the thread. "Oh, you mean is that enough to explain why Achilles would want you dead?" Bean thought about it. "I don't know. Maybe. But it doesn't tell us why he's setting up India for a much bloodier war than it has to fight."
"What about this," said Suriyawong. "Make everybody fear what war will bring, so they want to strengthen the Hegemony to keep the war from spreading."
"That's fine, except nobody's going to nominate Achilles as Hegemon."
"Good point. Are we ruling out the possibility that Achilles is just stupid?"
"Yes, that's not a possibility."
"What about Petra, could she have fooled him into sticking with this obvious but somewhat dumb and wasteful strategy?"
"That is possible, except that Achilles is very sharp at reading people. I don't know if Petra could lie to him. I never saw her lie to anybody. I don't know if she can."
"Never saw her lie to anybody?" asked Suriyawong.
Bean shrugged. "We became very good friends, at the end of the war. She speaks her mind. She may hold something back sometimes, but she tells you she's doing it. No smoke, no mirrors. The door's either open or it's shut."
"Lying takes practice," observed Suriyawong.
"Like the Chakri?"
"You don't get to that position by pure military ability. You have to make yourself look very good to a lot of people. And hide a lot of things you're doing."
"You're not suggesting Thailand's government is corrupt," said Bean.
"I'm suggesting Thailand's government is political. I hope this doesn't surprise you. Because I'd heard that you were bright."
They got a car to take them into town-Suriyawong had always had the authority to requisition a car and a driver, he just never used it till now.
"So where do we eat?" asked Bean. "It's not like I have a restaurant guide with me."
"I grew up in families with better chefs than any restaurant," said Suriyawong.
"So we go to your house?"
"My family lives near Chiang Mai."
"That's going to be a battle zone."
"Which is why I think they're actually in Vientiane, though security rules would keep them from telling me. My father is running a network of dispersed munitions factories." Suriyawong grinned. "I had to make sure I siphoned off some of these defense jobs for my family.
"In other words, he was best man for the task."
"My mother was best for the task, but this is Thailand. Our love affair with Western culture ended a century ago."
They ended up having to ask the soldiers, and they only knew the kind of place they could afford to eat. So they found themselves eating at a tiny all-night diner in a part of town that wasn't the worst, but wasn't the nicest, either. And the whole thing was so cheap it felt practically free.
Suriyawong and the soldiers went down on the food as if it were the best meal they'd ever had. "Isn't this great?" asked Suriyawong. "When my parents had company, and they were eating all the fancy stuff in the dining room with visitors, we kids would eat in the kitchen, the stuff the servants ate. This stuff. Real food."
No doubt that's why the Americans at Yum-Yum in Greensboro loved what they got there, too. Childhood memories. Food that tasted like safety and love and getting rewarded for good behavior. A treatwe're going out. Bean didn't have any such memories, of course. He had no nostalgia for picking up food wrappers and licking the sugar off the plastic and then trying to get at any of it that rubbed off on his nose. What was he nostalgic for? Life in Achilles' "family"? Battle School? Not likely. And his time with his family in Greece had come too late to be part of his early childhood memories. He liked being in Crete, he loved his family, but no, the only good memories of his childhood were in Sister Carlotta's apartment when she took him off the street and fed him and kept him safe and helped him prepare to take the Battle School tests-his ticket off Earth, to where he'd be safe from Achilles.
It was the only time in his childhood when he felt safe. And even
though he didn't believe it or understand it at the time, he felt loved, too. If he could sit down in some restaurant and eat a meal like the ones Sister Carlotta prepared there in Rotterdam, he'd probably feel the way those Americans felt about Yum-Yum, or these Thais felt about this place.
"Our friend Borommakot doesn't really like the food," said Suriyawong. He spoke