land at an airstrip that didn't exist when they took off?"
"That is an interesting idea and we're having the engineers look at it and evaluate the feasibility."
Bean nodded. "Good. That tells me all I needed to know. I'll stay."
"No, you will not!"
"I'll stay because, despite the fact that you're pissed off that I'm here, you still recognized a good idea when you heard it and put it into play. You're not an idiot, and therefore you're worth working with."
Suriyawong slapped the table and leaned over it, furious. "You condescending little oomay, I'm not your moose."
Bean answered him calmly. "Suriyawong, I don't want your job. I don't want to run things here. I just want to be useful. Why not use me the way Ender did? Give me a few soldiers to train. Let me think of weird things to do and figure out how to do them. Let me be ready so that when the war comes, and there's some impossible thing you need done, you can call me in and say, Bean, I need you to do something to slow down this army for a day, and I've got no troops anywhere near there. And I'll say, Are they drawing water from a river? Good, then let's give their whole army dysentery for a week. That should slow them down. And I'll get in there, get a bioagent into the water, bypass their water purification system, and get out. Or do you already have a waterdrugging diarrhea team?"
Suriyawong held his expression of cold anger for a few moments, and then it broke. He laughed. "Come on, Bean, did you make that up on the spot, or have you really planned an operation like that?"
"Made it up just now," said Bean. "But it's kind of a fun idea, don't you think? Dysentery has changed the course of history more than once."
"Everybody immunizes their soldiers against the known bioagents. And there's no way of stopping downstream collateral damage."
"But Thailand is bound to have some pretty hot and heavy bioresearch, right?"'
"Purely defensive," said Suriyawong. Then he smiled and sat down. "Sit, sit. You really are content to take a background position?"
"Not only content, but eager," said Bean. "If Achilles knew I was here, he'd find a way to kill me. The last thing I need is to be prominent-until we actually get into combat, at which time it might be a nice psychological blow to give Achilles the idea that I'm running things. It won't be true, but it might make him even crazier to think it's me he's facing. I've outmaneuvered him before. He's afraid of me."
"It's not my own position I was trying to protect," said Suriyawong. Bean understood this to mean that of course it was his position he was protecting. "But Thailand kept its independence when every other country in this area was ruled by Europeans. We're very proud of keeping foreigners out."
"And yet," said Bean, "Thailand also has a history of letting foreigners in-and using them effectively."
"As long as they know their place," said Suriyawong.
"Give me a place, and I'll remember to stay in it," said Bean.
"What kind of contingent do you want to work with?"
What Bean asked for wasn't a large number of men, but he wanted to draw them from every branch of service. Only two fighterbombers, two patrol boats, a handful of engineers, a couple of light armored vehicles to go along with a couple of hundred soldiers and enough choppers to carry everything but the boats and planes. "And the power to requisition odd things that we think of. Rowboats, for instance. High explosives so we can train in making cliffs fall and bridges collapse. Whatever I think of."
"But you don't actually commit to combat without permission."
"Permission," said Bean, "from whom?"
"Me," said Suriyawong.
"But you're not Chakri," said Bean.
"The Chakri," said Suriyawong, "exists to provide me with everything I ask for. The planning is entirely in my hands."
"Glad to know who's aboon here." Bean stood up. "For what it's worth, I was most help to Ender when I had access to everything he knew."
"In your dreams," said Suriyawong.
Bean grinned. "I'm dreaming of good maps," said Bean. "And an accurate assessment of the current situation of the Thai military."
Suriyawong thought about that for a long moment.
"How many of your soldiers are you sending into battle blindfolded?" asked Bean. "I hope I'm the only one."
"Until I'm sure you really are my soldier," said Suriyawong, "the blindfold stays on. But ... you can have the maps."