Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 91452 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91452 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
I knew the feeling.
“Hey,” Garland said from the other end of the boat, “who the fuck is this guy next to my bed giving a rock ’n’ roll salute?”
I got a text from Darius: Perhaps you people might sleep in shifts?
The day was already starting out bad.
NINE
Back on land, we split up. Dante took off looking for answers, taking Garland with him, because after the pictures from Darius, compliments of Lee, we were both feeling our age. Jing and I went to meet the ambassador, as requested.
The US embassy in Bangkok was a remnant of a Beirut truck bombing in ’83, when security was an overriding concern for US foreign missions. The five-story prestressed white concrete structure sat behind a double blast wall with a forbidding bunker-like appearance that even the lush and elegant tree-shaded street of Bangkok’s Embassy Row couldn’t soften. Bangkok was the second-largest American mission after Cairo, with the sprawling embassy estate resting on a ten-acre oasis of stately rain trees suffusing the property with lush greenery amid the urbanity surrounding it.
“Wow, that’s ugly,” Jing summed up nicely.
A uniformed security officer came out and asked me my name, and after I handed him my passport, Jing did the same. The guard scrupulously checked the photograph against each face before giving us visitor passes.
Inside, a woman approached, dressed in a dark gray suit, her jacket unbuttoned to suggest the presence of a sidearm, her hair tucked behind her ears. “Colonel Colter,” she greeted me, “I’m Taylor Clark, station chief here in Bangkok.”
“Good to meet you,” I said, taking her offered hand and noting that her handshake was firm and she didn’t smile. She wasn’t trying to be friendly, instead simply being professional, which I appreciated.
She shook Jing’s hand as well, and then her gaze met mine. “Please follow me.”
She led the two of us briskly to the elevators. She pressed the button for the fifth floor, and the door opened a minute later to a private corridor. Clark led us to a private office at the west end of the building, stopped in front of a red door, opened it, and went through.
Ambassador Daly was sitting behind a beautifully carved teakwood desk, in a high-backed swivel chair, reading a report. When I stepped closer, his head lifted, and he looked startled.
“I know, I know, I look like hell,” I told the man I knew from our time at West Point. We were in the same graduating class, and while we had never been friends, we weren’t enemies either. “But I’ve been busy since I got here.”
“I should say so,” Daly agreed, examining me with dark eyes that missed nothing.
“You look great,” I complimented the man, and he smiled and shook his head before rising and coming out from behind the desk.
He was a Black man in his fifties, but the only way I could tell we were the same age was the slight graying at his temples. The Hugo Boss suit that fit him like a glove made me embarrassed of how bad I looked. I’d tried to clean up, but there was no hiding exhaustion.
“I swear, all you guys that didn’t retire aren’t aging. What’s up with that?”
“Oh, we’re all aging, believe me,” Daly said, chuckling. “Come take a seat. You’re right on time.”
“The Army in me,” I said.
“Yes, of course.”
I knew he could relate. Mason Daly had served his country with distinction, doing three tours in Afghanistan before migrating his career to the Foreign Service.
“Ms. Khoo, please have a seat,” he said, then looked over at Clark. “And you as well, Ms. Clark.”
I turned to Jing, and she gave me a reassuring smile.
“All right,” Daly said, taking a breath. “Now, what are you drinking?” he asked, walking to a cabinet.
“Nothing,” I told him.
He looked to Jing.
“Oh, no, thank you, Ambassador,” she said graciously.
He removed a bottle of Irish whiskey and two glasses, giving each two fingers, and then returned to the desk, passed one to Clark, and stood next to her. “You’re making both our lives difficult at the moment, Colonel.”
“That wasn’t at all my intention,” I assured him.
Clark drained her glass, returned it to the cabinet, and spun around to look at me. “What is your intention, Colonel?”
“To find my colleague, nothing more. I promise I’m not here to rock the boat.”
She scoffed. “Colonel, you blew up the boats. Plural.”
“They were chasing us,” Jing chimed in, “not the other way around.”
“So you’re just bystanders,” Clark said to Jing. “That’s your assertion?”
“My assertion is we’re here to find Owen Moss, end of story.”
Clark stared at her, but when Jing didn’t flinch, Clark returned her gaze to me. “What will it take to get you out of Thailand, Colonel?”
“Again,” I said, trying for civil, “my colleague, Chief Clark.”
She seemed to internalize that, then turned to Daly, who crossed the floor after draining his glass and took a seat beside me.