Black Tiger (22 page)

As I got out of the car and raised my hand to greet the rotund figure of the prince, I recalled one grizzled sergeant telling me, ‘Ain’t nobody believe that shit anyway, Colonel! Besides, our boys are straight out of the tabernacle choir.’ Then he added confidentially: ‘This one guy I met, down from Nam, he hired four massage parlour girls, took ‘em everywhere for five days—wined ‘em, dined ‘em, took ‘em on the goddamn Floating Market Tour for godssakes. Spent a thousand bucks on ‘em and borrowed another thousand from the R&R centre and flew back to Nam wearing a grin as wide as the Mississippi, and all he could say was, “Man, it was worth every damn cent!” Let’s face it, Colonel: if you had to choose between that and five days in Hawaii with the missus, griping about the mortgage and junior’s dental work, which would you choose?’ He had me there!

Thailand’s industrious sex workers and their problems were on my mind now as we walked out of the blazing sun into the underworld murk of the ‘day-night-club’. Prince Premsakul instructed our chauffeurs to drive three times round the block. The way the city traffic was, even during the lunch hour, it gave us a good ninety minutes. It’s not always sensible for recognisable vehicles to be seen parked around this city, especially official vehicles.

The club was so dim that even with the waiter’s pencil torch guiding us to the table, we groped about blindly. I signalled to a hovering hostess and ordered a couple of beers, holding up two fingers.
‘Song yaj!’

I was aware the old prince despised beer, especially the local brew. I ordered it just to see how the royal courtesy would stand the irritation, hoping to glean more from our conversation by tipping him off balance at the outset. I also reckoned fetching our beers, tottering through the gloom on six-inch heels, would distract our transvestite attendant for a while. You never know who’s listening in these joints, but you can bet your sweet ass somebody is.

On the small stage, in a pool of sickly light, what looked like a girl squealed an inappropriately sexual interpretation of one of the unsexiest hit songs ever, ‘Born Free’.

‘Bored flea,’ the artist squeaked, ‘flea at the window. Bored flea to furrow you hot.’

This made me laugh. The performer flashed a mean glare toward our table. I turned to my companion.

‘There are millions of ‘em, you know.’ The prince’s affected tone of deep concern didn’t have me fooled for a minute.

I sighed. ‘Forget them. In the unlikely event of a pandemic, the infected sector of the population must just be jettisoned. Believe you me, it’s for your country’s good, Prince. Any attempt at individual treatment would be futile. A criminal waste of resources.’

‘But this young man who came to me—son of a faithful old retainer, clever chap, studied science and all that…’

Old retainer, my eye and Betty Martin, but it’s somewhat difficult to say ‘bullshit’ to a Prince of the Blood. That is, if you want to stay on the right side of him, and I did. For now, anyway.

‘He swears they can produce a miracle drug at a giveaway cost, in sufficient quantities to cure millions…’

I leaned forward, trying to gauge his expression. ‘Sounds to me like a young man who’s too clever for his own good,’ I suggested. But my companion appeared preoccupied, eyeing the singer’s short, rotating golden legs in their fishnet tights. I’m a leg man myself, but give me a long-stemmed Vegas showgirl any day. I returned to the attack. ‘I suppose, Prince, you yourself financed this lad’s education, and now you’re regretting your generosity, huh?’

He stretched out his hand in a gesture expressing modesty and helplessness. ‘One does what one can.
Noblesse oblige
, and all that, dontcha know?’ If I hadn’t known better, the old rogue would have had me fooled. ‘Anyhow, this young chap claims he and his associates can produce this miracle drug at an affordable price. And more importantly, there’s this new disease he claims to have discovered. Says it appears incurable, could decimate the world population…’ He hesitated. ‘Would you believe, he even suggested it could be man-made. Deliberately engineered.’ He paused, his pensive gaze glued to the stage. ‘‘Straordinary notion, don’t you think, General? Few organizations would have either the foresight or the power…’

‘Well, Prince,’ I said, and I let a hard edge creep into my voice so he knew I meant business, ‘I’d suggest your son forgets all about that. With all possible despatch. Pronto!’

He was mumbling now, and I had to strain to catch his drift over the whining singer. ‘Young hothead…only hope no harm comes to him. His only crime the naïve enthusiasm of youth…’

I shifted my weight and tapped the ash off my cigarette. ‘Harm? No call to dramatise the situation. But there are corporate interests to be protected. That’s something you’ll readily appreciate, Prince.’ We sat in momentary silence. The girl on stage removed her sequined blouse and writhed around the microphone. It was a girl, after all, or else those were great implants. Impassively we watched the jiggling of her round, vulnerable breasts.

I decided to lay it on the line for him. ‘What proportion of Thailand’s foreign income is represented by wooden goods and jewellery?’ I asked, and, without pausing for a reply, I supplied the answer. ‘Some thirty per cent, I guess, a rough estimate. It’s never advisable to compromise major interests. Now, if word of this got out—if American drug companies were to perceive some cheap wonder drug as a threat, and if, by the same token, it were to emanate from Thailand, we’d be looking at a massive tariff increase on Thai exports. Massive, potentially prohibitive.’ I paused for a moment to let this sink in. The Asian mind is so devious it does not always recognise the beauty of a straightforward threat. ‘It would cripple the economy. It would be much better to forget all about miracle cures and pandemics and all that jazz. It’s hardly worth compromising Thailand’s GNP, to say nothing of international goodwill, for the sake of a handful of deadbeat junkies.’ I paused judiciously, and added, on a warmer, friendlier note, ‘We’ve got our own junkies, back home, you know. We shovel them up off the streets like debris. They made their choices, they’re stuck with ‘em. After all,
que sera, sera
, eh? If you get sick from fooling around, you get sick. Divine retribution.’

The beer arrived.

‘Can’t fuck with karma, Your Highness!’ I said. I scooped up a handful of the peanuts that accompanied our beer and tossed them one by one into my open mouth. The prince watched, though I sensed he disliked this small exhibition of vulgarity as much as he disliked the taste of beer. He appeared preoccupied, as though he were considering whether to speak out or bide his time. When he spoke, at last, I had the distinct impression it was not what he had originally intended, but it was sufficiently interesting for me to stop my clowning and give him my full attention.

‘This Dr Raven,’ he remarked conversationally. ‘Jolly interesting chap. Wonderfully well-read Johnny, actually,’ and I swear he smirked, though it could have been the lighting, or rather the lack of it, that created the illusion. ‘He seemed rather taken with me own piffling labourings in the poetic vineyard!’

‘Well, now, how d’ye like that?’ I muttered encouragingly. Dr Nathaniel Raven had interested me, too. I felt there was more going on there than met the eye, but his story had checked out. He’d had a brief romantic fling with the French Foreign Legion in his youth. Oddly enough, he’d met up with Angel Fleischer there. Fleischer, now promoted to major and installed as AMA, informed me Raven had gone into documentary filmmaking, done one or two interesting pieces, and now appeared to have sunk into academic obscurity as a university don.

‘Dabbled in investigative journalism, you know,’ the prince continued, moving the beer glass a little further away, but showing no more distaste than if it had been a chess piece in an undecided match. ‘Fascinating stuff! Thailand.’ Prince Premsakul sighed, feigning a fond self-deprecation. ‘It’s a funny, complex old place, and Dr Raven is rather the innocent abroad, what? Wouldn’t you agree? One wouldn’t want a chap like that to go poking his nose where it wasn’t wanted, falling foul of undesirable elements…or worse, getting the wrong end of the stick. Wouldn’t do at all.’

I decided that he was right about Raven. Innocence is dangerous, and if Raven got to know too much, he might shoot his mouth off to the wrong people. And the trouble with former investigative journalists is they never lose that nosy newshound’s fatal curiosity. They can never leave things alone. If Raven got what the prince called the ‘wrong end of the stick,’ he could screw everything up, including the major developments I had been primed to expect—and would be held responsible for.

Moreover, although sending our friend Colonel Sya Dam to the States seemed to have achieved the desired result, I remained unconvinced, as I think many others did, of the colonel’s true motives and allegiances. You’d have been publicly lynched if you’d dared to suggest it, in the face of the colonel’s apparent obsessive loyalty to the Thai crown. Still, there was much about the late king’s fatal accident that remained unexplained, at least to an old cynic like myself. On the face of it, there would appear to be no earthly reason for Sya Dam to wish his patron out of the way. But I reckoned old King Rama had known Sya too well. Intimate knowledge is always perceived as a threat by an ambitious man. I did not trust Sya Dam. But if some Limey freelancer were to have the ill luck, through stumbling into something that didn’t concern him, to attract the unwanted attention of Sya Dam, he might just wake up dead. And such a contingency could have unfortunate, not to say catastrophic, consequences for all of us. So, upon mature consideration of all these factors in the course of sipping my beer, I decided the moment had come for me to make an executive decision. However reluctantly, I must take Raven under my wing and save him from himself. For the moment, anyway.

I had that very morning been ordered to investigate certain remote locations for their operational feasibility. The operation in question was top secret, and all I knew was that it was big—big enough to transform the entire international situation. My field study would take me upcountry, and I was looking forward to being on the open road between the jungle and the paddy fields under a blue, unpolluted sky.

‘I’m going upcountry soon. Maybe I’ll invite the good professor along. Spot of sightseeing. He can meet the interesting character who runs the American Mission, and see a little more of your wonderful country. Keep him out of Bangkok.’

The Northwest American Mission is on the Burmese border, in the heart of the Golden Triangle. Western hacks and paparazzi, superannuated hippies, aspiring drug mules, hopeful hopheads, and goggling gawpers from many nations regard this area with fascination. If Raven shared this universal curiosity, it would be better for everyone, including Raven himself, if he explored it under supervision.

Prince Premsakul smiled. The light on the stage was now a bilious violet colour, and his small pointed teeth glittered in his dark face like amethysts. ‘I am sure Dr Raven would find such an excursion both enjoyable and informative. You Americans are so hospitable. It is a noble quality! As for that other business, I take your point entirely. There will be no trouble about it.’

‘Excellent!’ I grinned, swilled down my beer, and paid. That was how we left it.

The prince’s car was waiting outside the lunchtime club. The air conditioner was on full blast, and the interior was pleasantly cool. The chauffeur closed the door and Prince Premsakul settled back into the leather seat with a sigh of satisfaction. As the big car nosed out into the almost stationary traffic, he reflected on his meeting with the American. He hoped that he had, by alerting van Hooten, ensured support for his discouragement of Toom’s rash endeavours, as well as ensuring protection for his son, if that foolish young man were to let anything slip about his groundbreaking discoveries. It would be convenient to have Raven removed from the scene for a while.

But, he mused, what would the general and his fox-haired lady say when they found out about their dear little daughter? Would the revelation alter the general’s views on divine retribution? Miss Genty, that little cutie, Prince Premsakul reflected. Such an unlikely product of the unimaginable union of those two ugly
farangs
, the hairy pink peanut-chomping pig and the bony vixen with the waxwork face.

Genty was such a naughty little schoolgirl, such a tireless, inventive little minx, this all-American gum-chewing daughter, with braces on her teeth and the Mickey Mouse hair bobbles! She deserved her jolly good spankings! Such a pity, he thought wistfully, that pert little Genty, like all the others, would be used up so soon. That she could not continue forever young, healthy, and enthusiastic. Momentarily depressed by this reflection, he cheered himself up by speculating maliciously on the reactions of her fond parents when little Genty’s luck ran out. If Toom were right, how would the gallant general react, the one who had so blithely written off millions of Thailand’s indigenous sex workers?

Prince Premsakul smiled more widely than ever. How interesting life was! However, he reflected soberly, children were a trial, even one’s own. Toom and Pim needed a sharp reminder. So difficult, rearing children in modern times, he mused, especially with a wife who was incapacitated by migraines so much of the time. No wonder a poor harassed father had to seek his diversions where he could find them.

He dabbed fastidiously at his lips with a small square of silk to rid them of the foul taste of Thai beer. The American had no doubt meant well, had intended his offering as a tribute to local products—but, like so much of what foreigners did, it was clumsy and misplaced. ‘Not the faintest idea of what’s what!’ he murmured to himself. ‘Not an inkling, poor dear chaps!’ He tapped on the glass. The chauffeur had worked for the prince for many years. He nodded and swerved to the left, plunging the big car into the narrow backstreets, clearing coolies off the road with its blaring horn as it sped toward a familiar establishment.