"Bangkok Tattoo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burdett John)

31

O ne night, after the two a.m. curfew, the bar is empty save for Hudson and me. He is drunker than I've seen before, though still more or less in control. Sitting on a stool, he starts to talk, as if continuing a conversation, probably with himself.

"Freedom? What kind of dumb all-purpose Band-Aid is that?" With pleading eyes: "I mean, what are we selling exactly? Money is the state religion of the West. We pray to it every waking minute-and we're gonna make damned sure every last human on earth gets down on their knees with us. All our wars are wars of religion." A pause. "Want to know why I'm still here, at my age? I'm just a few hundred miles away from where I was thirty years ago in Laos. Look, I've made no progress at all, not financially, professionally not much, romantically not at all, not even geographically. Why am I still here?"

I shrug.

"Same reason the other guys couldn't go back. All over Southeast Asia there are American men who never go home. We simply can't. Because when we look into the eyes of your people, we see something, call it what you like. Soul? The human mind before fragmentation? Something sacred we farang habitually amputate like tonsils because we don't understand its function? Maybe it's your damned Buddhism. But we see something. Now tell me this, Detective. When you look into the eyes of farang, what do you see?"

When I fail to reply, he sniggers. "Yeah, that's what I thought."

Three days after this conversation, everything changed. Hudson and Bright arrived at the bar that evening, looking gloomy. They ordered a couple of beers, which they took to a corner table, where they whispered together. Finally, Hudson came over to the bar with his news.

"Your Colonel's little game worked too well. Maybe he's a kind of a genius. Well, we'll see. They're sending the Boss."