Black Tiger (36 page)

‘Obvious. No bandit makes a daylight raid across river unless he feels secure, feels he has unseen backup.’

‘But he didn’t. They wiped him out.’

‘True.’ Sya pulled a face of mock regret. ‘On this occasion, his terrorist allies let him down. Too bad.’ He waved a hand. ‘Look! Sleeping beauty!’

The helicopter pilot was asleep in his seat. He held his cap in his hands. Behind one ear he had tucked a small wild orchid. In his innocent slumber he smiled, puckering his lips like a dozing infant.

Sya kicked the pilot’s seat viciously. ‘
Bai Hua Hin diawnee, krup
!’ He barked. ‘Hua Hin, let’s go, please.’ Even as he kicked the seat, he added
‘krup’,
a word men used to show civility. He was more than tough. He was a barbarian. By displaying aggressive good manners he made sure nobody dared remind him of the fact.

It had been a satisfactory outing.

Raven knew he had been taken along as both witness and alibi, and it irked him. Though he was no stranger to violence, he’d had no forewarning. He was still shocked by the suddenness, and at the same time he wondered about the meaning of the brief military engagement he and Sya had been spying on. Over the chopper’s roar he shouted,

‘What will happen to Salikaa, Colonel?

‘If she is wise, she will accept my cousin and retire from court for a while, if not forever. She has made many enemies in the short time she has been there. Enemies are bad for the health.’ He smiled. ‘I think you did not enjoy your day, Doctor Raven. A little roughhouse, as you say.’

‘It was interesting, Colonel, I assure you.’

‘I am so glad.’ Sya smiled smoothly, and Raven realised that this had been a display of Sya’s power to orchestrate events, and of the quality of his intelligence network. Most of all, it was another subtle warning, and Raven again found himself breathing fast and shallow. His spine tingled, and the hairs on his neck rose.

Salikaa, once fortune’s darling, went without protest to be married to a beetle-browed Neanderthal with a greasy pigtail and green teeth. She went without a friend to fasten up the back of her dress, only the personal maid Sya had appointed to attend her. Salikaa could not yet make up her mind whether the girl Pawn was a spy or whether she was just simple-minded, but either way, she loathed her immediately, as a servant of the unspeakable Sya, and called her the ex-tart.

Pim, still drowning in grief for her brother, felt Salikaa bore the responsibility for Toom’s death. Chee Laan was preoccupied with the affairs of her family, and absorbed in the fascination of her newfound acquaintance with Raven. Salikaa felt herself alone, and closer to despair than she would have thought possible.

She had raved and stormed, begging for an interview—five minutes even—with the young king. She had encountered a slippery-smooth wall of implacable courtesy, with no handholds. Prince Toom’s mother and the Princess Regent had allied themselves with Sya, accepting his suggestion of an alternative bridegroom with gratitude and sighs of relief. Embarrassment and tragedy were bad enough; scandal must be avoided at all costs. Salikaa must be spirited away from court with all haste before she could do any more damage.

And Vichai, Salikaa’s doting stepfather, her last resort, her bastion, was gone—his empire dispersed, his troops, for the most part, dead, dispossessed as pariah dogs. He had received an obituary of sorts in the columns of the
Bangkok Herald
. Salikaa had read it, weeping and snorting with rage.

Successful Anti-Terrorist Action

Gallant officers and men of the Border Patrol Police counter-insurgency forces yesterday achieved a major breakthrough in the campaign against communist terrorists when they successfully put down an armed rising by communist-influenced bandits who have long terrorised the northeast. Brigand chief Vichai Kiengsri, notorious for extortion and violence, was shot to death in the encounter. The BPP received support from U.S. special detail troops who happened to be on manoeuvres in the area from nearby Korat Airbase.

The BPP had no casualties to report…

Salikaa’s last rational act was to cut out the piece, fold it carefully, and slip it inside her bra. The royal physicians then administered tranquilizers to subdue her. As the sedative took effect, Salikaa struggled to marshal her thoughts. Her head felt as heavy as lead. Her limbs seemed to belong to someone else. Nothing made sense anymore. Why had Vichai, always so suspicious, and cunning as a rat, allowed himself to be lured from his lair, to be cornered and shot to pieces in broad daylight? Had he lost his touch, or had he been betrayed? Had she herself been used to bait the trap? Did she have his death on her conscience, as well as the disappearance of her bodyguard Tamsin, dispatched on a mission of vengeance and never to return? It had all been going so well. Now her universe was disintegrating. Everything was evaporating, falling apart, breaking up. The reek of death and betrayal was thick in her nostrils as she succumbed to oblivion.

Raven

It was two days after the gun battle I’d witnessed with Sya Dam. The Drinkwaters and their household, under the spell of Laila, personification of the artistic, zany, laid-back sixties, now showed Chee Laan up to my suite as a matter of course, brought us refreshment, and then stayed discreetly in the background. What they thought privately I never knew.

Chee Laan and I sat on my veranda, scanning the paper. I read the English and sometimes, slowly, the Thai; Chee Laan compared the versions published in the English, Thai, and Chinese papers, absorbing the gist in as short a time as it took me to struggle with a paragraph of Thai curlicues. It took me a moment to connect the
Herald
article with the violent exchange of fire I’d witnessed with Sya.

‘Border Patrol Police!’ I thumped the page incredulously. ‘The gunman who shot the leader of the boatmen was a huge black soldier!’

She shrugged. ‘What do you expect? BPP is Sya’s show. The glory boys. Let’s see what that drooling social columnist has to say about the wedding of the year.
Sanita’s Social Roundabout, Bangkok Herald.
’

With barely concealed scorn, she read:

‘Their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess Regent today graciously sponsored the nuptial celebrations of Salikaa Kiengsri (Miss Thailand) to Khun Vasit, cousin of Colonel Sya Dam, of the Border Patrol Police. After being granted audiences with their Royal Highnesses, the happy couple received guests at a sumptuous reception held in a pavilion on the grounds of Chitr Lada Palace. The banquet was attended by the crème de la crème of city society, the great and the good, all the beautiful people of the City of Angels, Thai and farang Thet, members of the court, and foreign diplomats. (For a description of the fashions, the bridal gown, etc., see photo spread feature, p. 9-10).’

Chee Laan read it aloud mockingly. ‘Not quite what Salikaa planned,’ she said in her normal light ironic tone.

The story kick-started my memory of that extraordinary day. We had both been invited to the ceremony. As we approached the palace, I’d asked her if the breathless haste of the marriage didn’t shock people. She said, ‘Why should it? The royal astronomers have calculated the auspicious moment. At dawn today the happy couple offered food to the monks to ensure abundant merit. The religious ceremony itself takes place at 15.02 precisely, as calculated by the Brahmins. Everything is perfectly arranged. But, Raven, look at Salikaa! What have they done to her—she’s like a zombie!’

Salikaa moved like a sleepwalker. Out of her artfully tinted face, surmounted by the lacquered coils of her coiffure, her hollow eyes stared, unseeing. At her side, her bridegroom ignored her, picking his green teeth with a long black fingernail, sucking with a small hiss any stray scraps of food. Under a gaudily striped marquee the Royal Thai Navy Orchestra sawed and puffed its way through its ‘B’ repertoire—’Songs from the Shows.’ Screening the bridal party, jasmine buds threaded on palm fronds created a Brussels lace effect. The wedding guests congregated excitedly, clothed in their best apparel. Uniforms clanked with medals, the ladies dazzled like starbursts in their jewelled and beaded silks. Members of the media, officially invited to cover the wedding of Miss Thailand, and unofficially in order to avert any outpouring of speculation, scribbled feverishly on their notepads, their natural cynicism for once overawed by the flood of titled glitterati.

Khamthorn, the photographer, oblivious to everything but the angle of his next shot, backed into Chee Laan, jumped as if burnt, and, upon recognizing her, bowed low, mumbling a horrified apology. Chee Laan smiled.

‘Candid camera shots,
Khun
Khamthorn?’ He grinned sheepishly, baring his betel-dark gums. Chee Laan whispered to me: ‘He’s a closet Chinese chauvinist and repressed anarchist. He photographs every riot and demonstration, whatever his assignments. If the
Herald
daren’t print the controversial ones, he markets them to foreign wire services!’

Now Pim approached, smiling. Khamthorn disappeared into the throng. Pim slipped her arm though Chee Laan’s and kissed her cheek. The man who had followed Pim cleared his throat, and the girls drew apart. Prince Premsakul stood there, beaming like a beacon, solid and imperturbable as a polished brass Buddha. He greeted me genially, but his smile concealed irritation as he looked at Chee Laan.

Prince Premsakul addressed me. ‘Simply ‘straordinary! Even m’daughter’s pinko chums couldn’t have dreamt this one up, what? Coupla Johnny nobodies, and all this laid on for ‘em!’ He spread his hands, indicating the scene. ‘Royal-sponsored wedding, I ask you! We all know the illustrious Colonel Sya, who does not? But this chap? This cousin, or whatever…and the girl? Oh, a pretty enough little thing, in her way, I grant you, but who is she? Nobody knows—or at least, not to one’s satisfaction…’

‘Yet you were willing to let Salikaa join our family.’ Pim’s eyes were accusative.

Her father sighed. ‘What does one not do for one’s beloved son?’ He spoke to me over her head, with sanctimonious self-congratulation and sublime operatic pathos. Pim clenched her fist and chewed her lip. Prince Premsakul, smiling still, said, ‘We must present our gifts.’ He led the way toward the pavilion, Pim following moodily in his wake.

At the door of the inner pavilion the greeter and gift-assessor received us, offering a golden coronet-shaped salver upon which to place our offerings. Courtiers alternated with Sya Dam, the only apparent relative, to perform this function.

Chee Laan moved close, whispering, ‘The bigger the packet, the gaudier the wrapper, the greater the face gained. It will be noted. But don’t expect it to be acknowledged, or even referred to ever again.’

Down the long table towered a mountain range of costly packages. After placing our gifts on the salvers, we were ushered into a two-tiered galleried hall. The Asian guests huddled close to the walls in respectful anticipation. A few
farangs
surged into the vacant centre, filling it with their big, awkward bodies and their barking voices. Palace staff had to restrain some from throwing themselves prematurely upon the buffet.

The orchestra abandoned the Blue Danube for the national anthem. The Princess Regent swept in, swathed in a cloud of apricot chiffon. Now the bridal couple, wreathed with jasmine, moved among the guests, distributing wedding favours, miniature glasses filled with sandalwood chips and engraved with an intertwined V and S in Thai script. When at last they resumed their seats at the top table, a foreign correspondent thrust a microphone into Salikaa’s face.

‘Is this a love match, Miss Thailand?’ He did not trouble to keep the incredulous sneer out of his voice.

The scowling bridegroom lunged, grabbing the reporter by the collar. He seized the microphone and thrust it into the man’s mouth. The reporter broke free, gagging, clutching at his bleeding lip. Servants quickly escorted him away. Salikaa’s bridegroom bared his teeth, then relapsed into his former torpor. His mouth fell slackly open. The membranes of his broad nose vibrated, and he snored. His greasy pigtail tumbled over his shoulder into his plate.

Sya approached us. ‘So, Raven, what d’you think, eh?’

‘Your cousin is a remarkable-looking man,’ I said.

Sya flashed his white teeth. ‘Believe me, he has a personality to match.’

We surveyed each other in silence. Sya’s triple row of medals dangled almost to his waist. Temporarily awake, the bridegroom too was staring at Sya, revealing his unhealthy teeth and betel-red gums in a jovial grimace. He pulled out a lump of semi-masticated food and threw it on the floor. Impassive, swooping like a Wimbledon ball-boy, a butler swept up the offending mass in his white-gloved hands and removed it.

Sya sighed. ‘He could have had his place at court, you know.’ He jerked his head toward the bridegroom. ‘Tame tribesmen, like tame cheetahs, are at a premium. Every privilege I enjoy could have been his for the asking.’

He moved to a small alcove overlooking a flowerbed. He leaned upon the stone balustrade, turning his gaze from the interior, where the brilliant guests strutted and preened, to the green lawns where the peacocks paraded and shrieked under the shade trees. I followed him, taking up a position leaning on the balustrade at his side.

Presently Sya said, ‘I guess you know the old story about Dog and Wolf. Stock in trade of every English teacher I ever met. First reading book. They imagine Orientals adore parables and epigrams. Anyway, Dog tries to recruit Wolf to serve Man. Wolf is attracted by the description of the creature comforts the Dog enjoys—the fireside, the food, and so on. He agrees to join Dog. But on the way to the village, the moonlight glints on Dog’s chain. “What’s that?” Wolf asks. “That? Oh, that’s just where they chain me up,” says Dog. “Goodbye, Dog,” Wolf calls, running back to the forest.’

‘Ah!’ I murmured. ‘Freedom; the last glorious deception.’ I wondered if Sya were one of those who seek power, dazzled by the illusion that power and freedom are the same. ‘I didn’t know there were wolves in Thailand,’ I prompted.