(1989) The Guest of Honour

by Irving Wallace

  THE GUEST OF HONOUR

  Irving Wallace

  First published in Great Britain 1989 by Michael Joseph Ltd

  Published by Sphere Books Ltd 1989

  Copyright Irving Wallace 1989

  Love begins with love; friendship,

  however warm, cannot change to love,

  however mild.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Wearing their light raincoats against the evening drizzle, the two of them, the colonel and major, left their car and driver between the Temple of the Emerald Buddha and the Church of Immaculate Conception, and proceeded on foot along the concrete path toward Chamadin Palace. When they reached the wrought iron gate set in the ten-foot high spiked wall surrounding the Spanish Colonial palace and the presidential compound, the taller of the two, the colonel, pushed the bell without a moment’s hesitation.

  They had rehearsed the operation so many times that no detail escaped them. They knew what to expect and were certain they would not fail.

  In response to the bell, a captain of the presidential security command and three enlisted men, each fully armed, emerged from the protective guardhouse and came forward to meet the pair.

  The colonel passed their identification papers through the gate.

  The captain of the security command glanced at the papers and looked up.

  From his side of the gate, the colonel spoke.

  ‘The major and I are messengers from General Nakorn, and we have instructions to deliver a confidential document by hand to President Prem Sang. You need not announce us. As our papers indicate, the president is expecting us.’

  The captain of the guards shook his head. ‘Sorry, sir. We must announce your arrival.’ He unlocked the gate and opened it. ‘Step inside while I inform the president’s secretary.’

  The colonel showed no concern; he had been prepared for this. He went into the courtyard, closely followed by the major, and they stood beside the sleepy enlisted men while the captain of the guards ducked into the guardhouse to use the telephone.

  The pair could overhear him on the telephone.

  ‘Miss Kraisri, the colonel and the major have arrived with a confidential message for the president from General Nakorn. Are you expecting them?’

  There was a silence as the captain of the guards listened.

  ‘You say the general’s office called?’

  He listened again and nodded in assent.

  ‘Very well, Miss Kraisri, I will so inform them and admit them.’

  He hung up the receiver and emerged into the drizzle.

  ‘Yes, Colonel, the president’s appointments secretary has been told to expect you. She regrets to tell you the president has no time to see you, but requests that you bring the documents to her.’

  ‘Thank you,’ the colonel replied.

  ‘Proceed across the court to the palace entrance. Show your papers to one of the guards inside the entrance. He will direct you to Miss Kraisri’s office.’

  Both the colonel and major bobbed their heads in acknowledgement, accepted the return of their papers, and headed for the palace entrance.

  One of the palace doors opened as they reached it and they went inside. A guard studied their papers and, once satisfied, pointed to the two flights of marble staircase ahead of them interrupted by a broad landing.

  ‘Up those stairs, sirs. Then to your right you will see guards in front of the door to the president’s office. His secretary will be expecting you.’

  ‘Thank you, Sergeant.’

  The colonel preceded the major along the marble entry to the glistening staircase, paused to let his companion catch up, and then in step they began to ascend the staircase.

  Both men found the going awkward, aware of what they were carrying beneath their raincoats.

  Reaching the gilt console atop the landing, they turned and ascended the second flight more rapidly.

  At the head of the flight, they saw a lieutentant in full uniform, a rifle slung over one shoulder, awaiting them outside the reception room.

  They went directly to him.

  ‘We’ve been instructed to hand Madame Kraisri a personal document from General Nakorn for President Sang,’ the colonel said.

  ‘Yes,’ the lieutenant replied. ‘Let me take you in to her.’

  He opened the door and led the colonel and major into Miss Kraisri’s reception room. A green metal desk and word processor dominated the room, but there was no one at the desk.

  ‘Miss Kraisri must be inside working with the president,’ the lieutenant said. ‘If you will turn the document over to me, I will see that President Prem or his secretary gets it.’

  ‘Let me give it to you,’ the colonel said, beginning to unbutton his raincoat. He moved to the guard’s left, and dug inside for the document.

  The lieutenant turned fully left to face the colonel and receive the document. As he did so, one hand outstretched to receive the document, the major moved behind him.

  As the guard waited for the document, the major at his back reached inside his own coat, tugged the long dagger from its sheath, pulled it free, lifted it high and aimed it at the guard’s back.

  In an instant, with great power, the dagger flashed downward, while the major’s free palm clamped over the guard’s mouth to muffle his outcry.

  Inside the vast presidential office, Prem Sang, president of the nation of Lampang, having sent his secretary upstairs to read the latest draft of his agrarian reform bill to his wife, once more hunched over the pile of papers on his oversized desk.

  He was a small man in his forties, with brown hair, sunken brown eyes, a prematurely lined face, altogether worn with fatigue by his three difficult years as chief executive. His smallness was accentuated by his cramped position on the breadth of the large desk.

  His spine ached, and he decided that it was time to stand up and stretch. In doing so, he was able to survey the elegant office, from its parquet floor covered by Iranian carpets, to the mahogany wall panelling punctuated by gilt-framed mirrors and a mural of farmers at work in a field, to the gold wall sconces and crystal chandeliers. Through the windows to one side, near the presidential seal hanging on one wall, he could see the bulletproofed enclosed balcony that encircled the building. There were three doors, one to his reception room, another to his downstairs dining room, and the third door that led to the staircase to the private apartment above that he and his wife shared. There was a fourth door, not visible, concealed by an extension of the mahogany panelling over its solid steel entrance. This door opened onto a passageway that led to the garden where the presidential security command had its barracks.

  Lowering himself into his leather swivel chair, Prem Sang focused upon the only object on his desk beside the pile of documents. This was a silver-framed photograph of his wife Noy and their son Den. Then his eyes fell on his papers, and once more his mind was occupied by his work.

  As he had been for months, President Prem Sang was absorbed by his dilemma. His domain consisted of three islands in the South China Sea off Thailand, Cambodia, and the southern tip of Vietnam. The main island, and by far the largest, was Lampang proper, where Sang resided in the capital city of Visaka. The two adjacent islands, Lampang Lop and Lampang Thon, were much smaller, with almost impenetrable jungles and hills, and there the communist insurgents resided in troublesome number.

  President Sang’s immediate problem was how to satisfy both opposing sides of his population. On the main island of Lampang where the ordinary people — who were democratic,

  Catholic, English-speaking - had elected him on a-platform of just distribution of land and wealth, he clung to his slim margin of popularity. On the nearby islands of Lampang Lop and Lampang Thon, the
communist guerrillas ruled under the leadership of Opas Lunakul, a pawn of the Vietnamese corn-mists who infiltrated daily.

  The communists had been propagandising effectively that President Sang and Lampang were puppets of the United States, from whom they received considerable economic assistance. Lampang’s independence was being eroded by this foreign dependency, they claimed. Only under communism could Lampang be truly free and economically sound.

  But the communists weren’t President Sang’s only problem. He had an internal one as well. The head of his army, his close friend General Samak Nakorn, was in total disagreement with him about the communists.

  The general wanted any money that might come from the United States to be spent on troops to wipe out the communists. President Sang wanted the money to prop up his domestic economy, which he felt was the best way to defeat any communist threat.

  President Sang sat reviewing the columns of notes on his desk once more. Unemployment in Lampang was eighteen percent. For the employed life was hardly better, the average family of five with an income of $110 a month. Dismal. If that could be improved, and land distributed, the communists could be beaten peacefully.

  There was a knocking on his entrance door.

  He half remembered. General Nakorn had sent over a message to be turned over to his secretary or the guard.

  With his secretary upstairs, President Sang called out, ‘Come in, Lieutenant.’

  The door opened. The president had anticipated seeing his lieutenant. But there was no one. And then there was. The lieutenant lay sprawled in the hallway, a knife in his back.

  That instant, two uniformed men, unknown to Prem Sang, stepped over the body of the lieutenant, each carrying rifles.

  As they raised the rifles, Sang was able to identify the weapons.

  They were automatic Kalashnikov rifles, standard Soviet assault rifles, and they were being aimed at him.

  Bewildered, President Sang jumped up from his desk, shouting, ‘What is this? Who in the devil -?’

  In response, both rifles chattered hideously.

  The muzzle velocity of each, the impact of the bullets, tore away part of Sang’s face, ripped through his heart, penetrated his stomach.

  The firepower momentarily lifted him off his feet, flung him backward against his chair, where he stumbled and slipped to the floor, and collapsed to the carpet in death. As a pool of blood began to form, the two assassins gently closed the door and disappeared.

  Upstairs, in the dressing room, the president’s wife had been applying cream to her face as she listened to Prem’s secretary — when suddenly she was startled by the sounds below.

  She paused and listened.

  Firecrackers, she told herself. Or maybe more. She snatched her silk robe off a hook, pulled it on, and made her way to the stairs. Hurrying down the stairs, puzzled, apprehensive, she burst into her husband’s office.

  She saw no one, and then moving closer to the desk, peering behind it, she saw her husband’s crumpled body. Then she saw its condition, riddled with bullets, and the dark pool that must be blood.

  She gasped, and then she screamed. She screamed and screamed.

  What followed was a kaleidoscope of people.

  Miss Kraisri and the servants came on the run. Then the palace guards, led by the captain of the guards. Soon the police, and doctors, and ambulance attendants.

  Someone had guided her to a straight-backed chair nearby, and there Noy Sang sat paralysed by shock.

  She had been seated there a long while before General Samak Nakorn and his officers arrived.

  Even here the stocky Nakorn was in uniform replete with ribbons and medals.

  Nakorn was questioning the doctors as Prem’s body was being carried out on a stretcher. Next Nakorn was questioning the captain of the guards. ‘Two of them, you say? The president’s secretary had told you I had informed her to let them in and expect a message. It’s a lie! I never spoke to the president about such a thing. I never had a message for him. It’s a communist plot. When the coroner removes the bullets, you will see they are of Russian origin. This is terrible, unbelievable, horrible.’

  Only later did Noy Sang realise that General Nakorn was standing over her, addressing her.

  Normally a gruff, hoarse man, his voice was oddly subdued.

  He was trying to tender his condolences.

  ‘I am sorry, very sorry, Madame President,’ he was saying.

  Only then did Noy Sang realise that not only was she a widow, but as her husband’s vice-president, she was now president of Lampang.

  In the glass-enclosed control room in TNTN - The National Television Network - bureau on M Street, Hy Hasken settled his lanky frame in an armchair beside the one occupied by his editor, Sam Whitlaw.

  The visit of Whitlaw from New York to Washington, D.C., was to be of short duration. One of the initial matters on his brief agenda was a talk with Hy Hasken, the network’s White House correspondent.

  After Hasken’s broadcast stint had ended, Whitlaw had teleponed him in the White House press room. ‘Hy, I want you to come over and join me in watching the seven o’clock news.’

  Hasken had arrived just in time for the evening news and prepared to observe himself on the television screen in front of them.

  Waiting for his own segment, Hasken tried to make small talk with his superior. But Whitlaw’s concentration was on the news, his life’s blood. So Hasken waited in silence.

  At last he saw himself on the television screen, microphone in hand, planted in Lafayette Park with the front facade of the White House in the background.

  Hasken tried to see himself as the millions of viewers out there saw him doing his stand-upper. Actually, he saw himself as his audience - longtime acquaintances - in a living room might see him. He was slender with sandy hair brushed to one side, a hight forehead dulled by studio make-up, alert blue eyes, a long nose and small mouth, and a staccato, resonant, faintly prosecutorial voice and tone.

  Watching himself, Hy Hasken listened.

  ‘The trrost significant news to come out of the White House today is that President Matt Underwood is preparing to meet with Madame Noy Sang, President of the island of Lampang, a nation crucial to the immediate interests of the United States.

  ‘Just one year ago this week, President Prem Sang of Lampang was assassinated by persons unknown, thought to be hit men representing the communist insurgents who have been growing in power on two neighbouring islands that fall under the jurisdiction of Lampang. The assassination of Prem Sang brought his vice-president to the presidency. His vice-president happened to be his youthful wife Noy Sang. If this seems odd to Americans, it must be understood that the politics of Lampang carry over a social structure known as the extended family. A president always has as his running mate and heir, his wife or son or another close relative. In a way this makes sense, for no stranger ever ascends to the presidency, but instead the replacement is always someone close to the president, one whose thinking is presumably compatible with the president’s own.

  ‘This has worked well in Lampang. Upon Prem Sang’s death a year ago, his widow Noy Sang was able to effortlessly slip into his office fully conversant with her husband’s ideas and goals. For a year, Noy Sang has served as president, and in this mourning period she had not travelled at all, but has remained in Lampang to acquaint herself with her country’s internal affairs.

  ‘In the past year, Madame Noy Sang has become more acutely aware of Lampang’s dependence on the United States. Now, with her mourning period behind her, Madame Sang is making her first trip abroad - a visit to the United States. She arrives this evening. After an overnight rest at Blair House she will come to the White House tomorrow for a business luncheon with President Underwood.

  ‘This meeting tomorrow is crucial for both sides. On the Lampang side, there is no question that Madame Noy Sang is looking for a loan in the millions, one that will bolster her economy and be welcomed by her citizens, who are seeking social help
and assistance in the land distribution programme now under way. The United States, in turn, needs something more important and more costly. The United States needs a large and modern air base on the island of Lampang.

  ‘To understand the importance of this air base, one must visualise where Lampang is located. Most viewers have heard of Lampang from time to time. Many may forget its strategic importance to America, which is second only in importance to the Philippines in the same general area.

  ‘Lampang lies to the west of the Philippines, on the edge of the South China Sea and near the Gulf of Thailand. The main island, two-thirds the size of Luzon in the Philippines, is south of Cambodia and Vietnam, yet still in the vicinity of the People’s Republic of China. Lampang faces three communist countries, two of whom openly receive weapons and aid from the Soviet Union. To complete our own anti-communist ring of islands in the Pacific Ocean, the United States needs a major air base on Lampang.

  ‘Obtaining this critical air base will be President Underwood’s principal goal when he meets with Madame Noy Sang tomorrow. Can he get it? There are obstacles. Madame Sang, like her husband before her, is under growing pressure to keep her nation free of dependence on the United States, and from American demands and influences. Much of this pressure comes from the local insurgent communists who want to take over Lampang.

  ‘At the same time, Madame Noy is a political moderate with a known affection for the United States and American ways, which began when she attended Wellesley College here in her twenties. But the key fact is that Madame Noy Sang needs something of immense value from the United States - a large cash loan to bolster her economy - and she is well aware that to get, she had to be ready to give.

  ‘So the luncheon tomorrow between President Underwood and Madame Noy Sang appears to be more than a social meeting. It is a confrontation that involves a trade-off. Will the trade-off take place? We hope to report the outcome to you tomorrow. This is Hy Hasken of TNTN at the White House.’

  Sam Whitlaw jumped up and switched off the television set. Returning to his chair, he faced Hasken.