The Delightful Life of a Suicide Pilot

by Colin Cotterill

  “That’s correct.”

  “I was in touch with Washington and they do have a microfiche copy of the war archive.”

  “Yes?”

  “But they’re unable to give out information over the phone, not even to embassies. I’d need to be there in person with a signed request from my ambassador.”

  Kyoko was silent.

  “Hello?” said Cindy.

  “So you haven’t been able to send us information about Major Hiro?”

  “No, I’m sorry.”

  “And you haven’t spoken to anyone else about this?”

  “No.”

  “Oh dear,” said Kyoko.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Defeat Can Be Confusing

  Siri and Daeng were too early to cross the river with Beer in his rowboat so they left him a note under the rock and went over on a small barge that ferried traders back and forth. The border was officially open for business, with soldiers on either bank going through the large plastic hampers and helping themselves to fruit and vegetables at will. Siri and Daeng had picked up some empty sacks and smiled as if they’d had a successful day at the market in Nakhon Phanom. Like everyone else they had no travel papers so they handed over twenty baht to the soldiers, who were doing very nicely in graft. It was no surprise to Siri that the insurgents had targeted Thakhek for their incursions. It was so accommodating.

  They hurried back to the guesthouse. They paused in front of the door and inspected it for scratch marks. Daeng looked through the window.

  “Safe,” she said, but Siri turned the key gingerly. Once inside, he went straight to the bed and lifted the mattress. From beneath it he took out the diary. He thumbed through the pages until he found the folded photograph of Hiro and Satsai standing with the village children.

  “Haven’t you looked at that enough?” said Daeng.

  “Looked, yes,” said Siri. “But seen, no,” he said. “Come and take a good look at this picture and tell me what you see.”

  Daeng perused the picture while Siri removed his sturdy Soviet magnifying glass from his shoulder bag. He always traveled with his detection equipment. He handed her the glass and she held it in front of the photo.

  “Eleven, twelve children, two adults,” she said.

  “Anything else?”

  “The village post.”

  “And can you see the hieroglyphics carved out of the concrete?”

  “Barely.”

  “What can you make out?”

  “Animals, mostly.”

  “And what’s the biggest one there?”

  “This one,” she said. “An elephant.”

  “Are you sure it’s an elephant?”

  “Well, I’m no expert, but when I was six it’s how I would have drawn one. Perhaps the artist wasn’t so good at elephants. It has really short . . .”

  She looked at her husband and he nodded.

  “Do you think this is the baku?” she asked.

  “Short legs. Tail of a lion. Bird feet. Doesn’t that look like a desperately constructed animal to you? The baku inhabit temple gates and pillars to keep the yokai away. Village pillars are usually made of wood but this one is concrete. What if Hiro replaced the old one when he came back from Lang Son?”

  “You think he might have buried his treasure under the pillar?”

  “At first, yes, I considered that,” said Siri. “With the type of metal detectors in common use the magnetic field is directed downwards. If the treasure had been in the ground the detectors would have found it. The reason I was so fixated on this photograph is that it didn’t seem right somehow. We know Satsai is of average height. He’s standing beside the pillar and I estimate there’s another two Satsais’ height before the top of the pillar—about five meters. When we saw it with him the other day, it would have been no taller than two Satsais, one on top of the other, if you know what I mean.”

  “Not really.”

  “The pillar is shorter now.”

  “How can that be?”

  “When we came to see Satsai on our second visit he was mending a piece of equipment: some sort of heavy-duty cordless saw. Now, if you’re cutting trees, a simple chainsaw would be sufficient, or an axe. That beast on his desk was for cutting metal and did you see any metal around there that needed cutting?”

  “You think the treasure’s in the pillar?”

  “It’s possible, and would have been simple enough to arrange. You’d just have to pour liquid cement into a wooden frame with a pipe through the center. The finished concrete structure would have a hollow channel running through it. You then melt down your treasure, be it gold or silver or whatever—and my bet is gold—and pour it into the hollow center. You erect your pillar, decorate it a bit, and all anyone sees is a tall concrete post in the middle of the square. It was the only thing to survive the raid. They burned everything else down searching for the gold. Nobody would think to look there. It’s the village secret. Whenever they need some funding for this or that project or disaster they just lop off a few centimeters from the top of the pillar. It would make sense that they used the gold to rebuild the village after the raid.”

  “You’ve got a devious mind, Dr. Siri.”

  “But it’s possible, right?”

  “Absolutely. But that means Satsai was lying to us about not knowing where the treasure was.”

  “Of course he was,” said Siri. “Wouldn’t you? His village had already been destroyed once. He knows someone suspects there’s a fortune in gold in or around the village. Someone knew about Hiro and his stash and his relationship with Satsai. I bet that someone was Yuki-san.”

  “So, what do we do now?” asked Daeng.

  “We try to work out why Yuki would involve us. Why did he send me the diary? We need to have ourselves a serious brainstorm and, for that, we need beer with a small b.”

  They sat on the odd chairs looking out over the water. The sun was smearing a purple bruise across the horizon. The clouds were highlighted in lilacs and mauves, the river pink. The bougainvillea bush in front of the balcony was being ravaged by a hostile gang of purple butterflies. It was the type of scene that would have graced the photo albums of all the tourists the government dreamed would one day come to appreciate the country and spend their money. But this evening only Siri and Daeng could be bothered to enjoy it. There was another ugly hotel being built on the far bank and they hoped the Lao would someday build an even uglier one in revenge.

  It was a hot early evening that anticipated more rain. The couple waved paper fans in front of their faces. Thanks to the generator the beer was cold but the ideas were not flowing.

  “It has to have something to do with my reputation as an internationally renowned crime fighter,” said Siri at last.

  “That, or the fact that you can read at all,” said Daeng.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look at it like this. Yuki-san recovers the diary from Satsai’s house in the village. He knows somehow that Hiro has gold or whatever. He can read the Japanese section but it tells him nothing. Half the diary is written in Lao language. The few academics we have here got their qualifications in French language. Most of them fled in ’75. We’re left with school teachers with classes up to grade six with no textbooks and college tutors with degrees in Russian. The teachers have nothing stimulating to read so they’ve not developed a reading habit. Hiro’s diary would be beyond the comprehension of almost everyone in Laos.”

  “Apart from Satsai,” said Siri.

  “But Yuki-san isn’t about to recruit the man from whom he’d stolen the diary to explain the hidden meanings in it,” said Daeng.

  “And I doubt Satsai would have seen it as anything but a literary masterpiece,” said Siri. “What Yuki-san needed was someone with a reading background, with a track record of solving mysteries, with research
resources and endless retirement hours.”

  “Enter Dr. Siri. Someone recommended you to Yuki-san, someone who admired your work. You were the perfect man for the job and, voila, here you are solving the mystery just as he planned.”

  “But he doesn’t know that,” said Siri. “All that effort would only be worthwhile if he was sitting here with us taking notes.”

  The screeching of the cicadas was momentarily drowned out by the grinding of cogs.

  “Oh, shit,” said Siri who had reached his conclusion only seconds before Daeng.

  They ran into the room and started to conduct a thorough search of all the likely places. When that produced nothing, they used their imaginations. It was Daeng who found the wireless transmitter in the knot atop the mosquito net, just two meters above their nighttime conversations and intimate moments.

  “It’s short range,” said Daeng. “He’d have to be within fifty meters.”

  “The mysterious guest in room four,” said Siri.

  They ran down the stairs to the far end of the building, where the door to room 4 was ajar. They went inside. Beside the unmade bed was a radio receiver. The headphones were on the pillow.

  “Looks like he doesn’t need them anymore,” said Siri.

  “We have to get to the village,” said Daeng.

  “It’s almost dark.”

  “It’s a tunnel. How much darker could it be?”

  So it was that with no plan and no equipment they headed toward the river. Even before they left the guesthouse grounds they bumped into Beer coming toward them.

  “Comrade Beer,” said Daeng. “We need a fast boat with a light.”

  “Why? What’s happened?” said Beer.

  “We’ll tell you on the way.”

  The boat they hired was certainly faster than Garu’s. They arrived at the entrance to the Thum Huk tunnel in record time. But the young driver didn’t have the expertise of the old man. He had a strong beam on the front of his boat but he was bemused by all the twists and turns of the cave network. He refused to go at speed because he was afraid. There was talk of ghosts in the tunnel. So by the time they reached the village the moon was on the rise, nestled now in the low clouds, and there was nobody at the dock. A clunky old WW2 foldable launch was tied up there. There was no artificial lamplight.

  “Damn, I wish I’d brought the Kalashnikov,” said Siri.

  “I suppose we could have planned this a little better,” Daeng agreed. “But we’re here now. Best make the most of it.”

  They’d briefed Beer on the journey. They’d told him about the revelations from Kyoko’s professor and the discovery of the listening device. He’d told them how he’d spent a fruitless day at clinics and pharmacies and even made an appointment with the director of the hospital, who had nothing useful to say. Beer seemed embarrassed by his failure but they congratulated him on his thoroughness.

  As they chugged painfully slowly through the caverns, Siri’s detective mind had kicked in. He was impressed by the tenacity of Yuki-san, who’d sat in room 4 for three days listening to their deliberations, waiting for the moment to arrive when the Lao announced the location of the treasure. But for such a well-planned surveillance operation there was something lacking. Yes, they’d discussed much of the case when they were together in their room. And yes, it had proven worthwhile to transfer the listening device to their new room after the explosion. But their discoveries and insights weren’t restricted to the bedroom. They’d talked on the balcony, in the boat, in the restaurant, sitting on the dock. Who was to know when and where the ultimate revelation would be revealed? To get full coverage they’d have to have another listening device attached to their clothes or in their bags, or . . . At that point, Siri had leaned into Daeng’s ear and shouted a theory that only she could hear.

  They walked by the light of the boat pilot’s flashlight to the square where the village pillar lay on the ground, the concrete smashed. The gold or other precious metal had been removed and the sledgehammers left lying around. On one slab of concrete, the smiling face of baku looked up at them, his tail-end gone. He’d failed to protect the village this time, but his expression suggested all was not lost. Still there was nobody to be seen, not a soul.

  “The school,” said Beer.

  “I know you’re afraid,” Daeng told him. “You don’t have to come.”

  “I do,” said Beer, his voice trembling. “I’m a part of this. I want to see my work through.”

  “You’re a saint,” said Daeng.

  She went up to him and gave him a hug. Siri joined them but his main objective was not to bond with their guide. It was to remove the pistol from the back of his macramé belt. It was hidden by the tail of his shirt but the doctor had seen its outline when they docked. He held it to Beer’s head and twisted the Vietnamese traitor’s arm behind his back one notch short of snapping it off.

  “What? What are you doing?” he asked.

  “You could shout to your team at the school for help,” said Daeng. “And they’d probably come to see what’s wrong. But we have a gun now. We could pick them off one by one. I doubt there’d be more than six of them and this is a Makarov PM. If it’s fully loaded, and it feels heavy enough, it contains eight rounds. I could even miss a couple with my first two shots and still leave you without allies.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Beer.

  “Oh, I know,” said Daeng. “Defeat can be confusing. We should have suspected you a lot sooner. That was a very thorough account of Hiro Uenobu’s early life you gave us. In fact it contained information that one would never find in standard service documents. You could only have learned it from someone who knew Hiro and had worked with him and had access to his records. I’m assuming that someone is Yuki-san. I also assume he’s paying you a significant amount of money for your service. Perhaps he’s offered you a share of the treasure.”

  “And here’s the way you probably imagined it all to go,” said Siri. “Yuki-san has the villagers at the school. It’s a small village so that will be about . . . a hundred people? You might actually think Yuki-san plans something innocent. Perhaps he’ll give the villagers a warning not to tell anyone what they’ve seen here and let them go home. That would be only fair considering they haven’t done anything wrong. Deep down, you’re a good person, so you’re hanging on to the hope that he isn’t planning to massacre the lot of them.”

  “How awful that would be,” said Daeng. “Bringing back memories of the war. The yokai let loose again.”

  “They aren’t like that anymore,” said Beer.

  “You know? I was wondering whether they’d already wiped out all those innocent women and children,” said Siri. “But then it occurred to me they’re just waiting for you to deliver the last two loose ends. The sounds of gunfire and screaming would have echoed along that old tunnel. We might have rebelled or turned back. So, no. Your last task is to deliver us, take a step back, and watch the bullet fest.”

  “Of course, Comrade Beer, you’re a loose end, too,” said Daeng. “You’ve served your purpose. They don’t need you anymore. I doubt they’ll give you a chance to step back. You’ve been helpful but they have their gold now and you’re not one of them. I’d say it’s sayonara, Beer-san.”

  “I know you’re imagining your share of the treasure,” said Siri. “That thought has turned you blind.”

  They saw the flashlight of someone approaching along the track ahead of them.

  “Your choice,” said Siri, handing Beer back his pistol. The doctor nodded at him and ducked into the bushes.

  The man on the path appeared around the bend. His lamp was attached to his helmet. He was in his sixties with a heavy-looking paunch but he wore full Japanese combat uniform. He raised his weapon when he saw Beer standing there with the old woman.

  “It’s you,” said the Japanese in heavily accented Vietnamese. “W
hat kept you? We’ve been waiting.”

  He lowered his gun and gestured for them to follow. Beer looked at Daeng, who raised her eyebrows and stepped in front of him. The silence that followed was thick as treacle.

  “I . . . I . . . the boat was slow,” said Beer, at last.

  “Where’s the other one?”

  “Other one?”

  “Yes, retard. There’s supposed to be two of them.”

  “He . . . I . . . I killed him. He tried to escape.”

  “Shit. Major Yuki won’t like that,” said the Japanese. “He won’t like it a bit.”

  He approached Daeng and for no apparent reason he slapped her in the face. It might have been for old times’ sake but in those old times the prisoners didn’t slap back. Daeng’s left hook almost knocked him off his feet. There was a brief look of shock on the soldier’s face before he pointed his gun at her chest. Siri was faster. He came up behind the Japanese and cracked him over the head with a branch. The man dropped like a coconut.

  “Congratulations,” said Daeng to Beer. “You’ve now officially switched sides.”

  Beer looked vacant. “I’m sorry,” he said meekly, seemingly apologizing for all of the bad decisions he’d made in his life.

  “How many more are there?” Daeng asked, pointing her chin at the prostrate soldier.

  “I didn’t plan to—” Beer began.

  “I asked you how many more?” said Daeng, removing the lamp from the helmet of the Japanese.

  “Five,” said Beer.

  “There were nine on the original raid,” said Siri.

  “They got old,” said Beer. “They died.”

  “They’re all Japanese?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Yuki-san is the leader?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. It’s time for a plan,” said Daeng.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Wish You Were Here