Slash and Burn

7

The knock on the door might as well have been directly on the inside of Siri’s head. Somebody was in his skull with a wrecking ball trying to get out. The groan from Daeng’s side of the bed told him that she wasn’t faring any better. If it was morning, the day was doing its damnedest not to show it. An early mist had oozed in through the open window and was swirling around the bed like dry ice. In the distance could be heard the thump of artillery fire as the joint Vietnamese/Lao forces began their daylight offensive against the last stubborn pocket of Hmong resistance at the Phu Bia mountain. While the Americans slept soundly in their beds, their discarded allies fought for their lives. The sound was the only sign that dawn had officially cracked. The knocking continued.

“Go away,” said Siri, both to the hangover and the unwanted visitor.

“That rice whiskey…?” said Daeng with a voice like a shovel through pebbles.

“I forgot to mention the day after,” Siri confessed.

“I feel like….”

“Me too.”

“Was that a knock at the door or my eyelids banging together?”

Siri shuddered as he left the warmth of the quilt and quick-stepped across the cold floor to the door. Peach stood in the doorway with a massive smile on her face.

“Morning, Doctor,” she said brightly and slid past Siri into the room. “I was gonna bring you doughnuts and coffee but the nearest deli’s nine hundred kilometers away.”

Daeng peered over the quilt.

“How on earth can you be this jolly?” she asked. “You were paralytic last night.”

“I have a missionary’s constitution. We get back on our feet really fast.”

“Do you … er, remember anything about last night?” Siri asked.

“Absolutely,” she smiled.

“Oh, really?”

“Yes. I remember taking a quick nap on your bed then waking up in my own. I guess showing off with fuel-injected rice whiskey isn’t such a smart idea. Who…?”

“Me and the doctor,” said Daeng, unburdening herself of the bedcover.

“Well, I appreciate it.”

“All part of the service. To what do we owe this wake-up call?”

“Orientation. Remember?” I told you I’d warn you what to expect at the start of each day? She opened her notebook. “OK, today will begin with the ‘Getting to know you’ breakfast at seven thirty. Once we all know each other we fly off to Long Cheng.”

“Because?” Daeng asked.

“I guess because that was the last place anyone saw Boyd Bowry alive.”

“And they think they might have misplaced him in a cupboard somewhere?”

“I doubt there are any cupboards left,” Siri said. “I get the impression there isn’t much remaining of the original outpost. Lost to mother nature and pillaging once the place was overrun, so they tell me.”

“Maybe so,” said Peach, “but, for whatever reason, that’s where the surrounding villagers have been told to assemble with their war booty. You’ve heard the heavy artillery? It means we have to take a very circuitous route to avoid the hostilities. It should take over an hour to get to good old Spook City. The task force sets up a base camp there and we go through the stories and evidence until we get a plausible lead. Then we head off to investigate.”

“I assume we’ll have a packed lunch?” asked Daeng, massaging her temples with her thumbs.

“I don’t think we’ll need to worry about food on this entire trip, Madame Daeng,” Peach laughed. “The chopper that brought us here could barely lift off from the weight of the provisions. They had the team all squashed up at the front. ‘Leave not one can of spam behind’ was the call.”

“And everyone on the list turned up?” Siri asked.

“Pretty much. Senator Vogal and his secretary Miss Chin are on standby.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, it means he may not come. But they still needed to get official permission for the both of them, just in case.”

“In case of what?”

“Success. If we rescue the pilot or we find his remains, he’ll show his face up here. Right now he’s slumming it at the Oriental in Bangkok for the five days of the mission. If he gets news of a breakthrough, they’ll fly him in. He’ll pose for pictures, shake a lot of hands, give quotes to the press. There’ll be maximum exposure back home. Headlines. I doubt he’ll stay here overnight. They’ll fly him back to civilization the same day and he can go home. Job done.”

“And why should he be involved at all?” Daeng asked.

“Well, he’s big on the MIA lobby, for one. If they find a live one there’s a lot of bucks to be had to keep looking. It’s a sensitive issue in Washington. Big political strides to be made by supporting the vets, and, in turn, the military. And, two, he’s Senator Bowry’s best pal. Their kids played together. He knew Boyd. The family want him over here keeping tabs on the investigation.”

“But he doesn’t want to roll up his sleeves and help us dig,” Siri remarked.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Peach. “He’s in Bangkok. If you’re on your recliner TV chair in the States that’s every bit as good as being in the Lao jungle. “Senator Ulysses Vogal the third is in Southeast Asia supervising an MIA joint force mission.” Good line. Nobody questions whether he’s in the sweaty forests of northern Laos or doing cocktails in the lounge. Just the word “Asia” is scary enough over there. He’ll be a hero. If we find Boyd it’ll be his photo on the front page of the Post with his arm around the young man, sweat stains around his armpits. You and your team won’t so much as crack a mention. “Local diggers” they’ll call you.”

“What if the boy’s dead?” Daeng asked.

“Same difference. ‘After a prolonged search, Senator Vogal sadly carries the remains of his best friend’s war hero son across the bitumen to board the TWA flight home.’ Votes a-plenty there from the female electorate. He’ll do great in farming communities.”

“You’re impressively cynical for such a young thing,” Daeng smiled.

“Madame Daeng, you try growing up white in Southeast Asia during an American war. The lines between them and us and right and wrong get real fuzzy. It was people like Vogal who decided there should be intervention over here to stop the communist takeover of the world. It was a policy experiment to prop up the fading popularity of the president. Another snow job to con the gullible general voters of North America.”

There was a long silence in the misty room.

“Very well,” said Siri. “As we haven’t even begun to look for the pilot, we’re still quite a way from finding him. It’s possible we won’t have to disturb the senator from his cocktails. Let’s take it from the introduction breakfast and see how we progress from there. Little Peach, do you foresee any disasters over our communal rice porridge?”

“Do you really want to know?” she asked.

“Major Harold Potter would like to welcome all the Lao delegates and says that he greatly respects the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos for everything the socialist administration has achieved in the past three years.”

Judge Haeng’s cousin Vinai, the director of the Office of Interpretation Services, was standing at the end of the dining room at a beautifully carved but wonky dais. The audience sat at two long parallel tables. The Friendship Hotel restaurant had once been the entire building. It was constructed of sturdy hand-sawn lumber and its pillars were sunk deep. But the tin roof had been replaced with concrete tiling and, apart from the doors and window frames, very little wood had been used to complete the new lodge. Perhaps this was why only the dining room felt comfortable. It was as if the laid-back ghosts of the Corsicans watched over their inn from the solid rafters. Even the inevitable breakfast speeches seemed mellow.

Siri turned to Daeng.

“The major said all that in four words?”

“You’d have to assume English is a lot more succinct than Lao,” Daeng decided.

Siri had studied French at a Lao lycee then become fluent during his years in Paris, but he’d had no cause to dally with the English language. Cousin Vinai’s English rendition of the American major’s comment had sounded authentic but he had no idea how accurate a trans lation it was. It was the conflicting word count and the bewildered faces of Peach and Nurse Dtui that alerted him to the possibility that something might be amiss. Cousin Vinai had been allotted the role of senior interpreter for the mission, yet since their arrival in Phonsavan he’d avoided all contact with the aliens. The judge suggested this was because of Vinai’s laryngitis and that he wanted to preserve his voice for the first day of activities. That day had arrived and he had supposedly translated General Suvan’s opening address word for word from his own script.

To Vinai’s left at the VIP table, which was resplendent with plastic hibiscus, sat General Suvan in full dress uniform. In fact, Lao full dress uniform was not as impressive as it sounded. He might have been mistaken for a postman in any other country. Although the same age as Siri, the balding old man made the doctor look like a teenager. His movements were languid and his reactions showed a lack of reflex. In front of him on the table was the three-page speech he’d just delivered. It was dog-eared and crumpled so he’d either slept on it or it was a well-used address. Vinai had his own copy. During the speech, the fried eggs and crispy bacon and steaming pots of instant coffee arrived and, as there was still a pervading atmosphere of nervous cultural tension between the two groups, nobody tucked in. So the guests watched their food slowly cool in front of them. Another half an hour would render the meal inedible which probably explained the brevity of the American major’s own greeting. But, to their horror, Judge Haeng seated to the general’s left reached into his own briefcase and pulled out a wad of paper twice as thick as that of the general. Cousin Vinai produced a translation of equal thickness. The judge slid back his chair but Siri got to his feet before him.

“With respect, Judge,” he said, wondering whether that counted as an oxymoron. If looks could kill, Judge Haeng was standing over Siri’s body with bloody fingers.

“As this is a special occasion,” Siri went on, “I suggest that it would be a courtesy to our American guests if we followed their culture and ate while we listened to your probably insightful and humorous early morning discourse.”

He still had little idea about American culture or whether they ate during speeches in the United States-Henry James certainly didn’t-but he was hungry. Judging from the ensuing round of applause once the translation had reached the visitors’ table, they were hungry too. And so, Judge Haeng’s speech and its purportedly English translation were all but drowned out by the clattering of American knives and forks and the hum of conversation. Nobody failed to notice the fact that Haeng glared at Siri the entire time. Siri seemed not to care. He was taking the opportunity to study the colorful assembly of Americans opposite.

The retired major, Potter, wore a large flowery Hawaiian shirt, green shorts with an impressive collection of pockets, huge boots, and a Dodgers baseball cap. Siri could think of no better word to describe his complexion than “ripe.” He was flushed and bloated like a man dropped into boiling water and left there to simmer, the result of blood vessels expanding. His nose was a crimson golf ball. He was, Siri decided, a man lost to alcoholism. This voracious appetite extended to food. Peach, seated beside him, looked on in amazement as he forked a mountain of potatoes into himself.

“Honey,” he said.

Peach looked around for the bar girl he might have been soliciting. She saw nobody.

“Are you talking to me, Major?”

“You’re the interpreter, right?”

“I am.”

“Then shouldn’t you be telling us what these two guys are saying?”

“Well”-she looked over her shoulder-“one of these guys is Judge Haeng and he’s giving a long talk about the tolerant nature of the Pathet Lao to former imperialist oppressors. And the other guy is translating it into English.”

“What?” The major put down his fork for the first time and cocked an ear in the direction of cousin Vinai. “That’s English?”

“Apparently.”

“I can’t understand a goddamned word. Can’t they get the interpreter to do it?”

“Comrade Vinai is the head interpreter, Major.”

“What about the big woman?”

“What big woman would that be, sir?”

“The one they put on our chopper yesterday. She spoke pretty good.”

“On our helicopter?”

“Yeah, you didn’t see her? She was the only Laotian on board.”

“I was stuck at the back behind a wall of cans, but, no, can’t say I noticed her.”

“Well, she was damned good.”

Once the Judge Haeng/Cousin Vinai double act was over and the plates emptied, everyone sat with their coffee waiting for the main event. Peach tapped the major’s arm.

“You’re up, Major,” she said.

Potter wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and inflated to a standing position. He said something loud and full of expression and then paused. There was an embarrassing silence. All eyes were on Cousin Vinai who was burrowing down into a bowl of rice soup. He waved his spoon at Peach.

“You take it, little sister,” he said. “This is the first chance I’ve had to eat.”

So, once again, Peach assumed the mantle of interpreter. She explained that Major Potter had planned a small activity as an icebreaker for the two sides to get to know each other. It was an adaptation of the game charades, of which none of the Lao apart from Siri and Civilai had heard. Siri gritted his teeth. For charades to be fun-if it ever truly was-you had to be three sheets to the wind, not hungover and stone-cold sober at breakfast. But there was no fighting it. Sergeant Johnson, perhaps the blackest live man Siri had seen in Laos, handed out cards apologetically. He was a marine based at the US Consulate in Vientiane. He had a booming sugary voice. He leaned into his walk like a meatless Nebraska Man in a hurry to catch up with evolution. But his gait put his smile out in front of him and it was a marvelous smile. It fitted on that handsome face with its gleaming eyes that took in everything around them.

The names of all those in attendance had been written in both Lao and English and the cards had strings attached so they could be hung around the neck.

“Oh, heaven help us,” said Civilai. “Didn’t the Chinese do something like this during the cultural revolution? What humiliation.”

“Get into the spirit, brother,” Siri said.

“If only I could.”

But to make matters worse, the Americans all stood and pushed their tables and chairs back to the wall. The Lao assumed they were supposed to do the same so the moment arrived when both teams were standing facing each other with no barriers between them. The symbolism was poignant. Whether this was his idea or a directive from Washington nobody would know, but Major Potter stepped forward and said, “Kwoi soo Harold.”

The Lao looked on in amazement. Had the major actually announced in Thai that he had a fighting penis? It was a bold statement if true. But they racked their brains for another possible meaning. It was Dtui who found it.

“Ah, koi seu Harold,” she said. “My name is Harold.”

The Lao echoed the utterance in relief and the ice began to break quite accidentally and all by itself. You couldn’t go downhill from there. The point of the game was to give your name in English and Lao and then mime what you did for a living for the other team to guess. The major launched into a gala performance of marching and shooting and saluting and the Lao kept silent. Everyone knew he was a retired major but they wanted to draw out the embarrassment. Oddly, the more he mimed the happier he appeared to be and the more the US contingent laughed. They were an amusing bunch with apparently no shame at all. It was Judge Haeng who finally called out enthusiastically, “He’s a soldier.”

This was translated and the Americans and Mr. Geung applauded and whooped.

“He’s a soldier,” laughed Mr. Geung.

This delighted the Lao who were now officially into the spirit of the moment. Even General Suvan came to for the event. His mime of a soldier was remarkably similar to that of the major, albeit slower, but he was delighted when somebody guessed correctly and he slumped back into a chair from the exertion. The game continued and was a success at many levels. Civilai had several lewd suggestions, none of them translated by Peach. All on the American side knew that Daeng was having a joke with them when she mimed that she was just a noodle seller and Mr. Geung could not resist adding sound effects as he sawed through the rib cage of an imaginary corpse. Peach was the last to go. Her hand gestures of two people talking led to Mr. Geung’s guess that she was a duck farmer and that heralded the biggest laugh of the morning.

By the time they were due to file out of the dining room, despite the odds and the temperature, there was no ice left to break. The two groups merged and mingled and attempted their few words of the others’ language. They shook hands and smiled and laughed at nothing in particular. If only the war had been conducted under similar rules.

Only one man, it seemed, was not humming the melody of peace and love. To date, Judge Haeng had not engaged Siri in conversation. In fact they hadn’t spoken since before the doctor made changes to the team list. But here, with everyone in a milling mood, he made a beeline to the old coroner and grasped his left hand like a claw crane engaging a sack of rice. He smiled, but not for Siri’s benefit.

“I haven’t had a chance to thank you for adulterating the personnel list that I’d spent a month finalizing,” he snarled behind his teeth. “I don’t know how you did it, Siri, how you forced the minister’s hand on this, but I promise you I will not forget it. Never. I’m the wrong man to get on the wrong side of and you are firmly on that side, Siri Paiboun. You have tossed able men and women from this work detail, respectable cadres with status and influence and you have replaced them with morons and housewives and senile sociopaths.” (Siri took the latter to mean Civilai rather than himself.) “And you embarrass me further by including my name in your circus ring. It’s all too too bad. A good communist does not shake his comrade by the hand and stab him in the back at the same time.”

Siri matched the man’s smile.

“I imagine I’d need a very long knife with a curve on it to achieve such a feat,” Siri said. “Or perhaps a scythe. Yes, that might work. Otherwise I’d have to let go of the hand then run round the back. But, by then you’d know what my intention was, wouldn’t you.”

“What are you…?

“Dear Judge Haeng, I don’t need to do anything behind your back. If you ever threaten me again with your menacing handshake, or insult my friends and family, you’ll have me to deal with face to face. What you’ve experienced of me so far is nothing compared to what you’ll get if you don’t back off. You aren’t my boss any more. You’re just another annoying civil servant.”

He removed his hand from its clammy nest, and left a fuming judge smiling at himself.

Before heading off to the helicopters, Major Potter singled out Cousin Vinai from the herd and put his arm around the interpreter’s shoulder as if they’d been friends for years. The major yelled to get everyone’s attention, pointed at Vinai and said a few words. There was something in Vinai’s eyes that Siri recalled witnessing in the expression of a deer they’d cornered in a deadend gorge during the fighting. It was that “on a spit by supper time” look. He gazed around desperately for Peach but she was nowhere to be seen. He was on his own.

“The … er, major would like to say how impressed he is with the record of the Pathet Lao over the first three years of their administration,” said Vinai.

Judge Haeng and General Suvan clapped but a worm of suspicion had already crawled through the minds of the other onlookers. Siri looked at Dtui who shook her head. Major Potter spoke again. Vinai, still scanning the room for Peach, said, ‘The major is saddened when … he sees so much destruction in this area … caused by the bombing.”

Haeng and Suvan clapped again. Siri sighed.

“Vinai, please tell the major we’re interested to know whether he’s been to Laos before,” Civilai shouted.

“No, this is his first trip,” said Vinai, without translating.

“Ask him,” said Civilai.

“I…?”

“Ask him.”

Vinai turned to the major, looked up into his puffy face and spoke very quietly. Potter listened attentively then seemed to ask for clarification. Vinai spoke again. The major removed his arm from Vinai’s shoulder and looked around, presumably for Peach. The American spoke once more, slower, enunciating every word with such precision that Mr. Geung could have understood it. Vinai, aware now that his grasp on credibility was slipping, said, “The major was here … on holiday.”

Like the US cavalry, Peach arrived at that moment and fell into a discussion with Potter. It appeared the major wanted to wish everyone good luck on the day’s mission, lay down a few simple ground rules and inform the teams of the subgroups they’d be working in. Nothing at all about holidays. At some time during this housekeeping talk, Cousin Vinai slunk away.

When the others were loading the choppers, Siri, Commander Lit, Phosy and Civilai found him hiding in his room and surrounded him. Phosy had been designated the roles of good, bad and only cop while the others looked menacing.

“Comrade Vinai,” said Phosy.

“Yes?” said Vinai.

“The English language.”

“What about it?”

“Do you speak it?”

“I am the head of the foreign languages department affiliated to the Ministry of Justice.”

“Congratulations. But the question was, do you speak English?”

“I’ve translated entire documents into Lao.”

“From English?”

“Some.”

“And so you speak it?”

There followed a long pause during which Vinai appeared to be searching the ceiling for an answer.

“Not exactly,” he said.

The Lao felt obliged to inform the Americans of this turn of events. In fact, they had no choice. The loss of an interpreter was crucial to their work. They found Peach and took her to the major’s room where the team leader was sitting on the edge of his mattress going over a map of the region. The corner of a crate of whiskey peeked from beneath the bed between his feet. He crossed his legs to hide it. They tried to be as diplomatic and humble as possible, explaining that although Vinai was a leading authority on English language text, he had little opportunity to listen to the spoken form and he found the American accent to be almost incomprehensible. The major seemed unfazed by this news.

“Major Potter says it’s no big deal,” Peach translated. “We should just use the big woman.”

Siri assumed the major was referring to Dtui. Yes, she was … not fat exactly but casually ovoid. Definitely not big by American standards. And she most certainly had a vast repertoire of vocabulary that would be ideal when dealing with the forensic surgeon. But he didn’t understand how the major would know such a thing. He stared at Phosy whose buckled eyebrows seemed to mirror his own confusion.

“How does the major know about Nurse Dtui’s English skills?” Siri asked Peach.

“He’s not talking about Dtui,” she said after a short interlude.

“Then…?”

“He means the large gruff Lao woman who traveled on our helicopter yesterday. I didn’t notice her myself. The major says her English is fluent.”

“There weren’t any Lao scheduled to travel on your flight apart from the pilots,” Commander Lit said. “I checked the security arrangements.”

“This one turned up late. Your chopper had taken off and she hitched a ride with us.”

“But our team was complete, too,” Phosy said, shaking his head. “That’s why we took off. Nobody was missing.”

“And where is she now?” asked Civilai. “I didn’t notice any strange Lao in the breakfast room.”

Peach asked the major who laughed and got clumsily to his feet, nonchalantly back-heeling the crate under the bed as he did so. He put his arm around Civilai and led him to the window. He’d obviously missed the cultural sensitivity day at orientation. He pulled the flimsy curtain aside and pointed to a spot way beyond the back fence almost twenty meters into the no-go area. There on a deckchair in a one-piece orange bathing suit was a rotund woman in dark glasses and a sunhat. All this, irrespective of the fact that the morning sun had barely made a crack in the early mist.

“What on earth…?” said Commander Lit. “None of that land out there has been cleared of unexploded ordnance. Didn’t she see the signs? What’s she playing at? Is she mad? Who is she?”

But the other Lao in the group knew only too well who had followed them to Xiang Khouang, and it wasn’t a she.

Auntie Bpoo was as common a figure around the downtown area of Vientiane as Eros was to London and Jesus to Rio. A man, most certainly; deep voiced and pot-bellied and solid as a wad of sticky rice, but a slave to cross-dressing. He read palms and predicted the future on street corners and fooled nobody with his zebra-striped tank tops and lime green hotpants. But put him in a silk suit, plaster him in make-up and stick a permed wig on his head and he might just fool a helicopter full of Americans. Because that’s what had happened.

Far from being angry, Siri was impressed that the fortune-teller had been able to pull it off. The doctor hadn’t an inkling that Auntie Bpoo spoke English, but that didn’t surprise him either. He, she-and she preferred to be called “she”-was a remarkable … woman. Although she pretended that her soothsaying was a scam, that she just wanted an excuse to sit and talk to people, to make friends and be accepted in Lao society, Siri knew for a fact that she had an uncanny gift. Tangled deep in her quirkiness and her unfathomable poems and her mood and gender swings, was a person who actually could see the future. Siri needed someone like her to help explain his own untrained connection to the spirit world. Yet so far she’d played dumb. He wondered whether, here in the wilds of Phonsavan with no escape, he just might be able to get some sense out of her. All that could come later. For now they had to convince her to put on something respectable and take a ride with them to Spook City.