All of the assembled delegates agreed to this, yet the Taiwanese and Russian representatives continued to bring up fine points of law that served only as delaying tactics. The Bangkok Accords, as they were to be known, were ready, yet Minister Tren and Ambassador Gennady Perchenko continued to delay the final signing.
Ambassador Perchenko had been mostly silent during the preceding weeks of negotiations, yet a week earlier he had taken his customary place at the round table in the richly tapestried room with a new set to his shoulders. He had begun to speak, and had rarely stopped since. At first, Minister Lujian thought Perchenko and Tren were buying time for a Taiwanese military buildup, but satellite images and hard data from spies around the naval bases at Kao-hsiung and Chi-lung showed no increase in activity. Kenneth Donnelly finally assumed that these tactics were a way for the Russians to gain some sort of economic interest in the Spratlys in exchange for a timely settlement.
Drawing on his twenty-five years of adroit statecraft experience, Perchenko had changed his role from observer to dominator, ready to dictate terms.
With a discreet click, a member of the king’s personal bodyguard closed the heavy doors to the conference room and took up station just to their left, a gleaming M-16 hanging from his thin shoulder. The Thai foreign minister, Prem Vivarya, paused for a few moments to let the men in the room settle down before opening the morning session. Set before the Asian delegates were cups of delicate porcelain decorated with ermine lotus blossoms, filled with steaming tea. The Americans and the Russians drank thick coffee from institutional white cups, the type found in hotels all over the world.
Through the partially shaded plate-glass window, Minister Prem could see the gleaming concrete tower of the hotel. Beyond it, the green torpid river was choked with powerboats, barges, water taxis, and long-tailed skiffs caught in the midst of the city’s rush hour. He hoped that this day would not become as deadlocked as the river traffic.
“Gentlemen, at yesterday’s meeting,” Prem intoned, and the assembled translators began whispering to their charges, “the representative from the Russian Federation, Ambassador Perchenko, was beginning to outline several concerns that his government had for the treaty that we are all considering.”
Even through the cumbersome translations, Prem’s annoyance at the Russian was plain. Perchenko, a heavy rumpled man in his late fifties, smiled tightly.
As an aide, Perchenko had attended the landmark 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea in Caracas. With more than 150 nations represented it was the largest gathering of its type in history, a truly global event. It took nine grueling months to write the final document. It pertained to every aspect of the oceans, from environmental protection to the harvesting of their bounty, from the free passage of vessels to undersea mining. In the end, every representative signed it, yet the convention was killed soon after its birth because the United States Congress refused to enact it into law.
Though UNCLOS had miscarried, it had given Gennady Perchenko one of the finest educations possible on maritime law. Now he was using that knowledge for the Bangkok Accords. Or, more precisely, to stall the Bangkok Accords.
After Minister Prem’s opening remarks, Perchenko launched into a ten-hour-long monologue, interrupted only by a one-hour pause for lunch. This speech, though informed, was entirely irrelevant. Perchenko chronicled sovereignty issues dating back more than a century and, although the conflict over the Spratlys was based on such historical clashes, they had been reviewed ad nauseam during earlier meetings. There was no logical reason for the wily Russian to bring them up again. As soon as the other delegates realized that Perchenko was stalling once again, they quickly tuned out the voices of their translators and blankly watched the shadows progress around the room as the hours passed.
This was the third straight day of Perchenko’s monologues, and this one was as pointless as the preceding two.
At six in the evening, Minister Prem politely interrupted Perchenko. “Ambassador Perchenko, the hour once again grows late. The hotel’s chef informed me earlier that his dishes cannot be held long, so it is in our best interest if we pause here and resume again in the morning.”
“Of course, Minister.” Perchenko smiled mirthlessly. His voice was still controlled and level after hours of speaking, and unlike the other men in the room he showed not the slightest trace of discomfort or boredom.
The delegates stood quickly and shuffled from the room. Perchenko remained seated and made a show of lighting a thin Dutch cigar. Undersecretary of Commerce Donnelly clapped Perchenko on the shoulder in a friendly gesture, but the big Texan’s hand dug deeply into the Russian’s soft muscles. “See ya’ at dinner, pardner.”
Perchenko waited until the room was empty before wincing at the pain in his shoulder and attempting to massage it away.
“Fucking cowboy,” he muttered.
Perchenko left the hotel quickly, forgoing the dinner, as he had most evenings. Exiting the gleaming concrete tower on the river side, he called over one of the hotel’s river taxis. Perchenko told the bellman his destination and he, in turn, informed the liveried boat driver. The Russian stepped lightly onto the taxi, a Riva twenty-four footer, and settled himself into the wide backseat just forward of the craft’s idling engine.
The driver eased the boat into the teeming river traffic, heading north and passing the classic Victorian elegance that was the Oriental Hotel. Like its brethren, Shepherds in Cairo, or the Mount Nelson in Cape Town, the Oriental stood as a reminder of the once mighty and far-flung British Empire.
The Riva drove north, cutting a quick stroke through the river, dodging other boats with the agility of a thoroughbred. Bangkok tumbled down to the edge of the river in urban sprawl. Barges sat tied to the banks four and five deep, forming cluttered neighborhoods of their own. The numerous canals that once sliced off into the city and earned Bangkok the title “Venice of the East” were all but gone, turned into automobile-choked streets, but all of Bangkok’s diversity could still be seen from the river; the wealth stacked up in glittering high-rises and the abject poverty living in stick and sheet metal shacks crammed between warehouses.
On the river, the sharp water smell almost masked the reeking cloud of pollution which shrouds the city, ejected from sweatshops and cars in a pall that rivals Los Angeles or Mexico City.
The boat sped along, under the Memorial Bridge, where cars and the three-wheeled jitneys called tuk-tuks were strung like beads. They shot past the Arun Wat, the Temple of Dawn, a squashed cone that typified Thai religious architecture. The dying rays of the sun shone hard against its gilded facade.
The taxi passed the royal palace, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, and Wat Po. As they pounded northward, the city became older, the buildings more tumbled, the Western influence not nearly as strong. The houses and tenements were so jammed together that they leaned against one another. It seemed as though if one were torn down, whole neighborhoods would tumble like dominos.
Finally they came to the Royal River Hotel, the only major hotel on the western bank of the river. A new hotel, it was immensely popular with European and Australian tour groups. Tourists clustered around white tables on the hotel’s landing, their shorts and open-necked shirts garish splashes of color that clashed sharply with their sunburnt skin.
Gennady Perchenko stood and shuffled to the Riva’s gunwale. Ignoring the proffered hand of a bellman, he stumbled to the dock and told the driver to wait, in both English and mangled Thai. He approached the waterside bar’s host, a tuxedoed man with a deeply pocked face and slicked back hair. As the maitre d’ led Perchenko to the only unoccupied table, he spoke quietly from the side of his mouth, his thin lips barely moving.
“There is no word yet, you should wait.”
Perchenko bristled at the order from this man who was no more than a cutout in the spy trade, a disposable piece of garbage whose worth was so small it was un-countable, yet he knew the man was right. He must wait.
As a slim waitress set a Rum Collins on his table, Perchenko thought, as he had every night since coming to Bangkok, about how he had gotten into his current situation.
He had been a successful diplomat under the old Soviet regime, a functionary of some standing who might have one day reached a cabinet position. The coup, the collapse of the Soviet government, and the subsequent formation of the Russian Federation had all but crushed his career. In the sweeping changes that washed across his homeland like a tsunami wave, Perchenko had found himself tumbling in the swirling black eddies. Former allies in the Politburo vanished, others switched loyalties so fast that even they had no idea in what they believed. Gennady watched assignment after assignment pass him by. The old cronyism had been replaced by a tougher but more subtle system of political patronage that left him idle while other men flourished.
