Slash and Burn

23

The truck with Lit driving like a madman skidded along the gravel in front of the Friendship and bumped so hard into the front steps that three of them were destroyed. Both he and Phosy were out of the cab and into the Friendship before the engine had died. Dtui and John Johnson were close behind. They headed first for the dining room which was empty. Likewise the kitchen. It was Dtui who first noticed the stain on their way out.

“It’s blood,” she said. “A lot of it.”

The search became more frenzied as they went from room to room along first the east wing then the west. None of them was locked and all were empty. All that remained were the cabins at the rear and the old opium warehouse. And it was in the open-sided godown that they found everybody. Civilai looked up to see them arrive. His head was wrapped in a white bandage. He looked like a Sikh.

“We need to touch on the subject of punctuality,” he called to them. He was one of seven-the others being Daeng, Dr. Yamaguchi, Secretary Gordon, General Suvan and the two old musketeers-who sat on the edge of the raised concrete floor with their weapons trained toward the fence. And there, tied to the wooden posts, were Senator Vogal and the four guards. They were dressed in only their underpants. Whether they were shivering from the cold or from fear seemed hardly relevant. Rhyme was at the fence using the last of his film to snap Vogal in his teddy bear undies. Like the others, the journalist had remained stoned throughout the whole hostage drama. He’d learned what had actually happened from Siri and Auntie Bpoo. He fully intended to write it all up as a “live at the scene” piece which would include every one of Bpoo’s exaggerations. The transvestite had been good to her word by drinking the cold tea in Potter’s room and was now every bit as wasted as the others had been.

“My idea,” she boasted. “Taking off their clothes. My idea.” And roared with laughter.

Dtui, relieved that none of her fears had been realized, ran to grab her friends’ hands and rub their backs-her own Lao hug. Those not assigned to sentry duty were seated around the large table with glasses in front of them. They all seemed to be squinting from the effects of the tea.

“What happened to your face?” Siri asked Phosy.

“Walked into a mountain,” said the inspector.

“But it was a mountain full of gold,” Lit added.

“There’s gold in Laos?” Siri raised his bushy eyebrows.

“Absolutely not,” Civilai called across to him. “Don’t you think the Politburo would have announced it if there was? No, sir, they’d give everybody a chance to help themselves before the government could lay its hands on the stuff. It’s all a rumor.”

“Well, a little lump of that rumor accidently fell into my pack when I was treating my husband,” said Dtui, pulling out a small nugget which appeared to be pure gold. She passed it around the table while Commander Lit explained the theory of what had happened toward the end of the war. Siri shared his own findings from Potter’s documents and between them the neat logic of the operation became apparent.

“This was all about gold?” said Daeng.

“Enough to make some people very rich,” said Lit.

“And a lot of others very dead,” Phosy added. “They obliterated two villages in order to ship out their war booty.”

“There’s still plenty left,” said Lit. “I don’t know whether the local battalion are guarding it to share out amongst themselves or whether they have orders from above. But somebody has a whole mountain full of gold down there. I’ll be making a full report about it.”

“Well, I’m not having it,” said Judge Haeng, now in a dry change of clothes. He’d been hiding at the far side of the table, invisible and silent since the fracas. “I’m setting up a national enquiry as soon as we get back. A good socialist….”

Siri wrote something on a slip of paper and folded it in quarters before passing it on to the judge. Haeng read it and blanched. Whatever was written there terminated the latest motto and would keep his honor shut up for the rest of the day. Siri would tell no one what it said.

The newcomers sat at the table and sipped at the fine Scotch whiskey.

“Did the papers tell you anything else about Potter’s involvement in all this?” Phosy asked Siri.

“I think he had suspicions about the illegal exploitation of air strikes, perhaps even the use of napalm. I found a copy of a letter addressed to Mr. Rhyme over there, asking him to take as many aerial photos as he could, focusing on cleared land and bomb sites. We know that the major suspected something was up in Ho Chi Minh. He had access to the same paperwork as Vogal. He knew there were discrepancies in the work placement orders. He was sending memos to the embassy in Bangkok until Vogal got wind of it. Vogal went over the ambassador’s head and had Potter removed. But the embassy was still on the major’s side. Looks like Potter and the ambassador put this little excursion together. Isn’t that right, Gordon?” he asked in Thai.

The second secretary looked up and listened as Peach did a more formal translation of Siri’s findings.

“I … er….” Gordon began.

“I have a letter here from the ambassador,” said Siri. “It was in with Potter’s papers.”

“Well then, I guess he did,” Gordon conceded.

“I don’t think you really need to guess,” said Siri. “Seeing as your name’s right here in the letter. It says how the embassy would support Potter’s nomination as team leader and the ambassador hoped that certain outstanding issues might be cleared up as a result. His trusted aid, Mr. Mack Gordon, would be included on the team to offer any support the major might need.” Siri looked up at the American.

“You and Potter were working on this together. You’ve known all about this right from the beginning,” said Siri.

Gordon put down his weapon and came over to the table. He looked around at the expectant faces.

“Not really,” he said. “I had access to some of the things Potter knew but he didn’t share everything with me. We had no idea what it was Vogal and Bowry had been doing here, only that it was illegal and it made them rich. There was other stuff I couldn’t tell you all. I’m sorry.”

He pulled out a chair and sat.

“The photographs sent to the embassy came with a note,” he said. “It was one of those blackmail letters you see in the movies, with the words cut out and pasted. It said something like, ‘Hi, Dad, congratulations on the promotion. As you can see, I’m alive and well. Thanks for asking. The guy you got to sabotage my chopper wasn’t the brightest. When you decide to kill your only son you really better do it right or he’ll come back from the grave at the most inconvenient time.’”

The guards were distracted by Peach’s translation. None of them noticed the senator slowly rocking back and forth. The fence post he was tied to was loose. By leaning against it and pulling upwards, he was slowly dislodging it from the ground. Emiliano on the next post looked across and he too started to edge his post out of the dirt.

“‘I escaped to Thailand,’” Gordon continued to recall the note. “‘I met a local girl and found work. It’s a comfortable life. I almost forgot all about you and your disloyalty, et cetera. But I see from the newspaper that you’re a bigwig now and you’ve got your finger in a money pie. So I’ve decided to claim my inheritance. I could use half a million dollars as soon as possible. Not a bad price when you consider everything I know. Everything I could tell them at your appropriations committee meetings.’ And then there were suggestions on how to get the money over here. That was the gist of it.”

“So that’s why Senator Bowry was so confident that it was his son in the photos,” Phosy said.

“Actually, no,” Gordon said. “He didn’t ever see the note.”

“You held it back?”

“For two reasons. One, it would have diverted the senator’s attention away from this MIA mission. We wouldn’t have had any control at all if he went off in search of his son in Thailand. And secondly, we knew it wasn’t Captain Bowry who sent the note.”

“What?” said Daeng. “Then who was it?”

“Leon. The head mechanic at Long Cheng. We knew about him from Potter’s files and embassy reports. We have quite a database of American expatriates living in Thailand, especially ex-servicemen. A lot of them find themselves a bar to run and don’t move very far from it. The note gave a PO box in Pattaya as a return address. It was registered in the name of a guy who has shares in the same bar as Leon. Seems the older he got, the stupider he got.”

“I know how that feels,” said Civilai.

“It didn’t take us long to get the connection to Leon. We went to see him, me and Major Potter. He was surprised we’d found him. It took us a while to convince him we were only interested in getting something on Vogal but if he didn’t cooperate we had enough evidence to put him away. We told him we’d try to keep the police out of it if he told us where we could find Boyd Bowry. He thought that was funny. Boyd was dead, he told us. Leon had set up the whole thing with the photographs. He’d met a guy in a bar who bore a passing resemblance to Captain Boyd and shot some pictures of him at the local ethnic culture park. He’d thrown in the briefcase for effect. We asked him how he could know Boyd didn’t survive the crash. He told us how the chopper was fitted with a tracer. Leon had a radar tracker. He knew exactly where the craft went down. He was working out of the same office as the flight control team. He was on duty late on the night of the crash. He was in a position to give false locations to the search and rescue teams. He hadn’t really heard the explosion. It was just another way to confuse the search.”

“As soon as Air America had given up on Boyd, Leon flew in there to take a look round. It appears Boyd almost made it. He’d somehow avoided the explosion. I guess we know how he did that now. Lowered himself down on the cable. Incredible that he should even try. Leon found his body mangled up in the trees. He dragged him down and buried him. Leon didn’t actually confess to being the one who sabotaged the chopper but I wouldn’t have put it past him. He did have a look about him. He undertook a discreet reconnoitre of the village nearby and that’s when he saw the tailplane. I guess the germ of an idea took root then but it wasn’t until the announcement of the MIA mission and Bowry’s newfound influence in DC that Leon sparked into action.”

“There were Lao girls working in Leon’s go-go bar. One of them had family in Xiang Khouang. A couple of brothers. She’d been in Thailand since the early sixties but, with the war over, she was keen on the idea of visiting her home village. It was just outside of old Xiang Khouang town, not that far from Ban Hoong. Not so hard to cross the border if you’ve got friends on the other side. Leon paid for her trip in exchange for a couple of small favors. A bonus if she came back with results.”

“The photograph and the rocks,” said Daeng.

“She was the dragon’s daughter,” Civilai laughed.

“So the rocks…?” Yamaguchi asked.

“Just another clue in case we were so dumb we missed the point,” said Gordon. “Backup in case the villagers died of a group heart attack carrying the tail up through the mountains. Leon needed Vogal and Bowry to believe Boyd had survived. Then they’d be more likely to hand over his half a million. Leon’s attempt to blackmail Bowry fitted right into our plans. We were certain someone would make a mistake and we’d be here watching.”

“You didn’t ask Leon what Boyd and the two senators were involved in?” John Johnson asked.

“Oh, we asked. But we’d gotten everything out of him we were likely to. He had a condominium with 180-degree vista of the ocean and a jet spa. He wasn’t living that kind of lifestyle on an air force pension. He’d made that money the same way the senators did. He wasn’t about to endanger his investment.”

“But it wasn’t enough for him,” Siri said.

“He saw the other guys were living at the top end and he wanted to be up there with them. He got greedy. Two weeks after we talked to him he was dead.”

“Do you think they found out he was orchestrating the blackmail?” Phosy asked.

“No, if they did they wouldn’t have gone through with the MIA mission. I think they were getting jumpy. It was time to clean up. They eliminated the last two mechanics who knew what had happened. That left Captain Boyd and Potter. Through the blackmail note, the young captain had taken on a life all his own. Leon had re animated him and we at the embassy decided to ride his luck. The major wanted to catch Vogal in the act of sabotaging the mission. But we underestimated him. By coming up here and shutting down all communications, Vogal was able to see off the major and make an alibi for himself. If things didn’t work out he could wipe out the lot of us and blame some renegade bandit gang. He had it all covered.”

“Actually, it’s brilliant,” said Civilai. “Splendid efficiency without a hint of conscience. No wonder they’re the leaders of the free world.”

“Vogal,” said Dr. Yamaguchi.

“That’s right,” said Gordon.

“No, I mean, Vogal’s gone.”

They looked to the fence to see that the evening mist had rolled in fast from the plane. The foggy figures of three of the guards sat featureless at the perimeter, but beside them two fence posts lay on the ground. Vogal and Emiliano were gone. The two musketeers started to give chase. One of them reached the fence line before Commander Lit called them back.

“Wait!” he shouted. “I think this recapture might take care of itself.”

Everyone stood silent, waiting for the inevitable explosions. Field mice weighing less than a hiccup had been known to detonate the temperamental ordnance on the plain. Even without clothes weighing them down, the runners would have to call on some ill-deserved karma to make it across. Everyone waited. Listened. Expectant … Nothing.

“Do you think we should call out, ‘Be careful,’ or something?” Daeng asked.

“I think they knew the dangers when they took off,” said Siri. “They think their chances out there are better than the alternative.”

The silence continued. Siri wanted to capture the moment somehow. The tension. The expectation. It would have made a remarkable cinematic image. He wondered whether it might be seen as inappropriate to discuss his screenplay concept with Civilai at such an occasion. He could see Kurosawa milking this scene. Two desperate men in their underwear lost in the mist on a landscape sown with explosives. Black and white. The only way to go. He looked around. Men and women holding their smoky breaths. Doubts fluttering. What if the endless blitz stories were all a myth composed by the propagandists? What if there were no-

It was less a bang, more a … a thunk. Like a punch. Loud, it was, and final. But not the boom you’d expect. There was no scream because bombies were renowned for their suddenness. By the time the shock had washed over you, screaming was the last thing on your mind. If your mind was still attached to your skull. Everyone wondered which of the escapees had been taken, but the thought was fleeting, because the second thunk seemed to leave a whistle in the air like a high-pitched ricochet.