite at my eyes, but slightly above them, you’re living your life now. How can you live a life, and write a book, simultaneously? I’ve never quite understood it. It seems to me you have to choose one or the other.

RLTP

Kelly Thorndike (GI: Curtis Wang, Wang Xiyun
)

April 30, 2012

PATIENT STATEMENT

I was born in Tianjin in 1975 and left China in 1981 with my parents and younger brother, Xigang (Kevin). We lived in Hong Kong for a year while my parents negotiated our US visas, and then moved to Athens, Georgia. My father, Wang Geling, started on a research fellowship and eventually became a professor of biochemistry at the University of Georgia; he died of a stroke in 2008. My mother, Xi Tande, was a professional dancer in China who performed in traveling shows during the Cultural Revolution. In the United States, she worked first as a bank teller and later as a branch and regional manager at NationsBank. She died of liver cancer in 1998. Kevin converted to Catholicism while a student at Georgetown University and is now a brother in the Cistercian order at Abbaye Pont-Desrolliers, in Alsace, France. He observes a strict vow of silence, and my only contact with him has been on two visits, the last of which was three years ago.

My childhood was happy and mostly uneventful. I attended public schools in Athens and had a very close circle of friends from my neighborhood, though I now keep in touch with them only sporadically. In high school I played bass in a local band that was moderately successful and recorded two LPs. I attended Harvard and switched majors three times, from philosophy to East Asian Studies to English. Through my roommate I became involved in an Internet startup, Amoeba.com, in 1996, first writing content and later designing the first version of the
website. Amoeba had its IPO in September 1999, and I sold my shares a week later, resulting in a net profit of seven million dollars. Though the company went bankrupt and liquidated in February 2000, during the first dot-com bust, I was left an accidental millionaire. Since then I have spent most of my time in Silicon Valley and Marin County, working in venture capital.

None of my projects have performed as well as Amoeba, but I’ve had some close calls, and my net worth has grown a bit over time. I was married to Sarah Duffy from 2004 to 2009, but divorced amicably without children. My father’s death prompted me to become more interested in my Chinese roots, and I have spent the last few years becoming familiar with venture capital markets in East Asia and the possibilities of new investment in high-tech startups in China.

Amazing, Martin says. It reads like a dating profile. Nearly put me to sleep. You’re really good at vanilla, you know that?

We’re having a working dinner alone at the kitchen table. Tariko is upstairs plinking away at his guitar; Julie-nah, having served us coconut rice, cold tofu with chili and lime, a tomato salad with edamame, and chicken sautéed with ginger and basil—it’s nothing, she said, as we watched her working, each hand doing four things at once, her mouth set in a rictus of bland anger—has now retired into the garden, where she sits with a pile of string beans in her lap, staring at nothing in particular.

Isn’t that the point? To be normal? I mean, not to arouse any suspicions? No reasonable doubt? I’m supposed to be passing, not doing a lion dance.

And the fifteen-minute rule?

This is the rule of thumb for a fake ID, he told me: your new identity
has to survive fifteen minutes of Internet research by an intelligent amateur. Any more than that is just overkill. You think the world is full of investigative reporters and intelligence analysts who actually
do their jobs
? They’re looking at kittens playing the piano on Facebook like everyone else.

Amoeba’s still listed in some databases, I say. Wang Geling and Xi Tande have obits in the
Athens Banner-Herald.
And there’s a memorial page on the University of Georgia website. Plus all his academic publications. And there’s a few hits in Chinese, too, from their hometown Party newspaper.

Listing the kids’ names?

Survived by two sons, Curtis and Kevin.
And Curtis did go to Harvard. Or at least
a
Curtis Wang did.

You learn well, grasshopper.

It wasn’t difficult, though I won’t tell him that. It wrote itself. I left the names blank and filled them in at the end. It’s not hard, with a billion and a half people and only a hundred surnames: pick Wang, Chen, Li, and you can more or less write any life that suits your fancy. It’s not unlike doing algebra. Simple patterns and infinite variations.

This is the easy part, he says. The question is, are you ready to
be
Curtis Wang? Are you, Kelly? You heard what Silpa said. There’s no halfway point.

It’s already done, I say. Actually it happened a long time ago.

That’s what I hoped you’d say. And you know why I believe you? Because you had me fooled. You were in drag. I took you for a normal.

I took myself for one, too
.

One more day, he says. It’s hard to wait, isn’t it? Don’t worry. Deciding is the worst part. The agony is already over. Now you just have to coast a little longer. Go downtown. Eat some great curry, get a
massage, see the sights. Check your mind at the door. Can you do that? Can you relax, Kelly? Turn off those analytical faculties?

Julie turns and looks my way, chewing on a bean, shading her eyes against the blade of evening sun.

I
am
relaxed, I say. This is me, relaxed. Can’t you tell?

Not until the water taxi has rolled away from the pier, the thrum of the engine vibrating the balls of my feet, not until we’ve muscled past two long-tailed boats, thin as barracudas, and the hot brackish wind from the river has caught me full in the face, can I look over my shoulder and say for certain, certifiably, that I’m being followed.

It’s ridiculous, the phrase, the whole idea, I’ve been telling myself that all day, as I shuffled along with the columns of tourists at Wat Phra Keow, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, which even I could recognize was the Disneyland of Thai temples—every tile and mosaic buffed and shining, every ornament dripping with ornament, the grass poison-green, security guards glaring straight ahead every few feet. It was a young kid in an orange-and-white polo shirt, who tried and failed to be inconspicuous, turning every corner just behind me, not more than twenty feet away, and who stared frankly at me every second, as if fearing I would disappear before his eyes. Later I sat for forty-five minutes in a massage chair at Wat Po, the Temple of the Reclining Buddha, and when I opened my eyes at the end I thought I’d imagined the whole thing, or maybe he was a young hustler, or just some crazy teenager following me on a whim. But as I left the temple gate and crossed two blocks, almost tottering in the heat, following the map in a
Lonely
Planet
Tariko lent me, looking for a vegetarian café he’d highly recommended, a man on a motorbike kept pace with me, sidling through the crowds of elderly Japanese ladies with floral handbags, the groups of Chinese all wearing the same ill-fitting red mesh baseball caps printed, in gold,
Empire West
. He wore the absurdly tight brown uniform all Bangkok police wear, with gold aviator glasses, but the bike was unmarked. At the café I took a seat in the window, and ate an excellent papaya salad and Massaman curry with tofu, keeping watch. Nothing. Of course, I thought, reeling back through every detective novel I’d ever read, every episode of
Law & Order
or
Magnum P.I.,
if the target is in a home or a business you don’t have to park out front, only somewhere with a clear view of the entrance, unless the target is savvy enough to find a back door. In which case you have to have two followers anyway, guarding each exit.

I had my Thai cell phone there on the table, next to the
Lonely Planet
; I could call Tariko, or get into a cab and head back to the house. Should I be afraid, I wondered, actually? And who of?

Who else, other than Martin?

It would be convenient to have a person vanish in the middle of Bangkok. Probably there’s few places in the world with more opportunities to disappear. You could go to Patpong and have a prostitute slip you a little GHB, and the next thing you know you’re decomposing in a field on the road to Ayuthaya while she empties your bank accounts. You could get on a bus for Phnom Penh or Chiang Rai or Vientiane and leave in the middle of the night. If I went missing, I thought, who would look for me? The night before leaving I’d emailed my parents my flight receipt, telling them I was on a reporting trip for a book project with no definite return date. They don’t expect regular phone calls or emails; it might be a month before they started looking in earnest.

Have I become that much of a liability?

Because of that additional five percent?

Because I’m a competitor? Another story, another celebrity? B
ecoming Chinese: If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Them: An American Leaves Home to Join the World’s Newest Superpower: Chinese from the Inside Out.

Because he thinks he’s doing me a favor. Before I become the tragic mulatto.

Because I’m the last one on earth who knows his real story. Who can pin him to a map.

Thinking this way was so ridiculous I flushed, the hairs prickling on my arms.

But then why would he have them follow me? Don’t these things depend on the element of surprise, the bag over the head, the hustling into the unmarked van? Wouldn’t they be more likely to send someone as bait? Like in
The Crying Game
. Forest Whitaker, the black soldier from Tottenham, snogging with Miranda Richardson in a muddy field at an Irish country fair, when Stephen Rea puts a gun to his head. Miranda Richardson, killed in a skiing accident just a few years ago, an untreated head wound, only in her fifties.

No, that was Natasha Richardson.

This is my last day on earth as Kelly Thorndike, I thought, the last day in my own skin, as the person my parents made, my grace period, and I’m inventing surreal murder plots and misremembering old movies. Shouldn’t this be a sign of something? I ought to be in a panic. Shouldn’t I run home, in a defensive posture? I ought to be missing my Rice Krispies about now. My neat and orderly life, my books and furniture, my desk, the clean-swept hardwood floor where I can pad about barefoot and listen to the police sirens streaking down St. Paul knowing they’re not coming for me. Baltimore. Home. But no. I didn’t want any of it. I’ve broken the spell, I thought, I’m free.

You want anything else?

The kind-faced young waiter in a Greenpeace T-shirt scooped up my dishes with one hand and refilled my water glass with the other.

Give me a recommendation, I said. I’ve seen the temples. What should I do now?

Take a river taxi, he said. You won’t regret it. Best thing for a day as hot as this.

—

The man in the gold glasses and brown uniform followed me onto the boat, ten paces behind, never glancing my way, talking on his phone the entire time. An ordinary preoccupied commuter. Now he’s taken a position on a bench next to the gangway. Alarm, alarm. A well of panic into which anything can fall without making a sound. I’m going to be leaving this life before it’s even begun. I turn away and pretend to study the enormous white cone of Wat Arun, just coming into view on the far side of the river.

Or—it occurs to me just now—maybe he’s simply having me followed. To make sure I don’t stray. No surreptitious emails, no long phone calls, no meetings with clandestine publishing agents. Why does that seem, if anything, even less believable? Of course he would consider it. I would, too. Given our history, who would believe in such a thing as absolute trust? I should call him just to confirm. In an easy tone.
Hey, Martin, about that guy watching me—

Two heavy fingers rest on my shoulder.

You Kelly? he asks when I turn around. He’s removed his glasses and stares at me with puffy eyes, the lids swollen like inchworms. Kelly from USA? My name San.

I have no idea what to say to this, so I nod.

Somebody want to see you, San says. You know. You know him. Follow me, please. We get off next stop.

—

We’re in the tourist quarter. Khao San Road, where the trustafarians play. Streaming past me are muddy-faced white girls done up in braids and beads, batik skirts and jingling anklets; twenty-something boys in Beerlao and ManU and Che T-shirts; towering Aussies with splotchy
sunburns gnawing kebabs and spooning pad thai out of paper cups. San threads me through the middle of the street, dodging tuk-tuk drivers and travel agents offering flyers, strolling ukulele players and kickboxers giving impromptu demonstrations. We turn two corners, all the sidewalks packed with pink faces, puffed out by heat and alcohol. Down an alley lined with sidewalk cafés and massage chairs, and under a hotel canopy—
Hotel Santana
—into deep, pungent shade. Sticky cocktails, cigarette smoke, spilled beer and fish sauce. On the back wall
The Notebook
plays on an eight-foot screen with the volume turned down, a close-up of Ryan Gosling’s puppy-dog eyes.

Mort Kepler, reclining in a rattan chair, a bottle of Singha and a glass of mango juice at his elbow, sees me and jumps to attention, with a broad, toothy grin. Son of a bitch, he says. I can hear him halfway across the bar. They got you. I was just about to pack it in for the day. Want to know how long I’ve been sitting here, waiting for you?

—

Mort, I say, swallowing a warm wave of shock, how the fuck did you make
this
happen?

I’m a reporter, he says. This is what reporters do. Use fixers. Local eyes on the ground. Haven’t you ever—oh, wait. I forgot. Right! You don’t
have
a background in journalism. Okay. I guess I have to explain everything from the beginning. Well, I have what Hemingway used to call a one hundred percent foolproof bullshit detector. And when I looked at you, right from the start, I knew you were hiding something. Just not what.

I raise one hand, defensively, and lower it a moment later. What’s the point in arguing with him? I’m so glad to see him, so relieved, I almost want to reach over the table and hug his bristly shoulders. Go on, I say. Give me the full report. I’m listening.

So you shitcan the station, you and what’s-her-name, after, what is it, three months? Three months after you get there? I’ve had Chinese food
that lasted longer than you at BCC. Well, so I had nothing else to do. And a grudge, yes. A vendetta. So I started tailing you. Having nothing better to do. Don’t you remember that day I crept up on you in Fell’s Point? There are no accidents in this world. Didn’t anybody ever tell you that? I was hoping for an introduction to the girl, but it didn’t take long to trace her back. Quite a pedigree.

You followed her, too?

No, you idiot. I used the good old-fashioned Internet. Photo-recognition software. And then a fifty-dollar scanner to pick up your WiFi signal. There’s this amazing store online, Orchid Imports? Based right in Baltimore. Sells all that kind of gadgetry. Ever heard of it?

Nope.

That’s okay. I don’t expect you to give up your sources all at once. Let’s just chitchat. Pretend I didn’t just shell out five thousand bucks to make this happen.

Who ever told you I was reporting anything?

Well, you don’t expect me to believe you’re
involved
, do you? Come on. Good luck with that. If you’ve managed to convince them of your ideological soundness, you’re a better actor than I ever gave you credit for.

I can’t do anything but stare at him, in sheer, confused defeat.

The movement, he says. Does it have a name? I did a lot of digging and came up all zeroes. Wilkinson’s friends with everybody, but no one wanted to talk when I came around. And believe me, I
know
people. So I’ve been doing a process of elimination. It’s not the New Black Panther Party. It’s not the Revolutionary Communists or the ACP. It’s not Occupy Wall Street. It’s not the Nation. If it’s Islamist at all, he’s a cell of one. Never been to a mosque, never met with an imam. There’s always that possibility. He could be one of those YouTube guys, the Zarqawi syndicate. But I doubt it. I think he’s starting from the ground up. He’s got the charisma, the connections, and the funds. But what
is
it, man? Just give a clue. What’s his agenda? Black nationalist? Radical
self-determination? Third World revolution? Chavismo? Or is he just another drug runner with fancy ideas? Okay. Not that. I can tell just by looking at you.

You must be a mind reader.

No, you’d just be a terrible poker player. I’m getting
somewhere
, I know that much. It’s like I thought. He’s a big thinker. He’s got ideas. So look, listen to me. I’ve covered insurgencies before. That’s my specialty. Leonard Peltier, Mumia, all the great ones. They all needed a chronicler. A
mythologist
. You know that book
In the Spirit of Crazy Horse
? Matthiessen ripped it off from my reporting. I would’ve sued him, but AIM said no. Didn’t want the distraction. Listen, I’m a movement guy underneath. Ask anyone I’ve worked with. I can talk a good line to the lamestreamers, but make no mistake: I’m a tool in the hands of the people. Not a word of this comes out till the moment is ripe. Listen, if you
are
actually in Martin’s pocket, let me talk to him. That’s all I want. Ten minutes to make my case. We can all be in it together. I’ve got the connections and the savvy. You’ve got—well, whatever it is. You’ve worked with him. And Robin, too. Robin’s obviously the key.

What are you talking about?

Have you read her master’s thesis?
Talking Resistance: Therapy as Emancipation from Freire to Fanon
? I know I’m not supposed to use words like this, but what the hell. Here we are in Bangkok. The girl’s
fiery
. We’re talking about the diary of a mad black woman. I don’t care if she works for Hopkins or Harvard or the goddamned Cato Institute, she’s a double agent. Scratch that surface and you’ve got a latter-day Angela Davis. Put the two of them together and you’ve really got something. The brains and the means.

A waiter brings me the same thing he’s having, the mango shake and the glistening bottle of Singha.

The mango’s for the vitamins, he says. The beer’s to stay relaxed. Old R&R trick I learned from my friends who spent years in Saigon. Because you never know, do you, when someone’s going to bomb the
place out? All these Yankees, out here in the open air? One of these days they’re going to do Bangkok like they did Bali.

He grins, lifts his straw fedora, scratches his bald spot. I never noticed, in the office, just how hairy he was—a salt-and-pepper thatch that runs up his wrists under the sleeves of his linen shirt and emerges over the collar, covering the nape of his neck. A sinewy, almost apelike, grasp. Here is a man, I’m thinking, who loves living his life. Mort Kepler, by Mort Kepler. A self-authored man. Emerson would be proud, and horrified. Does anyone my age live so vigorously, so unironically, so heedless of offense? On the other hand, did his parents? Or are the Boomers just a separate species, never to be repeated?

Mort, would it help in any way, I say, would it make any difference, if I told you you were completely fucking crazy?

All I need is one word. Not even a word. You don’t even have to say it. Just nod. What’s in the boxes? Is it rocket launchers? Centrifuge parts? C-4?

It’s electronics. Gray market electronics. You can ask him.

Well, answer me this, then. If it’s not a movement, what the hell is it? What happened to you, to turn you into this kind of, what, a
robot
? Is it a cult? A new religion, excuse my language? What, is he some kind of mystic? I mean, if it’s not drugs, and it’s not revolution, and it’s not just out and out
money
, then what the fuck is left? Religion, right?