Impact Read Online Free PDF

pockets, shades still on.
    “Gentleman wish welcome drink?”
    “Gentleman not wish welcome drink.”
    The girls went off, disappointed, and a moment later a man appeared from the back room, dressed in an impeccable black suit with a white shirt and gray tie, hands clasped together, making several obsequious half-bows as he approached. “Welcome, special friend! Welcome! Where do you come from? America?”
    Ford gave him a hard stare. “I’m here to see the owner .”
    “Thaksin, Thaksin, at your service, sir!”
    “Fuck this. I ain’t talking to a lackey.” Ford turned to leave.
    “Just a moment, sir.” A few minutes passed and a very small, tired man came out from the back. He was dressed in a track suit and he walked stooped, with none of the hurry of the others, bags under his eyes. When he reached Ford, he paused, looked him up and down with an inscrutable calmness. “Your name, please?”
    Without answering, Ford removed an orange stone from his pocket and showed it to the man.
    The man took a casual step back. “Let us go back into my office.”
    The office was small and covered in fake wood paneling that had warped and detached in the humidity. It stank of cigarettes. Ford had done business in Southeast Asia before and knew that the shabbiness of an office, or the poor cut of a man’s clothes, was no guide to who that person was; the most dilapidated office might be the den of a billionaire.
    “I am Adirake Boonmee.” The man extended a small hand and gave Ford’s a neat little shake.
    “Kirk Mandrake.”
    “May I see that stone again, Mr. Mandrake, sir?”
    Ford removed the stone but the man did not take it.
    “You may place it on the table.”
    Ford put it down. Boonmee eyed it for a long moment, moved closer, then grasped it, held it up to a strong point light shining from a corner of the room.
    “It’s a fake,” he said. “A coated topaz.”
    Ford feigned a moment of confusion, recovering quickly. “Naturally, I’m aware of that,” he said.
    “Naturally.” Boonmee placed it down on a felt board on his desk. “What can I do for you?”
    “I have a big client who wants a lot of these stones. Honeys. Real ones. And he’s willing to pay top price. In gold bullion.”
    “What has led you to think we sell this kind of stone?”
    Ford reached into his pocket and pulled out a stack of American gold eagles and let them fall to the felt, one by one, with a dull clinking. Boonmee didn’t even appear to look at the coins. But Ford could see the pulse in his neck quicken. Funny how the sight of gold did that.
    “That’s to open the conversation.”
    Boonmee smiled, a curiously innocent, sweet expression that lit up his small face. His hand closed over the coins and slipped them into his pocket. He leaned back in his chair. “I think, Mr. Mandrake, that we will have a good conversation.”
    “My client is a wholesaler in the U.S. looking for at least ten thousand carats of raw stone to cut and sell. I myself am not a gem dealer; I wouldn’t know a diamond from a piece of glass. I’m what you might call an ‘import facilitator’ when it comes to, ah, getting shipments through U.S. Customs.” Ford allowed a certain braggadoccio to creep into his voice.
    “I see. But ten thousand carats is impossible. At least, right away.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “The stones are rare. They’re coming out slowly. And I’m not the only gem dealer in Bangkok. I can start you off with a few hundred carats. We can work up from there.”
    Ford shifted in his seat, frowned. “You aren’t going to ‘start me off’ at all, Mr. Boonmee. This is a one-shot deal. Ten thousand carats or I walk down the street.”
    “What is your price, Mr. Mandrake?”
    “Twenty percent higher than the going rate: six hundred American dollars an uncut carat. That’s six million dollars, in case math isn’t your strong suit.” Ford gave an appropriately stupid grin.
    “I will make a call. Do you have a card, Mr.