Ivory Nation by Andy Maslen (free children's ebooks online txt) 📕

Gabriel had swung it by reminding her of Fang Jian’s Lotus Blossoms. There was something about female bodyguards that threw off male adversaries.

‘We make a sample purchase today, say we’re going to present it to our big client in London and, if he likes it, come back for a bulk shipment,’ Eli said.

‘And while we’re there, we make discreet enquiries about the BVR. Say we’re interested in investing upstream, too,’ Gabriel finished. ‘You think it’ll work?’

‘It’ll have to. This is our last remaining lead.’

The big Mercedes was silent inside, apart from the faint whisper from the air conditioning. Eli drove west along an unnamed road that tracked the Mekong’s Laotian bank. Very occasionally, they’d see a fishing boat. The thin brown-skinned man holding the tiller or casting nets would pause in his labours, shade his eyes then hold up a long, lean arm in greeting.

On the Thai side of the river, palms, huge, fat-trunked ferns and other unnameable trees blocked out any view inland. Gabriel had trained for jungle warfare in Brunei. They’d spent days, then weeks living in one hundred percent humidity, either alone or in a small patrol.

The days were spent fighting through foliage laced with saw-toothed edges, four-inch-long thorns, or leaking poisonous sap that raised blisters the size of poker chips on any exposed skin. He’d become accustomed to, though not happy about, sleeping in dry clothes then waking, packing them into a waterproof bag and squelching his way into the previous day’s wet outfit.

He’d been prepared for it. And it was only training, after all. As the jungle across the water rolled past, he imagined himself a farm-boy from somewhere like Kansas, drafted into the hell that was Vietnam.

One day you were driving a John Deere across a wheat field that stretched to the horizon, yellow-gold below and a dazzling blue above. The next, up to your waist in stinking swamp water, slapping away mosquitos the size of sparrows, your horizon truncated to two feet in front of your nose. Slashing at the grabbing, coiling, entangling vegetation while all the time fearing the bullet, grenade or shit-tipped punji stick that would end your life before it had properly begun.

How would they have coped? He feared he knew the answer. Not just from watching documentaries and reading military histories, but from talking to vets of that conflict during trips to the USA. Alcohol. Marijuana. Heroin. Suicide.

‘We’re here,’ Eli said from far away, breaking the spell and jerking Gabriel back to the present. ‘Tad Thong Road.’

He looked forward. She rolled imperceptibly to a stop in a clearing before an ornate stone-built church, its squat square tower surmounted by a cross whose horizontal member had slipped out of true and now hung at twenty degrees off true. A rose window above the gothic doorway depicted the crucifixion in stained glass. Here and there, irregular black stars interrupted the scene of Christ’s passion on Calvary.

Theirs was by no means the only vehicle in the improvised car park. It might have been an advert for a high-end rental outfit, or a millionaires’ car show. He saw a couple more Mercs, also a Bentley Continental in glittering metallic kingfisher blue, a brace of Lamborghini Urus SUVs, one black, one gun-metal, and a midnight-blue Range Rover, emblem of understated but still magnificent success from the shooting parties of Scotland to Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.

Eli climbed out of the front seat then came round to hold the door open for Gabriel. Two guards flanked the church doors, AK-47s slung over their impressive shoulders. They wore the regulation stony gaze of their breed. Plus in the left-hand man’s case, a broken nose, and in his companion’s a jagged scar bisecting his right eyebrow and continuing down across his eye socket to his cheek.

Broken Nose held up his right hand, palm outwards. He stepped forward, unslinging his AK as he came towards them. Behind him, Jagged Scar did the same, yanking the charging lever back for added drama.

Eli stood to one side.

‘I am looking for the Pompidou Centre,’ Gabriel said, in English.

‘You’re a long way from Paris,’ Broken Nose said.

‘But Vientiane is cheaper.’

Broken Nose grunted.

‘No firearms.’

Gabriel held his suit jacket wide then lifted the back and executed a full circle. Eli turned slowly on the spot. Though his eyes lingered on the baton, Broken Nose waved them in with a grunt.

Inside, it was apparent the congregation had already gathered. Sitting in groups in the pews or standing in huddles were gathered an array of men and the odd woman who fitted Gabriel’s mental category, ‘foe’.

He saw portly men in the Arab combo of thawb and ghutra, looking for all the world like oil sheikhs, which, he supposed they might well be. Other Arabs dressed in conservative, western-cut business suits. Black guys wore beige and mustard suits, sporting plenty of bling at neck and wrist.

All eyes were on Gabriel and Eli as they entered the formerly sacred space. The gazes were at the least curious, if not hostile. But they had been allowed in, so they had sufficient credentials to buy. Conversations started up again, and Gabriel picked out a swirl of languages and accents, including in one corner a Belfast accent thick enough to need subtitles.

Gabriel and Eli sat at a pew right at the back of the church. Above them, a sad-eyed Madonna looked down on them, as if reproaching them for being part of such a gathering.

Gabriel jerked his chin up at the blue-robed statue.

‘If her son were here, he’d have a fine time kicking over the tables, don’t you think?’

She moved towards him.

‘If he did, I hope he’d bring some muscle. This lot would crucify him for sure, if he tried it.’

A loud clapping from the front of the church silenced the chatter.

A tall Laotian appeared at the lectern. He was bald and the dome of his skull gleamed in the light entering through the stained glass windows.

‘Gentlemen,’ he intoned, ‘and, ladies, welcome. My name is John-Antoine Vong. We are ready for