Free The Bangkok Asset: A novel by John Burdett Page A

Argentina, the best sorcery from Cambodia. So the CIA people agreed to try the experiment the British doctor with the crazy name was urging on them. And it worked. Except that it didn’t just work on the assets they were trying to develop. It worked on the whole crew. Including Goldman and the British shrink himself.”
    Sakagorn shrugged. “That’s all I can tell you. It came out once only when he was drunk, and he never mentioned it again. I thought it was merely the ranting of a man who had spent too much time in the jungle. Perhaps it was. But something must have sunk in, because there’s no way I could bring myself to visit Angkor again. No way. I started to see the whole place in a different light. That huge dark rotting Wat the size of a city block, those hideous stone pyramids like Aztec architecture, that sinister little shrine right in the middle, the whole atmosphere of the thing…” He shuddered.
    “When you say it worked, what worked?”
    “Unclear.”
    Vikorn and I both grunted. “What else?”
    “Nothing. That’s all he let slip. They only had a few years, then Pol Pot turned up with his gang of brutes and Goldman had to get out. They went up to Laos.” He stared into our eyes, one after another, then shrugged.
    I changed tack. “You have spent much time alone with the Asset, Lord Sakagorn?”
    “No. Never. Goldman is always there.”
    “So how are they together? Do they lounge around on sofas watching football and drinking beer?”
    Sakagorn shook his head. “No. Not at all. The Asset cannot be without his toy for long.”
    “What toy?”
    “A gaming headset with a screen. Goldman takes it away for the demonstrations. It’s like depriving a hunting animal of food—it makes him fierce.” He paused again, too lost in his own dread to lie, or to help much either. “You would go round to Goldman’s luxury condo off Sukhumvit, and Goldman would be there scheming and brooding, and the Asset would be there in a corner like a troubled teenager totally absorbed in whatever he was playing on the headset.”
    “Why was that so weird?”
    “Because you knew what he could do with that amazing body, that enhanced cognition—all the stuff they’d done to him to make him superhuman—and there he was, like a dumb teen with emotional problems and no social skills.”
    “But you said he had charm?”
    The barrister lost patience. “We’re not talking about a human,” he grumbled. “Change one strand of DNA in a fruit fly, and you get a different-color fruit fly.” He let a couple of beats pass. “But this is not simple genetic engineering. That Asset has received accelerated learning enhancements: ALE in the jargon. Everything I’m telling you now relates to the last time I was with them at Goldman’s apartment. That was two weeks ago. Two weeks is a long time in the evolution of a transhuman. His personality is probably quite changed by now.”
    “But these changes are at Goldman’s command?” I was not trying to be provocative. Only now I realized from the lawyer’s face what a hot topic that was. Sakagorn stared at me, looked away.
    “That’s the question, isn’t it?”
    I decided to pounce. “You said Goldman seems terrified.” His hooded eyes conveyed the response:
So?
“Are you saying that Frankenstein has broken free—or knows how to? That sometimes Goldman is the slave and his Asset the master?”
    The lawyer recovered and bounced back; it was part of his professional bag of tricks. “I never spent much time with them, how do I know? I simply gave you a passing impression to help—under coercion, I might add. Can I go now, or am I still under threat of blackmail?”
    He pronounced the
B
word heavily, giving it full emotional and forensic dignity. I looked at Vikorn for an answer.
    “Why has all this come up now, Lord Sakagorn?”
    “Because everything has changed. There aren’t going to be any more big, expensive, symmetrical wars with tank battles that take place over