When I woke up on that first morning in Bangkok, I knew nothing about Philippe Fournier, Larry Brown, or Kevin Parker.
There was a rumbling sound from the air conditioning box and a faint light creeping through the window blind, and for a moment, I wondered where I was. I soon came around. I was in a hotel off Sukhumvit Road, had arranged to meet Virex’s research director, Amos Gazit, later, and then had this conference on infectious diseases to attend. The trouble was that things had taken an unexpected turn the night before.
I had arrived late afternoon, and after a shower and a change of clothing into something more suited to the Bangkok weather, I then ventured out into the hot evening air. After I’d fought my way through the usual hordes of night-time strollers, street vendors, and food stalls and avoided being run down by motorcycles at road junctions, I found myself at a certain place that had become a bit of a habit of mine on recent visits to Bangkok. Up until then, it had been like the start of any other business trip to Southeast Asia, but it suddenly changed into something far more personal.
I am a professional in my field, and I try not to make rash decisions.
Colin calls me Jinx for one very good reason, but normally, the decisions I make and the risks I take are calculated ones. Risk forms an essential part of this business. Whilst Colin runs the office and does clever investigative stuff on computers for clients, it’s me who’s
out there in the heat and dust mixing with folk of every colour, creed, culture, language and position on the criminality scale whilst trying to make sensible, calculated, on-the-spot management decisions.
I call my less calculated decisions whims. Whims are like instincts.
They sound unprofessional, but they are often the only option left when you’re in doubt and nothing appears to make sense.
Last night’s whim - the one that took me to that place - had looked innocent enough at the time, and it wasn’t a pure whim. I’d worked out a rough plan while drinking that Beerlao in Kuala Lumpur a few days ago. This was a calculated whim, and it added strength to my
“nothing ventured, nothing gained” management strategy. I admit, though, that I still felt unsure about whether it made sense, even when I reached the door of that place.
I stopped and stared at the door as a vision of myself hit my conscience like a drowning man. I am sure a drowning man can be forgiven for the flashbacks of his past pleasures or regrets. Perhaps, also, a drowning man with no hope of rescue can cram an entire life into the short space of time it takes to hold his breath until he could stand it no longer and finally inhales that last fateful lungful.
That flashback of myself had been just as quick. It was like a fast-forwarded video, a packaged version of my life to date, a snapshot of how other people might now judge me if they’d followed me over the last twenty years or so. I freely admit that I did not like what I saw in the closing moments of that vision.
What I saw was a professional loner, a sad example of a forty-five-year-old single man with no place he could call home except a rented flat over a Turkish restaurant in Queensway, West London. I saw a man with little more than a battered suitcase containing a few bare essentials for personal hygiene - a toothbrush, a razor, a few shirts, socks, a crumpled suit and blue tie in case there was a need to impress.
I saw a pile of mobile phones because I use them a lot. I’m buying and throwing them all the time for reasons you’ll understand. I keep a few essential things on a memory stick hung around my neck until I
can find a suitable place to plug the laptop in or visit an internet cafe.
I often leave these technical aids behind in a hotel room or somewhere just in case I find myself in a spot of bother. I have learned a thing or two, you see. A mobile phone is the worst piece of technology for keeping secrets, which is why I prefer a new one that’s empty of all data and other information. No one is ever going to steal Mark Dobson’s intellectual property. Most things I carry in my head, and so mine is a surprisingly light case for a man who lives out of it, uses it as his office, an occasional pillow, and travels around the world with it with a couple of spare passports tucked behind its lining.
I don’t normally get depressed, but what I saw in that vision gave me food for thought.
Right now, I’m telling you things I’d never tell Colin. Colin’s got his own problem. Two ex-wives and two kids he rarely sees are what give Colin headaches. He’s a good friend, the best, but if you saw how much weight he’s put on and counted the number of pre-packed sandwiches he consumes each day, you’d start to worry whether your office-based backup was going to survive long enough to enjoy his pension. As for me, I’ve just never settled. I’ve always thought that one day I might find the time to sort myself out.
Anyway, enough of that because. back in my hotel room, I felt a warm hand resting on my shoulder. It then moved down to my waist and around to my bare stomach. Her name is Anna. I was still a professional businessman with a job to do at ten o’clock, but my private life was on a very slippery slope.