Slash and Burn

by Colin Cotterill

  “Siri?”

  “I didn’t know. Honestly.”

  “Couples have been divorced over less.”

  “I thought she was you.”

  “When exactly did you realize she wasn’t … no, perhaps you shouldn’t answer that. We should take her to her room. She has a big day tomorrow.”

  “She looks so peaceful. Perhaps we should let her….”

  “Siri!”

  “That was a joke, my dearest.”

  Despite all the lugging and manhandling and door opening and laying out, Peach didn’t awaken from her drunken slumber when they sent her home. But by the time they got back to their room, Siri and Daeng were completely tuckered out. The only sound as they held hands under the covers was of their chests rising and falling. A new adventure was about to begin. The only thing certain about tomorrow was that their young American interpreter was going to have a very serious hangover.

  7

  THE ICE-BREAKER COMETH

  The knock on the door might as well have been directly on the inside of Siri’s head. Somebody was in his skull with a wrecking ball trying to get out. The groan from Daeng’s side of the bed told him that she wasn’t faring any better. If it was morning, the day was doing its damnedest not to show it. An early mist had oozed in through the open window and was swirling around the bed like dry ice. In the distance could be heard the thump of artillery fire as the joint Vietnamese/Lao forces began their daylight offensive against the last stubborn pocket of Hmong resistance at the Phu Bia mountain. While the Americans slept soundly in their beds, their discarded allies fought for their lives. The sound was the only sign that dawn had officially cracked. The knocking continued.

  “Go away,” said Siri, both to the hangover and the unwanted visitor.

  “That rice whiskey…?” said Daeng with a voice like a shovel through pebbles.

  “I forgot to mention the day after,” Siri confessed.

  “I feel like….”

  “Me too.”

  “Was that a knock at the door or my eyelids banging together?”

  Siri shuddered as he left the warmth of the quilt and quick-stepped across the cold floor to the door. Peach stood in the doorway with a massive smile on her face.

  “Morning, Doctor,” she said brightly and slid past Siri into the room. “I was gonna bring you doughnuts and coffee but the nearest deli’s nine hundred kilometers away.”

  Daeng peered over the quilt.

  “How on earth can you be this jolly?” she asked. “You were paralytic last night.”

  “I have a missionary’s constitution. We get back on our feet really fast.”

  “Do you … er, remember anything about last night?” Siri asked.

  “Absolutely,” she smiled.

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yes. I remember taking a quick nap on your bed then waking up in my own. I guess showing off with fuel-injected rice whiskey isn’t such a smart idea. Who…?”

  “Me and the doctor,” said Daeng, unburdening herself of the bedcover.

  “Well, I appreciate it.”

  “All part of the service. To what do we owe this wake-up call?”

  “Orientation. Remember?” I told you I’d warn you what to expect at the start of each day? She opened her notebook. “OK, today will begin with the ‘Getting to know you’ breakfast at seven thirty. Once we all know each other we fly off to Long Cheng.”

  “Because?” Daeng asked.

  “I guess because that was the last place anyone saw Boyd Bowry alive.”

  “And they think they might have misplaced him in a cupboard somewhere?”

  “I doubt there are any cupboards left,” Siri said. “I get the impression there isn’t much remaining of the original outpost. Lost to mother nature and pillaging once the place was overrun, so they tell me.”

  “Maybe so,” said Peach, “but, for whatever reason, that’s where the surrounding villagers have been told to assemble with their war booty. You’ve heard the heavy artillery? It means we have to take a very circuitous route to avoid the hostilities. It should take over an hour to get to good old Spook City. The task force sets up a base camp there and we go through the stories and evidence until we get a plausible lead. Then we head off to investigate.”

  “I assume we’ll have a packed lunch?” asked Daeng, massaging her temples with her thumbs.

  “I don’t think we’ll need to worry about food on this entire trip, Madame Daeng,” Peach laughed. “The chopper that brought us here could barely lift off from the weight of the provisions. They had the team all squashed up at the front. ‘Leave not one can of spam behind’ was the call.”

  “And everyone on the list turned up?” Siri asked.

  “Pretty much. Senator Vogal and his secretary Miss Chin are on standby.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well, it means he may not come. But they still needed to get official permission for the both of them, just in case.”

  “In case of what?”

  “Success. If we rescue the pilot or we find his remains, he’ll show his face up here. Right now he’s slumming it at the Oriental in Bangkok for the five days of the mission. If he gets news of a breakthrough, they’ll fly him in. He’ll pose for pictures, shake a lot of hands, give quotes to the press. There’ll be maximum exposure back home. Headlines. I doubt he’ll stay here overnight. They’ll fly him back to civilization the same day and he can go home. Job done.”

  “And why should he be involved at all?” Daeng asked.

  “Well, he’s big on the MIA lobby, for one. If they find a live one there’s a lot of bucks to be had to keep looking. It’s a sensitive issue in Washington. Big political strides to be made by supporting the vets, and, in turn, the military. And, two, he’s Senator Bowry’s best pal. Their kids played together. He knew Boyd. The family want him over here keeping tabs on the investigation.”

  “But he doesn’t want to roll up his sleeves and help us dig,” Siri remarked.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Peach. “He’s in Bangkok. If you’re on your recliner TV chair in the States that’s every bit as good as being in the Lao jungle. “Senator Ulysses Vogal the third is in Southeast Asia supervising an MIA joint force mission.” Good line. Nobody questions whether he’s in the sweaty forests of northern Laos or doing cocktails in the lounge. Just the word “Asia” is scary enough over there. He’ll be a hero. If we find Boyd it’ll be his photo on the front page of the Post with his arm around the young man, sweat stains around his armpits. You and your team won’t so much as crack a mention. “Local diggers” they’ll call you.”

  “What if the boy’s dead?” Daeng asked.

  “Same difference. ‘After a prolonged search, Senator Vogal sadly carries the remains of his best friend’s war hero son across the bitumen to board the TWA flight home.’ Votes a-plenty there from the female electorate. He’ll do great in farming communities.”

  “You’re impressively cynical for such a young thing,” Daeng smiled.

  “Madame Daeng, you try growing up white in Southeast Asia during an American war. The lines between them and us and right and wrong get real fuzzy. It was people like Vogal who decided there should be intervention over here to stop the communist takeover of the world. It was a policy experiment to prop up the fading popularity of the president. Another snow job to con the gullible general voters of North America.”

  There was a long silence in the misty room.

  “Very well,” said Siri. “As we haven’t even begun to look for the pilot, we’re still quite a way from finding him. It’s possible we won’t have to disturb the senator from his cocktails. Let’s take it from the introduction breakfast and see how we progress from there. Little Peach, do you foresee any disasters over our communal rice porridge?”

  “Do you really want to know?” she asked.

  “Major Harold Potter would like to welcome all the Lao delegates and says that he greatly respects the People’s Democratic Republic
of Laos for everything the socialist administration has achieved in the past three years.”

  Judge Haeng’s cousin Vinai, the director of the Office of Interpretation Services, was standing at the end of the dining room at a beautifully carved but wonky dais. The audience sat at two long parallel tables. The Friendship Hotel restaurant had once been the entire building. It was constructed of sturdy hand-sawn lumber and its pillars were sunk deep. But the tin roof had been replaced with concrete tiling and, apart from the doors and window frames, very little wood had been used to complete the new lodge. Perhaps this was why only the dining room felt comfortable. It was as if the laid-back ghosts of the Corsicans watched over their inn from the solid rafters. Even the inevitable breakfast speeches seemed mellow.

  Siri turned to Daeng.

  “The major said all that in four words?”

  “You’d have to assume English is a lot more succinct than Lao,” Daeng decided.

  Siri had studied French at a Lao lycée then become fluent during his years in Paris, but he’d had no cause to dally with the English language. Cousin Vinai’s English rendition of the American major’s comment had sounded authentic but he had no idea how accurate a trans lation it was. It was the conflicting word count and the bewildered faces of Peach and Nurse Dtui that alerted him to the possibility that something might be amiss. Cousin Vinai had been allotted the role of senior interpreter for the mission, yet since their arrival in Phonsavan he’d avoided all contact with the aliens. The judge suggested this was because of Vinai’s laryngitis and that he wanted to preserve his voice for the first day of activities. That day had arrived and he had supposedly translated General Suvan’s opening address word for word from his own script.

  To Vinai’s left at the VIP table, which was resplendent with plastic hibiscus, sat General Suvan in full dress uniform. In fact, Lao full dress uniform was not as impressive as it sounded. He might have been mistaken for a postman in any other country. Although the same age as Siri, the balding old man made the doctor look like a teenager. His movements were languid and his reactions showed a lack of reflex. In front of him on the table was the three-page speech he’d just delivered. It was dog-eared and crumpled so he’d either slept on it or it was a well-used address. Vinai had his own copy. During the speech, the fried eggs and crispy bacon and steaming pots of instant coffee arrived and, as there was still a pervading atmosphere of nervous cultural tension between the two groups, nobody tucked in. So the guests watched their food slowly cool in front of them. Another half an hour would render the meal inedible which probably explained the brevity of the American major’s own greeting. But, to their horror, Judge Haeng seated to the general’s left reached into his own briefcase and pulled out a wad of paper twice as thick as that of the general. Cousin Vinai produced a translation of equal thickness. The judge slid back his chair but Siri got to his feet before him.

  “With respect, Judge,” he said, wondering whether that counted as an oxymoron. If looks could kill, Judge Haeng was standing over Siri’s body with bloody fingers.

  “As this is a special occasion,” Siri went on, “I suggest that it would be a courtesy to our American guests if we followed their culture and ate while we listened to your probably insightful and humorous early morning discourse.”

  He still had little idea about American culture or whether they ate during speeches in the United States—Henry James certainly didn’t—but he was hungry. Judging from the ensuing round of applause once the translation had reached the visitors’ table, they were hungry too. And so, Judge Haeng’s speech and its purportedly English translation were all but drowned out by the clattering of American knives and forks and the hum of conversation. Nobody failed to notice the fact that Haeng glared at Siri the entire time. Siri seemed not to care. He was taking the opportunity to study the colorful assembly of Americans opposite.

  The retired major, Potter, wore a large flowery Hawaiian shirt, green shorts with an impressive collection of pockets, huge boots, and a Dodgers baseball cap. Siri could think of no better word to describe his complexion than “ripe.” He was flushed and bloated like a man dropped into boiling water and left there to simmer, the result of blood vessels expanding. His nose was a crimson golf ball. He was, Siri decided, a man lost to alcoholism. This voracious appetite extended to food. Peach, seated beside him, looked on in amazement as he forked a mountain of potatoes into himself.

  “Honey,” he said.

  Peach looked around for the bar girl he might have been soliciting. She saw nobody.

  “Are you talking to me, Major?”

  “You’re the interpreter, right?”

  “I am.”

  “Then shouldn’t you be telling us what these two guys are saying?”

  “Well”—she looked over her shoulder—“one of these guys is Judge Haeng and he’s giving a long talk about the tolerant nature of the Pathet Lao to former imperialist oppressors. And the other guy is translating it into English.”

  “What?” The major put down his fork for the first time and cocked an ear in the direction of cousin Vinai. “That’s English?”

  “Apparently.”

  “I can’t understand a goddamned word. Can’t they get the interpreter to do it?”

  “Comrade Vinai is the head interpreter, Major.”

  “What about the big woman?”

  “What big woman would that be, sir?”

  “The one they put on our chopper yesterday. She spoke pretty good.”

  “On our helicopter?”

  “Yeah, you didn’t see her? She was the only Laotian on board.”

  “I was stuck at the back behind a wall of cans, but, no, can’t say I noticed her.”

  “Well, she was damned good.”

  Once the Judge Haeng/Cousin Vinai double act was over and the plates emptied, everyone sat with their coffee waiting for the main event. Peach tapped the major’s arm.

  “You’re up, Major,” she said.

  Potter wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and inflated to a standing position. He said something loud and full of expression and then paused. There was an embarrassing silence. All eyes were on Cousin Vinai who was burrowing down into a bowl of rice soup. He waved his spoon at Peach.

  “You take it, little sister,” he said. “This is the first chance I’ve had to eat.”

  So, once again, Peach assumed the mantle of interpreter. She explained that Major Potter had planned a small activity as an icebreaker for the two sides to get to know each other. It was an adaptation of the game charades, of which none of the Lao apart from Siri and Civilai had heard. Siri gritted his teeth. For charades to be fun—if it ever truly was—you had to be three sheets to the wind, not hungover and stone-cold sober at breakfast. But there was no fighting it. Sergeant Johnson, perhaps the blackest live man Siri had seen in Laos, handed out cards apologetically. He was a marine based at the US Consulate in Vientiane. He had a booming sugary voice. He leaned into his walk like a meatless Nebraska Man in a hurry to catch up with evolution. But his gait put his smile out in front of him and it was a marvelous smile. It fitted on that handsome face with its gleaming eyes that took in everything around them.

  The names of all those in attendance had been written in both Lao and English and the cards had strings attached so they could be hung around the neck.

  “Oh, heaven help us,” said Civilai. “Didn’t the Chinese do something like this during the cultural revolution? What humiliation.”

  “Get into the spirit, brother,” Siri said.

  “If only I could.”

  But to make matters worse, the Americans all stood and pushed their tables and chairs back to the wall. The Lao assumed they were supposed to do the same so the moment arrived when both teams were standing facing each other with no barriers between them. The symbolism was poignant. Whether this was his idea or a directive from Washington nobody would know, but Major Potter stepped forward and said, “Kwoi soo Harold.”

  The Lao looked on in amazemen
t. Had the major actually announced in Thai that he had a fighting penis? It was a bold statement if true. But they racked their brains for another possible meaning. It was Dtui who found it.

  “Ah, koi seu Harold,” she said. “My name is Harold.”

  The Lao echoed the utterance in relief and the ice began to break quite accidentally and all by itself. You couldn’t go downhill from there. The point of the game was to give your name in English and Lao and then mime what you did for a living for the other team to guess. The major launched into a gala performance of marching and shooting and saluting and the Lao kept silent. Everyone knew he was a retired major but they wanted to draw out the embarrassment. Oddly, the more he mimed the happier he appeared to be and the more the US contingent laughed. They were an amusing bunch with apparently no shame at all. It was Judge Haeng who finally called out enthusiastically, “He’s a soldier.”

  This was translated and the Americans and Mr. Geung applauded and whooped.

  “He’s a soldier,” laughed Mr. Geung.

  This delighted the Lao who were now officially into the spirit of the moment. Even General Suvan came to for the event. His mime of a soldier was remarkably similar to that of the major, albeit slower, but he was delighted when somebody guessed correctly and he slumped back into a chair from the exertion. The game continued and was a success at many levels. Civilai had several lewd suggestions, none of them translated by Peach. All on the American side knew that Daeng was having a joke with them when she mimed that she was just a noodle seller and Mr. Geung could not resist adding sound effects as he sawed through the rib cage of an imaginary corpse. Peach was the last to go. Her hand gestures of two people talking led to Mr. Geung’s guess that she was a duck farmer and that heralded the biggest laugh of the morning.

  By the time they were due to file out of the dining room, despite the odds and the temperature, there was no ice left to break. The two groups merged and mingled and attempted their few words of the others’ language. They shook hands and smiled and laughed at nothing in particular. If only the war had been conducted under similar rules.