Colonel Pratt possessed an irritating memory for names and faces.
“What made you suddenly think of her?”
“You mentioned broken hearts and it made me think of her.”
“Did she say why she wanted to run the 10K with me?”
Colonel Pratt poured tea in his cup and studied Calvino for a moment. He took a sip and put the cup down.
“I asked her to follow you and see if you dropped any packages.”
“She bought that story?”
Colonel Pratt nodded as he looked at the bottom of his teacup, reading the leaves. Calvino had a flashback to Khin Myat sitting in front of the Hindu temple, sticking his finger in the wet tea leaves and studying the pattern.
“Kati has formed the bad habit of buying any story, if the price is right.”
“What you’re saying is that you’ve found her price,” said Calvino.
“She works for Udom. He sent her to Rangoon, Vincent. He suspected Yadanar had opened another channel into Thailand and was double-crossing him. Kati’s job was to get close to Yadanar and the people around him.”
“Instead, she decided to go for the saxophone player.”
“Udom has people in my department. He found out I’d been sent to Rangoon to deal with Yadanar. That caught Udom’s attention. My boss in the department wanted to close down Udom’s business. Udom couldn’t decide who was a bigger problem—Yadanar or a Thai police colonel on assignment in Rangoon to upset his business. Someone was messing with his cold pill monopoly. If Yadanar was cheating him, he’d handle that in the standard way. Udom had his own way of finding out if someone was shipping cold pills to other sources in Thailand. Yadanar was the man. It couldn’t happen without him knowing about it. Udom is a true believer in the double-cross, having been something of an expert in the fine art himself. Kati’s main job was to compromise me so I’d be sidelined, my boss would take the heat, the investigation would be taken over by Udom’s allies and everyone comes out happy. Except I’m left holding my saxophone and not much else.”
“I thought she was a honey trap. And I also thought you’d reverted to an eighth-grade hormonal rush.”
“Udom wanted video, photographs of the two of us naked. Not for blackmail but to take me out of his hair with the department. That first night I saw the setup. I let her believe she had me trapped. I saw an amateur take her own hook and line and run into the deep water. I wanted to see how far out she’d swim out before I reeled her back.”
“Shit, Pratt. You really knew?”
Calvino remembered the Colonel’s performance of the star musician enveloping his latest hot fan.
“You’re not bullshitting me because you think I’ll tell Ratana, are you? Did you sleep with her?” asked Calvino.
Colonel Pratt sat behind his tea, looking at Calvino, who wiped the sweat from his neck with a paper napkin.
“I told her I loved my wife. I let her know that I had only one chamber in my heart. That is a message no Thai woman can resist because they never hear a man tell them that. It converts the seducer into the seduced. I showed her photos of Manee, the two of us together. I showed her photos of our kids. I scrolled through a hundred photos on my cell phone, looking at Manee the way a teenager looks at a girlfriend. Kati turned away from the display screen and said that she had something important to tell me.
“But first I had to promise not to hate her. I told her that I could never hate her. She said that she couldn’t go through with something sinful with a man like me. The karma would be too awful. I asked what kind of sin? She cried. After she wiped away the tears, she said she’d been the star ‘pretty’ at Udom’s events company, the highest paid pretty on the payroll. No man had ever resisted her.
“Udom had put her on a couple of assignments. She always succeeded in compromising
the man. She’d thought until the end that I’d weakened, and she’d earn a large bonus. All that was missing was an X-rated video of the two of us. She cried again, this time for herself. She said that she was sorry. She didn’t know what she’d tell Udom. And would I please help her. That’s when I had the idea for her to go on the run.”
“You asked her to follow me on the 10K?”
Colonel Pratt nodded, swirling the last dregs of tea in the bottom of the cup.
Looking up at Calvino, he said, “I told her you could help her.”
Calvino glanced at the window. A couple passed by, sharing ice cream.
“Help her with what?”
“Help her find out who in Burma is helping Somchai Rungsukal run cold pills into Udom’s turf. Udom would be happy to act on that information.”
“And Kati believes I know the inside man?”