Anarchy and the Old Dogs

Toasting the Spies

At Pakse police station, Dr. Somdy had ministered to the coroner’s wounds and given him some painkillers. Tao saw him to the front gate.

“Two for two,” he said. “That’s a two hundred percent better record than any of us has ever managed, Doctor. You’re quite the detective. You ever considered joining the police?”

“You’re just sucking up to me because I threatened to have you transferred to hell.”

“Well, yeah. I probably wouldn’t bother saying it if I wasn’t a bit scared of you, but it’s the truth. I admire what you did. I know you had nothing to gain by solving this case. I get the feeling you did it just to let the mother have some peace. That’s a great thing.”

“Concentrate on the small things and do them well.”

“I’ll remember that.”

They shook hands and Siri walked through the muggy streets to his hotel. The thick cloud had returned, as mean as ever. It was a fitting overhang to his mood. He couldn’t get the thought of wasted life out of his mind. He remembered what Keuk in Khong had said about the bodies they’d pulled from the river after the French reprisals. A mountain of them, he’d said, killed and tortured for loving their country, and what did it achieve? Really, what did those patriots have to show for their sacrifice? Was all this actually worth fighting for? Were his whimsical countrymen worth defending? There he was again-thinking. It never did him any good. It didn’t surprise him at all that the highest doctor suicide rate in the world was among pathologists.

He took a deep breath before walking into Pakse’s best hotel, his home for over a week. The place was about as sophisticated as fried rice. The receptionist was sitting cross-legged on the floor behind the front desk plucking a chicken. He leaned over the counter and she smiled at him. She was in her teens and living proof that guest-relations skills are acquired over time.

“Oy, old man, what have you been up to? Did you fall off your bike? Your cousin’s been looking for you all day. He asked me a dozen times where you might be, as if I’d have any idea.”

Siri dispensed with his usual lecture.

“Is he in?” he asked.

She looked up at the key rack. It was empty. “Must be in his room.”

“Thank you.” He put his hand on the large green telephone that sat like a camouflaged armored car on the desk. He’d never heard it ring. “Does this thing work?”

“The phone? It’s good for local. If you want to call long distance you have to go to the post office.”

“Right. Thanks.”

On the upstairs landing he stopped outside Civilai’s door and heard what sounded like a party: laughter, cheering, all the sounds associated with celebration. He contemplated going directly to his own room but somehow forced himself to turn the handle and enter. He was astounded to see the array of guests inside. Sitting on the bed were two people so out of place in Pakse he didn’t recognize them at first. Phosy and Dtui both rose to greet his arrival. As they approached him, Siri was able to quickly scan the rest of the throng. Phosy’s soldier friend, Kumpai, sat on the floor beneath the Nordic stags. Governor Katay sat on one of the guest chairs with his hands behind his head, smiling like a happy father at a wedding. Civilai was in his usual seat with his fingers knitted together beneath his chin.

Phosy shook Siri’s hand and Dtui gave him one of her rapid body-slam hugs before stepping back to look at him. He was bruised and bloodied and his less-than-complete ear was wrapped in a bandage. His clothes were the color of dried mud.

“Hey, Doc,” Dtui said. “Who beat you up?”

He smiled at Dtui and finally had a chance to use a line he’d heard many years ago in a movie in France. “You should see the other guy.”

Dtui clapped and Phosy shook his hand again. There was more commotion and a lot of greeting and laughing, but nobody seemed to want to take the responsibility of telling him what they were celebrating.

“All right, I give up,” he said, taking a seat on the bed between his friends. “What do you all know that I don’t?”

“Between us,” Civilai said, “it appears we’ve been able to thwart the coup.”

One of Siri’s eyes opened wide. The other remained puffy and closed.

“You what? Why that’s great. How? Tell me all about it.”

While Kumpai went downstairs to order as much alcohol as the city of Pakse could provide, Phosy and Dtui told of the events leading to their arrival at the land border at Chong Mayk, where they had slipped through a well-used smuggling trail. Escaping into Laos had been easier than escaping out of it. They were met by Kumpai at a pre-designated spot and driven to Pakse that morning. The supposed phone call to the Ubon governor from Brother Fred’s office had in fact been to one of Phosy’s contacts on the Thai side. He, in turn, had been able to contact Kumpai in Champasak.

Dtui, being herself, often found Phosy’s rendition of the facts a little dry so she peppered it with anecdotes to keep the crowd entertained.

“The mission Land Rover was better than a laissez-passer,” she said. “The checkpoint guards all the way to the border just stared at the diplomatic plates and glanced up at my driver Phosy here, and me on the backseat. I was wearing these very Japanese ambassador’s wife-type sunglasses I found in the glove box. I looked down my nose at these country boys and they stepped back. Some of them even saluted us. I couldn’t believe it. I was heartbroken when our policeman here said we had to leave the car on the Thai side. I wanted to live in the thing.”

The first round of drinks arrived and Dtui made the initial toast of many.

“To our republic,” she said, raising her glass. The toast was echoed with resounding enthusiasm.

As the glasses continued to empty and refill, Siri glanced at Civilai. His friend was celebrating, joining in the festivities and enjoying the jokes. But, like Siri, he didn’t seem to have the same sensation of unbridled relief and joy that the others obviously felt. It was as if they were both pretending. He wondered whether his friend was feeling the same frustration and guilt of failure that Siri felt himself. It was a fleeting moment and one that alcohol soon erased. He returned his attention to the party and held out his glass for a refill.

“I’m still missing facts,” he said. “You’re at the border and Kumpai meets you…”

“Well, I suppose that’s where I come in,” the governor said. “I’d been summoned for a tкte-а-tкte with my Vietnamese counterpart. It appears the Vietnamese had become aware of an uprising, either based in or being channeled through Pakse. I was encouraged to round up any outsiders staying in town without official documentation. We began that search a few days ago and who should we catch in the net the day before yesterday but one undercover Lao army officer.”

“That would be me,” Kumpai said, putting up his hand. Kumpai had been an erstwhile nondrinker who had decided today was a good time to start. He’d begun to slur his words as soon as the cap was removed from the Johnnie Walker bottle (the real thing, not the Vietnamese rebottled variety). “I got caught,” he said and slouched against the closet.

“We were able to confirm Captain Kumpai’s identity with his superiors in Vientiane, and they insisted he share his knowledge with the Vietnamese security adviser. That’s how we learned that Captain Kumpai was in contact with agents in Ubon.”

“That would be us,” said Dtui, and she and Phosy threw their hands into the air just as their drunken predecessor had done. They slapped their palms together and whooped. Johnnie worked a lot faster than rice whisky. The governor, relapsing into his schoolmaster persona, told the two to sit down and behave. They obliged, smiling, as he continued.

“When the captain received his call in regard to Officer Phosy, we sent men to facilitate his reentry into Laos. He and Comrade Dtui were brought directly to my office. Our two rather amazing friends here had no end of valuable information for our attention.” There was another round of applause. “During our manhunt for insurgents, we had also discovered that Comrade Civilai was here in Pakse incognito”-another round of applause; Civilai bowed dramatically.-”Captain Kumpai had told us of his purpose for being in the south, and today we coordinated our efforts with his. He was instrumental in pinpointing various government officials we could trust. We had the Vietnamese advisers share our information with them. Thanks to the broken code, a number of key rebels have already been arrested around the country. Following those arrests, more conspirators were implicated and apprehended.”

“Who was the character referred to near the beginning of the note?” Siri asked. “The PP?”

“It would appear that Phetsarat Ponpaseth was involved in the coup.”

“Damn. And he’s a minister.”

“He was until this afternoon. We can assume he was slated to be the head of the revolutionary government. I’m sorry to say the security forces were too slow to pick him up. He and one or two of the generals on the list have disappeared.”

“They probably fled as soon as they heard that the Ubon operation center had been compromised,” Civilai said.

“So it would seem,” Katay continued. “But despite that little setback, my Vietnamese counterpart assures me that as far as Hanoi and Vientiane are concerned, the coup threat has been nullified.”

There was a spontaneous cheer in the little room, followed by much hugging and backslapping. It was an easy atmosphere to be caught up in but Siri continued to feel like an observer who’d stumbled upon someone else’s victory parade. He didn’t begrudge them their celebration. A win was a win. But he was sorry Daeng wasn’t there with them. She was the one who’d made the Ubon connection. This was her victory also. He’d sent a trishaw driver to find her but she wasn’t in her shanty. He thought back to that last night when they’d celebrated together in Savanaketh in 1945, the night they’d drunk to their country’s independence. He recalled how he’d felt then and wondered why he didn’t have any of those emotions now. Perhaps it was age.

He would have appreciated some time alone with Civilai. There were one or two things still worrying him that he knew his friend could explain, but through the evening and into the night the old brothers found themselves apart. Circumstances didn’t give them a chance to chat. First it was the unflagging conversation, then the trail of visitors from the town hall, and the military bringing ongoing reports and not leaving. Then it was the whisky. With Lao rice whisky there were clear signals that it was time to stop: stomachs evacuating, eyes blurring, bottoms flatulating. But those heathen Scottish tribes had created a brew that seduced a man and forced him to consume beyond the point of logic. He would find himself floating above the clouds on the back of a giant eagle, euphorically stupid. He would be so assured of himself that even when the eagle vanished-poof--and he was tumbling down toward the bleak rugged mountains of the highlands, he would still swear he was in control. He might even attempt a somersault or two as he dropped, and then splat.

Siri awoke from his own personal splat in a damp patch of grass above the ferry port. He had no idea how he had arrived there. Before him, the Se Don, which often gave the impression it was something special as far as rivers were concerned, converged with the magnificent Mekhong like a worm running into a giant cobra. The scene was too vast for Siri’s limited consciousness to take in. His brain felt like it had shriveled to the size of a walnut. When he moved his head he could hear it rattle inside his skull. His ear throbbed, his eyes smarted, and his neck was as stiff as a tree stump. His body was a treasure trove of aches and agonies. The morphine and the adrenaline had long since worn off and he was left with no doubt that he’d engaged in a wrestling match with a younger man. Hoisting himself onto one elbow was a major feat.

With the sky still obscured by grumbling clouds, it was difficult to pinpoint the hour. Something in his inner clock told him it was a quarter past dawn, but there was a thin line between instinct and downright guesses. Down in the river, up to her waist in the rust brown water, a woman bathed. She wore a thin cotton cloth tied above her breasts. The bathing sarong is sewn into a tube and, from experience, Siri knew she would be naked inside it. To Siri’s mind, there was nothing more beautiful, nothing in the world as erotic, as a woman bathing in a river.

She untied the loose knot and pulled the cloth forward. She took the soap from its floating dish, reached inside her sarong, and scrubbed. Then she retied the knot and reached up inside from the hem and took great pains to soap even the most inaccessible nooks and crannies. She gave a little spin-drier shimmy, collected her soap dish, and waded to the bank with the cloth sticking to her lean body like a tattoo. Siri was invigorated. It was a sight to turn a boy into a man. It was so stimulating he could momentarily forget the river bacteria and algae that dedicated their short lives to seeking out warm fertile flesh to infest. He could certainly forgive her for polluting a waterway that provided drinking water to thousands of families downstream, and the thought of what might have entered the water upstream wasn’t even worth considering. All of that fell into the realm of meaningless trivia when compared to the pleasure to be had from watching a woman bathe in a river.

The sight reminded him why he’d come to this spot in the early hours of the morning. Even before the party had begun to wind down, it had become imperative to see Daeng and tell her the news. In his inebriated state he’d been unable to find her small house along the confusing backstreets so he’d gone to her noodle stand. Not surprisingly, at 3 a.m. it was all disassembled and tied onto her cart, which in turn was padlocked to a six-inch pipe. He’d climbed the bluff to consider his next move and there fatigue and pain had overcome him.

But now the ferry was operating and a lot of hungry people would be passing up and down the ramp. He knew his old friend would be at work, and nothing soothed a hangover like a bowl of noodles. If Daeng’s noodle stall had been equipped with rafters it would have been jammed to them. The little plastic stools were all occupied, some by two patrons each balancing on one cheek. Others sat eating on the concrete ramp with their feet dangling over the edge. A long queue of people stood in front of the cart watching Daeng work the noodle baskets-ever in control-always with time to smile and joke with her clients. Siri stood to one side and admired her skill.

After a few minutes she noticed him.

“Brother Siri, what are you doing over there?” All the diners looked up at the battered old man. “And what on earth have you been up to? No, don’t tell me. I hear you were walking the streets at three this morning looking for my bedroom.” An ironic cheer rose from the happy eaters. Siri blushed a deep crimson. She really did know everything, this woman.

By the time he’d hobbled to the cart he still hadn’t thought of a witty retort. He merely squeezed her arm affectionately and whispered in her ear that the coup had been thwarted. She obviously knew that, too.

“Yes, good news, isn’t it?” she said. She didn’t seem excited. This was the same “ho hum” that he’d felt himself the previous evening. Perhaps she’d already exhausted her ability to celebrate. Quite unashamedly, Daeng told the people in the queue that Siri was her one true love so would they mind if he cut in, just this once? Of course, nobody objected. Love conquers all. He ordered the special, which was the ordinary plus fifty percent more of everything. As she handed him the enormous steaming bowl she said, “You’re going back to Vientiane today.” It wasn’t a question.

“At five.”

“I need to talk to you before then. About two? I’ll be finished with the lunch crowd.”

“Should I come here?”

“No, I’ll come to the hotel. There’s something important you should know and I have something to show you.”

Siri took his breakfast and his spoon and his Vietnamese chopsticks to the embankment and sat like a child, kicking his legs over the edge and filling his face. It was a happy experience. He looked back over his shoulder and gave

Daeng an enthusiastic two-thumb salute. He couldn’t remember having a better breakfast in his life, and he certainly had no dementia when it came to food. It cleared his head, settled his stomach, and started the rusty old cogs rotating in his brain. A peculiar thought, more like an accidental hypothesis, had been following him for the past twenty-four hours. It was so preposterous he’d tried to shake it off but it kept coming back. He had no choice but to satisfy his curiosity.