RACHEL PLACED THE call and made the introductions, then she put Shepherd on the telephone. Shepherd explained to Rachel’s anti-American lawyer pal what he wanted to do. He thought the guy sounded young, smart, and capable, and he seemed to get it immediately. So Shepherd decided not to worry about the lawyer’s political views. As long as he delivered on the impoundment order, he could have all the fun he wanted.
The guy didn’t seem to think it would be any problem at all to get an order issued. He casually mentioned that he would take it to a judge who was a good friend of his. Shepherd got the idea without making him say it a second time. After all, he had lived in Thailand. He knew how this kind of thing worked in third world countries. The price the lawyer quoted was astronomical, of course. Having a friend who’s a judge tends to run up the bill pretty quickly in almost any country. But Shepherd didn’t care. The bill was going to the Kitnarok Foundation anyway.
The lawyer asked Shepherd to email him a statement of facts and an affidavit. He said that if Shepherd could do it immediately he would file the petition before the end of the day. Shepherd wrote down the guy’s email address on a pad on Rachel’s desk. Then he thanked the lawyer and gave the telephone back to Rachel.
While she and Shepherd’s new pal were talking about something else, Shepherd pulled out his telephone and drafted an email with the materials the guy had asked for. Since he was making most of it up, it didn’t take very long. He added the email address he had written down and hit send. Rachel and the lawyer were still talking when he was done, so he and Keur just sat and stared at the flat panel monitors on the wall on which CNN and BBC continued to flicker in complete silence and waited for her to finish.
***
THE DEPRESSING MONOTONY with which people all over the planet were laboring to kill each other seemed slightly less horrific when it was reduced to a silent movie, but Shepherd wasn’t entirely certain whether that was a good thing or not. Maybe it would actually be better if somebody could find a way to make it more horrific instead. Perhaps that way some of the hideousness of mankind’s collective savagery might eventually penetrate people’s desensitized minds and shame them into behaving like human beings again.
Shepherd and Keur sat quietly like that for several minutes while Rachel continued to murmur into the telephone. Keur didn’t seem anymore interested in conversation than Shepherd was, each of them content to wait silently in the company of their own thoughts, until after a few minutes of sitting like that something on CNN caught Shepherd’s eye. It registered immediately as familiar, but it took a moment or two for his brain to catch up with his eyes.
When it did, Shepherd realized that CNN was broadcasting a headshot of Liz Corbin, the Bangkok bureau chief for The New York Times. Below Liz’s picture was a single line of white type: On the Telephone from Bangkok. And across the bottom of the screen was a much larger caption, all in red letters. It read: TERROR IN THAILAND.
“I need to hear that,” Shepherd said, pointing at the monitor.
Both Keur and Rachel glanced at the screen. Then Rachel took a remote control off her desk and tossed it to Shepherd. He found the mute button, clicked it, and the sound popped on. Shepherd was only vaguely aware of Rachel murmuring hasty goodbyes into the telephone.
“…nothing more about the real seriousness of the situation here in Bangkok until tomorrow morning,” a woman’s voice Shepherd recognized as Liz Corbin’s was saying on CNN.
“Do you know yet exactly how many explosions there were?” a male voice asked.
“The government is saying officially that there were four, Keith, but I am hearing unofficially that it was almost certainly many more than that. Perhaps as many as a dozen. What has caused real panic here, however, is not the number of explosions, but the apparently well-coordinated nature of the blasts. The initial explosion at Government House was followed within ten minutes by those at the Hyatt and the Four Seasons, and then shortly after that by those at other international hotels, two major shopping malls, and of course at the airport. The attacks appear to have been planned to kill and injure as many foreigners as possible and, by doing so, to strike a fatal blow at Thailand’s vital tourism infrastructure.”
“Is the government providing any casualty figures?” the man prodded.
“No, none at all. At the moment, the government’s reaction seems to be to try to keep a lid on everything as long as possible. They are saying very little and they certainly aren’t giving out any figures. My sources, however, say that more than a hundred are dead and hundreds more, perhaps thousands, are injured.”
“Where are you now, Liz? Can you see any of the damage from your location?”
“Right now I am about two hundred yards north of the Grand Hyatt. The air is heavy with smoke and dust and I cannot see very clearly. But I can tell you that the hotel appears to have collapsed right in the center and is almost wholly demolished. It would not surprise me if the casualty toll from that one bombing alone was many hundreds of people.”
“What is the mood there in Bangkok?”
“It’s almost impossible to move around the city right now so I have spoken to very few people. The military has appeared in the streets, but they don’t seem to be doing much of anything. The Four Seasons Hotel is only a few hundred yards south of here. I’m going to try to make my way to it on foot and see what the level of destruction is there.”
“Have there been any claims of responsibility yet, Liz?”
“As you know, Keith, the Thai government is locked in a bitter struggle with the supporters of former strongman General Chalerm Kitnarok, who was forced out of office with a blizzard of corruption charges. At the same time, they are fighting an increasingly violent Muslim insurgency in the south. The assumption here, of course, is that these explosions are a clear attempt to destabilize the government and therefore the most likely culprits would come from one of those two camps, but there is no specific information as yet concerning who actually is to blame.”
“Has the new prime minister made a statement yet?”
“Prime Minister Kathleeya Srisophon has been in office for less than a day, having been chosen by the governing coalition immediately after the murder of former prime minister Somchai in an attack on his motorcade yesterday morning. She has made no statements of any kind as yet and reports are that she is in an undisclosed location for security reasons. It is easy to understand why. In a country seemingly poised on the brink of chaos, the murder of a second prime minister would almost certainly send it tumbling over the edge.”
The image on the monitor shifted to a studio shot of a blow-dried newscaster who looked to Shepherd more like an actor in an unsuccessful daytime soap opera than a journalist.
“Thank you, Liz,” the man said. “That was Elizabeth Corbin of The New York Times on the telephone from Bangkok, where an unknown number of apparently well-coordinated explosions shook the city just after five o’clock this afternoon, Bangkok time. Initial reports are that there are many dead and injured, including a large number of foreigners. CNN is urgently trying to gather more information and we will have it for you as soon as we can. Meanwhile, back in Washington, the federal budget crisis shows no sign of ending with…”
Shepherd clicked the mute button on the remote and looked at Keur.
“It’s started,” he said.