the prime minister’s wife as she might eye a muddy sheepdog that was about to walk right across her new snow- white living room carpet, but the Chinese-looking woman who was with Yuri had the look of a startled raccoon suddenly caught in the headlights of a car.
Karsarkis seemed to appreciate the diversion, or maybe he just felt a bit of blood sport coming on, but regardless of which it was, he pushed the door wide open.
“I don’t understand, Karla,” he said, although it was obvious that he understood very well. “What are you talking about?”
“Ah, you know, Plato.”
I wondered if the woman had had too much to drink because she seemed to have difficulty speaking and was slurring her words. On the other hand, maybe [r hhe woma it was just her Australian accent. It was difficult to tell for sure.
“You men go all gaga over these little girls here and I got a theory about that. I think men who run after Asian women are really all bloody pedophiles at heart. That’s what I think.”
“Yes, it’s very possible you’re right,” Anita joined in, and I nearly choked.
She smiled warmly at both of the Asian women sitting around the table, but went on quickly.
“My own observation is that western men who come to Asia are generally unsuccessful with western women and they are looking for harmless playthings who will feed their egos and make no demands. Essentially, they’re looking for children.”
Anita smiled again at the two Asian women sitting at the table as if to say that of course she didn’t consider either of them to be any such thing.
“That doesn’t mean that’s what they find,” Anita finished, “but it’s still what they’re looking for.”
“Have you been into the cooking sherry again, my dear?” I inquired in what I thought was an arch enough tone to make my message unmistakable.
Too late. The Australian chick was in full flight now. I looked at Karsarkis, who had pushed back in his chair and had an enormous grin spread across his face.
“Doesn’t it just make you sick?” she was saying to Anita who was bobbing her head in earnest agreement. “Sometimes I think these halfwits go around screwing these tiny girls just because it makes their pathetic little peckers look bigger.”
Karsarkis was about to bust a gut, but then I noticed that the other men around the table had gone unnaturally quiet, even the Englishman, who before this had looked as if he might never shut up. I glanced at the former prime minister. The old man had his head down diligently examining the texture of his carrot mousse. I got the distinct impression that he had probably heard all this before.
“You see all these fat, smelly wankers strutting around dragging these poor little girls behind them or riding a motorbike with one propped up on the back. Jesus, they treat those little girls like they were no better than pets who give blow jobs. What’s worse, the silly cows don’t even seem to mind it.”
The Australian woman tossed her head and pushed her hair back. There was something about her face that made me think of a badly drawn cartoon.
“Of course, they’re just doing it for the money.” She looked around the table and drained the rest of her wine. “The silly buggers run out of money and they’re out on their dirty arses before they know what hit them.”
“Serves them right,” Anita nodded, looking straight at me as she did.
Suddenly a mobile phone started to ring and for a moment nobody said anything.
“Excuse me,” I spoke up after the sound had gone on for a while. “That’s probably my Thai girlfriend calling.”
Everyone laughed, particularly Karsarkis, who looked as if he might have a stroke.
The Englishman eventually pulled out his telephone and flipped it open. He glanced at the screen, and then he closed it again without answering.
EIGHT
After dinner, Mia invited the other women to ^at,toed'›
A houseboy wearing a white jacket and black bow tie offered cigars from a Dunhill humidor. The cigars were Davidoffs so naturally I took one, as did Karsarkis, but the others waved the houseboy away with varying degrees of courtesy.
The old prime minister stretched out on a lounge chair and within a few minutes was either dozing or dead. Meanwhile the Englishman and Yuri made vague excuses about telephone calls they had to make and headed off for other parts of the house. In short order I found myself alone with Karsarkis by to the pool and I wondered if that was entirely coincidental.
We busied ourselves in silence for a while cutting and lighting our cigars. When Karsarkis eventually spoke, he kept his eyes on his cigar rather than looking at me.
“May I make a personal observation, Jack?”
I waved my cigar in what I figured was a suitably magnanimous gesture.
“Sure,” I said, “go ahead.”
“You seem to be pretty hostile tonight.”
“Good Lord,” I snorted, flipping my spent match in the direction of an ashtray. “I never would have guessed you watched Oprah.”
Karsarkis chuckled slightly at that, but then he lifted his eyes, cocked his head to one side, and stared at me until I looked away.
“You really don’t like me, do you, Jack?”
“Well…” I sorted through a number of possible responses to that and finally went with the one I thought was most honest. “No.”
Karsarkis shifted his cigar from the left side of his mouth to the right and smiled slightly. “You want to tell me exactly why?”
“Sure. You’re one of the people who get away with it. I don’t like people who get away with it.”
“With what?”
“With whatever you want. You make ridiculous amounts of money any way you like. You brush off any inconvenient laws that happen to get in your way. You let the suckers do the productive work and pay the taxes. You ruin people when they threaten you, maybe you even have a few of them killed every now and then if they get to be real nuisances. And what happens to you?” I raised my arms and gestured around me at Karsarkis’ extraordinary house. “Not a fucking thing. You live like the king of the world, laughing at all the idiots who can’t do a damn thing about it.”
To my surprise, Karsarkis just stood and listened to me, nodding his head slightly as if he were in full agreement.
Then, taking another long pull on his cigar, he exhaled and watched the smoke drift away. “You see me laughing, Jack?” he asked.
“You know what I mean.”
“I know this: I can’t go back to the United States now and I have a daughter there who needs me. Did you know
I said nothing at first, but then I saw Karsarkis was staring at me as if he actually expected me to answer him so I did.
“No,” I said. “I didn’t know that.”
“She’s nine years old. Living in New York with my first wif c myidn amp;rsquoe. She has leukemia, Jack, and she’s too sick to come here. If I can’t straighten all this out, she’ll die before I see her again. What do you think it feels like to be in exile halfway around the world, living in a country where you can’t read the signs and aren’t sure who you can trust, when you have a nine-year-old daughter back home who’s dying of leukemia?” Karsarkis pushed one of the lounge chairs around with his foot, sat down on the side of it, and looked up at me. “What do you think that feels like, you self-righteous son of a bitch?”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing.
