FOR PRIVATE SECURITY contractors like Alan Jarrett, dawn was not just the start of a new day; it was a favorite time for executions, torture, or confessions. Interrogators, ambush point men, dictators who worked along the edge of the dark side of truth, they watched their targets illuminated by the first light on the horizon. Old military habits tend to graft onto a life, and after some years in the service no one can tell the grafted bits from the original. Dawn work detail was one of those grafts. Civilians slept through the dawn. Soldiers and ex-soldiers doing a soldier’s job were up and already at work, checking weapons and the perimeter, heading out for that place no one wants to go, with no choice in the matter. Dawn was the time for a hanging or an ambush. Jarrett and his buddy Tracer, both five days in from Kabul, had an appointment here in Bangkok, a job to do. Then they’d fly back to Afghanistan.
At five in the morning the new day’s light was no more than a fragile crack at the edge of the sky, running like a fissure of gold in a deep shaft. Within fifteen minutes daybreak would spread into a full-blown dawn. As if programmed, Jarrett’s eyes opened. He reached above his head and pulled back the curtain to look out. Letting the curtain fall, he laid his head back on the pillow and relaxed his muscles against the sheets. He felt the chill in the air and listened to the background buzz of the short time hotel room’s air-conditioning. It was always good to wake up in a safe civilian zone, an environment removed from the danger that lay just ahead. Jarrett raised his left arm slowly and glanced at his Rolex. It was 5:27 a.m.
His head slowly pivoted on the pillow. A ying in her early twenties, naked, back turned toward him, slept with one fist clasping the sheet waist-high. She moaned as she turned over, as if responding to someone in her dreamscape. She was an upcountry beekeeper’s daughter, and he wondered if in her dreams she was out in the fields tending the hives. Or was she just back in the bar, fleeing from a drunk who was pawing her? Rivulets of long black hair fell over her pillow. Her breathing was slow, regular, the kind that accompanies the deepest sleep. Jarrett told himself she was dreaming of tending hives somewhere in Surin province, the sun on her face and buckets of honey at her feet. At least he wanted to believe that. She introduced herself as Wan, which meant “sweet”—as in honey sweet. He had known her eight hours, long enough to learn her life story, or at least the edited version bar yings learn to tell. Her charm and body were enough to cause him to feel the excitement that comes with an unexpected close encounter with a young woman.
He smiled, thinking of an old blues song “A man always has a price to pay/A woman knows her value/But she sells it for what she can/There’s always a price/always a price/but you don’t always know how much/til you break it/always a price/and it ain’t always money.”
Jarrett slipped out of bed without disturbing Wan. He moved like a shadow with its own life and purpose. The hotel room was smaller than he remembered from the night before. From the edge of the bed he crept over to the chair and slipped on his jeans and T-shirt. He froze as she curled on her side, moved her leg, and pulled the sheet up to her chin. He waited until she settled back down and her breathing became more regular; then he kept an eye on her as he dressed. He thought about how civilians slept in a different way. They could sleep through their own deaths, he thought. He reached over to her handbag, a fake Prada bag bought from a Sukhumvit street vendor, and tucked ten thousand baht into the front pocket.
At the bar the night before, Jarrett had asked if her father’s bees were dying, like the ones in America. She’d blinked, shrugged. She didn’t know. Her father had abandoned the family and taken the bees with him. They’d been alive when he loaded them into two trucks.
“Where you from?” she’d asked.
“America, but I’m working in Afghanistan.”
“You on holiday?”
He smiled. “Working holiday.”
“I need the money to get back into the bee business.” It was a clever variation on the handicapped-mother and water-buffalo-with-a-heat-stroke stories.
“How much do you need?” His question hadn’t been serious.
“Ten thousand baht.”
“That’s a lot.”
Wan had shrugged. “I just started working. I haven’t saved anything. Not yet.”
She’d left her lady’s drink untouched. The mamasan who’d been eyeing her progress with the customer swept in from the shadows and ordered her to drink up. Wan had sipped her drink until the mama-san drifted away and flopped onto her stool in the corner.
“My father come at night with his friends and take away all of the hives. He left us nothing. He loved those bees more than he loved us.”
Jarrett had automatically divided the hotel room into coordinates. He moved from space to space, checking the curtains, the windows, the bathroom door, and going through the ying’s clothes and handbag. He found her ID card and tried to read it, but the Thai script defeated him. Her cell phone was turned off. He examined her makeup, lipstick, and brush, along with an inhaler, wrapped hard candy, and a box cutter. He slid open the blade and let dawn sun touch the sharp edge. Closing the blade again, he slipped the box cutter into his pocket.
His movements had a purpose. Jarrett wasn’t just being sensitive; he was putting himself through a training exercise. The beekeeper’s daughter—number thirty-eight, Wan—was young, alert, in top physical condition. Exactly the type of person Jarrett liked to test his stealth skills against, sharpening them for use in the field. Moving around a room without waking someone was a specialized skill in his line of work. Not everyone could do it—go unnoticed, unheard.
Using his training to anticipate another person’s reaction required regular practice. Working yings were a good challenge. They had street smarts and basic nighttime survival training. They worked in a world where they had to calculate each move in advance. They practiced the art of deception, set up emotional ambushes, and orchestrated side plays to defend their position and throw their customers’ counterattacks into disarray.
Jarrett studied her on the bed. In the bar she had clung to him. She’d carried out the role of the playful ying, and her catlike purring and brushing of her body against his leg, side, and arm were precursors. Only cats and humans toy with their victims before killing them. She was playing with him, finding the vulnerable center before striking. A working ying acquired the unique ability to convince her customer that their roles were reversed, that she was the target. And she needs him for protection. The only magic in the relationship was this sleight of hand.
Once inside the back-alley hotel room, she’d whispered to him that the bees had started dying in Thailand, too. Whole colonies had collapsed. Her eyes had grown large, as if she could see the horror unfolding as she spoke.
She had smiled when he’d asked her about what she wanted out of life.
Jarrett stood at the room door and took a last look at her. He thought about the empty beehive with only the queen bee and the royal jelly inside. The workers had gone walkabout, as the Australians say. “Abandoned” is the right word. Bees, like people, have been known to disappear. Buddhists say everything is impermanent. They understand the world of bees. It’s nature, just not human nature. Wan’s father had been swallowed up into the distant hills, finding sanctuary on the slopes where the Khmer Rouge had once laid down landmines. He’d returned home but only to get his bees. No one had seen him or heard from him. He’d timed his mission to avoid confronting his family. Abandonment of a losing position was an essential skill Jarrett had been taught in the service. Of all the skills he’d learned, he felt this one might be the most underestimated. Like something from an old blues song about how it’s too late to say you’re sorry.