Anarchy and Old Dogs (Dr. Siri Paiboun) (5 page)

"Not a thing," Phosy confessed. "Is there any more?"

"Just the last bit."

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D DAY PROPOSED AUG30

"'D day?'"

Siri said, "I believe it's the name the allies gave to the invasion of France in the Second World War."

"We're about to be invaded by the Americans again," phosy said.

"I doubt they'd be bothered," said Siri, and turned back to Dtui. "What about the last lines?"

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REPLY DIRECT

"It says to reply directly to the name at the bottom."

"And that is?"

A big Dtui smile spread across her face and her rosy cheeks puffed up like the bottom of an orangutan. She read it aloud. "Reply direct to the Devil's Vagina."

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THE DEVIL'S VAGINA

"The what?"

"I just call them like I see them, boss," she said. "And that's exactly what it says."

"What the hell is a devil's vagina? I don't understand any of it. It's even more confusing decoded. Can you make any sense out of the letters and numbers?"

"Let's see. Inspector Dtui can do this," she said unblink-ing, still wired from the coffee and drained from the emotions of the past twenty-four hours. "Focus. This might take some time. Bear with me. What do we see here?" She was talking to herself, as Siri and Phosy could see nothing. Almost everything on the list starts with a B. Only the third line that begins with B has two letters after the number. I get a feeling that's the way in. Always look for an anomaly."

That was where she focused her coffee buzz and where, after five minutes of staring, she had her brain wave. She turned and raised her arms to the clueless men behind her.

"What?" Phosy asked.

"Southeast," she said. "That's it. SE is southeast. The others are south and east. That's all it could be."

Of course, that wasn't all it could be, but caffeine has a way of making a person see the obvious even if it isn't there.

"So," Siri said. "Something in the east, the south, and the southeast that has numbers. Roads? Postal codes? Mountain elevation?"

"Army units!" Phosy said. "Could it be referring to military bases?"

Siri scoured his French vocabulary and came up with only one B.

"Bataillon.
Dtui, is it the same word in English?"

"There wasn't a lot of military vocab in my medical textbooks, Doc. But I wouldn't put it past the French to steal words from English. Totally untrustworthy people the French."

Siri nodded at the policeman. "What made you think of army units?"

"Only that I know for sure the Eighth Battalion's in Sekong and the Sixth East is just outside Bolikham."

"That's it," Dtui said. "It fits."

Phosy was certain, too. "It won't take much to match up the rest. I've got a feeling we're on to something. What about the letters after the slash?"

Dtui went down the list: MASS, MADB, GNKP, all the way to MAKK, but inspiration escaped her. She copied them onto a sheet of paper and went off to work on it at her desk. Phosy rode his lilac Vespa to temporary police headquarters on Sethathirat, where he could phone around to his old army colleagues. The word "classified" didn't apply in friendly, for-old-times'-sake chats. A day that hadn't exactly started with a bang for them had suddenly dawned into something exciting. Inspired by the industry of his colleagues, Siri went directly to the ward of private rooms, found one empty, and lay back on the starched sheet for a brief rest. He woke four hours later. He considered this his contribution to the project. A team needs an alert, conscious leader. To make himself even more qualified for the job, he stopped off at the canteen for noodles. These were the leadership qualities he most admired in himself.

He reached the morgue at 1 p.m. to find his entranced colleagues swaying in front of the blackboard.

"What have I missed?" he asked.

They didn't even turn to look at him. He had the feeling neither had noticed his absence.

"We've got it, Siri," Phosy said.

"What?"

"Your Dtui, she's a phenomenon, a genius in white. Tell him, Dtui."

Dtui strode up to the blackboard with a fresh stick of chalk and drew a line between the first two and second two columns of letters.

"It was the military reference that did it for me," she said. "Like I said, the only English I know I got from my medical studies, so I had to spend some time with my nose in the dictionary. But I wondered whether the letters ..." She jabbed at the column too enthusiastically and snapped the chalk. "Darn. I wondered whether the letters might have something to do with rank. So I looked up all the ranks and, sure enough, the first two letters in the column correspond: major, general, captain, and colonel."

"Ho, well done," Siri said, stepping forward.

"That leaves the other column, and I thought logically the letters could have been the initials of the person holding that rank."

"And they were," Phosy joined in. "I spent the morning finding what battalions were stationed in what provinces. They all match this list. When Dtui told me her theory, I called back to get the name of the general attached to Southern Battalion Six. The army isn't big on giving out names but my contact owed me a favor."

"And his initials just happened to be SP," Siri said.

"Souvan Phibounsuk."

"Goodness." Siri sat on the sink unit and put his hands on his head. "We have a confidential list of military placements and the names of ranking officers--sent in code and written in invisible ink. Are you two thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Some plot's being hatched," Phosy said. "This is a list of the officers they've talked into joining them."

"D-day," Siri said, half to himself. "That's it. It's a coup d'etat. August 30 is the date set for an uprising."

"It has to be," Phosy agreed.

"But this is enormous," Dtui said. "What do we do? Who do we tell?"

"Good question, Comrade Dtui," said Siri, staring at the list on the board.

"Well, obviously the Security Division," Phosy said. Unconsciously, their voices had dropped to whispers. "They're responsible for things like this, aren't they?"

"It isn't that easy, Phosy. Look at the list. They have generals. We don't know how high this thing goes. If we disclose what we think we know to the wrong person ..."

"They'll find the three of us tied to rocks at the bottom of the Mekhong. There'll be river crabs living in our ..."

"Thank you, Nurse Dtui." Siri smiled. "A little dramatic but the drift is there. The fact is we don't know whom to trust. And, to be honest, we don't have any hard evidence that what we've found here is actually what it seems to be."

"Come on, Doc. What else could it be? Birthday invitations?"

"I admit it looks ominous, but I think we should go at this delicately."

"So what do you propose we do?" Phosy asked.

The policeman was still swaying like a palm tree in a strong breeze. Siri looked into his friends' faces, ceramic with fatigue.

"The first thing I suggest is that you two go home and get some sleep. We need all our wits about us and there's no urgency. If the note is to be believed, we have until the thirtieth. That's two weeks. Inspector Phosy, perhaps when you're refreshed we could take another trip out to Dong Bang tomorrow to see whether the dentist's wife has kept any of her husband's notes. Comrade Civilai should be back from Moscow later tonight. I want to run all this by him before we do anything rash. He'll know how to handle things and he can put us in touch with his inner circle. If nothing else, he knows which people are on his side."

There were no objections from Phosy or Dtui. They collected their belongings and trudged to the door. Dtui stopped in the doorway and looked back at Siri.

"You know?" she said. "I don't understand how you do it, Doc. Look at you. Older than Angkor Wat, up all night boozing, and you still look as frisky as a prawn on a hot plate. What's your secret?"

Siri considered telling the truth, but only briefly. "What can I say? A life without impure thoughts," he said. "Look and learn, Dtui."

It was an odd afternoon. The thick, puffy clouds squatting low over Vientiane weren't particularly convincing. They were like stage scenery clouds that could be pushed aside at any time to reveal the sun. What Laos needed was rain, not the promise of it. Siri had stopped by Civilai's office and been told by his typist that he'd be arriving at some unearthly hour the following morning. Siri figured it would be at least lunchtime before his friend was in any fit state to quash a coup. So he scribbled a quick note to say he'd made a lunchtime booking at their riverside log for 12:30-- and Civilai should bring enough packed lunch for both of them. He added, "This is urgent so don't come up with any lame excuses."

Siri's next stop was the Department of Justice, where he was hoping he'd be able to drop his reports on Manivone's desk before her boss, Judge Haeng, could railroad him into his office for a quick burden-sharing tutorial. There was no love lost between Siri and his much younger boss. Siri didn't take orders and Judge Haeng didn't do much of anything other than give them. The national coroner was the only man in the country remotely qualified to do the job, so dismissal wasn't a threat Haeng could wield with any conviction. Siri dreamed of retirement, of inactivity and peace. He would have loved Haeng to kick him out and the young man would have been delighted to do so. The judge, with his iffy Soviet qualifications, was consumed by the need to maintain face--and Siri had smashed that face to smithereens once or twice. But, as of this week, a shadow even darker than Siri had been cast over Haeng's department.

In July, Laos had signed an agreement of friendship and cooperation with the government of Vietnam. Although it was packaged as a way to facilitate trade and exchange information, in fact, it gave the Vietnamese a green light to station military units on Lao soil and to have an even greater influence over Lao policy making. Vietnamese "advisers" had been billeted at Lao government departments, some even being bold enough to have their own desks moved into the offices of the department heads. Such was the case at the Department of Justice, and Judge Haeng didn't like it one little bit.

His office mate was a toothless but ever-smiling man who wore his hair greased flat on his head like a matinee idol. Although he sported a large, charcoal gray suit rather than a uniform, he was a colonel in the People's Army of Viet nam and a senior lecturer in law at the new institute in Hanoi. To Haeng's chagrin, he could read and write Lao, and under the agreement, every document that passed over Haeng's desk, "in" or "out," had to pay a visit to Colonel Phat. Although the colonel hadn't yet made any direct comments, Haeng watched him out of the corner of his eye as the man shook his head and tutted repeatedly as he pored over the reports. As a result, the judge concentrated doubly hard on his grammar and spelling. He also tried to be out of his office whenever Phat was in, which was most of the time.

So, to make a long story no less long, that was why Haeng bumped into Siri at Mrs. Manivone's desk in the typing pool that day.

"Ah, Siri," Haeng said, as if he were actually glad to see the coroner.

"Judge Haeng."

"What are you doing?"

"Just delivering my reports for the week. I was on my way to--"

"Good. Glad I caught you."

"You are?"

"Absolutely. There's a little matter I might get you to take care of for us."

"That depends. When?"

"'When?' That's hardly the reaction we expect from a soldier of the revolution, Siri." Haeng cast a glance toward the clerks sitting around the room. He seemed to know instinctively they were hungry for some homegrown socialist wisdom. "A true warrior would say, 'Let me at it.'''

"He would?"

"Yes, Siri. A dedicated socialist plunges headfirst into the troubled waters without testing the depth."

"Isn't he likely to bump his head on the bottom?" Siri asked.

"What?"

"If it's too shallow."

"I don't ... No. He wouldn't care. He would--"

"What if he can't swim? Like me." Siri and Haeng both heard a muffled chuckle from behind them.

"It's not literal, Siri. It's a ... Look, never mind. Come with me. We have something to talk about in private." He headed off toward the exit. Siri knew why.

"Isn't your office this way?"

"Yes, but it's ... occupied. We can talk outside."

As he led them toward the door, Haeng grabbed a small red book from a large pile beside the souvenir cabinet. He didn't stop till he reached the edge of the basketball court. Once a happy after-work recreation spot for the American imperialists, the concrete rectangle was now in the process of being reclaimed by nature. Undernourished ivy and morning glories crisscrossed the backboards and curled wreathlike around the rims.

There came a belch of thunder from overhead that rolled languidly across the stodgy clouds.

"Looks like rain at last," Haeng said. It was the first decorous comment Siri could remember hearing from the spotty young man. He was too surprised to respond. "But, anyway," Haeng continued, "we've had a bit of an embarrassment in the south."

"Souths are notorious for embarrassing their northern neighbors."

"Quite. It appears a deputy governor has managed to get himself electrocuted in the bathtub."

"Clumsy."

"Yes, I suppose you could say that. But there are complications. I was on the phone with the governor for an hour this morning. He seems to think there are political implications."

Siri laughed. "About a man electrocuting himself in the bath?"

"Siri. Please restrain the levity. The deputy governor was up here recently paying a courtesy visit to the Soviet embassy. I'm sure you recall how their ambassador likes to give away those horrible Soviet-built appliances as souvenirs: irons, fans, soldering equipment, all that type of stuff. Most of it's built to withstand missile attacks--no removable parts. When any of it breaks down, you have no choice but to sell it for scrap and buy a new one. Well, the deputy governor got a water heater as a souvenir. You know the sort: thick wooden handle with a hook and a long metal element curled into a loop."

"I've got one. You hook it onto the side of the bathtub, plug it in, and it heats up your water."

"That's the one. It would seem the deputy governor was in the bath while the heater was still live. Stewed himself. I tried to convince the governor that it sounded like his deputy's own stupid fault, but you know what they're like down there. He's accusing the Russians of assassinating his deputy. He believes the heater was rigged, and he's threatening to write his accusations in a letter to the Soviet authorities if the case isn't investigated. We certainly can't have that. I just need someone to go down there and put his mind at ease."

"Why me? And I don't need the warrior speech again."

Judge Haeng had tried the line "Don't question my instructions" before, and knew it didn't work on a man like Siri. "Because you're the national coroner, Siri. You're the only one who can convince him it was an accident. He'll have to believe you."

Siri had become selective about the long-distance cases he accepted these days. They invariably got him into trouble. Traveling to the other end of the country for some ridiculous water-heater accident seemed pointless. There was only one thing that might entice him.

"What province?" he asked.

"Champasak."

"I'll go."

"You will?" As usual when Siri agreed to obey one of Haeng's directives, a look of astonishment appeared briefly on the judge's face. Siri enjoyed watching it arrive and his fight to erase it.

"Jolly good. Here, take this for the journey." Haeng held out the book.

"What is it?"

"It's Chairman Mao's
Little Red
Book. We've had it translated into Lao."

"What on earth for?"

Haeng stifled his frustration and forced the book into Siri's pocket.

"A good socialist is not a dustbin, with a closed lid. He is a letter box, always open to receive news."

"Well, that explains everything. I'll do my best to keep my slot open."

"Good man. Right. I'll book you on a flight early tomorrow morning."

"No. Can't get away till the evening. Say six?"

"Siri, you know there are no scheduled flights at that time."

"Judge, that's when I'll be free to go."

"There's no way to ..."

"Have you told the Soviet ambassador what they're accusing him of in the south?"

"Of course not."

"Then I suggest you do. With the Soviets and the Chinese and the Vietnamese all jockeying for some kind of role in our humble land, it would surprise me if the ambassador didn't make his old Yak available for a special little trip south. You might mention that the Champasak governor's threatening to write to Moscow."

"I don't ..."

"Trust me, son. It's high time the puppet started pulling back on the strings."