The Second Biggest Nothing

by Colin Cotterill

  The early evening mosquitoes were flocking around the onlookers planning a sundown assault, but the audience was rapt and I was the star. Nobody else spoke.

  “In the beginning, I imagine you had no intention of returning to the West,” I said. “You were safe and you were happy. You had your secret Nirvana, but you were young and illegal. And there was a world out there you hadn’t seen. You became dissatisfied, and your money ran out. Your banana farm and your lychee plantation and your pig pens or whatever you thought might make your fortune, they all failed and you were left dissatisfied and frustrated. You needed to get back to America. But how do you do that when everyone believes you’re dead? The Central Command listed you as MIA. There was only one way to come back with dignity. You’d read about other US fliers imprisoned for years. The ones that made it back home had options and probably received a pension. But you had a bigger idea. You wrote about your fictional incarceration in a full-length manuscript. You could see movie and TV rights at the end of the tunnel.

  “Someone you met in the north of Thailand knew about a gang of thugs on the Lao side that rented themselves out as mercenaries for the PL. My friend the general here knows about them. Their commander had recently shot himself whilst as drunk as a cellar rat, and his gang was in need of guidance and money. So you headed up there with your manuscript and you made a deal. You handed over what little money you had left and promised them a share of the fortune you’d be making from your book. All they had to do was say they’d kept you a prisoner for almost six years under orders from their boss. Then they march you to the nearest legitimate PL camp and drop you off. It was a brilliant plan. You knew the Viet Minh were bringing all the MIA together in Hanoi for an eventual handover. What were a few months of discomfort in the Hanoi Hilton compared to the alternatives?

  “The book was a clever idea too. You were aware it might have been discovered but if it was, it would make you stand out from the other prisoners. Perhaps the Vietnamese would feel remorse for your cruel treatment over the border. Perhaps they’d respect you for your many attempts to escape. If it was successfully smuggled out by the tourist it would have been an immediate hit Stateside. But if it wasn’t, that was fine too because—and I’m guessing this last part—your wife had the original, probably resplendent with dirt and bloodstains. All she had to do was post it anonymously to the US embassy in Bangkok with a note that a deserter had brought it to Thailand. You couldn’t fail either way.”

  We’d left Henry alone in a cell that morning. He’d been exposed as a fraud so all of his dreams of back pay and compensation and book and film royalties, of one day getting a visa for his Thai wife, of being repatriated as a hero, that was all gone, thanks to me. The Vietnamese and the CIA fellow patted me on the back as we walked away, and I might have gloated just a little and Henry probably noticed that.

  Civilai and I sat on the front porch of a small house over in Ba Din that evening talking about Hanoi Hilton Henry. We were waiting for a showing of The French Connection with subtitles. It was R rated but we had IDs.

  “Why did you first doubt him?” Civilai asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “There’s what you see and what you perceive. Jane’s perception was that I was an elderly fan desperate for an autograph.”

  “Which wasn’t so far off the mark.”

  “I was more perceptive. I sensed there was something wrong with Henry. Unlike you in your penthouse suite and endless rounds of cocktail receptions here in the capital, I’ve been living in the jungle on and off for the past twenty years. Nature leaves scars. Some medical conditions are unavoidable, especially if you’re in the open air and unprotected. But he looked too . . . too hale and hearty. If he’d been tortured as he claimed, why were there so few historical wounds? And some lies are obviously lies. His arm had been broken as he said but not from parachuting from a plane six years ago and left untreated. There was little evidence of trauma. The bone had clearly healed when he was a child and had continued to grow. The break was at least twenty years old. It was arrogant of him to think we wouldn’t have qualified people here who’d notice things like that. I thought if he could lie about that, what else was he lying about? The liver disease could have been a result of hepatitis, but I have a nose for alcoholism.”

  “It takes one to know one, little brother.”

  I didn’t think a lot about Henry for the next few months because I was too busy getting bombed by Nixon. Christmas was celebrated in style with the heaviest bombing raids since World War Two. Hanoi took the brunt of it. For the first time, the hospitals had more civilians being put back together than military personnel. There was something desperate about the attacks, like a boxer down on points in the last round coming into the ring with a machete. And it did promise to be the beginning of the end. I was back in Hanoi for New Year’s, and I found a Christmas card in my mail pouch. I have no idea how it got there. It began pleasantly enough with the words Season’s Greetings in glitter on the front. But when I opened it, the message became a little less agreeable:

  To you and your loved ones. With nothing but unnatural death to look forward to. I shall kill you all. I’ll be seeing you, Siri Paiboun. I promise you that.

  Chapter Eleven

  Mindless Assassin of the Century

  “So, there are our three top contenders for mindless assassin of the century,” said Daeng. “If the line in the first note, I have already deleted one of your darlings, refers to your lovely Boua, that would rule out contestant number three. Boua died in ’65. You destroyed Henry’s life in ’72. Have you had any other loved ones bumped off since then?”

  “Not including dogs?” asked Siri.

  They heard a mournful howl from the street.

  “No,” said Daeng.

  “Then I can’t think of any,” he said.

  “What about the bread woman?”

  Siri stared at his wife. They were together at a table, straightening aluminum spoons and forks. The cheap rubbish from China tended to curl up after a few months of sweaty palms.

  “The bread woman?”

  “You should have known I’d find out.”

  “What’s to find out? We had one date and that was a disaster.”

  “You liked her enough to ask her out. Tell me about her.”

  “Really? All right. The bread woman, a.k.a. Lah, is, as far as I know, alive and well and baking baguettes with her sons. When I was still at Mahosot, Civilai and I would get our lunch from her cart and sit and eat on a log beside the river. Damn, I should really go and see how Civilai’s doing. He’s been bedridden for two days. I’ll go in the morning and force some doctoring on him. I know if it was serious, Dr. Porn would contact us; she’s looking after him, but a second opinion can’t hurt.”

  “We can take him a bottle of something to cheer him up,” said Daeng.

  “Did Phosy say anything else about the journalists?” Siri asked.

  “He ruled out the two Poles because they didn’t arrive in the country until two days after we found Ugly’s letter. And the Russian died of old age six months ago. He was replaced at the last second by someone much younger.”

  “That only leaves the East German,” said Siri.

  “Phosy talked to him. He was certainly in Hanoi when you were there and you might have met up with him in the caves at Vieng Xai. He wrote some pieces from there, being careful not to give away the location.”

  “Anything about me?”

  “He claims never to have heard of you.”

  “Then we have to learn as much as we can from our two dead ones,” said Siri. “Apart from the fact that they unquestionably died of drowning, I didn’t see any signs of violence. The tall one hit his head, probably on the dashboard. That might have been enough to knock him out. There were no seatbelts. The photographer’s airways were clogged. I’m guessing he suffered from allergies. I doubt that was serious enough
to kill him.”

  Daeng looked up and sniffed.

  “What is that smell?” she asked.

  “I’m boiling chicken bones in the back garden in a tin drum,” he said.

  “What on earth for?”

  “I’m afraid I cannot disclose that information.”

  “If you are planning to serve them with my noodles, it’s very much my business.”

  “Goodness me, no. You can’t eat them. They’re old.”

  “Where do you get old chicken bones?”

  “At the dump,” said Siri. “Ugly dug them up for me. He’s a natural. We managed to recover some thirty kilograms of the things.”

  “Thirty . . . ? That’s disgusting. How did you get them back here?”

  “I hired a bicycle samlor. It stank the thing up completely. It’ll have to be fumigated. I had to ride the bicycle along behind him with a peg on my nose. I gave him a nice tip.”

  “And you’re really not going to tell me what it’s all about?”

  “A man has to have a hobby that’s all his own, Daeng. Can you watch the drum for me? Keep the fire going for another couple of hours?”

  “Why? Where are you going?”

  “I told Phosy I’d take a look at the red Ferrari,” said Siri. “It just got back.”

  The Ferrari had finally been dragged from the fish pond and towed to the city behind a tractor. It was parked looking a little sorry for itself in the police parking lot. Phosy and Bruce were standing in the shade of a maiden’s breast sandalwood tree when Siri arrived on his bicycle, followed shortly by Ugly. Captain Sihot was standing guard.

  “Sorry I’m late,” said Siri. “Bending spoons. Boiling bones. You know how it is. Time got away from me.”

  Phosy and Bruce stepped up to the car.

  “We’ve been over it once,” said Phosy. “We just needed your coroner’s insight to take another look.”

  “Has anyone interfered with it since it went in the water?” Siri asked.

  “No,” said Sihot. “I accompanied it all the way home. Nobody’s been anywhere near it apart from our police mechanic, and I was with him the whole time.”

  “And what was his conclusion?” asked Siri.

  “He said the brakes and the steering were in great shape for an old car. Somebody obviously loved it and took care of it. He said he doubted it left the road due to some mechanical malfunction. He did offer a sort of explanation as to why the two of them couldn’t get out. The lock latches were rusty. You couldn’t open the doors from the inside. You’d have to wind down the windows and open them from outside. But with the pressure on the glass from the water it would have been hard to open them.”

  “Were the latches tampered with?” Siri asked.

  “Didn’t look like it, Doctor. Just natural rusting over time.”

  “I doubt anyone could have planned to have the car leave the road exactly where it did,” said Bruce.

  “That’s right,” said Sihot. “It’s got all the signs of an accident.”

  “But what made the driver leave the road at all?” said Phosy.

  “Drugs?” said Siri. “Booze? Speeding? Asleep at the wheel? Without an autopsy, we’ll never really know.”

  “Was there anything inside?” Bruce asked.

  “There’s a bag behind the driver’s seat,” said Sihot. “We didn’t touch it. There were beer bottles on the floor, so it’s pretty obvious they were drinking. I think the driver just lost control.”

  “They seemed to have a very impressive tolerance for alcohol from my memory,” said Phosy.

  While he fished out the bag, Siri walked around to the front of the Ferrari and looked through the broken windshield.

  “That’s odd,” he said. “There must be a dozen mimosa leis hanging from the rearview mirror.”

  “What’s odd about that?” said Bruce. “A couple of old Lao hands want to go for a drive in the countryside. They remember the old days when everyone hung flowers inside their vehicles to keep the road gods happy.”

  “But that’s exactly it,” said Siri. “The old days. There’s nothing on the road but military and government vehicles these days. Nobody sells leis anymore. Where would they get them from?”

  “Temples still make them for festivals,” said Sihot.

  “When there’s a fair they prepare them but not before. They don’t have spare leis laying around just on the off chance someone wants one.”

  “The journalist welcoming committee,” said Bruce. “They handed out leis at the airport.”

  “That was over a week ago,” said Siri. “These are still pretty fresh.”

  “Why are we so hung up about flowers?” asked Sihot.

  “It’s called brainstorming,” said Siri. “You just say things for no apparent reason until you accidentally stumble upon a truth. It’s like politics.”

  Phosy had recovered a black camera bag from behind the seat. He got into a coughing fit from the fumes.

  “Sihot, don’t let anyone smoke around here. The interior stinks of petrol. The tank must be cracked.”

  “I’ll get the mechanic to empty it,” said Sihot. “Can’t afford to let petrol evaporate in this day and age. It’s hard to come by.”

  Phosy laid the bag on the ground and unzipped it. It contained three very expensive looking lenses, several sodden packets of film and one plastic bag with a day’s supply of marijuana with soggy papers.

  “These boys were serious,” said Bruce.

  “It was a bit early in the day to get stoned,” said Phosy. “There’s no paraphernalia in the front seat. Just the beer bottles.”

  “And more important than what’s in the bag,” said Siri, “is what isn’t in the bag.”

  “Right,” said Phosy. “I doubt a photojournalist would go on a trip without his camera. He’d be prepared for unusual sights. He’d have it with him on his lap or over his shoulder.”

  “The cadre swore his boys didn’t take anything from the car or go through the foreigners’ stuff,” said Sihot. “But I’ll go see him again. Those professional cameras are expensive. A year’s salary for some of them.”

  “Have them go back into the pond too,” said Phosy. “See if anything got dropped when they dragged out the bodies.”

  With cloths over their mouths and noses they conducted one more thorough search of the car interior but found nothing of any relevance. They agreed that the most-likely cause was that they’d been drinking and lost control of the car. Phosy drove Sihot to the station and took Bruce home. The Aussie had moved out of the guesthouse and was living with a relative until he could find a place of his own. It was on the way. He asked to be dropped off at the end of the lane so he could get some snacks at the roadside stall. The chief inspector offered to put Siri’s bicycle in the back of the jeep and give him a ride to the restaurant but was reminded that Ugly wouldn’t be able to keep up with them. And, besides, it was a cool, overcast evening, and he could take a leisurely ride along the river.

  As Siri negotiated the dirt track in front of the Women’s Union, he noticed that there was plenty of activity inside. From the doorway he could see that Dr. Porn was still at her desk. He wondered if she ever went home. Very few doors were locked in Vientiane, and, like Siri, most householders couldn’t remember where they’d put their keys for safety.

  He pushed open the front door and called out, “It’s only me.”

  Porn’s office still had no door of its own. She looked up from the logjam of files on her desk and seemed relieved to have a distraction from her bureaucratic combat.

  “Siri, you old goat,” she said. “Come in.”

  Even before he reached the desk she had a cup of tea poured for him from her thermos. They exchanged a warm handshake that told of many years of friendship and cooperation.

  “How are the eyebrows coming along?”
he asked.

  It was a standing joke that only he found funny. Porn had shaved her eyebrows for a brief period as a nun and they hadn’t grown back.

  “I always dream that your mentioning them again and again will be motivation enough for them to make a comeback,” she said. “How are you, good doctor?”

  “I’m sparkling,” he said. “And you?”

  “Tired,” she said.

  “Work?”

  “Family.”

  “You have a family?”

  She laughed.

  “Yes, it comes as a surprise to me too.”

  “You never talk about them.”

  “It’s my policy to keep my private life private. I stay here as long as I can every evening, so I don’t have to deal with domestic issues. But you aren’t here to listen to my woes. How is your blockbuster film progressing?”

  “I think we’re on hold for a while until we can sort out a few other issues.”

  “Then that’s not why you’re here?”

  “No. I have two other matters to discuss,” he said. “Firstly, how good are your contacts in the camps?”

  “The refugee camps?”

  “Yes.”

  “How good do you need them to be?”

  “Let’s imagine that I have a commodity that I would like distributed amongst a certain faction of the camps’ residents.”

  “What is it?”

  “I can’t tell you yet.”

  “Is it legal?”

  “Absolutely.”