by Morris West
A few minutes after four I was walking through the arcade which joins the Writers’ Wing to the main body of the hotel. The arcade is lined with expensive boutiques selling jewellery, antiques, silks, high-fashion clothing for men and women. In one of them, Franz, the lover and personal assistant of Carl Leibig, was being measured by a young Thai tailor. He caught sight of me and beckoned me inside.
‘I need help here, Gil. This boy has good hands and a beautiful smile, but he answers “yes” to everything I tell him. Will you explain to him, please, that I want the salmon-pink silk, that the jacket is for informal evening wear and while I need it to be waisted, I don’t want it too snug.’
I went through the list of instructions for the tailor and translated for Franz his enquiries about such details as pocket flaps, lapel shape and cuff buttons. Franz insisted on making me a party to each decision. It was four fifteen before I could escape him. Even then, he held me back for a final chat in the arcade.
‘I’m worried, Gil. Carl is worried too, although he tries to wear a brave face. That’s his strength. He will not abandon an idea until its possibilities are quite exhausted. In this case, I am sure the Soviets are stalling.’
‘We know they are, Franz. They admit it. The problem is not with this delegation, but in Moscow itself. The mechanisms don’t function any more.’
‘But the Japanese position seems to be changed, too. I sat through a whole committee meeting this afternoon and they hardly uttered a word. They were, quite deliberately, reserving all their positions.’
That’s their style, Franz. You’ve lived and worked long enough in the country to be aware of it.’
‘I am, but this atmosphere is somehow different. I hope I’m wrong. If this negotiation does break down, I don’t want the Leibig Corporation to be held responsible.’
‘They won’t be. My advice is to sit quietly and play out the game according to plan. You can’t hurry events in Europe. There’s a glacier-like inevitability about them. One thing is certain: the Western powers can’t afford a general collapse in the Eastern bloc. Whatever happens, the Tanaka/Leibig group is well prepared to make appropriate moves. I presume you’re getting regular briefings from the German Embassy?’
‘They give us less help than you might imagine. As usual, the traders know more than the diplomats. However, they’re staging a cocktail party for us at the weekend. That’s why I’m treating myself to that very handsome jacket. Which reminds me. Where can I get some nice flowers?’
There’s a stall in the foyer. Give them an hour’s notice and they’ll prepare an arrangement for you.’
‘I thought I should visit Professor Boysen this evening.’
‘I’m sure she’ll be delighted to see you.’
‘Are you two together again? It’s none of my business, but I’d better know so I don’t make any gaffes.’
‘Let’s say we’re content to be friends.’
He gave me an odd sidelong look and a nod of approval. ‘Good. That’s safe ground for both of you.’
‘Meaning what, Franz?’
‘You’re the clever one, Gil. You know exactly what I mean. Our friend Marta Boysen is a very clever lady, too, but she’s never been able to make up her mind which side of the fence she wants to live on. If you think you can make up her mind for her, that’s fine. But you’re taking a hell of a risk. I like you, Gil, and I’d rather not see you burned. Carl and I are lucky, we value what we have. We discovered each other just in time. These days,’ his face puckered into a malicious pixie grin, ‘these days, the love game gets more and more like Russian roulette.’
He left me then and I walked through the Writers’ Lounge, where afternoon tea was in full swing: English teas in caddies, laid out in formal array on the trolley, cakes and scones and fruit conserves and cream, little knots of tourists sitting under faded photographs of old Bangkok and King Chulalongkorn with his consorts and their children, bookcases filled with the works of Conrad and Maugham and the long succession of famous authors who had sojourned here from the days of its modest beginnings to the era of its present splendour.
The ascent to the Noel Coward Suite is still made by a double staircase, designed for a more pretentious if less spacious time. The suite itself is as exotic as the man for whom it was named: peacock patterned wallpaper, cabinets of carved teak filled with celadon ware and famillerose porcelain and trinkets of beaten silver, twin canopied beds in the Thai style, painted in gold and turquoise blue. It made an appropriate setting for Max Wylie’s wife Jeannine, dressed in a caftan of emerald silk embossed with gold. Her greeting was cheerful, half a step short of brash.
‘So! This is the great Gil Langton. I’m delighted to meet you. Max says you’re so clever you’re a pain in the arse. Marta, who has poor taste in men, thinks you’re wonderful.’
‘And you, Mrs Wylie?’
‘I’m pleasantly surprised. Welcome! How do you like your tea?’
‘Lemon, no sugar, thank you. Is this your first visit to Bangkok?’
‘No. We come here fairly often, mostly on Max’s business. We thought of taking this vacation at home in Vermont, but since it’s likely to be cut short, we came here instead. We don’t do anything very much except laze by the pool or take an occasional river trip with a tame boatman Max knows. We like it though. After a few days Max becomes halfway civilised.’
‘Lay off, lover.’ Max Wylie gave me a shamefaced grin and a shrug of resignation. ‘Jeannine’s idea of a civilising mission is to slice me up like salami in front of our guests.’
‘He needs it, Gil. He’s so stuffed with secrets, I think sometimes he’s going to burst. And it’s all bullshit, like a bad movie.’
‘She’s right, of course.’ Max Wylie was eager to embrace the proposition. ‘It is mostly bullshit. The big things like plague, famine and mass destruction aren’t secret at all. They happen in full view of the audience. The rest of it – who sold whom for how much, who got raped, stabbed, strangled in the back of a car – is so sordid you puke when you see it in real life. If you ever thought what goes on in the kitchen of a famous restaurant, you’d never eat there again. And you’d always gag on the price list.’
Jeannine handed me my tea and a slice of sponge cake. Now that she had made her entrance and established herself as the woman-in-residence in Max Wylie’s life, she seemed calmer and more agreeable. Wylie responded to her mood.
‘Jeannine’s curious to know how this linguistic talent of yours actually works.’
‘Not how it works, Max. What it does to Gil. I mean, how does it feel to walk into a room where a dozen languages are being spoken and understand them all?’
‘It’s confusing, as it would be to anyone. Not the languages themselves, but the cacophony. You have to focus on one subject, one person at a time. The rest becomes a babble until you’re ready to concentrate and sort out the various elements. How shall I put it? It’s like skin-diving over a tropic reef. The first impression is of enormous clarity. You see everything. You can reach out and touch everything. You feel like a fish yourself. But suddenly you realise you’re not a fish. You’re an alien intruder in the fishes’ world. You’re an abnormality, a creature who needs mechanical aids to survive in water. You have to suppress that feeling, because it undermines your confidence. Nevertheless, it persists. I’m not sure I’m explaining myself very well, but…’
‘You are, but I’m not asking quite the right questions.’ Jeannine Wylie was brighter than she looked and sounded. ‘What I really want to know is whether you have any extra perceptions that other people, even people who speak four or five languages, don’t have.’
‘Yes, but those perceptions are related not only to the language itself, but to all the background which I absorbed as I was learning it. My father educated me by total immersion. We lived the language with the people who spoke it. Each word therefore acquired a whole cluster of associations which no dictionary can ever give.’
‘So what do you hear when you are list
ening to these terrifying speeches from the Arab leaders in the Gulf?’
‘It’s the high rhetoric of a god-centred people, a people with a long tradition of conquest. It’s ritual speech, like the Christian liturgy or parliamentary eloquence. I’m attuned to it, because I’ve experienced it at first hand and as a stranger who had to survive by understanding. I’m not frightened by it but I am frightened of it, because I know how potent its emotional and spiritual appeal can be upon a people bred and rooted in Islam.’
‘And meantime,’ said Max Wylie, ‘the bare facts and the figures tell an even more frightening story. The International Monetary Fund is just about to release its report on the Soviet economy.’
This was unexpected news. I asked him: ‘Have you seen the report?’
‘No. But we have the guts of it. Disaster, Gil. There’s grave fear of a total economic collapse. In spite of the fact that oil prices are going through the roof, the Soviet production is falling. Refineries, pipelines and transport are totally inefficient and getting worse. The whole economy is based now on a primitive barter system. I don’t know where that leaves your project; but it scares the living daylights out of us.’
‘When is the report due to be published?’
‘Some time in January. But already the news is out. Already market confidence is being eroded. There’s evidence that the Soviets may open their borders for a mass exodus before the end of winter.’
‘All that and a Middle East war.’ Jeannine Wylie set down her teacup with a clatter. ‘It doesn’t bear thinking on. I know you two have to talk about it. I don’t have to listen. I’m going to get my hair done. Forgive me, Gil. I’m not really the bitch I sound sometimes. It’s just that I know too much and too little and I wish to Christ I could shut it all out and live in a little house in Vermont.’
‘I’m trying to get you there, lover’ said Max Wylie, and for that moment at least I believe he really meant it. When we were alone, he curled himself up in the corner of the peacock-blue sofa and told me: ‘Don’t be offended by Jeannine. When she’s scared she gets prickly as a porcupine. She reads my mind, Gil. She knows I’m scared too. The Soviet débâcle will be slow but inexorable. A Gulf war will be a sudden horror. I’m afraid we’re going to get both. There’s a sick joke going round Israel that a syndicate is selling folding chairs and gas masks on the plain of Megiddo where Armageddon will be staged.’
‘How do you read the latest reports: mediation by the European Community, offers of aid from Japan if Hussein is ready to withdraw his troops?’
‘I think it’s window-dressing, designed to persuade the Muslim world that the West is reasonable and well-intentioned and Saddam is a bloody-minded fanatic. It’s also a useful sop to Congress so they’ll leave the business of war to the President.’
‘And what’s your personal opinion, Max?’
‘I think war’s inevitable, and probably desirable, to break Hussein’s power completely. A simple withdrawal now solves nothing. In fact, it’s the nightmare solution. It leaves the Iraqis with their military strength undamaged, a constant threat to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates. On the other hand, if we win a war, we lose the peace. Islam has a new honour roll of martyrs and the West gets a new wave of terrorists.’
I said nothing. There was more to come. There had to be more than doomsday talk to justify his pressing invitation. I waited, sipping my tea and nibbling on sponge cake. Finally, Wylie found voice again.
‘Back in Tokyo I gave you an assurance that I would not use Marta Boysen’s thesis on Haushofer as a weapon against your project. I’ve honoured that. But other people have got hold of it and they’re about to launch a series of attacks in the world press.’
‘What other people, Max?’
‘Mossad.’
‘The Israelis? Why, for God’s sake? What’s their interest?’
‘It’s part of a pattern of reprisal.’
‘For what?’
For outbreaks of anti-Semitism in Germany, France, Middle Europe and Russia itself. We all know they’ve been going on: desecration of cemeteries, burning of dachas, graffiti on public buildings. This is part of the response: If you insult us, damage us, you will go hungry a little longer. That, at least, is how the story has been read to me. Knowing how Mossad works, it doesn’t surprise me. So you’d better have your responses ready.’
‘Thanks, Max. I appreciate the warning.’
‘I don’t believe it will make an iota of difference either way. I can’t see you coming up with an agreement in two weeks, or even six months.’
‘Frankly, neither can I, but I believe we should work through the agenda in the hope that we can salvage at least some of the groundwork we’ve done, and there is an enormous amount of it. Meantime, what other good news do you have for me?’
‘The song and dance act: Hoshino and Cubeddu.’
‘What about them?’
‘Hoshino is in the entertainment business, which is also the flesh business. He exports women entertainers – and some male ones as well – all around the clubs he owns in South-East Asia. He’s in the drug business, too, but he deals in amphetamines, which are a high-use item in Japan and can be dealt more easily through Asian pharmaceutical houses. So he’s not a rival to the Thai and Chinese drug barons who deal in hash and heroin. All of that means he’s on friendly terms with the Thai police and the big nightclub and brothel syndicates here. He flies in the tourists who spend the money in this country’s sex markets.’
‘And Cubeddu?’
‘Is a loose cannon, a dangerous nuisance. He’s trying to establish a Mafia connection for heroin and opiates. He thinks Hoshino’s helping him to do it. Instead, Hoshino is keeping his bargain with Tanaka, holding Cubeddu under control until your conference is concluded.’
‘And after that?’
‘Exit Cubeddu.’
‘How?’
‘That will depend on how bright he is and how much he’s prepared to pay to stay out of the river or out of a Thai Jail.’
‘And you’re sure of all this?’
‘Absolutely. Cubeddu is under constant surveillance. His room is bugged and his favourite girl reports every day to the police.’
‘It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.’
‘True, but there is a complication.’
‘Which is?’
‘Tanaka’s girlfriend, Miko. She had one meeting with Cubeddu in his hotel room. The meeting was monitored.’
‘And?’
‘There is a financial connection between them, a finder’s fee and a million dollars in escrow, apparently related to this project.’
‘We know about those transactions.’
‘The monitored conversation takes them a little further. If Cubeddu is excluded from an interest in the Tanaka/Leibig consortium, Miko loses her million. She can, however, regain it if she agrees to work with Cubeddu on the Coast and in Japan and if she provides him with some personal hospitality on the side.’
‘And Miko’s answer?’
‘That’s on tape, too. She’ll think about it. Tanaka is a sick man, she will do nothing to hurt him. Afterwards, the matter’s open for discussion.’
‘Did they have sex on that occasion?’
‘Cubeddu wanted it. He didn’t get it. The lady’s a tramp, but she doesn’t come cheap.’
‘Who’s holding the tapes?’
‘The Thai police. Our people have copies. If they’re leaked, as the Haushofer document was leaked, then your friend Tanaka is going to have a lot of egg on his face.’
‘If the Thai police have them, Hoshino must know about them. He’s the watchdog on Cubeddu.’
‘I’d say that was a reasonable assumption. It means Tanaka must know too.’
‘That doesn’t necessarily follow, Max.’
‘Why not?’
‘Hoshino and Tanaka work different sides of the street, but there’s a pact between them. One protects the other. Hoshino would never permit Tanaka to be blackmailed. He would also
shield him from public shame, from loss of face.’
‘In that case,’ Max Wylie mused softly, ‘in that case, the lady Miko could have a very short life.’
I had a sudden vivid memory of the warning Tanaka had given me in Tokyo: ‘We are coming up to earthquake time, when the great rock plates shift and slide and buckle against each other and all our frail human edifices come tumbling down. People get hurt. You could get hurt.’ Then out of the silence came Max Wylie’s dry comment: ‘I seem to have given you some problems, Gil?’
‘You could say that.’
‘I’ll give you some advice, too.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘My old man was an FBI agent in the Hoover days. He used to say that the most economical solution to any problem was to let the Mob take care of it. That’s exactly what Tanaka’s doing. He’s leaving everything to Hoshino. You shouldn’t try to stir the soup. You’re likely to get scalded. The best contribution you can make is to keep your hands in your pockets and your mouth shut.’
‘You’re probably right.’
‘I know I’m right. They still shoot the bringer of bad news.’ Suddenly, inanely, he burst out laughing. ‘Do I hear you thanking me? Blessing me, because I’ve made you wiser than you were?’
Then, just as suddenly and inanely, I was laughing with him, as if all this talk of blackmail, betrayal, murder and the fall of empires were nothing but a Halloween story told to strike delicious terror into children at bedtime.
Fifteen
At five-thirty precisely, Kenji Tanaka received Leibig, Laszlo and myself in his suite. Miko served our drinks and withdrew. Tanaka made a brusque announcement.
‘You are my friends. You are my collaborators on this and other enterprises. I wish to inform you about certain matters which affect our mutual interests. I will ask you to keep this information private until all stock exchange trading has closed in all world capitals on Friday of this week. Do you agree to that, gentlemen?’