Anarchy and Old Dogs Read online

  “We’d convert all our assets into gold and swim across the river to Thailand.”

  “Perhaps that wasn’t such a good example. What do you say we just pass on what we’ve found to the Security Division and let them sort it out?”

  “Siri, you amaze me at times. We aren’t exactly talking KGB here. What type of training do you think those boys have had? They’re converted foot soldiers from the countryside. They’re chicken counters. Their job is to make sure people are disclosing their incomes and paying their taxes. What type of high-level counterinsurgency operation do you think they could mount?”

  “Surely there’s a mechanism in place.”

  “We’re an eighteen-month-old administration. We’re spread thin on the ground. We’re barely hanging on as it is. We need several more years to have an infrastructure up and running for something like this.”

  “All right. So we just let it happen?”

  “You know I didn’t say that.”

  “How about at the top level? People we’ve known all the way through the campaign: military leaders, politburo people. Men with enough local support to put up some resistance. After all we’ve been through, I’m certainly not going down without a fight.”

  “I’m shocked, Siri. I didn’t think you cared.”

  “I spent thirty-odd years crawling through the jungle for this country. My wife died for it. How can I not care? Do you know what last Saturday was? It was Free Lao Day. I went to pay respects at the Epitaph to the Unknown Soldier. People gave their lives for this independence. How can I let some opportunistic glamour seeker leapfrog an administration that struggled for thirty years to get where it is and … and steal our country from under us? Jesus. What was the point of it all if we just hand it over before we’ve even had time to get it right?”

  “OK. I get it.” Civilai put his arm around his friend’s shoulder. “I’d been wondering whether there were any nationalist embers left burning in your grate. I was starting to think your cynicism had pissed them all out.”

  “Me? Great, coming from a man who called the prime minister a toad.”

  “That was an accident. I meant ‘slug.’ I just couldn’t think of the word on the spur of the moment.” Siri laughed and his bout of gravity came to an end. “We’re both ornery old warhorses,” Civilai continued, “but they need asses like us. If they refuse to put us out to pasture, they have to expect a kick every now and then.”

  “So what do you say we put our asinine minds together and see if we can’t come up with something to avert this coup.”

  Civilai slowly began to unwrap the baguettes. “I know people,” he said.

  “Who?”

  The first drop of rain landed on Siri’s knee. It was as thick and heavy as a cow pat.

  “I don’t think I should tell you just yet.”

  “Why on earth not?”

  Civilai produced two perfect loaves—delights, works of art—but not even their splendor could cheer Siri’s mood. A second drop of rain smashed into the crispy leaves above their heads. Civilai handed a baguette to Siri, who just held on to it, still awaiting an answer to his question.

  “Because,” Civilai said, “when conducting a countercoup, one has to consider what the status quo would be if the coup was successful. The leaders would round up whoever was instrumental in the attempt to oppose them. They’d be the first to be liquidated. The fewer middlemen the better.”

  “I’m not a middleman. Let them liquidate me. Or, what? You think I’d crumble under interrogation and implicate all your ‘people’?”

  Large jellyfish-sized globules of rain were falling in countable drops all around them.

  “No,” Civilai said, biting into one end of his lunch. “All they’d have to do is offer you a decent supply of coffee and a carefree life and you’d squeal your guts out.”

  “If the coup were successful I’d march up to the buggers and tell them what I damn well think of them.”

  “That’s the diplomacy that got you where you are today. If you—” A huge blob of rain somehow avoided the tree and landed with a smack in Civilai’s face. Siri laughed and wiped his friend’s glasses clean with a tissue from the lunch bag. The seriousness of politics quickly gave way to the seriousness of eating. The bread was fresh and the stuffing delicious. These were two men who appreciated a good baguette. And they knew exactly the drink with which to complement it. Siri offered his flask of pennywort juice to Civilai. No cabernet sauvignon could have enhanced a sandwich more. They ate without speaking and watched the heavy drops of rain land in the river, never gaining enough momentum to be called a shower.

  Despite their present predicament, this was when Siri was at his happiest, eating and drinking on the bank of the Mekhong beside his best friend. He turned to look at Civilai. When trying to describe him to others, Siri had worked his way through a long list of insects—ant, hornet, wasp—before finally arriving at the simile that suited him best. Civilai was undoubtedly like a grasshopper. His head was a large, skin-covered helmet of a thing, mostly posterior. At its front, on his pointy nose, sat a huge pair of black-framed glasses. His grasshopper body was all gangly bones and angular joints. As he ate, an enormous Adam’s apple traveled up and down his long neck like an elevator.

  “If you don’t stop staring at me, I’ll slap you,” Civilai said without looking at Siri.

  “I can’t help it. You’re such a glamour-puss.”

  “You obviously spend too much time with the dead, Dr. Siri.”

  Like Siri, Civilai had France to thank for his academic degree and to blame for his political leanings. Whereas Siri had found his way to Paris via a temple education and charity, Civilai had been groomed for excellence by his parents. His wealthy Lao-Chinese father had been selectively married into an even more affluent Vietnamese-Chinese family, and even before Civilai was born, there had been no doubt that Mr. and Mrs. Songsawat’s son would be educated at the Sorbonne. They had mapped out a Francophile education for the boy in Saigon and invested a small fortune in contributions to ensure that he wouldn’t be rejected. As it turned out, his grades alone would have secured him a scholarship. On the day he sailed on the Victor Hugo to Europe, the family expected their smart lad to return with first-class honors in law and commerce, and one day take over the running of their vast business interests in Laos.

  But there was one factor they’d failed to take into consideration. Civilai had a mind of his own, a considerable mind at that. At the lycée in Saigon he’d befriended another son of the mandarins by the name of Hok Nguyen Truk. They were both idealists, and their curiosity had led them to a startling discovery. The poor in their respective countries were being squeezed dry by wealthy landlords, by the same families who’d raised the two boys to believe it was normal to have a man to trim one’s toenails. This revelation resulted in a hatred of the class to which they belonged and a hostility toward their fathers. They detested them for fawning on the French imperialists and for growing fatter from their dealings with the French while the poor starved.

  So there they were, two angry youths in search of a sympathetic doctrine. They found it in the Paris of 1923. They arrived at a Sorbonne that was a safe haven for liberals and members of the lunatic fringe. Although their classes were comparatively conservative, the student body was replete with left-wingers and radicals. At a rally one weekend they met a Vietnamese who was making a living on the docks during the day and proselytizing Marxism-Leninism at night. He’d given his name as Nguyen Tat Than. He was a lean, hungry-eyed man in his early thirties who wore French suits elegantly and spoke with passion. His philosophies and hopes so closely matched their own that they soon shared his dream to take socialism to Indochina and free their downtrodden brothers and sisters from the repressive yoke of colonialism.

  In this idealistic state, Civilai had chosen to ignore the absence in Laos of one of the fundamental components for a successful communist revolution. There was no rebellious Lao proletariat. There were no factories in w
hich to organize unions, and hardly any working class. Eighty percent of the people grew rice on small plots of land. All their energy was invested in survival. The farmers were so resigned to their fate that a great deal of agitation would have been needed to convince them they were dissatisfied at all.

  But by the time the two young men arrived back in Asia in 1929, the seeds of revolt had been sown in their fertile minds. Communism would save their repressed countrymen whether they liked it or not. In Siam they reunited with their guru Nguyen Tat Than, who by then was calling himself Quoc and posing as a Buddhist monk. The French had a death warrant out for him in Vietnam for his agitation in rural areas. Quoc was one of the many pseudonyms adopted for his survival by the remarkable man, but it was the name on an identity card belonging to a deceased Chinese merchant that would ultimately provide the sobriquet the world most associated with him: Ho Chi Minh.

  Civilai and Hok traveled with Ho to Hong Kong, where, in 1930, they helped establish the Communist Party of Vietnam. As the only Lao in the group, Civilai took responsibility for organizing his own people to rise up against the French tyrants and reclaim their homeland. But therein lay one more potentially insurmountable problem. Laos only existed as a geographical entity because, to cut down on paperwork, a French administrator had inked a national border around some thirty diverse tribal groups and posted an announcement that this was now officially a country. Ethnic Lao constituted no more than sixty percent of this brand-new, custom-built colony.

  This posed a quandary for Civilai and his cadres as they wandered from village to village stirring up national pride, building a national identity from the ground up. The villagers quite logically argued that they hadn’t wanted to be Lao in the first place. Why should they fight for the right to be so? That was perhaps why the Vietnamese revolution had taken shape so efficiently and why Civilai had aged rapidly over the years.

  The rain shower had exhausted itself even before the baguettes. They’d finished their lunch, these purveyors of frustrating politics, and sat still and silent on their log. Crumbs lay at their feet like wood shavings around a completed carving. Neither wanted to voice his feelings but Siri could tell what his friend was thinking. Avoiding a well-organized coup at this juncture in history could very well prove impossible. If that weren’t the case, he knew Civilai would have headed straight off to his office to set wheels in motion. Instead he stared dully at the river.

  “I’m off to Pakse this evening,” Siri said.

  “Why?”

  “Some fool electrocuted himself in the bath.”

  “Hmm. Well worth traveling four hundred miles to see, I’d say.”

  “Two birds, one stone.”

  “The dentist’s letter?”

  “It was postmarked Pakse.”

  “You want to get your hands on the Devil’s Vagina.”

  “Who wouldn’t?”

  “You’re interfering in something that could get you killed, you know?”

  “I’ve dodged bullets, escaped exploding buildings. I’ve even eaten in the hospital canteen for over a year. If I can survive that, I can get through anything. I’m starting to believe I’m invincible.”

  “You’re not.”

  “Then I’ll go down kicking and screaming. One day, during this or the next junta reign, they’ll remember me as a hero and put my face on a stamp. I’ll meet Boua in Nirvana and have something to boast about. I might even make her proud of me, at last.”

  “Your wife was always proud of you, little brother.”

  “You think so?”

  “I know she was.” A glorious yellow caterpillar had lowered itself from the tree on a web rope and come to rest on Civilai’s knee. Siri watched him gently run his finger along its back. “Of course, she always preferred me to you. But she was quite fond of you.”

  Siri laughed and shook his head.

  “Being perfect must have made your life miserable at times,” Siri said.

  “The Lord Buddha says all existence involves suffering.”

  “Is that right? Didn’t he have a thousand concubines before he saw the light?”

  “Exactly. So he knew what suffering was all about. I have just the one and I suffer interminably.”

  “Next time I meet Nong for one of our secret afternoon trysts I’m going to tell her you called her a concubine.”

  Civilai didn’t rise to the bait.

  “I’m coming with you,” he said.

  “To meet your wife?”

  “To Pakse.”

  “Really? Don’t you have meetings to go to? Hands to shake?”

  “They owe me a break. You’re a doctor. You can diagnose me with some disease, recommend I take a few days to recover from it.”

  Siri was delighted. “All right. Any specific requests?”

  “Nothing disfiguring. Something that doesn’t stop me drinking.”

  “Syphilis would put you down for a day or two.”

  “No. I don’t think Mrs. Nong would see the funny side of that. How about something internal and painful but non—life threatening?”

  “Chronic hemorrhoids?”

  “Perfect.”

  Siri was just completing Civilai’s medical certificate when Phosy stopped by the morgue. He wore a layer of dust and looked like a shift worker at the snuff factory.

  “How did it go?” Siri asked. As Siri had to prepare for his trip south, they’d decided Phosy should go by himself to revisit the dentist’s wife.

  “It was a lot faster on your bike.”

  “I said you could use it.”

  “I know, but regulations. We have to use the department scooter on official business.”

  “Even if it’s a pink Vespa?”

  “It’s lilac. At least it was until today.”

  “I’d hate to think of you giving chase to a criminal on that.”

  “Come on, Siri. You know there are no criminals in the PDR Laos.”

  “You saw the widow?”

  “I saw what was left of her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I got there at about eleven. The door was ajar and when I called out, there was no answer. I went inside and it was obvious there’d been some kind of struggle. The table was on its side and the pieces of that game thing had been scattered. There were cups and papers lying all around. Then I saw the blood.”

  “Oh, my. Poor woman.”

  “There was a pool of it near the couch, and a trail leading to the back door. I went through the place. Clean as a flute. No rifled drawers or cupboards. No overturned mattresses. Whoever hit the old lady hadn’t gone there to rob her. At least I don’t think so. There were odd pieces of jewelry upstairs but I didn’t find any money. And no personal documents for either of them.”

  “No identity cards, house documents, licenses?”

  “Not a one. But they might have had them stashed away somewhere else for safety. I didn’t find a purse or handbag, so whoever it was might have taken that stuff when they dragged the old woman’s body out.”

  “You think she was dead?”

  “There was a hell of a lot of blood, Doctor. I’m not sure she could have survived a wound like that. I brought you some.”

  “Some what?”

  “Some of the blood.” Phosy produced a small sauce bottle from his shirt pocket. “I think I cleaned the sauce out pretty thoroughly.”

  “What in hell’s name do you expect me to do with that?”

  “I don’t know. You’re a coroner. I thought you might be able to tell me something from it.”

  “Like how she died? What she had for breakfast on the morning of her attack?”

  “I don’t know. You’re the expert.”

  “I’m a very little expert, and certainly not a magician. And I’m an expert only in the absence of real professionals who have the benefit of a laboratory and technicians and years of training—people who might know what they’re actually talking about. This isn’t Hollywood. There, I believe, they can tell you
a victim’s shoe size from a sample of blood. Given my present state, I can barely tell you what color it is.”

  Siri took the bottle from Phosy and shook it.

  “How did you get it into the bottle?”

  “Just scooped the bottle through the puddle.”

  “It was that deep?”

  “Deep enough.”

  “Then I imagine your old lady hadn’t been gone long.”

  “Why so?”

  “In this heat, on a parquet floor, blood would dry in—I don’t know—an hour at the most.”

  “That means they must have taken her body out in daylight. That’s odd. I asked around. None of the neighbors remembered seeing anything. In a little place like that, you’d notice a body being removed.”

  “That’s one more thing that doesn’t make sense,” Siri said. “Let’s look at motive. Say someone wanted to keep the messages a secret. They knew we were nosing around and that she’d seen the contents of the notes. They couldn’t risk her disclosing what she knew. So killing her I can understand. But what could be gained from taking the body away? Delaying the discovery?”

  “Not likely.” Phosy began to wash his hands and face in the small sink in the corner of the office. “If you’re going to all that trouble, you’d clean up the crime scene. At the very least you’d shut the front door. Whoever did this wanted us to know that she’d been the victim of a violent assault.”

  “That message would have been clearer if they’d left her body there. They could even have made it look like a housebreaking.”

  “But this way leaves us in doubt. Maybe she didn’t die. It leaves us wondering what else they could be doing to her.”

  “A kind of warning, you mean? To us?”

  “Possibly. We might be well advised to spread around what we know to others. As long as we’re the only ones privy to the information it wouldn’t be that difficult to contain the damage by eliminating us,” Phosy cautioned Siri.

  “I talked to Civilai. He thinks he has people he can trust. He’ll spend the afternoon setting up a network.”

  “Dtui and I will have to be in on it.”

  “We’ve already discussed you two. You have your parts. But we can’t arrange anything for certain until we’ve nosed around in Pakse.”