The General who was admiring her contours as she slept was one of those men. Although Savika’s Indian features were softened by her Thai blood, the heft of her full breasts belonged to an apsara, one of those curvaceous Hindu sprites decorating temples all over Southeast Asia.

In the quiet street far below the sleek new studio apartment which the General used as a garconniere, street hawkers were setting up their noodle carts in the pre-dawn, and steady streams of Japanese cars were already threading themselves through the Bangkok roads in a routine which was designed to beat the dreaded rush hour jams of Krung Thep, the City of Angels.

It was so early in the morning that nearly every car in that thick flow of traffic had a sleeping child strapped into the back seat, an authentic Bangkok angel dreaming in his or her school uniform. The natives of Bangkok love to boast that their children eat, sleep, study, and are even born in cars; the city’s traffic department has a squad of officers trained to nip through traffic jams on motorbikes and deliver babies in the gridlock.

Savika was sleeping so deeply that the General was able to use his cellphone to speak to his official driver without waking her. This was hardly surprising; the General was physically powerful, sexually experienced and was known to be a bold and demanding lover.

One of the national emblems of Thailand is the garuda, a fearsome and very virile male eagle which soared into Buddhist mythology via the Hindu culture that is at the root of so many things Thai. This includes the writing system, religious rituals, court etiquette, dance, music and art-even virtually every surname in the Kingdom. The Hindu God Krishna himself was said to have ridden into cosmic battles under a banner depicting this creature.