Slash and Burn (8 page)
“Oh, I see. So there is a place for Vannasack Symeaungxay, Thidavanh Bounxouay, and Doungleudy Phoudindong but not for Auntie Bpoo?”
Haeng leaned backwards and the colour fell from his face.
“How…?” he began.
“I know that those are the names of the young ladies you have established in rooms around Vientiane. In December there’ll be another, Latsamy Thongoulay, but you haven’t met her yet. Even so, I believe the ministry would be interested to hear all about them.”
Haeng lowered his voice.
“This … this is blackmail.”
“Not yet. I haven’t quite decided what I want from you. When I do,
then
it’ll be blackmail.”
They were leaning close to be heard in the noisy helicopter. Before Haeng could react, Bpoo kissed him on the cheek. He fell away from her and moved to another place wiping the lipstick from his face and cursing. One disastrous trip, two hoof thorns. No respect. People had no respect. But he had his plan. Before the mission was over they’d envy him, admire him for what he was about to do. Yes, respect. From each and every one of them.
Back in Phonsavan, most of the Lao bathed from scoop jars in the communal bathrooms. The Americans opted to wait until the generator was switched on at sundown when the pumps would deliver water to the ensuite bathrooms. Only Judge Haeng in the Lao wing shared their patience. Dinner that evening was at seven; a fusion of Lao and Western cuisine as interpreted by Hmong kitchen staff working for a Hmong manager and his wife.
The Hmong was a divided people. Those who had lost the toss and sided with the Americans were now fleeing through refugee camps or making a last futile stand in the mountains. Those who had supported the communists lived a life not terribly different to how it had always been. Many were dragged down from their mountain homes to till fields and work in towns. Some succumbed to diseases they’d not known at higher elevations. Others, like Mr. Toua the Friendship manager, put their knowledge and industrious nature to more commercial ventures. He believed this joint US/Lao mission was just the start of a tourist influx that would turn Phonsavan into the Luang Prabang of the northeast. So all this effort would be worth it.
There were no longer two islands of tables in the dining room. They were now dotted around the room like in a regular restaurant. And, after a day in the field together, an American journalist might find himself sitting with a Lao soldier, a Lao policeman and his wife with a black sergeant, a Japanese-American forensic pathologist with a transvestite of unknown origin, a Lao general and an American major with a young interpreter.
“Tell him I was in Nam, honey,” said Potter. He’d somehow managed to get himself a happy whiskey glow even before supper and Peach leaned back to avoid his breath. She passed on the news to General Suvan.
“Six years, six goddamn years I was there,” he continued. “You tell him.”
She told him. There were no thoughts or reactions coming in the other direction. It was all Potter.
“They were all—and excuse my bluntness—chinks and dinks and zips and gooks to us.”
“I might have trouble transl—”
“Just do your best, honey. I know you’re trying. But the point is this. We only knew ’em by pejorative terms ’cause that’s what the Pentagon told us they were; ruthless, uneducated nameless heathens. That’s how they ran their wars. There wasn’t a Ngoo Yen or a Fat Dook, not a husband or a father or an ex-schoolteacher. Just a bunch of gooks. That’s why we underestimated them. How can you fight people you don’t understand? How can you kill people you don’t love? That was my point. There has to be a passionate reason to kill a man. You know what I mean? None of us had that passion. Hey, honey. I’m way ahead of you here. You wanna catch the general up on some of this?”
Peach wasn’t sure how to go about translating Potter’s point, nor was she certain the general was listening. There was beer on the table and he’d guzzled his first glass with more gusto than she’d noticed from him all trip. The Americans had brought in a dozen crates of Bud on their chopper. It was chilled, having spent the day in the cool water trough out back. With beer being so hard to come by, it was a treat, a honeymoon to consummate this morning’s first date. The Americans had the art of seduction down to a fine point.
“This is what we should have been doing all along,” Potter said, spearing a frankfurter. “Engaging. You’re all nice guys deep down, and you know what I like? You don’t gloat. We gloat. You don’t gloat. You know what the Vietcong did after they kicked our ass out? They sent a bill for damages of fifty billion bucks. They wrote it on a restaurant invoice sheet and addressed it to Kissinger. You gotta admire that. Ha! A goddamn bill. I bet the general’s got a heap of questions he’s been dying to ask an American soldier. Am I right?”
Peach asked. The general smiled, spoke briefly and took another slurp of beer.
“The general can’t think of anything just now,” she told him.
“I bet he can’t. I bet he can’t. These are emotional times. I relate to that. It took me some while to come to grips with my emotions too. To find and exorcize my demons. All that unnecessary slaughter. The destruction. I said to myself one day, “Hey, these are people we’re strafing here. There’s gotta be a better way.” And this is it, honey. This is that way. Beers across the table. Loving thine enemy. I’m so proud to be here. Cheers.” He lifted his glass and the general tapped it with his own. “Yes, sir. You got it. You certain he doesn’t have any questions?”
Peach didn’t bother to ask nor did she comment. She knew that Potter wasn’t exorcizing his demons. He was drowning them one by one. And now they were holding onto his ankles and dragging him down with them. She couldn’t let this go on. He was unsuitable for his role. People like Potter had to be removed. She could make sure of that.
Siri, Daeng and Civilai didn’t have an American. They felt a bit left out. At the next table were two of them huddled together. The second secretary from the Bangkok embassy, Mack Gordon was late thirties and overweight with an outdoor look like a hairy dog on the back of a pickup truck licking at the wind. His smile spread from ear to ear and his tongue seemed too big for his mouth. Talking to him was Randal Rhyme from
Time
magazine. Siri and Civilai knew Woody Allen from his films, of course, and were certain Rhyme was his brother; Woody being the taller, tougher-looking older brother with more hair.
“It’s racism,” said Civilai. He attempted to crush one of the cans but the Budweiser corporation obviously re inforced them before sending them off to remote areas. He was able to dimple it quite fearsomely, however.
“They’ve probably heard about you two,” Daeng said. “Who’s going to volunteer to come to this table to be victimized?”
“We’d be very pleasant, wouldn’t we, Siri?” Civilai protested.
“Why does everyone else get one and not us? They’ve obviously had orders to mingle, to make us all feel like family. It’s all been orchestrated to lull us into a mood of love and peace. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve put something in the beer.”
“Hmm. This is a Civilai conspiracy theory I haven’t had the pleasure of hearing before,” Daeng laughed. “While the Russians and Chinese and Vietnamese are attempting to conquer us with money and consumer goods, the Americans sneak in under the radar and win us over with love and tourism.”
“They’ve tried everything else,” Civilai reminded her.
“So, if that’s true, why aren’t they here wooing us?” Daeng asked.
“Exactly. They’re damned clever. They know that I know their plot so they’re holding back. It’s a double … something or other. I’ve a good mind to go over there and crash their meeting and show them some assault hospitality of my own.”
Siri laughed. “If I didn’t know you better … and I obviously don’t, I’d say you were just miffed ’cause we haven’t got an American to play with. You’re jealous.”
“And I bet you half a dozen cans of free beer that you don’t dare go over there,” Daeng added.
“You won’t find the word ‘dareless’ in the Civilai dictionary, madam.”
He rose majestically, grabbed three unopened cans of beer from the metal tray table beside him and marched to the neighboring table. Without missing a beat, Secretary Gordon pulled out a chair for their invader and they all shook hands.
“He seems to have done it,” said Siri.
“And they’ve apparently found a common language somewhere between them,” Daeng noticed. “They’re laughing.”
“Well, you wouldn’t catch me selling out to the other side,” said Siri.
“Me neither.”
“There isn’t enough water in the Mekhong that would make me talk to one of them.”
“I’d sooner run head first into a bramble bush.”
“I’d pull you out.”
“Thank you.” She looked around as she sipped her beer. “Tell me, the
farang
with the shiny head and glasses, he’s a journalist, isn’t he?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Well, don’t look over your shoulder now but he’s coming this way.”
“Fight him off, Daeng.”
“It’s too late.”
Rhyme from
Time
stood over them—only a little over them—and produced an irresistible smile. His blue eyes were magnified to double their size by his thick lenses.
“Wow!” he said, and then, in fluent French, “Madame Daeng and Dr. Siri Paiboun in the flesh. This is very exciting for me. A great honor I can’t tell you how much I’ve looked forward to meeting you two.”
Siri leaned across and pulled out a chair.
Day two of the mission began very much as had day one. The choppers landed at the site, the teams carried their equipment to Vang Pao’s house and set up the folding tables. Upon the arrival of Saint Siri, Ugly wagged his stub of a tail so frantically he threw himself sideways. Siri had saved him some breakfast so the relationship was cemented. The food, the newspaper it was wrapped in and a few mouthfuls of dirt were gone in ten seconds.
Whether the queues had remained in place overnight was hard to say but there appeared to be no changes in the lineup on the second day. The teams split into their groups and began to investigate the claims. An impressive array of objects was collected: tin ration trays, bootlaces, a complete arsenal of Zippo lighters, and, remarkably, a Charley Weaver mechanical bar tender without batteries. Where it actually came from nobody knew, although its owners claimed a pilot had given it to them as he was escaping a burning helicopter. You had to admire them for trying.
An hour had passed and still nobody had found a verifiable link to Captain Bowry. That was until the arrival of a group of old men and young boys dressed in black with spare sarongs worn as turbans. They had fashioned some sort of litter out of bamboo. On it, tied down with rope, was the tailplane of a helicopter with its directional rotors still attached. They carried it solemnly, like pallbearers, lowered it respectfully onto the ground in front of Vang Pao’s house, and stood back.
“My word,” said Siri. He left his table, abandoning a group of Hmong women who were trying to sell him a gold tooth. He stood beside the litter and was soon joined by all the other team members. Someone let out a low whistle. The tailplane had apparently been torn from the helicopter by an explosion. The metal at its base was jagged and black. The rest was dark green and had no military insignias but the figures H32 in white were clearly visible.
“That’s it,” said Dtui. “That’s the one in the photographs. H32.”
Major Potter had shown them the embassy pictures on the first day and now he was holding up the tailplane photo to compare with this new arrival. His excitement confirmed it was a match. He didn’t know who to hug first. He barked something to Peach who, in turn, asked the pallbearers in Lao where they’d found this wreckage. They smiled and nodded, but nobody answered. They attempted the same question in Hmong, Kang and Lu before Phosy finally hit the jackpot with his Phuan. The Phuan had once had their own kingdom in the region. But as hostility and violence weren’t their strong points they were eventually decimated by the warlords around them, finally to be forced into slavery by the Siamese. According to the ethnicity poll of 1977, there were barely ten thousand left in Laos. But this had to be a very isolated group if they had no other major languages between them. Phosy led the group to a chicken’s earrings tree, arranged for water, and as they drank they recalled their two-week journey with the dragon’s tail. The inspector showed them a map and although the group had no concept of how a vast wilderness could be shrunk and flattened onto a square of paper, they were able to guide Phosy’s finger via the setting and rising suns and the mountains and valleys and rivers, to their home.
After twenty minutes, Phosy joined the others. All interest had turned to the new arrivals. Phosy showed them a spot on the map, Ban Hoong to the east, where the group had apparently begun their journey. It was a mere forty-minute helicopter trip from where they now stood.
“They’re closer to Phonsavan than to here,” Dtui remarked.
“Their sorceress told them to come,” Phosy translated. “Said she’d seen a sign in a dream.”
“I take it there isn’t the slightest possibility she caught the government announcement on the radio?” Civilai asked.
“I doubt it,” said Phosy. “She’s been dead for seven years. It was her final request that they deliver the dragon’s tail to the wealthy overlords at Spook City.”
Peach was translating for the Americans.
“I guess that would be us,” said the major. “Did they tell you anything about how the dragon’s tail came into their possession?”
Phosy continued the story.
“There was an explosion one night and they woke up the next day to find this thing had fallen through the roof of their meeting hut. The sorceress told them that she’d been sitting in a tree—I get the feeling she wasn’t really in control of her senses—and she saw a dragon collide with the moon. The moon broke into a million pieces. They couldn’t convince her otherwise because she’d gone blind that night. Given the evidence, the head man in the group’s more inclined to believe it was a helicopter.”
“Was this the only part of the chopper they found?” Lit asked.
“Apparently.”
“How come only their sorceress saw the explosion?”
“There was always a lot of air activity in the region: bombings, anti-aircraft fire, crashes, the dumping of undelivered ordnance. They’d been visited and threatened by both sides during the war. All their young men had been forcibly recruited to fight. They were afraid. They weren’t about to go rushing out in the middle of the night to investigate an explosion. Just pulled the blanket up and hoped it would all go away.”
When word of this made it around the Americans, Sergeant John Johnson stepped forward.
“Did anybody hear anything before the explosion?” he asked.
“One woman seemed quite animated about the topic. She was awake that night,” Phosy said. “She was afraid of the helicopters and this one had circled overhead a number of times. She was sure he was looking for their village. Then, she says, the aircraft just went quiet, as if it was hiding in the silence of the sky. Then there was the bang.”
Johnson asked how long the gap was between the engine cutting out and the explosion.
“She says about ten breaths,” Phosy told him. “Does that mean something?”
“It could do.”
“Did the villagers find a body?” Siri asked.
“No,” Phosy told him. “But the vegetation around there is pretty dense.”
“Has the tail been in their village all this time?” Major Potter asked.
“Pride of place in the meeting hall where it landed, apparently,” said Phosy.
“Then do they recall anyone coming into their village and taking a photograph?”
Phosy asked the group and showed them the photographs from the embassy. They confirmed that it was taken in their meeting hall but didn’t recall anyone with a camera. None of the villagers had one, they said. Neither did they recognize the huts nor the American.
“Then I see just the one option,” said Potter. “We head off to their village and set up shop there, that’s if General Suvan and Judge Haeng agree, of course.”
Haeng told the interpreter that he was just about to suggest the same thing. The general nodded and asked about lunch. That just about summed the pair up. And so, with tens of disappointed but ultimately dishonest people sent packing from Long Cheng, the two Russian Mi8 helicopters with their young Lao pilots headed east in an arc to avoid the no-fly zone. Aboard were twenty mystified Phuan villagers scared out of their wits their first time in the sky. Four of them had started to be violently sick in the plastic bags provided even before they took off. The rest joined them in midair. The second chopper carried the tail section of a Sikorsky H34 suspended from a hammock.
As the old men and boys of Ban Hoong had never seen their village from the air, and the pilots had barely five hundred hours of flying time between them, it was left to Sergeant Johnson to guide them there from the maps and from landmarks on the ground. He leaned out of the open hatchway like a stuntman and signaled to Peach who was connected by headphones to the pilots. To everyone on board the carpet of green seen through the smudge of cloud and mist seemed featureless, but the sergeant had a knack and led them directly into the bosom of Ban Hoong. The village was so ramshackle, the kick of the rotors almost leveled it. They touched down in a clearing between the huts. As they climbed down from the choppers, Siri wondered whether the place was deserted. Nobody was about. The villagers in the helicopters realized where they were and gratefully leapt from the craft even before the rotors had slowed. One by one, women and children emerged from the stilt huts like field mice after a monsoon. Despite the fact that their elders and children had been away for two weeks, the homecoming was subdued.
Siri had seen many such villages in his days in the jungle. It was a collection of single-room grass-mat structures on stilts, each with a bamboo ladder. In the gap beneath the huts were humble family looms and well-used farming equipment and varied livestock. The site was a dip into the distant past. Only the corrugated iron roofs stopped this being a two-hundred-year-old community tableau. But the setting was idyllic. It wasn’t yet 10:00
A.M.
and not all the mist had burned away from the surrounding mountains. The sun was still a fuzzy egg yolk behind a lace curtain. The air was fresh and tingled the back of Siri’s throat. The sound of running stream water provided the soundtrack. The second hands on the watches on the wrists of the Americans began to crawl more slowly around the faces. Time had altered.
It was too much for some. The US embassy personnel, Rhyme from
Time
, Judge Haeng and Cousin Vinai took one of the choppers to Phonsavan where they would queue at the post office to make their long-distance phone calls to Vientiane. It was time to pass on news of the amazing development of the day. Meanwhile, the others set up their folding tables under the still-damaged grass roof of the meeting hall. Siri, who liked to understand his environment, strolled around the village with Ugly at his heels. The doctor smiled at people he couldn’t talk to and inspected the sad garden fences and unloved plants that marked the boundaries of each family property. He looked hopefully for something to admire but was left with a feeling that this village had died along with its sons.
Perhaps the only anomaly in an otherwise normal village was the boy who dominated the tiny village square. He was fifteen or sixteen and he sat cross-legged on the dirt. Two or three bugs buzzed around his head. In front of him were a dozen bottles of various origins: Coke, soda, a petroleum jelly jar, all glass. And in each bottle there was an insect, different species, varying sizes from a beetle to a horsefly. And if a visitor looked carefully, he’d see a fine thread feeding down through the bottle’s stopper and tied around the abdomen of each creature. The result was that when released from their prison they could fly only to the end of the thread. And if a visitor was to take the time to notice, he’d see that the bugs buzzing orbits around the boy’s head were attached by thread to his baseball cap. The lassoing of the insects would have taken a great deal of patience. The doctor tried to speak to him but the boy laughed deep in his belly and ignored the old man. Ugly was fascinated by the display. It wasn’t long before other members of the team had gathered around the insect cowboy. Two of the Americans took pictures. Everyone agreed it was extremely cruel, but terribly cool. Ar, the head of the village, stepped up to claim the boy. Both father and son had cheekbones you could stack plates on.
“My youngest son, Bok,” he told Phosy. “Never been right in the head. Can’t talk.”
“Is this all he does?” Phosy asked.
“He thinks if he can get enough of ’em he’ll be able to fly,” said Ar. “But of course they all die the same day. So he spends all his time hunting for new ones. I tell him he’d need a thousand of them to lift him off the ground but he never gives up. If only we could find something with a longer life span….”
Ar had obviously given the proposal a good deal of thought. It was as if somewhere at the back of his mind he believed that if the insects lifted his son the boy might become normal.
But you can only stand and watch beetles on leashes for so long. Both teams gathered in the meeting room to discuss the next plan. Ar pointed in the direction in which their sorceress had seen the dragon crash into the moon. After lunch they would take a hike across that ridge to the crash site.
“You do realize,” said Civilai, looking off into the distance, “that if the explosion actually took place over there and the tailplane found its way here, the odds of finding even a little piece of this pilot are less than finding a gram of common sense in the Politburo.”
“Not necessarily,” said Lit. “He was in a confined space surrounded by metal. Even if there was a fire there could be some remains inside the cockpit.”
“I don’t know,” Dtui said. “All this expense and bother for one man. It seems unfair to me. These hills are littered with the dead relatives of families who can’t ever hope to reclaim their bodies.”
“Oh, Dtui,” said Civilai, about to launch into one of his famous, “You don’t think….” tirades. “You surely don’t think this is a mission to find a body? This is much more than that. This is the empty coffers of Vientiane cooperating with the bankers of Wall Street.”
“Good, Civilai,” said Daeng. “We’re doing this for the money.”
“Common sense, young Madame Daeng. Because we ride fearlessly on the back of the Vietnamese tiger we have to join them in their condemnation of China. Last month our prime minister stood up in parliament and said that China was a bunch of international reactionaries. As a result we are going to lose one of our most generous benefactors.”
“I thought you hated the Chinese more than anyone,” Siri laughed.
“Not true. I hate all evil-minded usurpers in equal measure. But any fool, even you, Siri, could not fail to notice that with Peking on its way out our beloved leaders have begun making overtures to enemies past. The Thais, a nation of corrupt capitalist pornographers, have suddenly become our useful allies. Cracks have appeared in our resolve and televisions and motorcycles are leaking through them. Cultural exchanges are being arranged. A famous short-skirted pop singer has been invited to sing at our next That Luang festival.”
“Nan … nan … Nanthida, I like her,” said Mr. Geung.
