Figurehead (16 page)

Anyway, one day I addressed a rally in Washington DC in some indoor
basketball stadium. I don’t remember the university, I went to so many of
them back then, but I remember it was very green: rolling slopes, trees, maybe
a fake pond with fish, lots of granite. Kind of reminded me of North Korea.

I did my standard spiel: Vietnam belongs to the Vietnamese, theft is theft
is theft, Kissinger needs psychiatric help, Jane Fonda’s a good sort and good
sorts are never wrong.

When I left (the crowd stayed to listen to Walt Treetrunk do evil things to
Bob Dylan’s greatest hits), Senator Jackson – Cornell’s daddy – was waiting
with his rent-a-crowd protesters. They set out towards me chanting ‘Red,
red, red.’ The senator took the lead. He’d been some sort of star footballer in
his youth (American catch and put your feet up, not the real stuff), plus he’d
seen action in a couple of wars: he was a fearsome sight as he hurtled
towards me, that awful fat vein on his neck pulsating.

I didn’t bother to run. If they wanted television cameras to film them
making idiots of themselves, who was I to stand in their way? The senator
arrived first and stood before me, silent. I stuck out my hand in greeting.
‘G’day. My name’s Ted.’ He folded his arms. The protesters formed a circle
around me. ‘Mr Edward Whittlemore is drowning in the blood of American
boys,’ Senator Jackson told the television cameras. On cue, the protesters
produced bottles of tomato ketchup and doused me in it head to toe.

While I stood there, allowing the cameras to film me from all angles,
Jackson and his lackeys dropped to their knees and prayed for the salvation
of my eternally damned soul.

Ah, all those Vietnam War protests – in the US, England, across Europe,
back home in Australia – happy, happy days. Great memories.

‘We need more wine,’ Ted said.

‘How about cognac?’

‘How about who’s paying? The Edgar Committee for the Enforcement of American Global Domination Institute? But tell me – yes, my good man, two cognacs, the Yank’s paying – you’re Wacko Jacko’s son and you expect me to believe that you’re running an
independent
think-tank?’

‘I’m not telling you, buddy: I’m promising you. We accept not one dollar of government funds.’

‘Not even on the sly from Daddy?’

Cornell grinned. ‘That’s the great part. Father hates the whole idea but you know what? I got it started with investments he made for me.’

‘He funds it and he hates it?’

‘You’ve got it. You know what he tried to do?’

‘Get the feds to take you out?’

‘He tried to revoke my trust fund.’

‘He sued you?’ Ted was so delighted he fell off his chair. The waiter arrived, waving the bill and pointing towards the stairs. Cornell folded his napkin, pushed back his chair and sat on the ground beside Ted, holding his Diners Club card up for the waiter.

‘I expect a discount,’ he said. ‘We haven’t finished our meals.’

‘Hey, Cornie?’ Ted said.

‘Yes, buddy?’

‘Don’t take this the wrong way but in my opinion – and I’m never wrong – your Hank Washington Institute for Robbing the World Blind with Honour sounds like one great big joke. Sorry.’

Cornell patted Ted on the shoulder. ‘That’s okay, buddy. I ought to tell you that so far as I’m concerned communism is the great plague of the twentieth century.’

‘Keep your distance! I’ve got a disease! I’ve got the plague!’ Ted yelled as Cornell helped him down the stairs. ‘The twentieth-century plague.’

Outside, Ted sat on the curb, giggling and saying, ‘Wacko Jacko, Jacko Wacko, Wacko Jacko, Wacko Wacko.’

Two men appeared, dressed in all white. Marines, Ted surmised, or maybe Cornell’s personal valets.

‘Cute togs, boys,’ he said. ‘Going my way?’

They marched Ted down the road and into the lobby of his hotel. The feeling in Ted’s legs returned momentarily and he veered neatly around a Chinese dissident whom he was due to interview the next morning.

‘You lost, boys? Misplaced your boat? Looking for the sea? Head that way, I reckon, via France.’

They herded him into the service elevator. ‘Arr-ten-SHUN!’ Ted said. He saluted, poking himself in the eye. Cornell held his elbow. ‘I told him not to eat those goddamned prawns,’ he said. A cleaner, whom Ted mistook for a nurse, supported him on the other side.

‘If you’re going to vomit,’ the cleaner said, ‘please do it into this bucket.’

‘You’re Bulgarian, aren’t you?’ Ted said.

‘That’s none of your business.’

‘You’re Vulg … Bulgarian, I can sense it. I can feel it. In my loins.’

‘Steady on there, buddy. The nice lady’s helping us out.’

‘My lips have gone to sleep. Givvus a kiss to wake them up?’

‘Hey, buddy, why don’t you hold the bucket? It’ll give you something to do with your hands.’

Finally they reached Ted’s room. Cornell sat him on the end of his bed and pulled his boots off.

‘Ted? Hey buddy, can you hear me? Should I call a doctor?’

‘Why? Are you sick?’

‘Do you want me to take your trousers off for you?’

‘Why, is it something you badly want to do?’

‘Not if I can help it, buddy.’

‘You could get me a beer. Have one yourself if you like.’

‘I don’t think that’s wise.’

‘Beer’s for rehydration. Don’t they teach you that in Boston?’

‘Um, Ted, fella? Your nose is running real bad.’ Cornell came close, brandishing a tissue.

Ted’s eyes welled up, his throat tightened, he blinked furiously.

He turned away from Cornell just as his shoulders began heaving. He might have gotten away with it if he hadn’t lost his balance. Cornell caught him as he toppled off the bed. Ted bawled until the concierge rang and said the other guests were complaining. That roused him. He staggered to the shower, stripped and stood under the cold water until it hurt. He emerged happy, starving and, it appeared to Cornell, on the verge of sober.

‘Let’s order sandwiches. I suppose you’d rather have a hotdog, but I don’t know if they stoop that low here.’

‘Are you all right, buddy?’

‘Yeah, no worries.’

‘But what was that?’

‘That? That was the effect Americans have on the rest of the world. If you’re planning on doing much travelling, you’re going to have to get used to it. Come on, let’s order.’

* * *

I went to New York in September ’83 to cover the sitting of the UN General
Assembly. United? United in what? Hatred? Self-interest? Greed? That year
– like the year before and the year after – they voted to keep the Khmer Rouge
as the legitimate government of Cambodia, now shielded by the coalition
with Sihanouk and Son Sann. Pure unadulterated immorality.

It was Sihanouk’s birthday, his sixtieth I think, and ASEAN hosted a
giant dinner for him at the Wiltshire Manor Hotel. In the days before the
celebration I did everything I could to get myself invited. I booked a room in
the hotel, a tiny square of a box that I’m fairly sure was once a service elevator:
they’d added a camp bed and a bucket of water and a minibar and
named it Executive Suite 2012. But no sooner was I examining the room-service
menu than the manager and a goon with a gun arrived and
escorted me back out into the street.

Next I phoned Sihanouk’s room on the hour from 7 a.m. till 9 p.m. two
days running. His aides, once loyal friends of mine, kept promising that
he’d return my very important call. But he never did.

Next I sent him a long note apologising profusely. You know the sort of
thing:
Your Royal Highness, it has always been my honour to serve you. If I have ever inadvertently insulted you or if you imagined that I called you an apologist for any unpleasant political organisation or if I performed some perceived action that has mistakenly been taken as anything other than signifying my love and devotion blah blah blah ...
It’s a great word, ‘perceived’: it lets you apologise without
admitting a scrap of wrongdoing. It didn’t stop me from feeling dirty,
mind you: Sihanouk should have been grovelling for my forgiveness, not
the other way around.

On the night of the dinner I bought him a present – a silk tie and handkerchief
set, pretty bloody tasteful I thought – and dressed up like a waiter.
I’d got it into my head that I could serve Sihanouk a glass of champagne. I
could see him clapping his hands and crying out joyfully at the success of
my plan.

I slipped in through the kitchen but an over-excited assistant chef wielding
a cleaver locked me in the coolroom. By the time security marched me out
I was shivering, damp and dying for a pee.

I deserved to be at that dinner. I should have been standing on a table in
between main course and dessert giving a speech detailing the highs and
lows of Sihanouk’s life. Sihanouk loved me and he needed my help to find a
way out of that dirty coalition of his. He knew it, too, which I suppose is
why he refused to see me.

‘I have a theory that may interest you.’ Nhem Kiry spoke in French to the foreign minister of Malaysia, Rajeswary Ampalavanar, on his left, and Prince Sihanouk, on his right. They sat at a table of twelve but the other people present did not interest Kiry. The light in the room was dim, despite the hovering presence, directly above Sihanouk’s head, of a giant chandelier. Their table stood in the very centre of the room and was surrounded by another thirty-four tables. Although there were people everywhere, Kiry found that the continual waves of noise – the medley of voices and chewing and shuffling feet and clinking glasses – provided a quite agreeable sense of privacy.

‘In America even the finest hotels with the best kitchens offer special room-service menus positively awash with fat and sugar,’ Kiry said, expanding on his theory. ‘I believe that this is because all Americans watch sport on television – they have a station just for sport, can you imagine it? And it is a national pastime to eat this bad food while watching their games.’

‘How fascinating,’ Ampalavanar said.

‘I’ve never thought about it in those terms,’ Sihanouk said. ‘With insights like that, you could have been an anthropologist.’

‘They are now making a concession to us Asians, or so they think,’ Kiry said. ‘For instance, the room-service menu in my hotel now includes spring rolls.’

‘Ah, yes indeed,’ Ampalavanar said. ‘The ubiquitous spring roll. The all-conquering dim sim. The finger-licking-good sweet and sour pork.’

‘Last night my assistant, Akor Sok—’

‘What a fine fellow that Sok is,’ Sihanouk said. ‘A truly great Cambodian.’

‘Last night Sok ordered a dozen spring rolls, as an experiment, just to see what they were like.’

‘And what conclusion did he reach?’

‘They were drowned in grease, he said. The insides were mashed: there was no way of telling what the filling actually consisted of. Sok rang the kitchen to find out. They claimed it was chicken but I tasted a tiny morsel myself and I’ve got my doubts. It came with something they called plum sauce but I dipped my finger in: it tasted like tomato ketchup with extra sugar stirred through.’

‘What a finely honed palate you have,’ Ampalavanar said.

‘They’re all going to die of heart attacks anyway ... It makes you wonder why they’re so worried about Libya,’ Sihanouk said.

An Indonesian general came past to wish Sihanouk happy birthday and to fawn over Kiry. When he left, Sihanouk rolled his eyes.

‘That awful man reminds me of Sukarno,’ Sihanouk said. ‘Sukarno visited me in ... what year was it, Mr Vice President?’

‘1960,’ Kiry said.

‘1960. Yes. He had the most oafish bodyguards I have ever encountered. They all had birth defects. They roamed around Phnom Penh as if they owned the place. All the pretty girls fled.

‘As for Sukarno himself: what a crazy old man. He was absolutely obsessed with virgins … Am I revealing too much? Should Sihanouk shhh himself? Should he clamp his mouth shut yet again? Too late now.

‘And then the Cambodian Royal Ballet performed for Sukarno, led by my beautiful daughter Bopha Devi. Afterwards Sukarno held my daughter so tightly I thought she would surely break in half. He wanted to marry her ... for one night only, he didn’t want to keep her. And Monique – Sihanouk’s very own Monique, no less – he wanted to ravish her too. Am I being indiscreet? It’s my birthday and I can tell any story I want. Anyway, he’s dead, so what does it matter?’

A plate of crispy-skinned quail stuffed with figs appeared in front of Sihanouk and caused him to abandon his story. He placed a fingertip on the quail and its breast burst open. He lifted the figs one at a time towards his lips; his tongue rushed out to meet them. Only when he had eaten all the figs, leaving a purple stain around his mouth, did he begin to tear at the wet quail flesh.

‘If I may change the subject, I was hoping that we might speak in a frank way, as only friends can,’ Ampalavanar said to Kiry.

‘It is a delicate matter,’ Sihanouk added, picking at a piece of meat that was caught in his teeth.

‘I wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to have an unofficial word – nothing more than friendly chit-chat, you understand – about several of your colleagues,’ Ampalavanar said.

Kiry wiped his hands, took up his knife and fork and began to eat his quail from wing to wing. After a minute he set down his cutlery and indicated with open palms that Ampalavanar should proceed.

‘With the greatest respect, I am hoping – my government is hoping – that you might take a moment to consider whether it might be an ideal time for Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, Nuon Chea and Ta Mok to retire. Especially Pol Pot.’

‘Retire?’

‘Oh what a wonderful birthday present that would be,’ Sihanouk said.

‘I believe it could prove to be a turning point for your country,’ Ampalavanar said. ‘Not to mention a very clever manoeuvre for your coalition. Many of my friends and colleagues in the ASEAN community share my views. Needless to say—’