Chapter Four
Bangkok, Siam, 1925
When he had popped up in Istanbul and attempted to bung her onto the next train back to the land of hope and glory, Bobbie played along until the train reached an out-of-the-way stop, then she had evaded the irritating Scotsman by jumping off the train. After losing him in the crowd, she had hopped back onto the train as it was about to depart the platform once more. She paid him no more thought as she sipped a gin and tonic at the hotel bar in Bangkok.
Now, she stared thoughtfully into a rectangular pool of water into which a stone creature was spitting a trickle of water with a pleasantly soothing sound. Bobbie’s research at the British School at Bangkok—the place where seasoned overseas scholars converged and stored information about their studies of the area—had thrown up a curious account from one thousand years ago and it warranted further investigation.
As far as she understood it, the provenance was a Chinese diplomat who had observed first-hand a great natural disaster in 925AD; precisely one thousand years ago. Bobbie had cross-referenced his story, and while no one else had written about the same series of events, there were other historical accounts that the diplomat had been in the area at the time, and that there was a great earthquake felt all the way to Singapore, where local astrologers had decided Mars was responsible and sacrificed a lot of goats to try to appease him.
The diplomat, however, told it differently. According to him, it had begun with locals disappearing, then there had been rumours of a snake cult, at first tolerated by the mostly Hindu population, because Nagi the seven-headed snake was thought to be a force of protection. Then, however, they had done some sort of ritual. A virgin had been sacrificed, of course.
The details got difficult to understand after that, as the original source was in Chinese, and the British scholar who had translated it clearly thought the whole thing preposterous superstition. Since Bobbie’s Chinese was poor, she couldn’t easily translate it herself, so she had to rely on the English version, which claimed a giant seven-headed snake had been unleashed on the world, and that it had destroyed an area of about one thousand miles with earthquakes, so only the most well-built temples survived. Bobbie had trouble believing a giant seven-headed snake had really appeared, and wished there was another source to explain what had really happened.
However, imaginary snakes aside, she was here to find evidence for the snake cult, so she could write an account about one of the more unique subcultures of the area’s past, and regardless of any embellishments, this first-hand account was good evidence that there had been a snake cult in 925AD, when the Chinese diplomat had visited the area.
It was particularly relevant in the present because Bobbie had found suggestions that another snake cult was emerging, now. She was very excited to find out if it was a continuous thousand-year tradition with well-preserved rituals. So far, she had made discreet enquiries and heard many rumours of a cult in the mountains. Entire families had disappeared, although it was more usual for husbands to go missing. At first, people had thought it was the French, exercising their control in the usual way of western men. But then the green-clad acolytes had appeared. Bobbie still wasn’t sure what the connection was, but she knew she needed to get into the neighbouring country to find out.
What made that difficult was civil unrest had just broken out; a French official had gone to talk to some peasants about a corn shortage, and like oppressed people with sharp agricultural tools the world over, they had responded by bludgeoning him to death.
Colonialism certainly had its advantages, and Bobbie knew she benefited from it, but all the same, it was clear to anyone with half a brain that the barely begun era of westerners showing up around the world and claiming it as their own was drawing to a close. The empire was at the beginning of a decline. She had studied ancient cultures and the rise and fall of so many empires that she didn’t know how Europe could be so arrogant and stubborn as to believe they had the situation in hand around the world. When Britain lost America, it was a turning point as far as Bobbie was concerned.
“Nee-haan, madame. A drink for you.” A waiter placed a gin and tonic beside Bobbie’s almost full glass.
She frowned. “Sorry, but I didn’t order another drink,” she replied.
“It is a gift from the gentleman at table four, madame.” The waiter pressed his hands together as though he were about to pray, then bowed his head in the traditional Siamese greeting. Bobbie bowed her head in return, lifted her glass then looked around for the culprit.
When her eyes settled on the dark-haired man, she raised her chin in a back-to-front nod, raising the glass at the same time, then took a deep draught of liquid. Hopefully he would think she didn’t recognise him. Externally calm, her mind ran through all the escape routes from the building. There was the wooden screen window in the ladies’ toilets. The hotel’s kitchen would have at least two doors, one for deliveries and one for airing the stove. Then there was the main entrance, of course, although it was a long walk across an exposed space and he would easily follow her. The service stairs would end at a door, to ensure any laundry was removed quickly.
She had paid for the room in advance, but she had plenty of funds to keep her going; there had been a ten percent finder’s fee on a hoard she had found two years ago in Egypt, and since she had a title, she had been easily able to get it placed safely in a bank account of her own, rather than one belonging to her father. The greatest nuisances would be having to find another hotel that could whip up a gin and tonic worth a damn, and hiring a trustworthy man to retrieve her things.
It wasn’t the first time she’d made a quick exit from someone who was trying their damnedest to bend her to their will, although this chap was rather dogged. She took off her cardigan and draped it over the back of her chair. She needed to play this slow. Sipping at her drink, she began counting. Exactly one hundred and twenty seconds after removing the cardigan, she stood up, intentionally wobbling a little as she did, so he would think she was drunk. Careful not to overact, she picked her way to the toilet and locked it behind her, then climbed onto the wash basin and pulled out the wooden panel that blocked the window. It made a loud cracking noise as the dry, thin wood splintered, then she cast it to the floor. A few seconds later, there was a hammering at the door.
“I ken you’re in there, lass,” a Scottish voice rang out.
Bobbie rolled her eyes and hoisted herself up to the window ledge, then looked out. There was a ten-foot drop into a river. She sighed.
“Looks like I’m getting wet, then,” she grumbled to herself, as the banging on the door got louder. Mostly, water was a damned nuisance. The best way to draw attention to herself in a city would be to walk around dripping wet. It would attract more notice than her fair skin, which after all could be covered up for the most part with scarves. She slung her handbag diagonally across her body with its long strap, glad that she always kept her passport in a waterproof oilskin pouch, and got ready to jump. The door burst open, banging against the wall as it betrayed her, and she threw herself at the water.
Landing with a splash, Bobbie pressed her lips together against the urge to gasp at the cool water. Even in a city that was this hot, the water was quite nippy. Attempting to move through the water was strongly hampered by her clothing, which seemed to catch all the water and pull her down. She kicked off her shoes and slid out of her heavy skirt, leaving it to float down the river at a leisurely pace. Unfettered by her attire now, she kicked her feet more easily, and quickly swam in her blouse and slip to the side of the water.
The Scotsman would be hot on her trail, she knew, so she dodged into a busy market. Silks from China competed for customers’ attention with beautiful lapis-lazuli brooches from India, although the most striking thing was the heady aroma of kaffir lime and lemongrass from the spice stalls. It was enough to make Bobbie’s mouth water, and she remembered with a pang of regret that she’d been about to order lunch when the silly man had interfered.
There wasn’t time to eat, now, regardless of the fact she seemed to have stumbled into an area comprised entirely of exotic street foods, many of which were being cooked on the spot. Bobbie wondered what her parents, who paid an exorbitant salary to their Michelin-recommended chef (her mother insisted that Xavier was a household necessity), would say if they saw her salivating over fried squid tentacles and green eggs.
Dragging herself away from the food and trying to remember the task at hand, she wandered deeper into the bazaar looking for the cheap, ready-made clothing stalls she knew were somewhere around here. Every market had them, and she usually passed them by in favour of real tailoring, but today they would be very useful for a disguise.
Hurriedly, she bought some new off-the-rail clothing while she made her way through the huge thoroughfare, not even bothering to haggle. When she emerged at one of the many ways out of the row of colourful stalls, she was dressed in a thin skirt and headscarf of light green cotton, along with her blouse.
Bobbie’s handbag had survived the river, and she easily checked into another hotel, where she went straight to her room and locked the door. She hoped that was the end of the Scotsman, but something told her he was going to continue being a nuisance for a while. If only there were some way to make him think she had gone back to England, perhaps he would stop bothering her.
More pressingly, Bobbie needed to get into Cambodia. The land was so impenetrable that it was very likely Sean wouldn’t be able to reach her once she crossed the border, anyway. Not daring to leave her room, Bobbie ordered room service, tipped someone handsomely for finding and bringing some clothing and equipment to her room, and then spent the evening poring over maps of this part of the world, planning her route.
A big problem was that a lot of the mapping had been done by someone in an office somewhere, probably Paris, who had never seen the Orient in his life. It was disheartening that the country boundaries weren’t especially accurate, and Bobbie was convinced that none of the so-called cities would be anything bigger than a modest village. The area to the south, marked ‘volcanoes,’ where Bobbie knew there was only jungle, proved that the cartographer had perhaps missed his true calling in life: fantasy author.
Regardless of where the roads and towns were, it was clear that she would need some sort of beast of burden, but horses were quite rare in these parts; the heat disagreed with them. Donkeys were equally problematic, and the nearest camel was probably over a week’s journey away, in far-off Arabia. An elephant seemed ridiculously ostentatious, and probably rather slow, but Bobbie saw no way around it.
As she was trying to find a man with an elephant, she spotted something rather better. It was an eyesore, and it was completely out of place in the bustling streets, ripe with tradition. It looked like someone had attempted to carve a horse out of scraps of metal, without having ever seen a horse, and having no idea what a sculpture ought to look like. Bobbie had ridden motorbikes before and wasn’t enamoured of them. However, it would be rather faster and more nimble than an elephant.
Unfortunately, its owner couldn’t be located. Bobbie left a hastily scrawled apology note where the bike had been, along with her contact details in Britain, then she started the engine and got it moving through Bangkok’s busy streets, thankful that one of the chauffeurs at home had been persuaded to teach her how to ride a bike.
The roar of the engine reminded her of how she’d bravely strode up to the hapless chauffeur and coyly glanced up at him through her lashes, before running her fingers along the bulge in the front of his trousers. When he’d been about to explode in his underpants, she’d audaciously told him she would suck his cock and swallow every drop if only he would show her his motorbike. He’d readily agreed, and she’d kept up her end of the bargain an hour later. Motorcycles, it had transpired, were easy to ride, but chauffeurs were even easier.
It had been a sad day when Bobbie’s mother had finally noticed the amount of time Bobbie was spending being driven from one place to the next, and had promptly found the young man a new position as the driver of an elderly dowager duchess in Surrey. Bobbie had been told firmly that dalliances were strictly not allowed. She hadn’t intended for things with the chauffeur to turn into a longstanding arrangement, anyway, so the fervour and passion faded away with time. What hadn’t disappeared was the excitement of whooshing across bumpy country roads, swerving around potholes at full throttle, with her long hair streaming behind her and her open legs dangling either side of an engine. The ugly nature of motorbike design, regrettably, couldn’t be helped.