I had been with an old friend, one of my best, Darius Hawthorne, who, it turned out, was also in Paris on business. As I was fretting over the radio silence from Owen, Darius was trying to take my mind off the situation by taking me to the most outlandish places for dinner he could think of. I loved him for it as well as for the daily check-ins. To say he was busy was an understatement, so the fact that he was making so much time for me, was telling. When I got a call from a number I didn’t recognize, I turned the screen so Darius could see.
“That’s Thailand’s country code,” he told me. “Isn’t that where Owen is?”
When I answered and was given the news, I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t even have to reach for my friend; he was there in an instant, holding me up.
He was dead. Owen was dead.
I couldn’t grip my phone, and it fell, hitting first the table and then the floor. Before I could even think to pick it up, Darius had snatched it and put it to his ear. He listened, spoke, then listened again. When he hung up, his bright-green eyes met mine.
“Get up,” he ordered. “You have to go bring him home.”
How many men, how many intelligence assets, friends, brothers, had we made sure to bring home? The number had to be in the hundreds. And now it was Owen’s turn.
“On your feet,” he directed, and there was steel in his voice as he stood and left a couple hundred euros on the table, which more than covered our bill and the tip. It was rude, leaving like that, but I didn’t care, couldn’t focus. Only his voice centered me. The person I loved most in the world was gone.
Darius would have flown with me to Bangkok, but he knew better. Knew that was a trip I had to make alone. Still, he made sure to put me on his private jet so I didn’t have to wait for mine. It felt like the greatest gift he’d ever bestowed.
And now I could report back that Owen Moss was, in fact, not dead. The emotion, though, the relief, felt just like grief. I couldn’t parse it from sadness. It was hard to tell the difference. But the man standing in front of me didn’t need to know what I was feeling. Better for him to think he was looking at anguish.
Most people would have let the man know immediately: “No, thank God, that’s not the person I love,” but I wasn’t most people. The fact of the matter was, Owen’s wallet and phone were found on this man. Fingerprints were a match, as was the DNA—at least, that’s what their report said. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make me believe this was Owen. I might even have bought the charade, but my eyes knew the difference. If I’d argued, facts would have been thrown at me. Better to fake acceptance and find out who this man on the slab truly was. More to the point, I wasn’t leaving him behind. His family, whoever they were, needed closure as well. But now I was left trusting no one.
Finally, I met the police surgeon’s gaze and repeated woodenly, “It’s Owen.” I felt lost, unable to shake off the cold chill of the morgue as we stood over a stranger’s lifeless corpse. Glancing around the room, at the walls, at the body, I felt haunted. Other ghosts, other times. “Where was he found?” I didn’t try and conceal the tears in my eyes. My gaze returned to the deep Y-shaped incision on the man’s trunk, to his swollen, lifeless eyes.
“Water bus found him floating in the Saen Saep canal. Death by drowning. Appears accidental.” The Khlong Saen Saep was one of the city’s heaviest water arteries, running some eighteen kilometers through central Bangkok.
“How long was the body in the water?” I asked, wanting to hear his answer. The body—not Owen’s body, not his body—was in terrible shape, so my guess was a week at least.
“Three days by my estimate.”
The condition of the body was shocking. It was badly mutilated from being struck repeatedly by canal traffic, and decomposed to the point of being unrecognizable. The days Saen Saep canal was clean enough to wash clothes, bathe, or swim in were long gone, as Bangkok’s canals were so heavily polluted, they were considered environmentally toxic.
“May I see his dossier?”
The surgeon looked surprised by my request. I was betting most people didn’t ask to peruse the chart. He turned away from me, toward the third man in the room, who had remained suspiciously quiet the entire time, not even breaking his silence to introduce himself. Easy to figure out I was looking at the surgeon’s boss. He was official-looking, the dark suit and polished shoes out of place in the morgue. He’d stood mostly hidden in the shadows of the surgical lamps’ bright halo of white light.
I watched as the shadow man gestured to the surgeon to hand the file over. Crossing to his desk, he retrieved the file and handed it to me gently, reverently, and I appreciated the care. A slight wince told me he sympathized with my pain. Perhaps he too had lost a loved one.
As I reviewed the notes, I studied everything, especially the Polaroids taken prior to the autopsy. I scrutinized an extreme close-up of the face, needing that extra bit of evidence to be certain. I wanted to be right, hoped I was, but the beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt part soothed my soul. This was not my friends’ son, and I knew it down deep.
Checking the toxicology report, I flipped forward and then back, surprised by what was missing. “Are you still waiting for tests to come back?”
“We—”
“This is only a rudimentary toxicological work-up,” I stated, knowing I was right, certain he was aware of that as well. “Where’s the rest of it?”
“Everything is as it should be, Colonel Colter,” the shadow man finally spoke.
“Mr. Colter will suffice. I’m retired now.”
“My apologies. I’d heard the contrary,” the man said, feigning a chilly warmth as he stepped from the shadows and into the light. “I am Jùnjié Sun, liaison to the Ministry of Interior,” he said crisply.
As I shook his hand, I noted that it was a firm handclasp full of strength and confidence. He was Thai and looked to be in his thirties, and there was experience and intelligence in his eyes.
“I understand how grief can cloud perspective, but we have fully cooperated, have we not, Mr. Colter?”
“Yes, I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.”
“No, I understand. You are a man of meticulous detail. But we fished the body from the canal, so there was no reason to run a comprehensive panel.”
I stared at the corpse, trying to figure out what it was that had alerted me to the wrongness of this man being Owen from the moment I saw him. A body in the water for three days made it difficult to be certain who you were looking at. And yet, at first glance, I knew. But how could I? If the tables were turned, could Owen have figured out it wasn’t me? I had to wonder.
“Hard as it may be to accept, sir, Mr. Moss’s companion has given sworn testimony that Mr. Moss was intoxicated when he fell into the canal. He was struck by a passing express boat before his companion could offer him aid. A search was made to no avail. It was three days before the body resurfaced.”
“May I have a moment with him?”
“Yes. Of course.” Sun nodded to the surgeon to give me some space.
Steeling myself, I leaned over the corpse as if it were nothing. I’d seen worse, made worse, and so I put my bare hands on the gray, bloated flesh. The smell of decay, like a putrid wet tree bark, singed my nostrils. Whoever this was, I would find out and make sure he got back to his people. I needed to get him home.