The Delightful Life of a Suicide Pilot

by Colin Cotterill

  “Two more mentions,” said Beer. “In October he was admitted to a French hospital suffering from ‘shell shock.’ Then in November he was pronounced dead in battle. Your researchers did some cross-referencing and concluded there was no battle anywhere on that day.”

  “And there he was traveling south on a pony cart while at the same time lying dead in a nonexistent battle,” said Daeng. “They’d have contacted his family. They’d be mourning his death while here he was having a nice life in Laos. Of course he would have been executed for desertion if they’d found him here.”

  “Comrade Beer,” said Siri. “I know you’ve had a busy day with a lot of international travel, but I’d like you to do one more trip for us tomorrow. I want you to ask around at clinics and pharmacies. See if you can find someone who remembers getting paid over the odds in 1943 to administer diphtheria vaccinations across the river. You might want to stir a Japanese officer who didn’t speak into the mix to jog memories. There wouldn’t have been a lot of medical facilities to choose from in wartime Nakhon Phanom.”

  “Why do you think the medicine would come from Thailand?” Daeng asked.

  “We didn’t have and still don’t have the medicines or the expertise to deal with an epidemic,” said Siri. “He wouldn’t go to the Japanese for help and the French were already rationing food and medicines. I seem to recall Satsai saying a medical unit arrived to administer the vaccinations. We didn’t have such things as medical units over here, not even in Vientiane. It had to be Thai.”

  Siri smiled at Beer. The Vietnamese always seemed pleased to be given an assignment even though the Lao couple hadn’t yet paid him, nor had they negotiated a fee for his services. He seemed to know they wouldn’t cheat him of what he’d earned. He was a poor man. His clothes had seen many washings, his sandals were made from old tires, and his trousers were held up by a length of loosely macraméd strings. It was then that it occurred to the doctor.

  “They weren’t American,” said Siri.

  “What?” said Daeng.

  “The raid on the village. The helicopters were American and the men wore American uniforms but the uniforms weren’t theirs. They were too big, hence the rope belts.”

  “How long does it take to punch a few holes in a belt?” said Daeng.

  “I don’t know, Daeng. But the point is—”

  “They could have been small Americans.”

  “Unlikely, and they probably didn’t care about the belts because they didn’t think anyone would notice such a small detail. Perhaps only a weaver would spot a fashion anomaly so they didn’t worry about it. It was all set up to make the villagers believe it was an American operation. In wartime nobody would question such a thing. Americans are historically nuts. But what if they were Japanese? There are Jap deserters peppered all through these mountains. Yuki-san has read the diary, or at least he knows of it. He might have found it in the village, or maybe someone on that raid passed it on to him. But that again begs the question, was the raid set up to find the diary or was finding it coincidental? Were they looking for something else but stumbled on the diary?”

  “I have a question,” said Beer. “I’m still not clear why Yuki-san would show up in Thakhek and tell you about Hiro if he was involved himself.”

  “He was sowing seeds,” said Daeng. “Of course, he came to keep Siri searching, afraid we might leave before we had the whole picture.”

  “And he pointed us in the direction of the Tunnel of Love,” said Siri. “He threw in the clue we needed to identify Hiro. But who is he and what does he stand to gain from our presence here?”

  “There are only two possibilities I can see,” said Daeng. “He wants us to find Hiro, or he wants us to find something that Hiro had.”

  “The treasure,” said Beer.

  “Exactly,” said Daeng. “It always comes down to money. How disappointing.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The Case of Beer

  The next morning, with the early sun at their backs, Siri and Daeng were absently tossing a mushroom net into the river and freeing anything silly enough to get caught in it. It was a futile charade because nobody on either bank cared who they were or where they were going. Beer rowed slowly, allowing the current to do all the work.

  “I thought I’d be doing my homework alone this trip,” he said.

  “And you will be,” said Siri. “But we feel like we’re really close to putting all the pieces together. We had an epiphany that we’re now on a treasure hunt with an evil Japanese villain watching our every move. How much more thrilling could it all be? While you’re at the clinics and pharmacies, we’ll go to see Kyoko and find out whether her sensei has any news for us. We’ve decided that the answer to everything lies within the ranks of the yokai. Hiro has led us into the world of the demons for a reason. That’s where we’ll find the treasure.”

  They docked the old boat at its usual disused pier and Beer padlocked it to a post even though they all doubted anyone would bother to steal it. He put the key under a rock. They agreed to meet back there at eleven to compare notes.

  “What do we do about Yuki-san?” Beer asked.

  “He worries you, doesn’t he,” said Daeng.

  “If he was on the village raid, he must have accomplices who are killers,” he said. “Yes, I’m excited about solving the mystery of the lost treasure, especially if there’s a chance of my sharing in the spoils, but I’m not in a hurry to die for it. I’d never met Yuki before but he came straight up to me in the market and asked about you. So he knows who I am and where to find me. I’m not a fighter. I’m not you, Madam Daeng. If it comes down to it, I’m a coward.”

  “I understand,” said Siri. “When we get back to Thakhek today we’ll use our contacts to trace him. We know people at police HQ. It can’t be that difficult to find a foreigner with a family, not even in the mountains. If he’s on the Vietnamese side they’d have a record of him. We’ll find him. Once Yuki-san stops being anonymous, he stops being a threat.”

  “I was . . . I was kind of thinking you’d already started a search for him,” said Beer.

  “Not so simple, Beer,” said Siri. “You know what communication’s like in this place. But don’t panic. We won’t let anything happen to you.”

  They shook hands and went their separate ways. Siri and Daeng took the river road, stopping to admire the pickled monkey bushes, looking across the river at the dinosaur country they lived in.

  “Do you think we can find something for him in Vientiane?” Siri asked.

  “Beer? Are you still collecting people, Dr. Siri?”

  “More like an investment, I’d say. If his face wasn’t split in half he’d be snapped up by the UN or some NGO: hardworking, responsible, honest, fluent in half a dozen languages. He could be on a living wage somewhere.”

  “Have you not considered he might prefer his freedom?”

  “You can only appreciate freedom if you have alternatives,” said Siri. “It seems freedom is his only option.”

  Daeng dropped the subject. She knew her husband was already on Beer’s case. There was no arguing with him. He’d probably already drawn up a list of employment opportunities.

  They arrived at the JICA office long before the staff was expected to be there. But the security gate was open and there was a motorcycle parked out front. Kyoko was at her desk with kanji sheets in front of her. She jumped for joy—literally—when Siri and Daeng appeared in the doorway. She didn’t know whether to wai or hug, so she did both.

  “Uncle! Auntie!” she squealed. “We’re almost there.”

  “Where?” asked Daeng.

  “The conclusion,” said Kyoko. “Come. Sit down. Have tea.”

  She poured green tea from a ceramic pot into three delicate bowls. Daeng decided that only a Japanese would travel to a third-world country with such breakable objects in their suitcase. Daen
g sipped the tea politely. Siri slurped and decided it needed sugar to stop it from tasting like liquid grass. But he kept his mouth shut.

  “I’m a fanatic,” said Kyoko. “I’ve become an authority on yokai. I can’t believe I wasted my formative years studying sociology and psychology when there was a world of demons out there I hadn’t even delved into.”

  Siri and Daeng stared at her.

  “I’m not even sure if she’s serious,” said Daeng.

  “Oh, I am, Daeng-sama,” she said.

  “So you’ve found Toshi’s alter ego?” said Siri.

  “I have—we have,” said Kyoko. “But he wasn’t a yokai. His name was Minamoto Yorimitsu and he was a warrior dispatched by the lords of the land to rid them of Shuten Doji. Doji was the leader of the Oni devils. The legend went that Shuten Doji put on a hideous mask when he was drunk one night and was never able to take it off. He spent all his time drinking sake and murdering young virgins. And here, my friends, is where the fictional writing of Toshi may have come together with reality. My sensei tells me that a group of senior officers did go to Thakhek around the time of the Japanese surrender. One of them was the general, Shosen Umiji, who had become infamous in the region because it was he who was instrumental in implementing the atrocities in China. He had been Toshi’s commanding officer for a time.”

  “Damn, I do believe he’s the one who condemned Toshi to death at the Vietnamese hospital,” said Siri.

  “If Toshi had been tormented by the horrors in Manchuria, General Shosen would have had a traumatic influence on his life. If Toshi was actually using the diary as therapy, what better way to slay his demons than to confront the general in whatever form?” said Kyoko.

  “I’m getting bogged down with names here,” said Daeng. “So Hiro a.k.a. Toshi fancied himself as . . . ?”

  “Minamoto Yorimitsu,” said Kyoko. “The slayer of the head devil, Shuten Doji.”

  “Who walked the earth under the name of . . .”

  “General Shosen Umiji,” said Kyoko.

  “But all through the diary Toshi’s a friend of the yokai,” said Daeng. “How could he live with them if his mission was to defeat them and overpower their leader?”

  “I believe we have to look at this as Toshi living in three worlds,” said Siri. “There was the peaceful world in Sawan with his friends and his lover. Then there was the fantasy world he wrote about in his diary. But there was another darker world that he was repressing all the time; the evil world of the devils into which he’d been dragged in China. His hadn’t been a simple madness. He had been possessed. He managed to subdue the yokai for several years. But then something must have happened to reopen a portal into that world.”

  “There’s only a hint at the end of the diary and we don’t have the missing pages, but it seems that Toshi was becoming unsettled,” said Kyoko. “We think there may have been an incident. Something caused the yokai to reveal their true identities and Minamoto Yorimitsu, the slayer, was awoken from his ignorance. We think this might have taken place during the parade of the hundred devils, which is the only time the yokai become visible.”

  “Sounds like a meeting of the Central Committee,” said Siri.

  “Siri, we’re being serious here,” said Daeng.

  “Sorry, dear.”

  “When was that?” asked Daeng.

  “It happens quite often,” said Kyoko. “Yokai are restless. They need exercise. I have a feeling Toshi’s so-called friends let slip who they really were on one of those nights. The professor in Thailand said the nearest parade date to Toshi’s disappearance was August ninth, 1945.”

  “That would have been six nights before the Japanese surrender,” said Daeng.

  “And that was exactly the period the pages were ripped from the diary,” said Siri.

  “Exactly,” said Kyoko.

  “So the events of those last six days were the cause of Toshi’s disappearance,” said Daeng.

  Siri got to his feet and walked to the window. He adjusted the louvers so he could see the garden.

  “I think I understand,” he said. “The diary wasn’t therapy.”

  “What do you mean?” said Kyoko.

  “What happened in that diary was real,” said Siri, turning back to the women. The louver glass was spotless but he instinctively wiped dust from his fingers. There were no clean louvers in Laos.

  “How could . . . ?” Kyoko began.

  “It was real in another dimension, Kyoko-san,” said Siri. “When Hiro was writing, he was in the same plane as the ghosts and the spirits. It was every bit as real as his life here with the one he loved. I know all this because I’ve been there.”

  Kyoko looked at Daeng, bewildered.

  “It’s true,” said Daeng. “Ridiculous but true. You should try living with him.”

  “Toshi was troubled and confused,” said Siri. “His mind had been twisted out of all proportion by what he saw in China. And somewhere along the line he had become broken and had opened a connection into the spirit world. For me it’s usually a door through which I pass in order to switch dimensions. For him it was the diary. It was there in this diary world that he met the devils that had driven otherwise sane, rational men to madness. It was there he met the yokai who threatened to once more spill over into this world of ours. But through his diary he had been able to keep the yokai content by befriending them. It was his way of keeping the lid on a bubbling pot. But the arrival of the wicked overlord and his demons stacked the odds against Toshi. Everything terrible was coming together. The yokai were revealing themselves. There was heavy troop activity in Thakhek. Japanese soldiers were out of control the way they had been in China. There was cross-dimensional chaos. Hiro was afraid for his friends in the village. He had to go on a second mission to protect them.”

  “And that mission had to involve General Shosen Umiji, whom he believed to be the incarnation of Shuten Doji the demon,” said Kyoko. “Or why else would Hiro have taken on the name of Minamoto? Perhaps Hiro moved away hoping the yokai might follow him.”

  “I don’t see him running,” said Siri. “Neither metaphorically nor literally.”

  “This is getting creepy,” said Kyoko.

  “But this doesn’t take us any closer to the treasure,” said Daeng, who’d had enough spirit talk for one day. “Did the professor shed any more light on the text?”

  “There was a reference we almost missed,” said Kyoko. “We ignored it at first because it was . . . well, it was very Western. We’d only been looking at Lao transcriptions of Japanese names. But the professor is a very thorough man and he returned to it. The name was Hal.”

  “That was the name of the cat that left because of the arrival of the dog,” said Siri.

  “Nicely remembered,” said Daeng.

  “In the earlier pages we learned that Hiro was very fond of the cat,” said Kyoko. “But the cat left because it couldn’t stand the new arrival. The new arrival was Taigou, or Senbiki Okami, one of the yokai in dog form. The professor made a list of possible versions of ‘Hal,’ its Japanese pronunciation being ha and ru, and with a little juggling he came up with the name: baku. I suppose one of the reasons we missed it is because, like ‘Minamoto,’ it isn’t the name of a yokai.”

  “Then what is it?” said Siri.

  “The baku is a sort of talisman,” said Kyoko. “It’s a guardian spirit and country people adopt it to protect themselves from the devils. Baku reside in the gates or the pillars of temples. They soak up bad dreams and ward off yokai.”

  “So the cat was one of the good guys?” said Siri.

  “Perhaps he was protecting Hiro the whole time,” said Kyoko. “We wondered whether baku might have been responsible for painting the idyllic scenes in Hiro’s mind to subdue the yokai and keep him safe.”

  “What do baku look like when they aren’t being cats?” Daeng ask
ed.

  “It’s said the baku was a last-minute throw-together,” said Kyoko. “The gods only had spare parts left over when all the other creatures were created. Baku was composed of whatever they could find. It looked a bit like a small bear with uneven dog legs and the head of an elephant.”

  “Well, I’ll be,” said Siri.

  “That’s your insightful face,” said Daeng.

  “You know? I think I have an idea,” he said. “We need to get back across the river immediately.”

  “You’re not going to share this idea with us?” said Daeng.

  “Not yet. Don’t want to get anyone excited. It’s just a theory right now.”

  Siri stood but Daeng helped herself to another cup of tea.

  “He does this,” she said to Kyoko. “He keeps things to himself, gets himself shot to death crossing back to Laos, leaving none of us any the wiser. He takes his secret to the grave.”

  “Now Daeng,” said Siri. “Be honest. How many times has that happened? Come on, drink your grass juice and let’s go.”

  He kissed Kyoko on the cheek and she blushed rose.

  “We’ll get back to you as soon as we have news,” said Daeng and she followed her husband out the door.

  Twenty minutes after Siri and Daeng had left the JICA office, the phone rang. Kyoko was the only one in the office so she answered it.

  “Hello, I’m phoning from the US embassy in Phnom Penh,” came a voice. The caller spoke Thai with a slight American accent that Kyoko picked up on. “I was given this number in regard to inquiries from Dr. Siri Paiboun.”

  “You just missed him,” said Kyoko. “Can I take a message?”

  “If you wouldn’t mind. My name is Cindy.”

  “Ah, yes. I’ve heard about you,” said Kyoko. “Your help in this matter has been invaluable. Thank you for calling.”

  There was a very long pause.

  “No, I think you must be thinking of somebody else,” said Cindy.

  “Why?”

  “Well, actually I’m embarrassed not to have been in touch sooner,” said Cindy. “Dr. Siri asked me if I could find information about a major in the Japanese Imperial Army.”