She first saw him sitting alone on a bench in the waiting hall of Hualamphong train station — a slight, sharp-faced white man, bending over to scratch his ankle above the sandal strap. Something about that movement was like a draft of cool dry air across her face. He wore a white linen shirt and had a haircut and was reading a magazine, paying no attention to the blaring loudspeaker, the smell of mango peels and incense and cigarettes, the barefoot farmers squatting on the floor. It was as if he came there every morning, as if it was Hampstead Heath. She sat down two seats away, put her pack between them, and began thumbing through her Lonely Planet guide, which everyone had warned her never to do in Bangkok: make a decision about where you’re going in advance and then get a taxi and go straight there and don’t listen to the men who come up to you in the train station and for God’s sake don’t go with them. Any sign of hesitation, any stopping to get your bearings, was an invitation to the predators. She’d thought she would go where everyone else in her train car was headed, to Khao San Road, the backpacker’s ghetto, but at the sight of this man all desire for cold Heineken and fish and chips went out of her, and she had to linger, to sit down.
And at that moment his cell phone rang. Wai, she heard him say in greeting, but the rest of the conversation was drowned out by the roar of a train arriving at the nearest platform. Missed your chance again, she thought, should have spoken sooner. He snapped the phone shut, paused, and looked down at her.
That’s an old guidebook, he said, in an American accent, flat, slightly nasal, at once solicitous and cold. A CNN accent. You should be careful. Half the places in there are gone by now.
I lost mine, she said, lifting her head and shading her eyes; he stood right underneath a bilious yellow-white overhead light. Someone gave me this one in Nong Khai. Better than nothing, I guess.
He took the book out of her hands and turned it to the map in the front. Baglamphu, he said, pointing to a highlighted square next to the river. Khao San Road. That’s where you’ll want to go. All the cheap guesthouses are there.
Actually I’m in a bit of a crisis, she said, crisply. The lie came welling up all at once, fully formed; she found herself speaking in complete sentences, outrageous and perfectly innocent. My wallet was stolen in Vientiane. And my traveller’s checks. All I’ve got is two hundred baht that was in my pocket. I was just about to call Visa to see if they could wire me a new card.
That’ll take days, he said. You shouldn’t have come down here. You don’t know anyone in Bangkok? This isn’t a place to be hanging around with no money.
He looked at her skeptically. Her fancy red-and-black backpack, her Israeli custom-made sandals, her peasant blouse, not nearly as stained and wrinkled as it should have been, but also, she thought, her blond curly hair, falling out of its bun, her smooth legs, relatively unscathed after two months of hard travel, turned the color of dark honey from the sun. Finally he shook his head, as if surrendering, not entirely unhappily, to the inevitable, and said, We have an extra room. My wife’s just gone upcountry. You’re welcome to stay overnight, if you want to.
That’s very kind, she said. Would it be too awkward? I don’t want to intrude.
In the taxi he spoke to the driver in Thai, leaning over the back seat and directing him across broad avenues and down alleyways crowded with pedestrians and hand-carts and noisy tuk-tuks. Every so often she glimpsed a blue-tinted skyscraper or the roof of an enormous wat, a temple, the color and shape of flames licking the sky, or some kind of white government palace, set back from the road behind a lawn and a high gate, guarded by soldiers. But mostly they travelled through a labyrinth of dark back streets that seemed never to end, one indistinguishable from the other. Bangkok was dirty, sprawling, congested, all the things the guidebook said, but she’d expected it to be more different from Manchester or Birmingham — not just another city full of motorcycle repair shops and dingy convenience stores and adverts everywhere for Pepsi and Britney Spears and Kool, which she could recognize instantly, even if the writing was Thai. The endless bobbing and weaving through the traffic was making her queasy.
When they finally stopped he shouldered her bag and led her past a stand selling satay skewers and underneath a giant fern that made a kind of doorway leading away from the street. She saw a sidewalk, shaded and overhung with plants in containers of every kind — a jade plant in a stone box, a row of hibiscus in Chinese porcelain jars — and beside the plants, a ledge overlooking a narrow canal of gray-green water that sloshed from side to side. An old woman sat there on a plastic stool, dicing green beans onto a sheet of newspaper. The sounds of the street were entirely blotted out. He turned so suddenly she might have thought he had disappeared, and then she found herself climbing three flights of dark stairs and entering a high-ceilinged room, so sparely and quietly furnished it could have been a catalogue advertisement: Southeast Asian Style. Low couches in burgundy and amber prints; Lao silk hangings on carved wooden frames. The only discordant note was the computer table at the far end, and the expensive-looking office chair, all handles and curving supports. The desk was piled with papers and books, and the computer screen was lit, as if he’d walked away from it only a few minutes before.
I’m sorry, she said. I don’t mean to keep you from your work. You won’t know I’m here.
That’s all right. He took a remote control from its wall bracket, switched on the air conditioner, and moved around the room, shutting the windows. As hot as it was, she wished he hadn’t: she disliked the silent chill of air-conditioned rooms.
There’s a shower in there, he said, indicating a doorway with a nod. Feel free to use it. Make yourself at home.
I haven’t even introduced myself, she said. For the first time it struck her as odd that they’d been practically shoulder to shoulder for an hour and a half, and still she knew nothing whatsoever about him. It was a habit of traveling, this easy, instant comradeship — assuming that any white face in Kucha or Luang Prabang or Tiger Leaping Gorge was a fellow wanderer, someone who understood, who meant you no harm. Here they were in a city, halfway back to the First World; it wasn’t appropriate. And, of course, she reminded herself, you were the one who told a lie. Out of pure instinctive desperation: for a shower, a clean floor, maybe even a drink with ice in it. Not sex per se; sex on fresh sheets, on a bed big enough to swing your legs out. All this deception was very much against the Backpacker’s Code.
Well, to hell with it, she thought. It’s just for a night.
I’m Samantha, she said, stretching out her hand. I’m from the UK. Birmingham. Everyone calls me Sam.
Lloyd Foster, he said, shaking it lightly.
Are you American?
Canadian. But I teach in the States.
What do you teach?
Anthropology.
So you must be on leave, she said, writing a book, right?
His mouth tried to form a smile, stretching and shrinking like an inchworm.
My dad’s a professor. she said. Economics. He was always getting leave or a grant to go off and study something someplace. India, South Africa, Brazil. Particularly when we were in our awkward stages. I think he tried to spend my entire adolescence overseas.
So you must have done a lot of traveling.
Not really. There was hardly ever enough money to go with. That’s why I’m on the road now. My last best chance to see the world.
Before what?
I beg your pardon?
You said your last best chance.
Before I have a real job and rent to pay, and a family. The end of my prolonged adolescence. Her tinkling laugh died away as soon as it began. His eyes reminded her of tiny lenses, giving off little glints as they focused and refocused on her face. I’m actually kind of a homebody, she said. I never imagined myself as a world traveller. That was part of the idea. Testing myself. It sounds a bit New Age-y, I suppose. Like a vision quest, or a walkabout. Only the bourgeous version.
And do you have a destination in mind?
Not really, she said. I meet people and they tell me where they’ve been, or I read up in the book and see what looks interesting. It’s not difficult. You get over the feeling of being a pinball. It’s nice, actually, never having to worry if a train is late or if the bus doesn’t come for three more days. You might call it a principle of karma. There’s a logic behind every move, even if you don’t realize it at first. She swallowed hard. Saying it to him, here, her voice ringing out in the silent apartment, it didn’t sound as smart as she’d expected. So there’s a reason why I lost my wallet, she said. And a reason why I met you. We’ll just have to find out what it is.
Yes, he said, and though she expected him to smile, he didn’t. Good, he said. We’ll have to.
Part Two
Only after she’d stepped out of the shower did she notice the cross hanging from a nail on the wall next to the mirror. It was perhaps four inches long, cut — or hammered, she thought — out of some kind of rusted metal. Not the kind of cross you’d expect to see in a home like this, or anyone’s home; it looked like a battered artifact just dug out of the ground. Probably it was here when they arrived, she thought, and they never bothered trying to detach it. She moved it to one side with a finger: the rust had stained an outline of the cross the color of dried blood into the concrete.
He had shown her the guest room, with its own door into the bathroom: a small room with a single high window that opened onto an airshaft. It was lined with bookshelves on three walls and had a twin bed pushed against the fourth. When she had dried herself she let the towels fall to the floor and unzipped the top of her backpack, enjoying the unexpected pleasure of nakedness. After months of scrubbing herself underneath sarongs and worming around inside her sleeping bag to change clothes it was wonderful to be in a room of her own, a room with doors she could lock if she wanted to. She’d always thought that privacy was overrated as a virtue, that the English were just obsessed with it, with their tiny walled-in backyards and separate rooms for every child. India had cured her of that idea.
Needs, she thought, I have needs like anyone else. That justifies it.
When he knocked ten minutes later she was just pulling on her last clean shirt, a tank top she’d left in the bottom of her bag for just such an occasion. Come in, she called. He took one step into the room and stopped, still holding the doorknob, and again she felt his eyes clicking at her like shutters. She’d spread her clothes out on the bed in neat piles — bras, underwear, shorts, t-shirts, skirts, a few printed Indian blouses and a salwar kameez — and now wished she hadn’t, watching him take it all in with a glance.
You have a beautiful place here, she said. I didn’t imagine people could live like this in Bangkok. It’s incredibly quiet for being in the middle of the city.
It’s a good place to work, he said. No one bothers you here. We’ve managed to get a lot done this year.
Is your wife also a professor?
No, no. She works for a social service agency.
You mean like an NGO?
A religious agency. A missionary group.
He’s watching to see how I’ll react, she thought, and in confusion, all she could think to do was laugh. I should have known, she said. There aren’t so many good Samaritans in this world, are there?
Are you? he asked. Christian, I mean?
Not exactly. I was baptised — we all were, my brothers and sisters and me. But I’ve never been a churchgoer. She tried to make her voice neutral, factual, unapologetic. It didn’t quite work. I’ve nothing against it, though. I’m not an atheist. Just a non-participant.
Don’t worry. He gave her a faint smile, and raised his hand, palm forward, as if to stop her. You don’t have to apologize. I don’t blame you.
Well, you’re a strange sort of missionary then, aren’t you. She smiled, to show she was joking. Aren’t you supposed to try to convert everyone you meet?
It isn’t easy being a Christian, he said, softly. I think — we think — that it’s better that you either take it seriously or not do it at all.
How elitist of you, she thought. How perfectly un-American. So I take it that’s your cross in the bathroom, she said. I was wondering where that might have come from.
It’s from a little village on the Burmese border, he said. It’s made of hammered sheet metal they cut from a helicopter.
A helicopter?
An Army helicopter.
She’d always seen herself as a fairly good interpreter of men, their attitudes and postures and elaborately disguised emotional agendas, but here, she thought, these waters just get deeper and stranger. It was impossible to say whether his caginess was an attempt to be dramatic or a way of trying to spare her an awful truth. I’m sorry, she said, but I have no idea at all what you’re talking about. Should I?
He let go of the doorknob and crossed his arms, as if unsure of what else to do with them. No, he said. I’m sorry. It doesn’t matter. The point is, it was a gift. A very precious gift. Though I’ll admit it doesn’t look like much.
He’s shy, she told herself. It’s awkward, having me here. He’s not used to talking to strange British girls. She had a sudden desire to flatter him, to put him at ease. I’m fascinated by Burma, she said. I’m thinking of going there next. I’d like to know more about your work.
He smiled and shook his head.
You don’t, really. But it’s nice of you to say so.
Come on, she said. Give me some credit. I’m not as close-minded as all that.
His eyes went up to the ceiling and stared so intensely that she had to resist the urge to turn and look at what he was seeing. You’re a tourist, he said. Why would you want to hear about these things? It isn’t a matter for idle curiosity. Why should you burden yourself? You don’t want to know what’s really going on in this world.
Sanctimonious fucker, she could hear herself saying. Imagining they were in a pub in Islington, or on the beach in Penang, for that matter. Keep your burden if it means that much to you. She crossed her arms and took a step back, involuntarily, nearly falling over her sandals. What is it about these people, she wondered, who think that if you don’t have a position you don’t have a mind at all? Her own brothers, for example: one a director of the Hare Krishna temple in King’s Cross and the other a Lacanian psychoanalyst. They couldn’t be in the same room, let alone sit down for dinner together; given the chance they would dispute the subtext of Hello or the implications of Nice weather today. Try me, she almost wanted to say to him, sarcastically. Test me. But before she could do anything he held up his hand again.
I’m sorry, he said. I shouldn’t have put it that way. I’d be happy to explain it to you over dinner. Would you like that? We can leave in an hour or so.
She swallowed; her tongue and throat were suddenly dry and sandpapery. That’s an interesting lead-up to an invitation, she said, trying to smile again. Of course. You’re too kind.
Part Three
While he showered she took her journal and sat on one of the couches in the living room, instinctively tucking her legs under her in the position a guesthouse owner had shown her in Laos — so as not to offend anyone by inadvertently exposing the soles of her feet. The coffeetable in front of her was glass with a shelf underneath, piled with books: A Political History of Southeast Asia. Barrett’s Pocket Concordance. The Expatriate’s Guide to Bangkok. She picked up the guide, and saw underneath it a smaller book, supermarket-paperback sized, with a plain cover, white letters against a green background. The World in Flames. By Walter Maddox, M.A., J.D., Ph.D.
To the Reader, read the title of the first page.
This book assumes that you are familiar with the Book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ and the writings of our Fathers in the Church of Jesus Christ in Rapture. If you are not so familiar this book will be of no use to you and you should 1) put it aside until you have read the aforementioned works or 2) dispose of it immediately.
The purpose of this book is to outline the practical steps that must be taken in the next three to five years to assist the final events preceding the Day of Glory. They are strictly in accordance with the prophecies given by our Lord in the Book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ.
She turned the pages and stopped at a chapter heading: Breaking of the Seals 1-4.
Rev. 6:8: “They were given authority over a quarter of the earth, to kill by the sword, by famine, by plague and through wild beasts.” Notwithstanding the corresponding verse Ezk. 14:21, it is not certain that the horsemen will appear in the Holy Land. Recent observations and World Events indicate to experts that Africa may be the most likely site of the Appearance.
She turned the pages again and stopped at a diagram: Possible readings of the seal of God on the foreheads of the 144,000. There were six line drawings of the same smiling face: a black woman’s face, with a broad nose and thick, exaggerated lips. On each her forehead bore a slightly different mark: a word in Hebrew, she thought, or Aramaic, or Greek. At the bottom of the page, printed in block letters:
REMEMBER, THE CHOSEN MAY NOT BE WHO YOU THINK!
They left the apartment at dusk, the sky turning a yellow-green color that reminded her of moldy lemons. This time a small Toyota van was waiting for them at the curb; he opened the sliding rear door for her, and then sat next to the driver, a short Thai man who wore a polo shirt unbuttoned, a wide gold chain underneath. No one spoke. It seemed to her that they were headed into the center of the city: they turned onto a broad avenue lined with hotels and shopping malls and restaurants, and passed an enormous fountain lit with red and pink and orange lights, like a giant frothing wedding cake, underneath a billboard-sized picture of the King. You saw his picture everywhere, it seemed to her: a slender, balding man with oversized square glasses, who was always looking off to the side, as if embarrassed to be there.
We’ve been working with a group called the Miwa, he said to her, over his shoulder, as if they had been in the middle of a conversation. It’s a very small tribe — only about three thousand members or so. They live up in Chiang Rai province, right on the border, up between Burma and China. It’s an undeveloped area, full of smugglers and such, and there’s an insurrection going on just south of them, in the Shan State. No aid group has ever reached them before, let alone the government. And they need everything — wells, clean toilets, a health clinic. Right now I’ve been working with some recordings to see if I can develop a basic Miwa grammar for our aid workers. They don’t have a written language, and no linguist has ever studied them before. It’s all uncharted ground.
That sounds like an expensive project, she said. Where do you get the money?
Churches, he said. Our American churches, primarily. They’ve been very generous.
The driver slowed and darted left across a narrow gap in the opposing traffic. She put her hand against the window to steady herself, and stared for a moment at the tiny yellow eyes of the scooters flying toward her, her sphincter bunching up like a fist.
It’s easy to misunderstand the kind of work we do, he said, looking straight ahead. People say that it’s manipulative, that it’s blackmail. As if we went into these areas and said, we’ll only help you if you become Christians like us. It’s much more complicated than that. What these people need more than anything is some good news. He turned and gave her a half-smile. How would you feel, he said, if you knew that your culture, your whole way of life, was a dead end? Your population’s dwindling, you’re being attacked on all sides and you don’t understand why. All the animals you used to hunt have disappeared. These people need to hear that there’s a different way.
And besides, she said, there’s the question of the 144,000, isn’t there?
He blinked, repeatedly, his eyelids fluttering.
I was looking at one of your books, she said. The World in Flames. Is that all right?
It’s fine, he said, too quickly. I’m just a little surprised. I thought you weren’t interested.
Do you really believe all those things? she asked. The four horsemen, and the marks on the foreheads, and the trumpets, and the War in Heaven?
He laughed. Look around you, he said. The street was jammed solid with cars and lorries, bicycles and racheting motorbikes dodging among them; the sidewalks filled with women carrying groceries and babies, stone-faced monks in bright orange robes, street vendors with enormous loads of durians and mangos slung over their shoulders. How can you think anything different? he said. Do you know what rich Thai men like to do these days? They buy twenty child prostitutes at a time and bring them home as a harem. Then, when they’re finished with them, they buy twenty more. Disposable children. It’s the most successful industry in the city.
But the whole world isn’t Bangkok. It’s a particular situation.
And what makes you so sure of that?
She remembered, in Bombay, hearing the stories of children whose parents cut off their arms and legs, or squeezed them into boxes to deform them, to make them better beggars; mothers who rubbed hot peppers on their babies’ anuses to keep them crying until they died of dehydration. All those hours of trying to tease out an explanation — poverty caused by overpopulation, the breakdown of traditional rural life, cycles of abuse and neglect, the psychological effects of chronic malnutrition — what good did it do, in the end, when their tiny dirty hands tugged at her skirt and waved in her face? It was arbitrary, in a way, wasn’t it, this business of explaining the world in facts and graphs and studies: an indulgence. What was wrong with accepting such an obvious, time-honored explanation? Her grandparents had been Calvinists; this was another variety of the same concept, wasn’t it?
I have to say I admire you, he said. I don’t know what it would be like to live in this world and not feel the end coming. People think it’s hard for us, but how hard is it, really? To me the real nightmare would be not knowing what’s going to happen.
The air in the van — the mingled smells of vinyl seats and cigarette smoke, the weak A/C — was making her thick-headed and sleepy. She rested her head against the back of the seat and tried a few deep, cleansing breaths. The problem with the analogy was that in those days everybody was a Calvinist, or Catholic, or Church of England. On the same playing field, if not quite the same team. It’s different when it’s you against the world. How do you live, day by day, with that kind of contempt, with so much revulsion, the secret of your own superiority?
Either he’s a faker or a saint, she thought. Or a fanatic of some kind. They had those in America — the ones who sneaked up on abortion doctors and shot them through the window at breakfast. But that kind of thing would never happen here. And anyway he didn’t have the steel for it. You could tell that instantly. This was a man who believed in decency and trusted God to dole out the punishments.
Just then he did something utterly extraordinary and unexpected: he turned and reached an arm between the front seats, grazing her bare thigh, and squeezed her hand. It was the first human touch, the first skin-to-skin contact, she’d had in weeks, since those few fumbling kisses with the Australian boy in Luang Prabang. It stirred her.
You’re not trying to convert me, she said, the same way you’re not trying to convert the Miwa, is that it?
He laughed. No, he said. There’s hope for the Miwa. You’ve had your chance.
Part Four
At a certain point the driver made another turn and took them through a series of quieter, darker streets, gunning the engine and checking his watch. A dog crossing the street looked up at the oncoming lights and swerved away at the last possible moment. In a perfect cone of light cast by a single bulb she saw a group of men seated on low stools around a table, playing chess, she thought, or cards, it was impossible to say what exactly. This is a long way to go for dinner, she said, but he was talking to the driver now, and either didn’t hear her, or didn’t bother to answer.
After another half hour they pulled into a wide dirt field next to a kind of tent city: she saw a long, low series of roofs made out of plastic sheeting, glowing from lights underneath. Parked all around them were lorries and pickup trucks, all covered in mud and dust, as if they’d just arrived from a long journey. She smelled frying food, garlic, oil, fish; her stomach cramped with hunger.
It’s the weekend market, he said to her, as they climbed out of the van. People come here from all over Thailand to sell stuff. On Thursday nights, when just the vendors are here settting up — it’s the biggest party in Bangkok. He took her elbow and led her down a narrow lane, between the tents; in the half-darkness, people hurrying past bumped into her and went on without speaking. Not a place you’d want to be on your own, he said. No one wants to see farangs around here without a good reason.
Do we have a good reason?
Absolutely. They stopped and he pushed aside a yellow plastic curtain, calling out a greeting in Thai. Two men and a woman stood up from a low folding table to greet them. The taller of the two was about her age, she guessed, had long hair in a ponytail, and wore jeans torn at the knees and a Chicago Bulls jersey. The other was much older, with a withered, creased face, and some sort of traditional garment, a shirt or jacket made of black homemade cloth with elaborate embroidery around the hems. And the woman couldn’t have come up past her breastbone; her back was curved, and twisted slightly to one side, so she had a loping, asymmetrical limp. This is Charlie, Foster said, indicating the taller man, Sarpan, and Parang. At the mention of her name the woman gave Samantha a mischevious smile and fumbled with something hanging on a thin black cord around her neck. It was a small silver crucifix; she held it up so that everyone could see, and said something to Foster, who answered her quickly.
What did she say?
She asked if you were a Christian like us.
And how did you answer?
I said that you were a friend.
There was food already on the table, and a young woman came in through the back of the tent, bringing more dishes in styrofoam bowls; somehow there were enough stools and overturned crates and boxes for everyone to sit on, and in a moment, without quite knowing how it happened, she was sitting squeezed in between Charlie and Parang, nibbling at a piece of roasted chicken smeared with hot pepper paste. Everyone seemed to be talking at once, and in the next tent someone was playing loud pop music on a tinny radio; somehow it reminded her of being at the Kite and Whistle on a Friday night, packed shoulder to shoulder, shouting to be heard over the jukebox. Every so often Parang would touch her knee and smile, and gesture at something else she should eat: blackened shrimp on skewers, diced sour melon in some kind of sweet juice, sticky rice that had to be rolled into balls and eaten with grated green mango. She took the smallest pieces she could, and closed her eyes as the tastes exploded on her tongue, the saltiest, spiciest, sweetest, sourest, most bitter things she had ever eaten. This is how they make it when it’s not for farangs, she thought. She felt giddiness coming over her, as if the tension in her joints had been loosened a notch, like being drunk, but without the tinge of dizzy sickness after the third pint. You shouldn’t be so relaxed, she thought. It isn’t like you. But there it was again, the whole question of like. Like what? Like anything you’ve ever encountered?
That’s why it made sense, not novelty, but openness. Only connect, as Forster said. It takes curiosity. It takes risk. Otherwise you’ll be home in six months with a couple of shawls and some lousy snapshots.
Parang looped an arm around her back and rubbed her, inexplicably, between the shoulder blades. Her bottom teeth, Samantha saw, were all gold, one after another, incisors and bicuspids in a neat row.
So are these people Miwa? she shouted at Foster across the table. Is that how you know them?
He shook his head. These are Karen people, he said. They’re how we get to the Miwa. Our transport. And our guides. Parang said something to him, and he nodded, vigorously; she reached under the table and brought up an orange shopping bag tied tightly at the top. She says she wants to show you some photos, he said. They took them on their last trip up there. Would you like to see them?
Of course.
The photographs, wrapped in newspaper and rubber bands, were brand new, still in their Kodak envelopes. She looked at each one with great care, conscious of the four sets of eyes staring at her. There was the kind of dense bright-green forest she had seen in Laos, thick bamboo groves and enormous ferns and banana palms; shaggy jungle mountainsides, a river the color of tea. A group of figures along a trail, carrying large loads on their backs, but the picture was taken at a great distance: it was impossible to tell one person from another. A village of houses on stilts; a naked girl of three or four looking fearfully at the camera, her fingers in her mouth. In the next picture, a group of barechested men, grinning, waving at the photographer. One held a cigarette between his lips. The picture was slightly out of focus, but she could see that all of them had long tattoos running up and down their arms, what appeared to be strings of words running vertically from wrist to shoulder.
Are these the Miwa? She showed him the picture, and he nodded. What are the tattoos for?
Oh, he said, some kind of spell. I’m not really sure. A good-luck totem.
She put one stack of photographs back into its envelope and opened another. The first was a picture taken just above the forest canopy — from the roof of a house, perhaps — of a plume of black smoke rising in the distance. The second showed a group of houses, or huts, on fire. It was bright daylight, and so the flames themselves were hardly visible: she could see the billowing white smoke, and the blackened timbers, and a strange blurring of the air around them, with the blue-orange tinge of the flame from a stove. Nobody could be seen. These houses, whosever they were, were being left to burn to the ground.
In the third photo a group of mud-smeared men squatted on a trail, with Kalashnikov rifles balanced over their knees or slung over their shoulders. This time the picture was focused, and she could see clearly the tattoos on their arms, the white threads bound around their wrists.
She looked up at Foster. He gave her a wistful smile and shook his head.
You’re not a missionary, she said. What is this, some kind of joke? These men are soldiers.
He took a packet of tissues from his shirt pocket and began to wipe his hands methodically. War is all part of the plan, he said. War is the plan. You’ve read the Bible, haven’t you? Don’t you know how it all ends?
But the Miwa don’t know anything about that.
Don’t partronize them, he said. You don’t even know them. What, just because they haven’t been given all your advantages? They know what the end of the world means. They’ve seen it happen. And, by Christmas, they want to be on the winning side.
She wanted to laugh; it was all a horrible joke, she thought, a put-on, some tribal war he had nothing to do with. Gallows humor, an aid worker’s cynicism. But he stared at her with the same look of dry detachment and pity as ever.
You really don’t know these things, do you?
What things?
Revelations nineteen, he said. I saw heaven open, and a white horse appear; its rider was called Trustworthy and True, in uprightness he judges and makes war. From his mouth came a sharp sword with which to strike the unbelievers; he is the one who will rule them with an iron sceptre, and tread out the wine of Almighty God’s fierce retribution.
He translated the passage rapidly; Parang nodded, and Charlie put his hands together in the wai gesture and touched them to his forehead.
It’s beautiful, isn’t it? he said. I saw an angel standing in the sun, and he shouted aloud to all the birds that were flying overhead in the sky, Come here, gather together at God’s great feast. You will eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of great generals and heroes–
Enough, she said. Enough!
She wanted to stand, but she was so tightly wedged in, with Parang’s arm still looped around her waist, that there was no way to manage it without falling backwards, or turning over the table. Foster looked at her sorrowfully, his eyebrows tilted inward, his head tilted slightly to one side. I’ve seen that look before, she thought. The statue of Jesus outside the parish church in Mulder’s Hill she passed every day on her way to school. Suffer the children to come unto me.
You’re free to leave, of course, he said. In a minute. But there’s a favor I’d like to ask of you first. Can you find your way back to the van?
The van?
There’s a box in the back seat, he said, slowly, as if addressing a child. It’s heavy, but you’ll have to manage it by yourself, I’m afraid. Whatever you do, don’t open it. And don’t let it drop. Bring it here, and then Parang will give you an envelope, and you take that back to the van and put it in the glove compartment. The doors will be unlocked. Then the driver will take you back to pick up your things.
What is it? she asked. What’s in the box?
Courage, he said. Pride. The Miwa aren’t about to disappear without a fight. They’re not willing to settle for a footnote in history. We’ve arranged a little event here in Bangkok that’s going to take the struggle to the next level. We’re going to cause an international incident.
I don’t understand.
The Lord has given us an extraordinary gift, he said, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The last unguarded Israeli consulate, as it happens. Open to the public. At street level.
No, she said, loudly. She wanted to silence the table, to cut through the conversation volleying around her; she wanted them to see her alarm. Sarpan eyed her for a moment, picking at his teeth with a chicken bone, and turned away. You can’t act this way, she said. You can’t justify it, using these people as pawns. It’s pathological.
Is it? He smiled, in a way that, she knew, he thought passed for irony. We’re all pawns, my dear. In the end all wars become one war. That’s God’s plan.
Outside the tent, a group of drunken men passed by, singing in hoarse voices. Parang looked anxiously at her, her forehead creased, and reached up and put a hand to her cheek, speaking in a low voice. Samantha trembled.
What’s she saying?
Afterward you’ll know you played your part, too, he said. His face had softened, grown fine lines, like polished leather; it glowed, she thought, basking in some private, ineffable joy. She wants you to know that. Put yourself in God’s hands. That’s what she’s saying. Do his bidding.
Part Five
Inside the van, in the stifling heat, she lifted the box with great difficulty from its hiding place and set it on the rear seat. It was an ordinary cardboard carton, unmarked, closed at the top with heavy-duty copper staples; whatever was inside was about the weight of a stereo receiver or a small television. She pried two of the staples away with her fingernails, and ripped up a corner of one flap; a few styrofoam peanuts spilled out. Come on, she thought. I should know. Someone should know. The other staples came out easily, as if they hadn’t been fixed properly, and then it was open, there on the seat, like an unexpected gift.
She pulled out a cylindrical metal device with a handle on one end, like a giant caulking gun, and then a kind of arm rest that looked as if it was meant to lock onto the cylinder. Underneath was something smooth and pointed at one end and very heavy. She put both hands around it, and lifted it, cradling it; it was a bomb, or some kind of short missile, painted a dull blue color, with a long number etched into one side. Her arms were shaking, but now that she had picked it up somehow she was terrified of putting it down. She sat back on her haunches and held it close to her chest, the sharp metal fins digging into the crook of her elbow.
What have I done with my life, she thought, that I should be here, in the back alley of a back alley of a sub-basement of Hell, holding certain death in my arms? Little droplets of sweat ran down her forehead and into the hollows of her eyes, and she blinked them away; she was used to sweating, if nothing else, after all this time. Is this the end coming, she thought, is this what it feels like? Is this Judgment? She remembered, out of nowhere, a bit of Exodus: Moses said, Lord, surely you will not strike them all down? And the Lord said, Stand aside.
Merciful God, she thought, I’m sitting here all alone. Wouldn’t this be the best way? She bent forward and wrapped herself around it, like a shell. Isn’t this what you want? Not anonymous victims, but a single martyr, a martyr by her own free will? Against her skin, the metal was turning warm and slick; she hugged it closer to her chest, afraid of letting it slip. Do you feel it at all when it’s this close, she wondered, do you feel heat, or do you just become transparent, and weightless. Do you feel it coming from outside your body, or are you the explosion, the bomb like another internal organ, nestled in your gut, somewhere north of the spleen and kidneys, beneath the lungs and the heart?
A full minute passed.
She was growing accustomed to its weight and solidity, to its tug of gravity. It seemed to her that she had spent her entire life learning the wrong things. She had no idea, for instance, how to lay the cables of a bridge so it could hold the weight of an army. She had not learned how to avoid being the instrument of men. But that’s the wrong way to think about it, she told herself. There’s no time like the present.
A missile has to fit into its launcher.
With trembling fingers she allowed it to rest on her knee, pointing straight up, and used her free hand to lift the cylinder into place beside it. It’s a two-man job, she thought. This can’t possibly be the manufacturer-recommended technique. She almost wanted to giggle. Holding the missile in the crook of her elbow, she let it slide down the tube, a little too hard. It latched into place with a loud click. She lifted the whole apparatus and set it against her shoulder, as if she’d been doing this her entire life, having never held a rifle, not even a toy one, having never aimed anything deadlier than a crumpled piece of paper at the bin. She swung so that it pointed in the direction she had come, the direction where Lloyd Foster would appear, when he noticed how long it had been, when he wondered what she was doing with his property. She would shut her eyes and cover her face, as soon as she saw him, against the breaking glass, and squeeze the trigger, and brace her body against the recoil. Recoil. A word she never thought would apply to her. She would wait till she saw his face again. She needed no other signal.
