General Zinna’s HQ is about twenty miles out of town, but he starts to make himself felt at about half that distance. Army trucks full of soldiers in camouflage fatigues start appearing parked on the hard shoulders; then motorbike squads come close to our motorbike escort, like medieval louts looking for an off-course jousting match; then, about three miles from the army compound, tanks start to line the road, parked perpendicular to the turnpike with their guns raised ambiguously. Is this a gauntlet or a welcoming committee? Maybe Vikorn wasn’t expecting quite so many tanks; he frowns for a moment and tells the driver to turn up the Wagner. By the time we get to the threshold of army land proper, the tanks are lined up tread to caterpillar tread, producing a funnel-like effect which drives us like game into a net with shrieking Valkyries infesting the air.
And there he is! I have to say I feel a twinge of admiration, the way he has tried to imitate Vikorn’s theatrics, and done a not-bad job of it. He is standing in full army-general parade dress, with his shoulder boards, et cetera, all shined up, the thick rawhide band across his great chest, his men-hundreds of them-all at attention with eyes forward. He’s the little guy with power to spare waiting with the determined dignity of the short to welcome our own capo di tutti capi.
Vikorn, though, is a natural at this kind of thing. The effortless, slightly foppish way he gets out of his Bentley-just slightly limp-wristed here, to point up and impishly mock Zinna’s military correctness-then, just as the General is provoked into beaming and moving forward a couple of steps to greet his guest, Vikorn decides to have a girlish moment-Whoops, I forgot the champagne, his expression says-and instead of ordering his driver to get it he dips back into his limo himself to bring out what is surely a symbolic single bottle of Veuve Clicquot ’86 (there is more on ice in the trunk) while Zinna hangs there wondering what to do with the hands he just raised to his eyes in a wai.
“So our negotiations go all the more smoothly,” Vikorn says with a debonair smile as he hands over the bottle at the same time finally returning Zinna’s wai.
Sensing that he might have been upstaged, Zinna blushes as he takes the bottle; but it is clear he has built up an arms cache of extravagance to hit us with. Sure enough, once Vikorn has strolled nonchalantly through his inspection of the troops, with Zinna bouncing up and down beside him, the General declares it is time for lunch and takes us into his mess, where a banquet has been prepared. The banquet, though, is all for the supporting cast; under heavy police and military escort Zinna leads Vikorn and me to a smaller mess room for senior officers; only the three of us and Zinna’s valet, a trusted member of the inner circle who hails from Zinna’s own village, enter here.
Now Zinna demonstrates how he has grown in stature and grace over the years, because the feast consists of soul food from Vikorn’s home village in Isaan. A mere glimpse at the table tells me we are in for quite a treat: noodles, Mekong River catfish, grilled chicken, salads loaded with minced meat or fish, steamed fish with mint leaves, chilies, garlic, lemon-grass, lime juice, and galangal. Boneless duck tossed with deep-green long beans. Salt-cured crab, and crunchy pork skins. Num tok with rubbery beef balls, slices of pork, cuts of liver, and tripe, squid in gal kua. Green curry, eggplant, and basil leaves with pork (chicken, beef, or seafood is also available, but less appealing), in a sauce thickened with coconut milk. Red curry with cinnamon and chili. I have been told by Lek-who, since his ordeal at the hands of the army, has become the recipient of the most salacious military gossip (he claims one of his guilty tormentors e-mailed him with an apology and an offer of marriage once he’s had the op, and they’ve been pen friends ever since)-that Zinna himself interviewed a short list of chefs to produce Vikorn’s extra-special favorite homebody version of somtam, which takes a full day to prepare and is not complete without a few blessings and spells from the local shaman.
My Colonel’s mien is grave but respectful as he bows his head for the first taste of the somtam, with Zinna himself holding his breath. Vikorn’s expression is all the more solemn when he replaces the fork and spoon, dabs his lips with a napkin, and declares, with an air of defeat, that the dish is perfect, very nearly as good as his grandmother made it. No, he will not bend the truth simply to score a point, he confesses, before the two of us, Zinna and me, that it is even better than his grandmother made it, no doubt thanks to the chef’s more delicate hand with the holy basil and the Kaffir lime leaf. Gratified, Zinna exhales slowly, and with considerable relief; how could they not reach an agreement now? Of the two of them, it is Zinna who most needs the money, and no one doubts it is Vikorn, the gilded civilian, who is the supreme patriarch of dough.
The rest of Vikorn’s champagne is brought from the back of the Bentley, along with its silver ice bucket. Zinna offers all known cocktails, spirits, beers, wines. We plunge into the Widow Clicquot in silence. Now soldier-waiters arrive with vegetable filo parcels, steamed crabs, chicken satay, Thai dim sum, pan-fried fishcakes, barbecued pork spare ribs, spring rolls, grilled seafood with pineapple, bean sprouts and tofu soup, quail-egg salad with prawns, red snapper with three-flavor sauce, turia with pork-I’m giving only the unusual dishes, farang; all the old favorites are represented as well.
I am floundering under the weight of the banquet, but those two old bull elephants seem able to pack it away without a stomach rumble. Finally, it’s over. Zinna has someone bring the cigars and the Armagnac for Vikorn, a single-malt whisky for himself, while I surreptitiously undo my belt a couple of notches. Suddenly, both men are looking to me for the next move. It dawns on me that some kind of unwritten protocol has forbidden either of them to speak first; indeed, the entire meal has passed without anyone saying a word since the somtam-not even “Please pass the nam pla.” Zinna coughs. Vikorn coughs too, staring-almost glaring-at me. I reflect to myself that one of the great bugbears of conferences of this nature is that nothing is written down-there are no minutes and no agenda-and on the last occasion we got into hostilities before the meeting opened, so there is no historical format to follow. To make matters worse, I don’t think either of them has any idea of the proper order of business. Somewhat dizzy, I stand up.
“Gentlemen,” I say, then decide to display full consigliere authority by pacing the flagstones a little. “This is a great historic occasion.” They nod encouragingly. “For too long has our great Buddhist country been divided between the military and civilian disciplined services. How can this be? Didn’t the Buddha himself favor commerce over war?” More encouraging nods from the old men, as if I were rehearsing for a school play. “And has not the whole of Asia benefited from a trade-friendly religion which has made our half of the world’s population into such gifted businessmen and -women?” I pause to glare with righteous indignation. “And is it not a fact that after three hundred years of global militarism, starting with Clive of India, which our people never wanted-is it not a fact that only now is the West beginning to awaken to the need for peace, a need which Buddhism has been explaining to anyone who would listen for two and a half millennia?”
I pause again, frowning like Beethoven. “You see, the essentially socio-pathic nature of modern corporations worldwide is easy to explain when one remembers it originated in the needs of professional opium traffickers, viz, the British East India Company under Clive. To see it as anything other than the expression of a criminal mind-set is catastrophically naïve. The long-term effect? The destiny of the world has been handed over to Gamblers Anonymous.”