"Well, he still knows a lot of movie people." McGinty lowered his voice. "And he has a private bar. He's chummy with the Royal Family. They make allowances for him."
"Yeah?" Turner didn't relish mingling with McGinty's social circle of wealthy retirees, but it might be smart, politically. A word with the old com minister might solve a lot of his problems. "Okay," he said. "Sounds like fun."
The privy councilor, Yang Amat Mulia Pengiran Indera Negara Pengiran Jimmy Brooke, was one of Brunei's odder relics. He was a British tax exile, a naturalized Bruneian, who had shown up in the late '90s after the oil crash. His wealth had helped cushion the blow and had won him a place in the government.
Larger and better-organized governments might have thought twice about co-opting this deaf, white-haired eccentric, a washed-up pop idol with a parasitic retinue of balding bohemians. But the aging rock star, with his decaying glamour, fit in easily with the comic-opera glitter of Brunei's tiny aristocracy. He owned the old Bank of Singapore office block, a kampong of remarkable looseness where peccadillos flourished under Brooke's noblesse oblige.
Monsoon rain pelted the city. Brooke's henchmen, paunchy bodyguards in bulging denim, had shut the glass doors of the penthouse and turned on the air conditioning. The party had close to a hundred people, mostly retired Westerners from Europe and Australia. They had the stifling clubbiness of exiles who have all known each other too long. A handful of refugee Americans, still powdered and rouged with their habitual video makeup, munched imported beer nuts by the long mahogany bar.
The Bruneian actress Dewi Serrudin was holding court on a rattan couch, surrounded by admirers. Cinema was a lost art in the West, finally murdered and buried by video; but Brunei's odd policies had given it a last toehold. Turner, who had a mild long-distance crush on the actress, edged up between two hopeful emigres: a portly Madrasi producer in dhoti and jubbah, and a Hong Kong chop-socky director in a black frogged cotton jacket. Miss Serrudin, in a gold lame blouse and a skirt of antique ultrasuede, was playing the role to the hilt, chattering brightly and chain-burning imported Rothmans in a jade holder. She had the ritual concentration of a Balinese dancer evoking postures handed down through the centuries. And she was older than he'd thought she was. Turner finished his whiskey sour and handed it to one of Brooke's balding gofers. He felt depressed and lonely. He wandered away from the crowd, and turned down a hall at random. The walls were hung with gold albums and old yellowing pub-shots of Brooke and his band, all rhinestones and platform heels, their flying hair lavishly backlit with klieg lights.
Turner passed a library, and a billiards room where two wrinkled, turbaned Sikhs were racking up a game of snooker. Farther down the hall, he glanced through an archway, into a sunken conversation pit lavishly carpeted with ancient, indestructible synthetic plush.
A bony young Malay woman in black jeans and a satin jacket sat alone in the room, reading a month-old issue of New Musical Express. It was headlined "Leningrad Pop Cuts Loose!" Her sandaled feet were propped on a coffee table next to a beaten silver platter with a pitcher and an ice bucket. Her bright red, shoulder-length hair showed two long inches of black roots.
She looked up at him in blank surprise. Turner hesitated at the archway, then stepped into the room. "Hi," he said.
"Hello. What's your kampong?"
"Citibank Building," Turner said. He was used to the question by now. "I'm with the industrial ministry, consulting engineer. I'm a Canadian. Turner Choi."
She folded the newspaper and smiled. "Ah, you're the bloke who's working on the robots."
"Word gets around," Turner said, pleased.
She watched him narrowly. "Seria Bolkiah Mu'izzaddin Waddaulah."
"Sorry, I don't speak Malay."
"That's my name," she said.
Turner laughed. "Oh, Lord. Look, I'm just a no-neck Canuck with hay in my hair. Make allowances, okay?"
"You're a Western technician," she said. "How exotic. How is your work progressing?"
"It's a strange assignment," Turner said. He sat on the couch at a polite distance, marveling at her bizarre accent. "You've spent some time in Britain?"
"I went to school there." She studied his face. "You look rather like a Chinese Keith Richards."
"Sorry, don't know him."
"The guitarist of the Rolling Stones."
"I don't keep up with the new bands," Turner said. "A little Russian pop, maybe." He felt a peculiar tension in the situation. Turner glanced quickly at the woman's hands. No wedding ring, so that wasn't it.
"Would you like a drink?" the woman said. "It's grape juice."
"Sure," Turner said. "Thanks." She poured gracefully: innocent grape juice over ice. She was a Moslem, Turner thought, despite her dyed hair. Maybe that was why she was oddly standoffish.
He would have to bend the rules again. She was not conventionally pretty, but she had the kind of neurotic intensity that Turner had always found fatally attractive. And his love life had suffered in Brunei; the kampongs with their prying eyes and village gossip had cramped his style.
He wondered how he could arrange to see her. It wasn't a question of just asking her out to dinner -- it all depended on her kampong. Some were stricter than others. He might end up with half-a-dozen veiled Muslim chaperones -- or maybe a gang of muscular cousins and brothers with a bad attitude about Western lechers.
"When do you plan to start production, Mr. Choi?"
Turner said, "We've built a few fishing skiffs already, just minor stuff. We have bigger plans once the robots are up."
"A real factory," she said. "Like the old days."
Turner smiled, seeing his chance. "Maybe you'd like a tour of the plant?"
"It sounds romantic," she said. "Those robots are free labor. They were supposed to take the place of our free oil when it ran out. Brunei used to be rich, you know. Oil paid for everything. The Shellfare state, they used to call us." She smiled wistfully.
"How about Monday?" Turner said.
She looked at him, surprised, and suddenly blushed. "I'm afraid not."
Turner caught her eye. It's not me, he thought. It was something in the way -- adat or something. "It's all right," he said gently. "I'd like to see you, is that so bad? Bring your whole kampong if you want."
"My kampong is the Palace," she said.
"Uh-oh." Suddenly he had that cold feeling again.
"You didn't know," she said triumphantly. "You thought I was just some rock groupie."
"Who are you, then?"
"I'm the Duli Yang Maha Mulia Diranee.... Well, I'm the princess. Princess Seria." She smiled.
"Good lord." He had been sitting and flirting with the royal princess of Brunei. It was bizarre.
He half expected a troupe of bronzed eunuchs to burst in, armed with scimitars. "You're the sultan's daughter?"
"You mustn't think too much of it," she said. "Our country is only two thousand square miles. It's so small that it's a family business, that's all. The mayor of your Vancouver rules more people than my family does."
Turner sipped his grape juice to cover his confusion. Brunei was a Commonwealth country, after all, with a British-educated aristocracy. The sultan had polo ponies and cricket pitches. But still, a princess....
"I never said I was from Vancouver," he told her. "You knew who I was all along."
"Brunei doesn't have many tall Chinese in lumberjack shirts." She smiled wickedly. "And those boots."
Turner glanced down. His legs were armored in knee-high engineering boots, a mass of shiny leather and buckles. His mother had bought them for him, convinced that they would save his life from snakebite in savage Borneo. "I promised I'd wear them," he said. "Family obligation."
She looked sour. "You, too? That sounds all too familiar, Mr. Choi." Now that the spell of anonymity was broken, she seemed flustered. Their quick rapport was grinding to a halt. She lifted the music paper with a rustle of pages. He saw that her nails were gnawed down to the quick.