power plant’s filters, dead but for the grace of God, his body covered with evidence of extreme physical violence, a garish tattoo running the length of one forearm that all but screamed “gangster.” What could they think but that he was a criminal caught out on the wrong side of a deal gone bad?
They said none of this.
“Are you able to walk inside?” one of the men asked in fluent English.
Simon nodded, discovering that he was unable to speak.
With kindness, they led him inside the tower, one man assisting him on either side. Over and over, they asked if he was all right, if he needed to go to the hospital. Simon shook his head, making an okay sign with his fingers, though he was far from it.
They went to a locker room, where a shower was already running. Simon spent five minutes beneath the hot water. Gradually, he regained his strength and his senses. Then, a memory: You chipped me. He ran his fingers across his upper arms and shoulders. There, a hard nodule where none should be. An RFID transmitter had a limited range, no more than five miles, and a limited life span. Odds were that it was no longer functioning. But Simon was in no position to play the odds.
He finished showering and wrapped a towel around his waist. He found the men huddled in a conference room. Politely, he asked if any of them had a knife or, better yet, a razor blade. “A splinter,” he said, by way of explanation.
Finally, one of the men rose and accompanied him to the snack kitchen. Simon found a paring knife in one of the drawers. Ten seconds over a gas flame sterilized the blade.
“Where is the splinter?” asked the engineer.
Simon pointed at his shoulder. “In here.”
“I see nothing.”
Simon sat on a chair and, with the knife in one hand and a paper napkin in the other, excised the transmitter. One, two, three, and it was out, bouncing on the linoleum floor.
The engineer picked it up, a titanium grain of rice. “What is it?”
“Top secret,” said Simon. “You don’t want to know.”
A few seconds later, the transmitter landed in the kitchen sink and was washed down the drain. As far as Shaka was concerned, Simon was at this very moment floating his way into the Gulf of Thailand, there to stay forever.
Back in the shower room, he found a set of clothing folded neatly on a bench. Gray T-shirt, dark work pants, socks, a pair of boots, a cap. All fit him, more or less.
A bowl of noodles and a cup of hot tea waited in the conference room, complete with a napkin and utensils. Simon sat, sipped the tea, devoured the noodles. A map on one wall showed the locations of power plants across the country. One was colored with a red dot. Ratchaburi Hydroelectric Plant #2. He believed this to be his present location, some hundred kilometers southwest of Bangkok.
“The police are on their way,” said one of the men, bald with thick glasses, a patient smile, and a frank manner, who’d introduced himself as “Steve.” “It will take a while. We are some distance from the nearest town. I imagine you will want to tell them who did this to you.”
“Yes,” said Simon, though it was more of a croak. He drank some more tea and felt his throat relax. “Thank you.”
He gazed out the window onto the parking lot. Four cars. A motorcycle. His mind switched into gear. He began to plot his escape. He could overpower the men, steal a car, make it to someplace where he could obtain a new passport—a false passport. Find out where London Li was, contact her, or, better yet, go there. The police could never protect her from someone like Shaka. Maybe he couldn’t either.
“What happened?” asked Steve.
Simon put down his tea. He’d been working up a story, something about a waylaid tourist, a robbery…or was it a kidnapping? He was too tired to keep the facts straight. He looked at the men. All were well educated, engineers or the like. He knew his story wouldn’t fly. He made a radical choice. The truth.
He told them everything, from his meeting with Dickie Blackmon in London to his visit to the Remand Prison and meeting with Colonel Tan, to the shootout at the Spanish embassy and his subsequent capture by Shaka. Along the way, he told them about himself—who he was, what he did for a living—making it