Black Tiger (10 page)

‘How do you make that out?’ Raven asked, trying to keep his voice from betraying his resentment. This catalogue of his qualities and achievements, recited by a stranger, was highly irritating.

James Smith sighed theatrically, as Raven himself might sigh over the obtuseness of a student. ‘Why did you leave the Legion, Dr Raven?’

Raven knew the question was rhetorical, designed to force him to an acknowledgement of Smith’s own conclusion regarding Raven’s patriotism, or lack of it. Amused, he decided to play along. ‘My mother became ill. I decided not to re-enlist.’

The mild-mannered gentleman swooped forward, bringing his face startlingly close to Raven’s. ‘Ah! I mistook disenchantment for truth!’

Raven, despite his intentions, found himself answering, ‘Grapevine suggested our next undertaking might well run contrary to the interests of this country.’

Smith smiled, as if an unpromising pupil had at last come up with the goods. ‘Precisely. And now, Dr Raven, you continue to make meteoric forays into the media limelight from the ivory towers. However, your recent documentaries have been concerned with subjects more closely related to your real fields, zoology and environmental science. The plight of mountain gorillas, the return of the wolf and brown bear to parts of Western Europe, and the consequent implications for local farmers. Playing it safe these days, Dr Raven?’

Now it was Raven’s turn to smile. ‘You’d be surprised. People are more passionate about animals than anything else except sex and football. You get more death threats for suggesting a wolf cull than for denying the Holocaust.’ He paused, looking Smith straight in the eye. ‘I still don’t understand your interest.’

‘I liked your work on Singapore.’

Raven nodded noncommittally. Many people had liked his work on Singapore. He hoped he was not needy enough to treasure compliments.

‘You’re considered something of an Asia specialist, Dr Raven.’

‘Hardly that.’ Raven had started on his pasta, and now glanced up at the other man over a fork wreathed in what looked like golden knitting. He set it down, feeling the need to explain. ‘Asia presents an infinitely complex picture in every respect. Coming to grips with the Asian reality—
any
Asian reality—is like grappling with a bag of eels in the bilges of a leaky rowboat. Contradictions, revocations, disavowals,
voltes-faces
. Besides, Asia’s a big place. There are many Asias.’

‘Siam.’

Smith’s use of the old-fashioned name jolted Raven off balance. The loss of equilibrium bothered him. He hoped it didn’t show.

‘Nothing’s going on in Siam,’ he said slowly. ‘Enlightened constitutional monarchy. The occasional bloodless coup, skirmishes on the borders, but a relatively stable society for decades. Amazingly so, when you think of the situation in contiguous countries—Burma, Cambodia, China, not to mention the Vietnam mess.’

‘Precisely. Siamese stability is vital to the Western interest. It gives us a foothold in the area. Thailand’s never been colonised, but it is friendly to the West. Not only do the Americans have airbases there—essential to the engagement in Vietnam—but, despite Southeast Asia’s bad memories of World War II, Japanese businesses function there, too. Thailand’s usefulness as gateway, as neutral meeting place, can hardly be overestimated. The Thais remain responsible for their own administration and running their own affairs to their own satisfaction, and with a popular monarch, Thailand’s stability is vital to many international interests.’

‘So all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds?’ Raven provoked.

Smith blinked tolerantly. ‘So long as nothing rocks the boat. The world…or rather, we cannot afford any untoward events to jeopardise that stability. Any developments tending to point that way must be nipped in the bud. We would need to know well in advance and not allow it to happen.’

‘
We
being who, exactly?’ Raven interrupted impatiently.

The other man waved this aside. ‘Let us say interested parties close to the bridge—people concerned with world progress and the fate of nations.’ His tone was ironic. Seeing his response only partially satisfied Raven, James Smith leaned forward, pushed his half-empty plate aside, and rested both elbows on the table. ‘We need someone on the spot for a while, Dr Raven—someone capable of forecasting the weather. Someone with political insight, linguistic ability—we know you speak French, Arabic, and German, and you have some Malay—someone for whom no implausible cover story need be devised. As a reputable academic and acclaimed investigative journalist, your own cover, for example, would be ideal: you are investigating the decline of the great hornbill, assessing the long-term effects of slash-and-burn agricultural policies, and, if need be, the opium cash crop in the Golden Triangle.’

He touched the cloth napkin to the corners of his mouth, delicately as a cat, his eyes never leaving Raven’s face.

‘There’ll be formalities: signing the usual papers, proper briefings from those better informed.’

‘And who might they be?’ Raven tried to control his truculence.

Smith simpered, eyebrows arching like circumflexes above his expr-essionless eyes. ‘I am merely Ganymede, cup-bearer to the gods.’ He bowed in mock reverence. ‘The gods who will reveal themselves in their own time. Oh, and get Bellwether’s Thai experts to give you a few lessons in the lingo. Officially, you’ll be on a cultural exchange—give a few lectures, make a few studies, hand out a bit of free expertise to a worthy local project or two. Your full salary plus emoluments will be paid into your local account as usual. And you’ll not find us ungrateful. This assignment is not entirely devoid of potential hazards.’

‘Danger money?’ Raven’s lip curled in a half grin.

Smith, totally unfazed, allowed his simper to appear once more. ‘From what one hears of the Legion, hardly more hazardous than you are accustomed to—but yes, it would be unrealistic to exclude some small element of risk.’

Raven interrupted him. ‘And how are the Thais going to feel about it?’

‘Take it from me, they will be delighted. In exchange for you, a Thai student will attend our business school. Business! That’s all they want these days: commerce and technology. A mercenary and mechanical age we live in, Dr Raven! Distressing for an old Luddite like myself.’

The self-deprecating smile implied that Smith did not allow much to distress him.

‘Why me?’ Raven demanded, suddenly weary of playing games.

The grey man’s eyes widened innocently. ‘But, my dear Raven, I’ve just told you. You’ve the right background and qualifications. Moreover, we’ve established that you are a patriot.’

‘And why should I agree?’ Raven suppressed a cold shiver of anger.

‘Have I misjudged you?’ Smith sighed softly. ‘Curiosity. Boredom. Oh, yes, Dr Raven.’ The grey eyes glittered mockingly. ‘Or let us consider the lovely Ms Nancy Raven, whose biological clock is ticking loudly.’ He paused, fixing Raven with a beady eye. ‘That sound equates, in the minds of many men of your age, to the ringing of alarm bells. A signal to evacuate the building.’

‘I don’t have to listen to this.’ Raven started to get to his feet. He could feel the flush of anger flooding his cheeks.

‘Sit down!’ Smith snapped softly. ‘Behave yourself, man!’

Despite himself, Raven obeyed.

‘You’ll accept, Raven. You won’t be able to help yourself. Simply because, if you refuse, you will always wonder, if developments take an interesting turn, what part you might have played. The reason we selected you is because we knew that you would not refuse us, could not refuse us. You will accept, because the temptation to be on the inside is irresistible to a man of your sort. Inquisitive, restless, pig-headed, you are a driven man. Am I right?’

Raven’s silent fury escalated with the knowledge that the man before him spoke the truth.

Taking his silence as consent, Smith continued blandly, ‘One more thing: I said we should be grateful, but elastic expense accounts are guaranteed to bring out the beast in people. All too frequently, one observes that they foster delusions of grandeur. So, no soaring above the heads of men. We don’t just want the bird’s-eye view; we want the worm’s view of the grass roots.’ He clicked his fingers. The waiter appeared.

‘Due espressi, per favore.’
The grey man cocked an eyebrow at Raven. ‘I’m assuming you drink yours black. One never quite trusts a man who drinks it white at this time of day.’

Raven nodded resentfully. For once, he had been outmanoeuvred. God only knew what Nancy would say! ‘You were sounding me out just now. Why did you decide I was the man?’ he rephrased his earlier query, other unasked questions buzzing inside his head like disturbed wasps.

‘The way you spoke of Britain as “this country”, Dr Raven,’ James Smith said, sipping his mediocre wine gingerly, as though it were an unpalatable cough mixture and only a genteel upbringing prevented him from spitting it out on the red-chequered tablecloth. ‘Only those Britons who experience a genuine sense of national identity and social responsibility say “this country” in just the way you did a few minutes ago.’

Raven choked with outrage.

Smith, smiling broadly at last, tapped the stem of his wine glass, then, as if making up his mind to an unappealing duty, drained it in one and stood up, not waiting for the ordered espresso. ‘I’ll leave you to reflect, Dr Raven. But not for long. You’ll be back in your room at the Faculty this afternoon? Excellent! Someone will be in touch later today.’

He walked purposefully over to the bar. Raven watched him pay the bill and leave, acknowledging the waiter’s ‘Please come again, signore!’ with a backward wave, courteous yet indolent, like the flipper of some basking seal. It was obvious that for Mr James Smith the outcome of the discussion had never been in doubt. Someone, somewhere, knew more about Nat Raven than he was comfortable with.

‘Holy shit!’ grunted Raven under his breath, his anger mixed with a curious exhilaration and the first creeping sensation of apprehension.

Raven

On the steep staircase leading to the annex of the East Asiatic Languages Department, I came upon the Worzel Gummidge figure that could only be Iolo Ellis, lecturer in Thai Studies, hunched like a wounded bird on the window ledge. The building was a picturesque inner-city firetrap, scheduling preventing its long overdue demolition. We students never grumbled over the climb, because it was worse for Iolo. He was asthmatic, and lame. Mysteriously so: the young amanuensis variously ascribed his gammy leg to encounters of a personal kind with landmines, the Khmer Rouge, drug smugglers, the CIA, and unfriendly Burmese border guards.

‘Raven.’ Iolo squinted at me, his newest recruit. ‘Hello, Raven, how are you? You’ll be Slightly More Advanced, you will,’ he diagnosed, running a freckled hand through tawny pot-scrub curls. ‘Reckon we’ll skip Beginners altogether. I’ve had my instructions, see. Speed, of the essence, isn’ it?’

Iolo’s South Welsh singsong touched everything he said with whimsy, imparting to Thai, a tonal language, an innocent, quirky malapropism that I was to discover, too late, could occasion great offence, as when, imitating Iolo, I found I’d addressed Buddhist dignitaries as dogs or horses.

The Thai language classes were scheduled too early in the day for my and Iolo’s tastes, but suited my fellow students. One was a Buddhist convert, a retired train-driver who habitually rose before dawn in order to complete his meditations before his wife began her daily recrimination. ‘Heathen idols! Give you the creeps! What’s the matter with St Effin Thomas?’

The other mature student was a butcher who had purchased a catalogue bride. Their brief honeymoon a distant memory, he now wanted to be able to argue with the grasping little madam in her own language.

Iolo was soon exasperated by our clumsy attempts to reproduce the four-tone melody of Thai sentences. He attempted to interpret the elegant curlicues that constituted the Thai graphic system, ‘devised not by qualified linguists but by a king, so no wonder it’s such sheer bloody mayhem!’ He hobbled about the room, striking at the sparse furnishings with his crutch for emphasis. ‘Rigid class system, birth and wealth. That’s their long suit. Inevitable, where you’ve got inequality of opportunity and an inadequate social safety net. But there are a couple of jokers in the pack. Holiness. Holy is good. And there’s pretty. Pretty is even better—for any sex. Like prowess in a medieval tournament, where any plucky nobody could batter his way to stardom. Snakes and ladders, Thai society is. One unlucky throw, you land in the bear pit. One lucky break could catapult you to fame and fortune. Look at Asra, case in point!’

‘New model Toyota?’ I provoked. The butcher, Dave, self-confessed connoisseur of Thai pulchritude, bent on me a look of aggressive scorn.

‘Only won Miss Universe, didn’t she? What a looker!’

‘Right you are,’ agreed Iolo. ‘Captivated the eye of a Prince of the Blood. Beauty was her passport. There wasn’t a murmur; everyone was delighted. She came from the wrong side of the river, but not a raised eyebrow. If anything happens to old King Rama, they’ll be regents, Asra and her prince—he’s just a kid, the other guy, the Crown Prince. Fair play to him,’ Iolo warmed to his theme, abandoning for once the sardonic tone of righteous censure which discussions of the aristocratic and moneyed classes normally brought up in him like acidosis, ‘the old system of concubinage meant any Thai with a title was automatically a Prince of the Blood; but Asra’s fellow’s the real McCoy: the king’s full brother.’

‘They call Asra “Thailand’s Smile,”‘ interposed Dave, not to be outdone. ‘Only made the list of the world’s ten best-dressed women, didn’t she? Bloody gorgeous, she is, I tell you. Thai women, they’re something else. The cream de la cream! Ask one who knows…’ His voice trailed off suggestively. His wife’s appearance, despite her duplicitous nature, remained a source of pride.

Pictures flashed through my mind then of the three Thai girls on the survival course I’d helped Fleischer devise during the last long summer vacation. I had agreed to help Fleischer with his project out of boredom, curiosity, cupidity—who knew? Nancy and I had been at each other’s throats toward the end of the university semester, stressed and impatient with each other. The sixties’ flower-power revolution had had little impact on Nancy, but it had benefited her professionally. Cool and ambitious, Nancy would have climbed over dead bodies to achieve promotion. As, by the sixties, many of those bodies were semi-comatose, drained of all ambition by a surfeit of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, her ascent to the top of her profession had been meteoric. She had blasted through the glass ceiling like a surface-to-air missile. I was happy for her. That did not mean I liked the person she had become. Personally, I’d had enough of clambering over corpses in the service of ambition. I’d grown comfortable and lazy, and I knew it. Perhaps in some perverted way I imagined a shot in the arm of the old cocktail of testosterone and adrenaline would render me a more worthy partner for Nancy. Beautiful, predatory, razor-sharp Nancy.