Black Tiger (33 page)

Sya grinned. ‘I might know that. But the Americans don’t.’

‘Since when do the Americans interfere in internal Thai matters?’

He laughed delightedly at her naïveté. ‘You’re so innocent, poppet. Our gallant allies help us secure our borders against the Red Threat.’ He grasped her chin in an iron grip, turning her face this way and that, scrutinising. ‘That Threat is wherever we see it. Wherever I see it.’

Salikaa reached out, cupped his chin, and brought her face close to his. She bit down on his mouth until she tasted his blood; Sya brought his fist up and hit her so hard that she flew across the room. Her legs struck the divan and buckled under her, and she sprawled backward onto the silk cushions. She thought her jaw might be broken. Only stubborn pride prevented her from fingering it to assess the damage.

Blood snaked down from Sya’s lip. With a muttered curse he wiped it off on the back of his hand.

‘If you’re going to play grown-up games you’ll need to grow up first, little mouse,’ he said dispassionately. He turned his back on her and walked from the room.

‘I’ll kill you!’ she hissed after his retreating back. She drove her long fingernails into her palms until they drew blood. ‘Fuck you, you bastard!’

After a while, when all was silent but for the distant ocean and the cicadas in the garden, and nobody came, not the cowering servants nor the curious guards, Salikaa sat up and examined her jawbone and decided it was merely bruised, an insignificant injury indeed for a survivor of Lieutenant Fleischer’s school of hard knocks. Nothing a dab of cologne, an ice pack, and a good foundation cream could not disguise. It was the insult that really stung. But there again, she might, if she wished, capitalise on it; publicly denounce Colonel Sya for his unprovoked assault. But no, this was not the right moment. She must play her cards carefully in the future. Now, more than ever, Salikaa needed Tamsin. But Tamsin had not returned from his last assignment, and this could mean only that he was in prison, or dead. If Fleischer had killed Tamsin, it would be highly inconvenient. It meant Tamsin could not do the world the inestimable favour of stifling the odious Colonel Sya Dam.

Idly, Salikaa wondered what had become of her young fiancé. Perhaps, she thought, she should go in search of him—he had looked so wild-eyed and extravagant, spouting all that rubbish. His Majesty had swallowed the bait, but Toom was still needed. A bird in the hand was worth two in the hedge. Or whatever the ridiculous
farang
proverb was.

Raven

So much
, I thought,
for my airy promise to Chee Laan to keep an eye on Salikaa.
I’d watched her little interplay with the young king with a growing sense of unease and foreboding. A whole Panzer division could not have looked out for Salikaa. Salikaa was a kamikaze on a self-appointed collision course.

When the king left the hall, the music died. As if the orchestra had been the last bastion of discipline, the silk-clad courtiers became a marketplace rabble, breaking up into little knots, whispering, squeaking, hands fluttering, their eyes wild with speculation.

The Prince Regent beckoned to Sya, silent as a shadow. The chatter stopped. Watched by a hundred pairs of eyes, curious, jealous, anxious, Sya inclined his shaven head with humility, then rose and saluted, leaving the hall at a purposeful lope.

Clearly, he had been despatched to find the king and present him to them once more, before face had suffered too disastrous a loss. The pillared hall seethed with speculation. Conversation flickered, sporadic now, voices muted, anxious to excuse a young and impetuous king. Prince Premsakul reappeared, smiling to everyone. He took his place beside his family. I noticed that none of them spoke to one another, and that the boy Toom had not returned to the hall.

Covertly I watched the Princess Regent. Her heartbreaking smile never wavered as she shredded the dark purple orchids with waxy tapering fingers. Hours seemed to pass before we heard again the hurried stamp of the colonel’s boots. Ahead of him the young king stalked back into the hall, to an audible sigh of relief, those he passed bowing to the dust like jungle grass flattened by helicopter rotors. The boy appeared breathless and angry. His struggle to control such a breach of manners was touching, but he had changed. Arrogance had given way to a self-contained, petulant pride. Modestly, he took his place beside his guardians. A liveried usher hastened off on some new mission, and as the Premsakul family, father, mother, and daughter, watched him go, Pim frowned. Her pale brow contracted with worry. I sensed her fear, and that it was only her disciplined upbringing that kept her sitting there like a statue when she was longing to break free and leap to her feet.

Sya Dam bowed before the Prince Regent, shaking his head regretfully in response to some unheard query. Dismissed with an anxious glance from the prince, the colonel walked determinedly over to where I was sitting. He stood looking down at me, smiling broadly.

‘May I sit here, Dr Raven?’

‘Delighted, Colonel.’ The elderly general and his lady who had been sitting with me, courteously rehearsing the litany of politeness—have you eaten noodles, can you eat
nam pla
, how many temples have you visited, do you find the climate of Bangkok intolerable—now excused themselves and moved away, with, I fancied, considerable relief. Sya looked briefly across at the young king, sitting very straight on his velvet chaise longue.

‘His Majesty was easy to find. Now they have sent another emissary to find Prince Toom. Then everything will settle down.’ I doubted that very much, but Sya leaned back in his chair expansively, smiling more broadly than ever. ‘Ah! The ways of the Thai court, a sacred mystery to foreigners such as ourselves, eh, Dr Raven?’

Sya carefully set his radio on the table between us. He glanced at me as if challenging me to question his foreign status, sizing me up. I allowed my eyebrows to twitch just sufficiently to indicate slight interest rather than vulgar curiosity.

‘Make no mistake. I am a tribesman. To these people, I am a dangerous animal. I belong in a zoo.’ Sya looked at my expression and laughed. ‘Oh, yes, indeed so! The Thais are well aware of this. In that charming northern capital, Chiengmai, Rose of the North, they have established a human zoo. There, the interested visitor may view specimens from each tribe—except the Spirits of the Yellow Leaves, aboriginals, so few, so pathologically shy that no one can get close to them. They keep the tame tribespeople in an enclosure. It is convenient for photo opportunities. Tourists can shudder at the barbarity, squalor, and ignorance on display.’ His bull neck seemed to thicken as anger suffused his broad golden face. He gripped the radio in a powerful, short-fingered grip like a bear’s paw, and banged it gently up and down on the table, shaking the single orchid spray in its fragile vase. ‘People do not realise that the tribes are a disgrace to this country, an affront to the administration and the royal family themselves, who are doing everything in their power to improve conditions, enhance the tribes’ social status and self-esteem.’

I grunted. ‘I don’t suppose being kept in a zoo does much for the self-esteem of any species.’

‘A zoo is all the tribes are fit for,’ Sya snapped. ‘Before real progress can be made, the opium trade must be stamped out. Our government have been very patient. They realise these people live far from civilisation, remote not only geographically, but also spiritually. They inhabit a savage world of primitive violence, peopled by ghosts, steeped in filth and ignorance. It’s hard to persuade such people of the advantages of growing peaches instead of opium. They don’t know what peaches are. They don’t want to know. Opium they know.’

Sya shifted in his chair, tilted back and stuck his feet out straight in front of him.

‘No Thai would sit like this,’ he said. ‘Show the soles of my feet!’ He saw me looking at his boots and laughed. ‘Sure. I keep my boots on. Even in drawing rooms. Know why, eh?’ His eyes challenged me. ‘I never saw boots until I was twelve years old. Look at my head!’ He twisted his shapely naked skull. The sharp-pointed ears seemed pinned back, like an animal’s, questing the wind. ‘I used to pluck the hairs out of my skull one by one, and leave the back part hanging down in a pigtail. I was the first male of my tribe to have that pigtail cut off. After they did it, I lay awake sweating in terror for three days and three nights. The Thai priests, they told me it would be okay. Everything hunky-dory. But I was sure the spirits would steal my mind. I watched myself for signs I was going mad. I didn’t dare go to sleep. I knew they’d come for me!’ He smiled mirthlessly at the recollection. ‘Some dumb fuck, huh?’

‘You don’t seem to have much respect for the tribes. That must make your job difficult,’ I suggested quietly.

Sya looked at me. ‘How, difficult?’

‘I thought you were part of the government propaganda machine,’ I said. ‘Rallying the tribes, all that.’

‘Oh, the tribes have royalty fever just like everyone else in this country. Even the Akha will trek through the mountains for days for a glimpse of the Princess Regent’s petticoat.’

‘So they’re not terrorists.’

‘Don’t believe all you hear. Terrorists, dog-eaters, drinkers of blood. All big-style bullshit. Pigs and opium. That’s all my people know. Hopeless people.’

He leaned forward, scraping his boots back beneath his chair, jabbing at me with a stubby forefinger.

‘My father grew the poppy all his days. They would tell him to plant another crop, but somehow it never worked out. Then they sent experts. In Thailand these days, we’re knee-deep in experts. The experts advised my father to abandon agriculture. They lured him, and the tribe, with the promise of a comfortable life in a state reservation. So he led his people, a hundred or more, through the jungle for days. Through those mountains where there are no tracks—they had to cut their way through. They took all they had: pregnant sows and pregnant women, old folks, babies, cooking pots, gods, sacred symbols and opium. They were never going back. They were going to start a new life in security and comfort.

‘It was hard to find their way to the town, but in the end they made it, and then they were happy, for they were going to be part of things at last—in touch with the centre, the kernel strength of the nation. Know what happened?’

I shook my head, reluctant to interrupt his flow.

‘They were turned away. Too many tribespeople wanted places in the reservation. The land allocation was inadequate. In short, somebody had goofed. Or it had been intended like that all along.’

‘So what did they do?’

Sya regarded me without expression. ‘What should they have done? For a day or two they sat around on the ground. Some of the foreign experts and Thai officials took their pictures.’

I’d seen some of those award-winning anthropological studies, giant blow-ups mounted on chipboard screens. Zeiss and Leica had lingered lovingly on those handsome, sullen people, picking out every detail of the richly ornamented costume, every lineament of the proud, hard-bitten countenances.

‘My tribe still wears the scarlet, black, and silver,’ Sya said. ‘It shows up well. The women’s headdresses are especially photogenic. They decorate them with old silver coins and scarlet feathers. They wear them from puberty to death, never take them off.’

‘Awkward in the shower,’ I quipped, and immediately regretted it.

Sya snorted with laughter. ‘You kidding? Akha don’t shower! What do you think we are—you imagine we go in for ritual bathing before entertaining customers, like some Thai tart? Three times is enough for any body to be washed. At birth, marriage, and after death. Washing is dangerous. Water spirits. Worst of the lot.’ He looked at me a little longer than necessary. ‘Tribesmen fear spirits and devils, it’s true. But the most powerful devil of all is the secret devil that lives inside every tribesman. The devil that never dies.’

I felt a prickling sensation along my spine, the fine hairs stirred on my neck. The warning was clear. Sya smiled, his eyes almost disappearing behind the bulging cheekbones, like a Japanese garden Buddha, both genial and malign.

‘I do not think my brother officers will find Prince Toom,’ he said. ‘I guess I’ll go help. Excuse me.’ The smile disappeared; only the warning remained. While I sat thinking about this, I heard a low voice close to my ear.

‘Dr Raven.’ Suddenly the Princess Pim was beside me, her narrow face darkened with anxiety. I looked at her trembling lips and half rose, pulling out the chair for her. ‘Forgive the intrusion. I have a feeling that something really bad has happened to my brother. He—he was so distressed.’

Then I knew. If something bad hadn’t happened to Toom, it was about to. ‘Excuse me, Princess!’ I said, setting off as fast as I could after Sya’s retreating figure.

My exit was blocked by the sturdy figure of van Hooten, who had been listening unashamedly from the next table. He too swung into decisive action. ‘You go on over and visit some with your momma, young lady,’ he said to Pim, ‘and the doc here and I will offer our services. We’ll stroll around, do a recce, and report back in due course. But there’s surely no need to upset yourself. Boys will be boys, eh, Raven?’

Pim’s eyes stayed on my face, unwavering. ‘We’re very close. I have this really bad premonition…’ she entreated.

Van Hooten dropped an avuncular paw on her slender shoulder. I saw her wince at the liberty, and just as quickly control herself, standing meekly with the large freckled hand creasing her dark blue silk dress.

‘Now, never you fret, Princess! We’ll bring your brother back, dead or alive!’ He guffawed at his own wit. The girl rose, and looked from one to the other of us, the blood draining from her face.

I followed van Hooten at forced-march pace along the sea, a dark, breathing presence that was visible only as the small waves broke, showing their white teeth. Further down the quiet beach other searchers ran, torches bobbing. The torches converged; voices were raised. I broke into a run. Beside me, running easily for such a big man, the American kept pace. The torch beams flickered over the blue, green, and scarlet hulls of the beached sailing dinghies.