Her arm was so sore she had to strap on the cantilever before she could carry the eagle from the van to the fence post, which would be the bird’s perch for training today. She checked that the creance attached to the leash was long enough for the eagle to glide three meters safely Then she removed the hood.
The bird was momentarily stunned by light and the new environment. Blindfolded in a strange place, she suddenly found herself on her own territory once more. She crouched, opened her wings, and jumped. But her muscles were still so weak, she could only flap from the post to the grass below. Diana had deliberately fattened her during convalescence, and she now weighed seven kilos. An eagle at that weight, even with the huge wings that this one had, could never fly fast enough to hunt. She would need to slim down to six kilos before she could be freed, but dieting had to be undertaken carefully, or the flight feathers would develop starvation breaks.
Having eaten the duck yesterday, the eagle was not really hungry enough to be anxious for food again, but now she was used to being fed twice a day, and Diana had given her nothing before leaving the aviary that morning. She let the bird ride on her arm from the ground back onto the post and took up a position three meters away. There she held out a morsel of rabbit. The eagle became instantly alert, stretched her neck, and launched into a glide. As she got within twenty centimeters of Diana’s glove, Diana jumped away. The bird landed, offended she had missed. Diana shooed her back toward the post and lifted her up again. Then she repeated the temptation and the trick.
For the next twenty minutes, with rests and occasional food rewards, Diana made the eagle fly toward her hand. In three weeks, she hoped, Aquila would be able to make these short flights for an hour at a stretch, twice a day. Then they would move on to the next stage: Diana would stand on a stepladder, holding out food, while the eagle would stand on the ground. She would have to pump up to Diana’s hand, first one, then two, then three meters of vertical flight. This would put immense pressure on her wings, and at first the bird would be able to do the exercise for only one minute, twice a day. But Diana hoped that after three weeks of pumping, plus an hour’s gliding and flapping morning and evening in pursuit of a lure, the eagle would be strong enough and tame enough to fly free in pursuit of live game. Diana planned to net some rabbits, keep one in her hip bag, put the eagle on a very long creance, then toss the rabbit onto the ground. It would bolt, and the eagle would try to catch it. After one or two tries—the eagle would almost certainly miss—Diana would let her off her creance. She would be flying free but would be so intent on catching the next rabbit, so convinced rabbits came from Diana’s hip, she would not fly away. That was the theory anyway.
If all went well and if they trained six days a week, by the beginning of winter the eagle would be ready to be freed. The thought of her soaring above the mountain again made tears come to Diana’s eyes. It would be like that morning on the lake, when the great bird had watched them all from the sky.
She reached into the bag for more food. “One last time,” she called.
The eagle adopted a pose of dignified hostility and turned her head to observe the lake. Diana waggled the grub of meat, but the bird remained resolutely uninterested and, after a period of scrutinizing the water, turned her attention to the clouds. I hope another eagle hasn’t moved into this territory, Diana thought. She wanted her bird to be able to return to a known hunting ground. If another wedgetail had seized the territory while it was unguarded, her eagle would have to fight to regain her land—and despite her size and strength, there was no guarantee she would defeat a younger, smaller rival.
Diana looked up, trying to see what the eagle could see, her eyelids wincing from the light. Something … There was a mighty whack on her cantilevered arm, which almost sent her sprawling. Next moment, she felt the strange, convulsive tightening of gigantic hands and the shimmering noise of feathers closing. The wings came down and were folded smooth. The huge, scaled feet under the dark feather trousers were fastened around her arm, and the beak was fifteen centimeters from her left eye. The serpent neck bent, and the food disappeared. Serves me right, Diana thought. Falconers had been killed by eagles.
An hour later that morning, driving on a straight stretch of road on the approach to Kalunga, she saw Billy and Tom riding toward her on their bikes. They slowed down, stopped, and looked as if they wanted to vanish, but on either side there were fenced paddocks and no trees.
“Where are you going?” she called.
They hung their heads. “Nowhere,” Billy replied.
Although they were on the road that went to the Research, it was such a long ride out there that it did not occur to Diana that the Research could be their destination. “You’re wagging school!”
“Only a bit,” Tom said. “It’s almost the holidays.”
She got down from the van. “C’mon. We’ll put the bicycles on the roof, and you can ride home with me.” They had baskets on the front of their bikes for schoolbooks. “Where did you get all these bananas?” she asked.
They drove in silence for a while, until she said, “Well? What are you up to?”
Billy glanced at Tom, whose face had turned to a piece of wood. “Nothin’. Don’t tell Grandma.”
“Why not?”
“She’s always cross with us.”
“Please,” Tom wheedled. “We’ll get in trouble.”
“You’re to promise not to wag again.”
“We promise.”
When they got out of the van, Billy said to Tom, “We didn’t tell a lie.” On Thursday, school would let out and people would be arriving for the Easter bird-watching tour: Grandma and Diana would be too busy to notice they were not there. “I’m going to call mine King Kong,” he added.
On Tuesday morning, Michael Romanus returned to Bangkok after almost three weeks of taking photographs in Mae Wong National Park, northwest of the capital. The nature reserve was in a mountainous region, watershed for the Mae Wong and Ping rivers, which feed the mighty Chao Phraya of central Thailand. Its waterfalls, rarely seen because of the rough terrain, were considered among the most beautiful in the world. Romanus had photographed two of them on this trip and had a case of undeveloped transparencies showing horn-bills, wild elephant, wild dog, wild pig, the waterfalls, and—triumph!—twenty frames of a tiger drinking from a pool. He had spent all night in the hideaway above the salt lick and seen nothing. But the following day, when he was on the ground, the cat had stepped out of the trees just three meters in front of him and trotted on big, soft feet to drink. He had been too excited to be frightened. Hallelujah! The blimp’s on! he thought. When it had drunk, it glanced in his direction, as if to say, I know you’re there. Then it trotted back into the forest.
From Mae Wong to Bangkok was a drive of almost four hundred kilometers. As he drove, he rehearsed how he would break the news to Raoul about the tiger shots. He had called him a few times that day but only got the message “This telephone is out of range or unattended.…”
“I got the big waterfall, a few birds, a few elephants, and a cat,” he would say.
“A cat? What sort of cat?”
“Stripes on it.”
“Stripes? Must be spots, Michael. Civet has spots.”
“Reckon they’re stripes.”
Romanus yelled with laughter as he gunned down Highway 1. Sabea had been due in Bangkok from Chiang Mai two days earlier; tonight they would celebrate the end of eighteen months’ work. Tomorrow it would be time to disappear. “Mongolia, I think, might be a nice spot,” Romanus had said. “How about Bosnia?” Raoul had replied, laughing.
They rented rooms in a Khao Sahn boardinghouse. The place was clean and cheap, and although it was a rough area, full of social-fringe farangs, it suited them. They needed a base in the capital where they could leave extra gear when they went up-country. Grossmann had often pressed Romanus to move into his palace in Yannawa, adding, “Sabea is welcome too.” But it was obvious that Grossmann disliked Sabea. In part it
was a natural clash of temperaments, but mostly it was jealousy of the friendship between the two younger men.
“The old man feels young and horny when you’re around,” Raoul said. “You’re the son he wishes he had.”
“He’ll kill me,” Romanus muttered.
The boardinghouse was in the alley off Khao Sahn, and he was able to drive right to the front door to unload his gear. The man in the tattoo shop next door came to lend him a hand; the woman on the corner who sold fruit bobbed her head and gave a blessing for his return. I love this town, he thought. Everything today was pure pleasure. As soon as he had showered and shaved and caught up with Raoul, he would visit the Mamba. The thought of her had been exciting him on and off for the past week.
When the photographic gear was all upstairs, he went along the tiled corridor and knocked on Raoul’s door. There was no answer. He clattered down to the kitchen, where the old lady who ran the boardinghouse was grating coconuts. She said she had seen the Spaniard two days ago but had not noticed him around since then. I know what you’ve been doing, Romanus thought.
An hour later, in fresh clothes, wearing the gold chain with its good luck charm that the Mamba had given him, he climbed the spiral staircase to the No Name Bar. The bar was empty, and he had to drink his beer with nothing for company but the mural of a man divided into a Buddha and a devil holding a skull. The alternative decoration was a wooden carving of a huge face eating a small human.
“Seen the Spaniard?” he asked the barman. Not for weeks, the barman said.
Romanus swallowed his drink and went downstairs thoughtfully. No need to panic, he told himself. In Khao Sahn he hired a tuk-tuk to go to the Mamba’s house. It was only a quarter to four, and the Mamba did not start work until four o’clock; he hoped to be her first customer.
The crone who worked as her maid opened the door and cackled with delight at seeing him, cupping her old, bent hands over his. She led him into the small sitting room. “You wait. Mistress not long,” she said, and shuffled off to get him a beer. Romanus felt annoyed he had not arrived early enough to be first cab off the rank. At least there were no other men waiting.
A bamboo rack held magazines printed in Thai and Chinese, and on the coffee table there was a copy of the International Herald Tribune. He tried to read.
After a few minutes Sabea’s favorite girl—Romanus could never remember her name—came into the sitting room. She was holding her hands in front of her like starfish, waiting for the varnish on her nails to dry. She had a big orange bow in her hair, the same color as the varnish.
“Mi-kal!” she said, and flung her arms around his neck.
“Hey, gorgeous, you’re looking great.”
“You frien’ mean to me.” She pouted.
He nodded cautiously. “What’d he do?”
“No see me.” She sniffed. “Already four week. He promise, I come back Chiang Mai, I come to you house, we all day, all night. I give you two hundred dollar, I buy you silk dress.… He no come.”
“He no come?” Romanus repeated. “You no see him yesterday?”
The bow flopped from side to side when she shook her head.
“Who’s in with the Mamba?” he asked.
“Nobody. Mamba still resting.”
Romanus went to the bedroom door and knocked.
The Mamba’s husky voice said, “Who?” in an unfriendly tone.
“It’s Michael.”
“Hey! My man!”
He heard her bound off the bed, and the door opened. He stepped inside and took her hands. “Shh,” he said, with a look over his shoulder. She bent to listen, painted eyes wide. He liked to tell her she was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen. She had a haughty nose, long eyes, broad lips, and skin the color of bronze. She was dressed in a red brassiere and bikini pants. “Mamba,” he whispered, “you see the Spaniard?”
She shook her head vigorously. “He man of my frien’!”
“I know. But you’re sure you haven’t seen him?”
“I no steal her man! I no see him. She ask everyone in Bangkok: Where my man is? You see my man? She sick in her heart. Crying, Why my man no come?” Her red mouth opened, and her long, raspberry-colored tongue licked his ear. “You stay with me now?” she said.
Her gaze softened. She was thinking about a dress she wanted to have made and what she would eat for dinner. He was looking at her red-dyed nipples, visible through the lace cups of her brassiere. She unzipped his fly and slid her hand around his erection.
“How long time you want?” she asked.
“An hour,” Romanus said automatically. He felt unexpectedly ill at ease. Why had no one seen Raoul? He watched the Mamba rummage in a drawer crammed with condoms, lubricants, and butt plugs, and felt suddenly bored.
“Do you like animals?” he asked distractedly.
She hesitated before replying, calculating the right response. “Animals?” she hedged. “You mean pussycat?”
“No—tigers, wild pig, gibbons.”
The Mamba grimaced. “I no eat such things.”
He pulled her toward him and murmured, “I meant, do you like to look at them?”
“What for?” Her eyebrows conveyed disgust.
“Because they’re wonderful.”
“Wonderful?” Her expression, which was tending toward bad temper, lit with a smile. “Money is wonderful. Gold is wonderful. Food is wonderful.” She smiled sweetly. “You is wonderful. Best lover in the world.” She made a fist and laughed, trying not to notice he had rezipped his fly.
I’ve got to find Raoul, Romanus was thinking. He let out a gasp, smacking his hand on his back pocket. “I forgot my wallet!” he said. An expression of contempt crossed her features. Sometimes you can see what she’ll look like when she’s thirty-five, he thought: angry, and hard, and disgusted with life.
“I’ll bring the Spaniard back here, and we’ll all go out to dinner. The four of us. We’ll go to the Dusit,” he said. To himself he added, You’re a shit. Neither he nor Raoul would go to the Dusit with a pair of nothing-to-say whores. The Mamba knew he was lying.
“You wonderful lover,” she murmured. “You stay with me.” She ran a finger across his upper lip.
He could smell her sweetish, alkaline odor. “Back soon,” he said.
Protocol was that a customer left by the bedroom’s second door, to avoid seeing the next customer in the waiting room. He gave the crone a good tip. She bobbed and chortled as she let him out onto the lane behind the house, where he hailed a taxi. As soon as he was inside, he felt a wave of relief. “Khao Sahn,” he said. “When we get there, wait. I might want to go somewhere else.”
Chapter Sixteen
In U-1, Parker and his team remained seated around the staff room table after lunch, continuing the planning session that had engrossed them for the past hour. They had a strategy for evasive action in case Diana Pembridge insisted on inspecting U-1 on Wednesday. There would be at least thirty minutes warning before she arrived. The yellow and red kindergarten table and chairs, the toys and the shortened bicycle, were to be taken upstairs, some to Sonja’s bedroom, some to Lek’s cabin. Sailor and Lucy and the monkey chow would be loaded into the Land Cruiser and be driven around for the duration of the visit.
“There’ll be plenty of time,” Parker said, to reassure himself as much as the boys. He hated to rush or be rushed. He held open his long-fingered hands, counting off each person’s task. “Are we all clear about our jobs?”
The telephone on the wall near the microwave rang. It was Grossmann. Could Parker be in Sydney at seven o’clock next morning to meet “a friend” who was arriving then? he asked. “You’ll like him better than the lady who sees ghosts.”
“I can’t get to Sydney by seven!” Parker almost shouted. There was not only the threat of an inspection tomorrow; he was having difficulty with one of the columns in the HPLC machine, and first thing in the morning, he needed to test its beads.
Grossmann grunted irritably as he l
istened to Parker’s excuses. “My friend doesn’t speak much English, John. If nobody meets him he might get lost. You understand?”
“Do I know him?” Parker asked cautiously.
“You’ve seen him in my car in the evening sometimes.”
“Somchai?”
“A good man, eh? He’ll fit in well.”
Fit in well! Parker thought. Somchai had tattoos, and he grew the nails on his little fingers ten centimeters long. They resembled a crocodile’s claws. I won’t have him! he wanted to shout. “I’m sure he will, Otto, but the fact is, even if I leave here first thing, I can’t get to Sydney until ten-thirty in the morning. Let’s think of somewhere to meet.”
“I’d like him to see the zoo, John.”
Parker groaned to himself. The Taronga Park Zoo was on the other side of the city
“I’m thinking of bringing a few chimps and orangs down to Bangkok, and I might get Somchai to look after them. I’d like him to see how the apes are housed in Sydney.”
“I’ll meet him at the chimpanzee enclosure at around one o’clock tomorrow. There’s a map inside the entrance, with pictures of animals to show where they are.”
“Sounds okay,” Grossmann said. “Just a moment.” Somchai was standing at a respectful distance from the desk. He nodded as his boss explained the arrangements to him. “He’s happy with that. I told him to take a taxi. The taxis in Sydney look like taxis in Bangkok. Is that right?”
“They’re even driven by people from Bangkok,” Parker said bleakly.
While he was on the telephone, the boys busied themselves with minor chores. None of them, he was sure, knew that Lek had come into U-1 in the middle of the night and set off the alarm; like everyone else, they believed there had been a malfunction. But they would realize he was worried about the girl, he thought. Several times that day he had left his bench, mumbling, “I’ll just see how she’s getting on,” and had entered the Animal Room. She cowered from him. When he tried to grab her, she ran to a corner and turned her face to the wall, whispering, “I scream.” After his third attempt, he had given her a hard slap on the bottom and gone back to work.
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