Black Tiger (59 page)

As he sauntered down the street, swinging his hips, Salikaa attracted the usual glances of startled admiration, but now both men and women stared. The crowd parted to let him pass. Salikaa began to whistle.

Raven

I had survived the brutal process of freeing myself from my chains while in London. It had taken a few weeks, but I had managed it. As soon as I could, I flew back to Bangkok—the short route, over Tashkent. Even so, I passed the flight in a fervour of impatience. In my infatuated naïvete, I could not wait to throw myself at Chee Laan’s feet. I could not stop planning our conversation in my head. There were many versions, but in all of them she agreed in the end to spend the rest of her life with me.

As the taxi chugged through the thronged streets, I was infuriated by the tortoise pace. I felt like getting out and running down the road in the heat, knocking down any who got in my way.

I’d calmed down somewhat by the time we reached the hotel. She had told me where she would be. On the phone she did not sound welcoming, or even very friendly. I told myself that she was feeling shy because we had been apart for weeks. Looking back, I realize that I had already lost her.

A page showed me in, and I found Chee Laan seated behind her grand-mother’s desk. Everything was the same; everything was different. Her cheek still had the lovely curve of youth, but the gold-embroidered black silk pyjamas she wore were austerely conservative. From the little Mandarin collar her slender neck rose like the pale stem of a primrose. But the young girl I loved had vanished: her posture radiated a mature and steely confidence. She sat ramrod straight in the ornate high-backed chair, both her hands reposing on the surface of the desk, and rested her cool gaze on me. The effect was electrifying.

‘My God,’ I murmured. ‘I don’t believe it—you’ve turned into her!’

She frowned at me reprovingly. ‘Tea.’ It was not an invitation, but a veiled command.

‘Tea be damned!’ I was aware of my rudeness, remaining standing, looming over her. I flattened my palms against the desk. ‘My darling!’ I blurted, chilled by her tone, desperate to evoke some softened reaction from her, some acknowledgement of what we had shared. Chee Laan only pulled her hands into her lap.

‘Please do not call me that,’ she said.

My hopes foundered. All at once, I knew what I had lost.

She watched me silently for a moment. I imagined she was probably thinking how blind she had been ever to love me, if indeed what we had shared was love, and was choked with self-loathing. She studied my hand as if it were an ape’s paw and she couldn’t believe she had ever allowed it to caress her. She went to press the unseen bell beneath the desk, then hesitated. ‘Something stronger than tea, perhaps?’

‘I came back for you,’ I said weakly.

‘Things have changed,’ she said.

‘Devil take it, Chee Laan!’ I burst out. ‘I know things have changed! Your grandmother has fled the country. People have been murdered; Sya has been extradited to the States. He’s for the electric chair!’

‘You are as bad as my brother Pao. I know all these things. I know everything. Raven, please sit down. Take refreshment.’

I still towered over her, angry and bewildered. But her black eyes glittered dangerously. Finally, obediently, I took the chair that placed me slightly lower than her, bowing to the reflection of her power.

‘You see,’ Chee Laan was choosing her words carefully, ‘I am permitted by royal dispensation to inherit my grandmother’s property. Though she was regarded as a defector, the terms of her will are to be respected. By gracious intervention of Their Highnesses. Even though I am only a woman,’ her lip curled, ‘I am preferred above my brother. It was not cheap. But I too have rendered some small service. They owe me. That in itself does not disturb them. But the fact that one day I might remind them of it, that does.

‘Raven, in every Chinese business, there are many workers. But do you know who always sits at the cash desk? A son of the house. This is the first principle of the Chinese family.’ She paused. ‘The Black Tiger promised to help my grandmother escape. He abandoned her. Worse, he never planned to keep his promises; her parachute was tampered with. Sya made sure it never opened. She fell to her death, Raven.’

Her eyes met mine, and their bleak expression froze my marrow.

‘I believe the Tiger had unfinished business with you. This is why my grandmother had to die. He deserted her to pursue you.’

I leapt up from the spindly chair. ‘Chee Laan, all that is past. I’m asking you to marry me.’ I nearly gasped trying to breathe in. ‘Please, my love!’

For a moment hope soared wildly in my chest as she rose and walked calmly toward me and stood looking up. I caught the scent of lemon in her hair. She extended a cool hand. I grasped it, bruisingly, like a child gripping a flower too tightly. Her eyebrows lifted, narrow and wing-shaped, like those of her grandmother.

‘Do you remember
The Summer Wives of Mount Lu
, Raven?’ I scowled, impatient, tired of smokescreens and games. ‘A wise scholar knows when the summer butterfly has turned back into a goddess.’ I saw that she spoke without irony. I sank back into my chair. ‘The Buddha says, “Pull out that love as one pulls out lotuses in the dry season”,’ she said gently. It was an acknowledgment, of sorts, and one with which I would have to be content.

She studied me for a long moment, eyes roving over each lineament of my face and body, gravely committing them to memory.

‘Goodbye, Raven,’ she said at last, reclaiming her hand softly. Never has a touch landed harder, like a whirlwind from a butterfly’s wings.

I exited her office into a coach-load of tourists crowding the hotel lobby, chattering excitedly. The uniformed bellhop pranced around me expectantly. I said in Thai: ‘Call me a taxi, please. Don Muang Airport. Tell the driver no more than fifteen baht.’

The bellhop pulled down one corner of an eyelid to express his unbounded admiration. ‘Sirmadame sapeak Thai numbah one, very clever, satay Thailand long time?’

‘Too damned long.’

The bellhop, with a look of pained incomprehension, protested, ‘But this dry season! Bangkok dry season, numbah one!’

I never saw Chee Laan again. Occasionally her name crops up in the financial pages in connection with the continued expansion of the Lee Empire. Sometimes she is pictured, usually the lone female among the suits in some boardroom; always in control, always smiling. Her face is slimmer and her teeth appear longer. Her resemblance to her late grandmother is commented on frequently by those who remember the great Sunii Lee or have seen the portrait of her which adorns the boardroom of the Lee Banking Corporation. She favours business suits the colour of flame. There’s never any mention of a husband, but there is a son, a crown prince, a handsome Eurasian boy—adopted, probably. His name is Sunny Lee, but the reports use his nickname.
Nok Dam
. Black Bird. He was seventeen when Sya Dam was finally executed for good in Florida. He is, apparently, a prodigy, the apple of his doting mother’s eye.

Salikaa, of course, has become the darling of the
beau monde
. In less than two decades, he has built a fashion house that eclipses Dior and Balmain. In the exalted circles in which the star couturier moves, he is known only as
Son Altesse
, His Highness. It is rumoured, and Salikaa carefully fosters the legend, that he was born a prince—Cambodian, perhaps, or maybe Laotian. Certainly, his admirers whisper, he is a prince among artists, resoundingly successful and devastatingly beautiful. As his celebrity has increased, those about him have begun to treat him like a dazzling, capricious god.

Our real Highness, Princess Pim, has also achieved legendary status, though sadly she did not live to enjoy her fame—but that is the destiny of a martyr. She is remembered as a pioneer for reform, and her name is honoured far beyond Thailand’s borders.

Occasionally, in the elegiac mood produced by much whisky, I glance at the book Sunii Lee gave me,
The Summer Wives
, and think of my own butterflies. None of them were goddesses, not even Chee Laan, though she was remarkable, and bewitching, and I loved her. We played a role in each other’s legends, just as Sya and I did. I also feel that I have played nemesis—not just for Sya, but also for Sunii Lee, who threw herself out of a plane to her death, a victim of Sya’s obsessive hatred for me.

As for my ‘mission’, it was successful. In the interim, the United States has recognized Red China. Vietnam officially ended. The society that produced Sya Dam and allowed him to exert his malevolent regime of assassination and terror is changing. But there are always new enemies springing up like dragons’ teeth, new battles to be fought. Perhaps that’s the way with empires, and society, and wallpaper. You paper over one crack, another appears somewhere else. That’s life’s banality.

I’m left with just one question, for what gods and goddesses there be: If a man like the Black Tiger comes along only once in a lifetime, why did it have to be in mine?

I would like to thank Malinee Chang, who taught me Chinese. Viggo Bruun and Khun Rasomnee, who taught me Thai. Professor S. Egerod, Julia de Felice Davies, and especially Fiona Spencer Thomas, who believed. Michelle Dotter, my US editor. Salikaa, swift swallow, and of course Frederik, who was, as ever, there and there for me.