The Rat Catchers' Olympics

by Colin Cotterill

  “I hope our rooms are near the bottom,” said Thip, the eldest and prettiest of the lady runners.

  “Why, love?” asked Madam Daeng.

  “Cause it’ll be a bastard of a climb if we’re at the top.”

  In just over two weeks, when the Games were due to begin, the Ukraina would be given over to the world’s journalists, but for the time being the virgin countries had the place to themselves. Comrade Baronov had accompanied the team to the hotel, made sure they were settled in, and now stood like an out-of-order vending machine in the gaudy reception area. Given the boy’s choice of studies, Civilai doubted he had friends. He decided to adopt him.

  “Young man,” he said.

  Baronov squinted, smiled and said, “Yes, uncle?”

  “Uncle? Shouldn’t you be addressing me as comrade?”

  “Goodness no,” he said. “These are the eighties. Life has changed. And this is the Olympic rebirth. The dark days are over. No classist language. No racism. No xenophobia. We’re all one big family and the Lao team are my brothers and sisters. You are my uncle.”

  As a man who spent much of his life listening to the bull dung of communist rhetoric, Civilai could only assume that these sentiments had been instilled in the minds of the official translators to last only for the duration of the Games.

  “Then you may call me uncle,” he said. “And am I to assume that you are at my team’s disposal while we’re here?”

  “Anything legal,” said Baronov. “Although there are one or two moderately less-than-legal things I’ve been instructed to turn a blind eye to.”

  “Such as what?”

  “Marijuana. Ladies of the night. Gambling. Fighting in public without weapons. Theft of small hotel property.”

  “What about anti-Soviet sentiment?”

  “Absolutely out of the question.”

  “I’ll bear all that in mind. I’m assuming Baronov is your family name.”

  “Yes, uncle.”

  “What’s your first name?”

  “Vladimir Svyatoslav.”

  “No, that’s far too complicated.”

  “I have a foreign name: Roger.”

  “Yet another good choice. Well, Roger, I’m in desperate need to contact my country to let them know we have arrived safely.”

  “I was anticipating such a request,” said Roger. “You can phone directly from the hotel. All phone calls are complimentary.”

  “Ah, yes. It’s just that my country does not have a vast network of international telephone lines. I was hoping you might have something more . . . archaic.”

  “We have a telex service,” said Roger.

  “Excellent.”

  The telex Civilai sent was to Inspector Phosy, care of the national police headquarters. It read,

  Phosy,

  At Wattay I saw an old colleague, a major called Lien. That was his nickname but it’s a derivative of his actual name. Boulien or Khamlien, something like that. He used to be based in Buagaew, Unit 6. I was certain he’d be coming to Moscow but he didn’t get on the plane. Please follow up.

  Thanks. C.

  As the keyboard was set out in Roman characters and Civilai didn’t know English, he wrote the telex in French and Phosy would have to get it translated. As Laos modeled its security and spy network on the Soviet system, Civilai assumed somebody would be monitoring communication into and out of the country. But all he was doing was trying to locate an old friend. No national secrets to be had there.

  Madam Daeng had discovered the turban when she and Dtui were thumbing through 1950s copies of Paris Match on the eve of their departure. The French hadn’t contributed very much of value during their stay in Indochina but they did leave behind some interesting magazines. And it was in one of these that Daeng saw Marlene Dietrich in a silk turban. It was the answer to her fashion dilemma. She’d been right about her hair. It was taking its sweet time to grow. She no longer looked like a billiard ball; she now could be compared to a grassy clod of earth. But with a silk turban, crayoned eyebrows and a light girdle to hide the tail, she would no longer feel out of place. Dr. Siri, on the other hand, preferred his women as nature intended them but he wisely kept his comments to himself.

  The doctor hadn’t heard a word from his spirit guide, the obnoxious Auntie Bpoo. He wondered whether the occult might be like radio—getting weaker the further from the source you journeyed. But he also hadn’t had a disappearing episode for a month, which was not a bad thing. How would it look for the Lao team physician to vanish during a reception? He continued to wear his stone talisman on a string around his neck, although he’d taken to leaving it on the bedside cabinet of a night. At home the pendant kept him safe from malevolent spirits. But this was Soviet Russia. How far could ghosts really travel?

  It was probably as a result of this complacency that a further breakthrough was made on his second night at the Ukraina. Their room was like one of the roped-off boudoirs he’d seen at Versailles. He’d visited the palace as a student and wondered how comfortable Marie Antoinette would have felt there constantly afraid of damaging an antique or spilling red wine on a priceless counterpane.

  The boxers and athletes had been placed in apartments on the seventeenth floor. Fortunately there were elevators, but the management had formally requested the Lao stop riding them for pleasure. One group had spent the first morning traveling from the ground floor to the roof and running to the windows at the end of the corridor to see how high they were while one of them held open the lift doors.

  Siri and Daeng were in the VIP suites, which were like the private quarters of rich grandmothers: a bed so high there were lacquered steps on either side to mount her, a stuffed couch like a patchwork loaf, a television in a finely crafted cabinet, and curtains so heavy it took two to pull them apart of a morning. But the view across the river to the Garden Ring was glorious. And neither complained about the complimentary wines and liquors lined up in rows atop the cabinet like the Russian cavalry. And perhaps it was a slight overindulgence in the free booze that threw Dr. Siri into one of his dreaded dreams. It was about 1 a.m. and Daeng was awoken by her husband saying, “Fasten your seat belts,” over and over again. She reached across to calm him but he wasn’t there.

  He was, in fact or in fiction, upside down in an Aeroflot Tupolev and he had no seatbelt. He knew at any second he could plummet to the overhead lights. He could hear screams over the intercom. Flames lashed the windows. The door to the cockpit opened (it was a finely carved temple door with garuda motifs) and Auntie Bpoo in an Aeroflot stewardess uniform stepped out. She was walking on the ceiling but as the aircraft was upside down it was the only place to walk. She looked even less like a woman than usual. Her hair was cropped and she’d started to grow a beard. A scar like a glued-on centipede ran down one cheek.

  “At last,” said Siri.

  “Chicken or beef?” said Bpoo.

  Their heads were at the same level but one of them was upside down.

  “I’ve been trying to get through to you for months,” said Siri. “What happened to our arrangement?”

  “If you don’t want chicken or beef I’ll have to recite you a poem,” she said.

  “Beef,” said Siri.

  “Ingrate.”

  The cockpit door reopened and a small buffalo walked out. The fuselage rocked.

  “That’s not beef,” said Siri.

  “These are hard times,” said Bpoo and held up a machete. “Brisket or rib?”

  “I said, what about our arrangement?” Siri tried again. “You’re supposed to be tutoring me.”

  “In what?”

  “In communicating with the other side. You promised.”

  “And was there a time limit applied to this promise?”

  “I’ve just turned seventy-six. We have a lot to fit in before I’m on the pyre and you’re homeles
s.”

  “Goodness. What drama. Would you like a drink with your meal?”

  “I’d like some advice.”

  “Red or white?”

  “Remember Noo, the Thai forest monk? He’s in a coma. It’s as if he’s given up on life but I don’t know why.”

  “You don’t know much.”

  “I know. So teach me. How do I bring him back?”

  “We should have ice cream but the fridge is on the blink.”

  “Bpoo!”

  “You really aren’t very good at this, are you? Look. Isn’t it obvious? The problem isn’t him, it’s his spirit.”

  “He’s a Buddhist monk.”

  “So what? It doesn’t matter what you call yourself. It doesn’t stop the opposing spirits haggling over your soul. It doesn’t carry any weight in the respective heavens and hells. If he’s dangling there must be some unfinished business.”

  “How can I know what that is? Can you connect me to his spirit?”

  “Do I look like a telephonist to you?”

  “Please. He’s been through a terrible ordeal.”

  “Then sort it out. You know what your problem is? You think we’re in control. But here’s a dose of veracity. I’m only here because you want me to be. You created me. We’re all here because you put up this big psychic ROOM FOR RENT sign and you don’t check on us at all. We’re running riot, peeing on the carpets, breaking the windows and we get away with it because you can’t keep your house in order. Don’t beg, Siri. Show a bit of spunk. You want to help Noo, you go in there with your AK27 and you make a mess of his malevolent spirits.”

  “But how? Even you don’t listen to me.”

  “I’m different. I’m out of control. Have you finished with your meal?”

  Siri looked down to see a plate of feathers on the tray.

  “How was it?” Bpoo asked.

  “It was chicken, I asked for beef.”

  “Yeah, that’s better. Spirits admire ornery hosts.”

  She handed him a laminated card. On it was a poem. He made the mistake of reading it. It was as awful and unintelligible as all of Bpoo’s offerings.

  Take to the sky

  Why not? They used to say

  The safest way

  Then comes a bearded man

  A hidden blade

  Afraid of a lemonade can

  Exploding shoes

  Who’s to know which one?

  She started to walk back to the cockpit.

  “It’s forty-seven,” shouted Siri.

  “What is?”

  “There’s no AK27.”

  “Well, that’s a relief. Can we go back to sleep now?”

  Siri turned to his left to see Daeng, still in her turban, her eyes puffy with sleep.

  “Did I disappear?” he asked.

  “About half an hour. Where were you?”

  “Aeroflot.”

  “I imagine a lot of people disappear on Aeroflot.”

  Chapter Five

  Good Mourning

  “All right. Here’s the story,” said Civilai. “I heard back from Inspector Phosy. He got in touch with his military contacts in Buagaew and, of course, they knew my Major Lien. His full name is Ailien Viaketh. As far as his colleagues knew he was on his way here as their delegate on the Olympic shooting team.”

  The old woman pushed him in the back for the tenth time. He turned and snarled at her but also took a step forward. He was, after all, a guest in her country.

  “So I wasn’t delusional,” he continued. “Major Lien really did think he’d see me on the flight.”

  “Then what do you think went wrong?” asked Siri. He regretted not bringing a hat. The thought of getting sunburned beneath a July sun in Moscow hadn’t occurred to him. Once they’d left the trees at the edge of the park there was no shade.

  “It’s almost as if everything was decided on the spur of the moment at Wattay,” said Civilai. “Phosy found Major Lien in Vientiane staying with relatives, still in shock and very upset. He was hiding his puffy eyes behind dark glasses. He’d been ordered not to say anything but his sister walked Phosy to the gate. She was more talkative. She said some military officials had pulled him aside at the airport and said there was a problem with his application. Lien wouldn’t tell her what. Phosy wondered what the Soviet security detail had found in the major’s files at such a late juncture. He had access to the security office that kept the application forms of the military Olympic competitors. He found something in the major’s record that could have had a bearing on his ouster. Major Lien had a criminal record.”

  “There are such things as criminal records?” Siri asked.

  “Exactly! Everything from the old regime was destroyed and everything from our side is suppressed. There’s no way the Soviets could have gained access to the military files of a senior officer.”

  The old woman jabbed him in the back again and he and Siri shuffled forward a few more paces. A guard with a pistol in a holster walked beside the queue looking at everyone’s feet. Probably just a routine footwear check.

  “What was he supposed to have done?” Siri asked.

  “Black marketeering. He’d organized the import of petrol from Thailand, as did army units up and down the western border. It was standard policy. The only way they could keep their vehicles on the road. Everyone knew they were doing it. And it wasn’t even a crime if you consider we tore up the constitution in ’75.”

  “So this was a trumped-up charge to keep Major Lien off the Olympic squad?” said Siri.

  “Apparently.”

  The old woman nudged him again. He called on the spirit of the great naga to give him restraint.

  “But if that were true and he was pulled at the last second, there would have been one member missing from the team,” said Civilai. “But there wasn’t. The colonel on the flight counted the shooters and there were seven accounted for. So somebody stepped in at the last moment to replace Lien.”

  “Which suggests the whole thing had been planned,” said Siri. “That the replacement was there at Wattay ready to step into the vacant spot. Now why would anyone do that?”

  “I hadn’t been given the official list of shooters so I asked the colonel to make me a copy. He gave me a handwritten list just before we arrived at Sheremetyevo. Major Lien’s name wasn’t on that list. I asked the officer why it had been left so late to get me the names. I reminded him I was the team manager and I was responsible for the whole team, including the shooters. He cited the problem of domestic communication and the fact that the military units didn’t get around to sending in the names of their candidates as requested. As you know you can get away with arguments like that in Laos because our inefficiency is legendary. You request documents and they arrive six months later. So it appears he didn’t know who was on his own team until Wattay.”

  “You believe that?”

  “No. It’s as if they were holding out till the last minute so they could fiddle with the list.”

  “And the organizers would have been so relieved to finally get the seven names they wouldn’t have bothered to check them too closely.”

  “Which leaves us with the fact that someone on the shooting team shouldn’t be here,” said Siri.

  “And we can’t find out who that is because our Lao soldiers have been whisked away to a Red Army base outside the city,” said Civilai.

  “And the question is, why go to the trouble of infiltrating the Lao Olympic squad?”

  Still they shuffled and still the old lady prodded but after ninety-three minutes Siri and Civilai were at last in sight of their goal. Compared to the opulence of the Ukraina, the sarcophagus was disappointing. It had recently been renovated with tile-like slabs that made it look like a large outdoor kitchen cabinet.

  “We’ll have t
o wait till we’re all together at the Olympic Village,” said Siri. “The shooters will have no choice but to stay there. It won’t be that hard to talk to them individually and find our interloper.”

  “We can do—”

  “Shh,” came a voice.

  They looked up to see a burly guard standing beside the small entryway. In spite of the July heat he was dressed like an Arctic border guard in furs and earflaps. Most importantly he was armed with something that could have taken out a tank.

  “But we aren’t even inside yet,” said Siri, in French. In such a situation he hoped that any foreign language would do the job.

  “Shh,” said the guard, holding his gloved index finger to his mouth.

  “We can do something in the meantime,” Civilai whispered. “Phosy’s been working with the official photographer. He took hundreds of snaps of the team and the trainers at Wattay. Phosy’s hoping he’ll be able to cross-check and find the face that replaced Major Lien’s.”

  “And do what?” Siri asked.

  “Well, send it to us, for a start. We can—”

  The armed guard took a step forward and punched Civilai in the shoulder. It wasn’t playful. The old boys really didn’t want to be sent to the back of a queue that snaked all the way across Red Square and into the park so they shut up and shuffled.

  Visitors were told to enter the chilly mausoleum in pairs even if they’d come alone. The procession veered to its left and descended a marble staircase. Another left and a right passing somber guards, none of whom returned Siri’s smiles. Then suddenly the bier was in front of them, bathed in a saffron glow. The pace picked up and there was Uncle Lenin, not flat out exactly, more propped up slightly as if he’d asked the nurse if he could watch television. His hands, or at least the hands they’d given him, were linked in a deflated prayer and his slightly orange face seemed to be concentrating. Siri wondered whether he was trying to solve the puzzle of how he’d ended up in a musty room being ogled by thousands of morbid mourners every day from eight till five.