The Rat Catchers' Olympics

by Colin Cotterill

  “Not hungry?” he said, seeing the untouched plates of food on the table.

  “It’s delicious,” said Dtui. “We’re just a bit overexcited.”

  “I know. I know,” said Roger. “Isn’t it wonderful? Aren’t we all doing a splendid job so far?”

  “Splendid,” said Civilai.

  “You know how many people will be watching the ceremony?” Roger asked.

  “We know,” said Daeng.

  “I don’t suppose you had a chance to find me that list of foreigners?” said Siri.

  “Oh, yes,” said Roger and he produced a roll of paper from his inside blazer pocket. Like most Russian men he wore a shirt and tie that weren’t really happy together. And they weren’t on speaking terms at all with the jacket.

  “Moscow is desperate to please,” said Roger. “The research center claims it can answer any question the athletes ask with total candor. Anything—historical, political, cultural—all in record time. I showed them my official translator name card and within twenty minutes the printer was churning this out. Isn’t it remarkable?”

  •••

  There were nine sheets in all and the font was small. Dtui and Daeng started to go through them.

  “Not including tourists and business visas there are nine thousand and ninety names of long-term foreign residents in Moscow,” said Roger. “Their status is marked beside the names. I’ve taken the liberty to underline all of the names I suspect are of Lao origin. That comes out around fifty. There are almost two hundred Vietnamese.”

  “Thanks,” said Civilai. “That’s a lot more than I’d expected. I think we should concentrate our limited resources on the Lao names. By the way, I don’t suppose you listen to the radio of a morning?”

  “Yes I do, uncle. Every morning.”

  “Anything interesting this morning?”

  “These days it’s mostly Olympic news,” said Roger.

  “Crime?”

  “The Party’s negated crime for the duration of the Games,” said Roger with a smile. “They’ve sent all the drunks and addicts up country for a bit of a vacation. The hardened criminals are helping police with their inquiries for the next three weeks.”

  “So no murders on the radio?” Siri asked.

  “Didn’t mention any.”

  “Splendid,” said Civilai.

  “All right,” said Daeng. “A lot of these names are connected to the embassy or trade delegation. Most are students. Then there are one or two with dubious spelling that we aren’t sure about. So I suggest we send the whole list to Phosy.”

  “He can only research the Lao names,” said Siri. “And time’s limited. I don’t think we have the resources to check out the Vietnamese.”

  “Roger,” said Civilai, “do you suppose your research department might be able to find more detailed information about all the Lao names on this list?”

  “Actually they seemed quite bored,” said Roger. “I’m sure they’ll be delighted.”

  The clock struck four and a hundred trumpeters blasted forth a fanfare that was soon to be drowned out by the Soviet Anthem. Greek warriors and goddesses in blond wigs carried the Olympic flag of rings on foot into the Central Lenin Stadium with chariots in close pursuit. The Lao could only watch this on TV screens beneath the terraces because it was not yet their turn to perform. They were aquiver with nerves. All they had to do was walk; something they’d done without mishap since they were toddlers, but as they waited all the possible missteps came to their minds.

  General Suvan, the senior Party representative, was petrified to the point that he decided he wasn’t up to carrying the Lao flag.

  “Look at my hands,” he said. “Can’t keep ’em still. I’m going to drop the bloody thing in front of a billion people.”

  So it was Civilai himself who took the pole position, although he wished he’d had the foresight to go to the bathroom beforehand. At the sound of a whistle, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic made for the entrance ahead of Lesotho. It was probably the only time they’d lead anyone for the next fifteen days. At last they stepped into the late afternoon sunshine. It was like entering a new solar system. Cameras flashed and 103,000 voices rose to a deafening roar. Siri and Daeng had seen more than most but had never witnessed anything like it. Even the thought of preventing an assassination paled to a colorless irrelevance beneath the euphoria. They walked on unsteady legs around the track, waving and blowing kisses. They’d had seconds of fame here and there but this was their full five minutes.

  When the countries were corralled at the center of the stadium the speeches began. Siri rolled his eyes. In Laos they’d be spending the next hour pacing on the spot praying for an end to the interminable dross. But he was pleasantly surprised. The Games chief organizer, the chairman of the Olympic Committee and the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union all kept their remarks brief and the whole thing was over in five minutes. The crowd roared its approval and even President Brezhnev applauded himself for his brevity. The flag was raised and an unnaturally fit torch-bearer ran up an almost vertical ramp to light the flame. Several thousand birds were released and although a number may have been roasted in the fire it was agreed they’d bravely gone up in smoke for the motherland.

  Two cosmonauts sent their good wishes via a live feed from space, which was probably the moment that extended Siri and Daeng’s disbelief to its limit. From then on they could only have been in a hypnotic trance. The athletes were shepherded to the stands and several thousand dancers and singers and contortionists moved in to put on a most remarkable exhibition. Daeng reminded Siri of the trouble they’d had at the youth camps getting twelve children to march in step. Yet here were thousands of bodies moving as one, forming human blancmanges, defying gravity. Layer upon layer of men and women piled like psychedelic multi-story sea anemones. 8,400 Cossack warriors throwing their Cossack girlfriends into the air and, fortunately, catching them again. Then a lake of impossibly pretty blonde girls ebbed and flowed across the playing field. It was unimaginable that such a thing could be achieved by obedient performers under the guidance of a patient choreographer. Comrade Marx and Comrade Lenin could only have fantasized about such coordination.

  “Let the Games begin,” someone said.

  Chapter Ten

  Luxury Penthouse, Armed Guard, French Maid

  Research showed that the speed of the average filing clerk in Laos was only slightly faster than the movement of an ice shelf at the South Pole. So rather than tempt fate by handing his list to a police department bureaucrat, Phosy decided to take it to the Good Luck restaurant the next morning. Given the occurrence at his previous visit he expected the old soldiers to clam up when they saw him but on the contrary the killing had reanimated some long-forgotten lust for life. They were more vocal than at his first meeting with them. Even more old soldiers had gathered there that morning to drink coffee and to toast one more fallen comrade.

  When Phosy took out his lists it was like a feeding frenzy. The old men formed groups and had one member read out the names while the others made comments. Even if they’d never met the characters living in Moscow they’d recognize the surname and talk about the families. Many of the names were of relatives of the Central Committee who’d been sent away to study. There were comments about the unreliability of embassy officials and about the good fortune of old friends who were on a healthy Soviet per diem. But there was one name that seemed to stick in the craw of many of the patriots.

  “Can I take back my request to shoot Thatcher and shoot this one instead?” said the same old flaky gentleman pointing at the name. “That’s the one that’s going to bring us all down.”

  It was never easy to separate fact from fiction at such a gathering but the consensus was that Manoi Zakarine, the eldest son of Thonglai Zakarine, was the most likely to be attracting unwanted attent
ion. He was being groomed for a leading role in the Lao politburo. He’d been sent to the Soviet Union as a teenager and studied through high school to university level. He was currently a year into a PhD in political science, which he was studying in the Russian language. Undoubtedly he was a brilliant student and everyone agreed he would make a fine leader—but for one thing. He was vehemently anti-Vietnamese. Of course it would have been political suicide for Manoi to admit such a thing but the rumors were rife.

  Every man at the Good Luck had been trained by the Vietnamese. They’d fought alongside Vietnamese troops. Even today, five years after the revolution, there were still forty thousand People’s Army of Vietnam troops stationed on Lao soil. Every ministry, every department had its own Vietnamese adviser channelling Vietnamese policy into the Lao system. Every member of the politburo had deep, sometimes familial connections to Vietnam. Expressing doubts about Vietnamese integrity was probably not the wisest of career moves.

  Manoi’s father, Thonglai, was one of the Lao businessmen who had survived the coup. He had been generous to the Pathet Lao and had been invited to advise the cabinet on such issues as investment and business endeavors. When the government first admitted it was driving the country into bankruptcy it was Thonglai who established the first government/private sector joint ventures. And it was Thonglai who steered that sinking ship back into the black. Laos still struggled but Thonglai became more powerful.

  He was the economic guru for all the top politburo men but he was a patriot. Laos was in his family bloodline back through generations beyond King Zakarine of Luang Prabang. He openly resented the fact that the French had brought in Vietnamese to run the country, that Vietnamese children had been given priority to study to high school level ahead of the Lao, that the Lao revolution to oust the French oppressors had been credited solely to the Vietnamese. But he was a patient man. He had three sons. One he sent to France to study, one to the USA and one, Manoi, to the Soviet Union. The first two sons had fallen out of love with their country of birth and established ties in the West. Each had excelled in his studies but only Manoi had carried his father’s nationalism. Most agreed it was he who would be the flag-bearer for Lao autonomy. He would be the true Lao savior.

  “Yeah, he’s the one I’d shoot too,” said Trench Coat.

  “But why?” said Phosy. “Aren’t you all patriots?”

  “To the death,” said Lenin Cap. “But we’re afraid what might happen if we dissociate ourselves from our closest allies. We owe everything we have to them. It’s only that relationship that stops China invading us.”

  “That’s right,” shouted some of the others.

  So Phosy had his candidate for assassination in Moscow: Manoi, the son of Thonglai the patriot. Now he needed to find a connection to dead Pinit Saopeng, the old soldier.

  Behind the bricks opposite the old man’s window, Phosy had found forty thousand US dollars in large bills wrapped in plastic. But the old man was hardly living a lifestyle that type of money could buy. Phosy had learned from the files that Pinit Saopeng had retired from military service in ’75 and from there on there was no trace. He hoped the old boys at the Good Luck might fill in some of the gaps.

  “What kind of man was Pinit Saopeng?” he asked nobody in particular.

  Heads looked left and right but nobody answered.

  “We were hoping you might be able to tell us,” said Flaky.

  “Secretive, was he?” said Phosy.

  “No idea,” said Mint, the owner.

  “Come on,” said Phosy. “You drank coffee with the fellow every morning. Surely you got to know something about him.”

  “Who drank coffee with him?” said Trench Coat. “We’d never seen him before you turned up. We thought he must have come with you.”

  •••

  There are events that you can’t stop talking about and others that you don’t know how to start. And perhaps that was why the atmosphere on the bus back to the Olympic Village was so subdued that very early morning. The athletes and officials had taken part in something remarkable. Even the most cynical of viewers in front of their TVs in Tokyo and Toronto would have to admit there had been no Olympic Ceremony to match it.

  Daeng held onto Siri’s arm and couldn’t wipe the smile from her face nor calm the wag of her tail.

  “Thank you for not disappearing,” she said.

  “That would have been a hell of a trick, wouldn’t it?” said her husband. “I doubt they’d be able to top that even in Los Angeles in ’84.”

  “I feel sorry for anyone who has to compete today,” said Daeng. “I’m drained. I doubt I’ll even make it to breakfast.”

  “I could use a bed myself, but . . .”

  As he no longer trusted Civilai to stay awake, Siri had agreed to take the 12 p.m. to 6 a.m. surveillance shift. But post-ceremony euphoria had dragged on in the stadium and it was already well after midnight when they arrived at the village. They watched Sompoo step drowsily from the bus and, like everyone else, head directly to the dormitory block. Siri stopped in the foyer and kissed his wife goodnight.

  “You know, Daeng,” he said. “there’s only one thing everyone watching the show today will agree on.”

  “And what’s that?”

  He took a step back and admired her glossy chignon hair extension with its simple silver tiara, her silk blouse, her heirloom blue pha sin skirt and her neat leather sandals. The mound of her tail was barely noticeable and her face was scrubbed and glowing.

  “That of all the thousands of beautiful women in the stadium yesterday, none was as beautiful as you,” he said.

  Daeng put her hands together in a slow, sensual nop and lowered her head. His original Madam Daeng was back.

  Once alone, Siri went to the vending machine, realized he didn’t have any tokens but didn’t dare desert his post to get some. So he sat in the least comfortable chair and spent his next four hours making up Lao country song lyrics in his head.

  Phosy sat in his police dormitory room watching his daughter sleep. Not for the first time he considered how little he knew or understood about the society he lived in. Pinit, the dead soldier, had turned up at the Good Luck for the first time on the day Phosy had chosen to go there. The suggested location had come in one of Civilai’s telexes and Phosy had written back to say he would go there the following morning. The police department had a telex machine operated by a young lady who, supposedly, couldn’t read western script. Phosy wasn’t that hot on it either. He’d take the telexes to Inthanet, the puppet master who lived in Siri’s house. Inthanet would translate them into Lao and write the reply in French. Apart from the possibility that Pinit’s turning up at the Good Luck was an amazing coincidence—which Phosy dismissed immediately—there were three ways that anyone would know of Phosy’s intentions. First was the chance that the telex girl allowed someone else to read the messages before passing them on to Phosy. Second was the scant possibility that Inthanet passed on the information to a third party. As Phosy put much faith in friendship he didn’t want to give that likelihood much credence. Third was the possibility that someone in Moscow was intercepting the messages. That was his suspicion but it was a problem he couldn’t address until the following day.

  He then moved on to motive. Why was old Pinit at the Good Luck? This he whittled down to two possibilities. One, that the soldier was there to find out what the police knew about the “loose cannon” in Moscow. If Phosy was getting too close there was a chance he’d be taken out of the equation. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to get Sompoo to Russia. They wouldn’t want an overenthusiastic cop spoiling all that preparation. So, that could mean the two bullets were intended for Phosy. That the sniper was just a lousy shot?

  The second option was that Pinit had planned to meet with Phosy after the breakfast meeting and tell him what he knew. He’d started to talk when the bullets shut him up. But then again it
was Phosy who’d approached Pinit, not the other way round. What if someone else had got wind of Pinit’s intention and put two bullets in him to silence him? They’d analysed the bullets and found they came from an American M40, probably left over from the war. That was not a weapon for poachers or lucky border guards. Someone with a gun that serious shouldn’t miss twice.

  Then there was the room and the money. Had the old man intended to take him there and offer him a bribe to turn a blind eye to what he’d learned? Or was that just wishful thinking on Phosy’s part? Forty thousand dollars could buy a nice life for Phosy, Dtui, and Malee. They could go overseas. Take jobs that didn’t involve getting shot at. Open that cake shop in . . . He dragged his thoughts back to the room. Did the old man actually live there? The signs of habitation were scant, almost stage-managed. Was Phosy being encouraged to study the piles of reading material looking for hidden meanings? Was it all intended to tie him and his investigation in knots? Or was there really something there? The policeman regretted the absence of his think tank. So many of his cases had been solved by bouncing ideas off Dtui and Daeng and the two old codgers.

  Malee farted then laughed in her sleep. She did it often. She was a born entertainer.

  Phosy looked at the summary of the Russian language books he’d found in the old soldier’s room. Two were basic Marxist-Leninist ideology. Three were technical: mechanics, electronics, water management. One was on first aid and there was a Lao–Russian dictionary, something Phosy had never seen before. It was unusual to find Lao characters in a book of such quality, or in any book at all for that matter. Of the four illustrated children’s books there was one with an inscription in Russian inside the front cover.

  To Bébé with love from Daddy. Don’t forget me.

  It was an odd thing to write to a child. It was as if the writer was absent or planned to be. Phosy leaned over his sleeping daughter and whispered in her ear.