BROTHER ZERO

In the late 1990s Rana Mitter and Colby Snow were two very different young journalists in Southeast Asia chasing the ghosts of Pol Pot. Twenty-five years later the daring Colby is dead. And Rana, always in Colby’s shadow, sees his modest dreams dying too. His career is adrift and his marriage to a demanding Bangkok banking heiress is in trouble when the 40- ish Rana attends Colby’s funeral. Afterwards, he drives up a cold mountain to Colby’s rural cabin. Awaiting him there is a long hidden jungle interview of Pol Pot that Colby did days before the tyrant’s death. Rana’s luck proves short lived. Walking through Bangkok’s airport 24 hours later, tape in hand, he is abducted and taken to Sara the “yaba queen,” a violent drug lord with a penchant for muscular “muay thai” fighters and an obsession with her father: Pol Pot. Dismissive of the tape Rana has found, Sara threatens “Good Student” Rana. “I am your teacher now,” she says to him, and if the “real tape” isn’t found in 72 hours Rana will pay a brutal price for failure: His young family will die. Standing in Rana’s way is a ruthless American ambassador, the Golden Triangle drug lords and a besieged billion-dollar Southeast Asia tin mine. All are linked to Pol Pot’s missing tape. Rana’s search also dredges up the dark past behind his wife’s banking fortune and Rana’s own dormant guilt and corrosive self- doubt. By Rana’s side is his old boss, Bertie, a grizzled British editor gone to seed in the bars of Bangkok. Bertie helps Rana recover his faith in himself. In tow are a team of young reporters who work for Rana and who want to break the story of their lives. “I had given up expecting those last words, whose ring, if they could be pronounced, would shake both heaven and earth,” said Conrad’s Marlowe at the end of Heart of Darkness. Will Rana hear Pol Pot’s “last words”? If so, at what terrible price?