Slash and Burn

by Colin Cotterill

  “OK?” he asked.

  “Do you think she’ll know what they are?”

  “Th … th … they’re hearts.”

  “Ah, of course. I knew that.”

  Dtui turned back to the beginning and looked again. Sure enough, some of the dumplings did resemble hearts. She grabbed hold of her friend and pulled him to her.

  “Hug,” said Geung, with his arms straight down at his sides. “Is it good?”

  “Can your friend Tukda read?”

  “No.”

  “She’ll love it.”

  He pulled away.

  “Are you c … crying?”

  “It’s the smoke, honey. The smoke.”

  It was four thirty on day three and they’d found nothing. Fourteen people had been scouring the earth for the best part of the day and they’d found not a shard of metal, not a bullet, not a tooth. Not a damned thing. They’d walked the grids with their machetes and grass hackers then covered them again on their knees. They’d had to trust the word of Ar the headman who swore that area had never been bombed and no villagers, buffalo or dogs within a twenty kilometer radius had ever been blown up. Even so, the teams were reluctant to dig too deeply into the hard earth. Auntie Bpoo, not a paid member of the team, had spent most of her time in a hammock watching Siri, waiting for his untimely death. She assured him that once his time came she’d know how to deal with it. He hoped it wouldn’t come during one of her snoozes.

  At one stage, Siri had found himself foraging beside Second Secretary Gordon. The American had a working knowledge of the Thai language which was close enough to Lao to make a conversation possible. Siri had begun with personal questions because he knew the visitors liked to have their ice broken. Gordon was single, a career diplomat with sights on an ambassadorship some day.

  He’d been posted in Ho Chi Minh City—then still called Saigon—for four years during the war. He was born in the year of the horse, a fact that seemed to be very important to him, as was learning that Siri was a dragon. At last, Siri got around to the point.

  “Did you get a chance to read Captain Boyd’s service record?” he asked.

  Gordon hesitated.

  “Yes.”

  “Were there other blips in the pilot’s past?” he asked. “Was he a habitual drug and alcohol user?”

  “From what I could tell there was just that one occasion,” Gordon told him. “I’m not even sure he liked to drink that much.”

  “And no other disciplinary problems?”

  “He didn’t have one black mark on his record.”

  “But the Air America people covered up the true events of his disappearance that night. They could very well have ignored other such lapses.”

  “You know, Doctor? Despite its obvious CIA and government connections, Air America was a company. They had regulations and standards. If any of their pilots screwed up they had no problems about kicking them out. There was always a supply of young men in search of adventure to replace them.”

  “So what happened? What happened that was so drastic that our perfect airman suddenly lost control?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Do you have access to the interview documents?”

  “The people Air America interviewed after the crash?”

  “Yes.”

  “They have a copy at the embassy in Vientiane. I didn’t get to look at it in any detail. I do remember they spent a long time talking to the Filipino mechanic and one of the pilots, a Raven. That’s what they called the crazy forward air command guys. The pilots who flew in and guided the bombing raids. They were the three getting stoned together that night. The Raven got killed in action a few weeks after Boyd disappeared.”

  “Is there any way of getting a copy of the interviews up here?”

  “That looks less likely with every passing hour. They don’t have a fax at the post office and we can’t have it flown here, for obvious reasons.”

  “Do you know if anyone on this mission has read the complete report?”

  “Major Potter went through it in detail before we left. He could probably tell you what the witnesses said.”

  Siri’s instincts were kicking in. Something told him the current search wouldn’t yield any clues to Boyd’s disappearance. But there was something odd going on. He could really use a little supernatural intervention on this one. Since his arrival in Xiang Khouang, Siri had become aware that there’d been very little contact from the spirit world. In many respects it was a blessing. Before his departure his dreams had been overcrowded with disgruntled Khmer souls stuck to his subconscious like moths on drying paint. They’d exhausted him to the point that his waking hours were more restful than sleep. Here in the north he’d slept nights and had no recollections of supernatural nocturnal encounters. He still wore his white stone talisman on a string of plaited hair around his neck but it was starting to feel more like an ornament than a force field against the malevolent phibob. Even his angel mother had missed the flight. For almost a year, the old lady with lips red with betel nut had followed him around, offering warnings and unfathomable advice. If Auntie Bpoo’s prediction was accurate, he really could use a little spiritual backup. Instead, he had to emulate his long-time hero, Inspector Maigret of the Paris Sûreté, and use his brain. There was never a useful ghost around when you most needed one.

  He abandoned his search for relics he knew for certain they’d never find, and went in search of Inspector Phosy. After a brief consultation they walked together over the ridge to Ban Hoong where everyone seemed to be going about their business. Rice huskers husked, grain pounders pounded, and chicken pluckers plucked in their time-frozen warp. The headman’s son was still sitting in the middle of the central square with his collection of insects. He currently had three in active service buzzing around his hat at the end of their tethers. The peak of the cap provided a perfect landing platform. While Siri and Ugly stood watching him with the same fascinated expressions on their weathered faces, Phosy gathered together the village elders for an impromptu meeting.

  “We’re working at the place you led us to,” Phosy told them. “We were wondering whether anyone in the village has ever come across wreckage from the crash there.”

  The elders huddled and Phosy sat on the bench provided for them. The answer was no.

  “Then, apart from the tailplane falling through your roof, you have no other physical evidence that the craft came down where your sorceress said it did,” Phosy continued.

  The answer was no.

  “How old was your sorceress?”

  “Ninety-two,” came the reply.

  “And she was in control of her faculties?”

  “No, she was as mad as a loon,” came the reply.

  “And what did this mad old woman say when everyone awoke in the morning?”

  “Nothing,” came the reply. “She was unconscious after hitting her head on a branch. She didn’t wake up for three days.”

  “And when she came round, what did she say then?”

  “She said the sky dragon had crashed into the moon and sent it bursting into the jungle to the east.”

  “And she was certain of the location?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you notice the charred jungle and the smell of smoke when you passed in that direction?”

  “No,” they said.

  “And you didn’t think that was odd?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you didn’t question her word?”

  “She’d been our sorceress for sixty years. She’d birthed many of us. It would have been disrespectful to doubt her word. She’d never once lied to us.”

  Siri wandered into the meeting hut. He and Phosy consulted.

  “Did she develop any peculiar conditions in her later life?” Phosy asked them. “Anything you noticed that was unlike her?”

  They huddled again.

  “There was one thing,” they said.

  The teams were gathering their equipment and preparing for t
he hike back to the trucks when Siri and Phosy marched jauntily out of the jungle.

  “Of course you can both afford to be smiling,” said Judge Haeng. “We’re all here digging and scratching like peasants while you two run off into the woods together. Don’t think we didn’t notice. If you don’t want your per diem docked you’d better have a good excuse.”

  “Would it help that we’ve found the real helicopter crash site?” Siri asked.

  “Where?” said Madame Daeng.

  “How?” asked Civilai.

  Peach passed on the news to the Americans and they gathered around. Phosy told of the ninety-two-year-old sorceress who’d pointed to the crash site and the fact that in her twilight years she’d started to confuse words, particularly opposites. She would say no but mean yes. Say left but mean right.

  “It’s a condition called Gerstmann syndrome,” Siri told them. “It’s particularly pronounced when talking about directions. The speaker isn’t confused. She honestly sees a mirror image of an event taking place in a different location. In this case it appears she saw the moon explode in the east. She’d watched the helicopter crash and seen the trees burst into flames. When she came out of her coma she was convinced the event took place right here but in fact it all happened to the west of the village. We went to look in the opposite direction and found the site just two kilometers away.”

  “But that’s ridiculous,” said Haeng. “Two kilometers from the village and nobody there noticed it?”

  “What the villagers found there was a large area burned to a crisp. They assumed it was set alight by one of the fleeing Hmong groups to prepare the land for planting. That wouldn’t have been at all surprising in this region, given the number of villages that have been forcibly re located. There are burnt out areas all through these hills. And this doesn’t look like a crash site. There was no obvious debris—just a black, treeless patch of earth. The villagers are afraid of the place. It’s been ten years since the crash but nothing grows there. They call it the dead man’s field.”

  After the translation Sergeant Johnson spoke excitedly to the interpreter.

  “That would suggest the explosion was fierce and the resulting fire gave off excessive heat,” said Peach. “If that was so, the helicopter must have been carrying something volatile, probably a high explosive. A normal helicopter crash wouldn’t have caused so much devastation. The sergeant wants to know if there was a crater.”

  “There’s a pond,” said Siri. “A large pond with no pond life at all. We wondered whether it could have been a crater. The odd thing is that it’s right at the front edge of the clearing. You’d expect a crater to be at the center.”

  “But how can you be so certain it was the helicopter crash site?” Judge Haeng asked.

  “Something went down there,” said Siri, upending his cloth shoulder bag and emptying a small mound of objects onto the ground. Everyone gathered around. “We were only there for half an hour but we found these.”

  In the pile they recognized a petrol cap, melted but in one piece, various bolts and screws all slightly deformed, and what could have once been the trigger of a pistol. The largest sliver of metal was no bigger than a thumb. There was nothing to identify helicopter H32 but the discovery certainly buoyed the mood of the searchers. Were it not for the thickening of the air and the murkiness of the late afternoon, they would gladly have headed to the dead man’s field right then. But as they walked back to the trucks they talked excitedly of plans for the following day.

  The porter who had been caught in the morning blast was bruised but had made a remarkable recovery. He told them it wasn’t the first time he’d been blown up and probably wouldn’t be the last. Judge Haeng had insisted Madame Daeng apologize for her practical joke and assure all the porters that there was no such thing as a drop adder. Even so, they walked with their eyes pointed heavenward for the entire journey and were relieved to reach the trucks. The drivers were woken up and the convoy headed back to Phonsavan along the rough dirt tracks.

  Siri and Phosy had arranged to sit on the flat bed of one of the vehicles with Major Potter. He had been uncharacteristically quiet for much of the day. Auntie Bpoo served as translator. To the major’s surprise, and subsequent delight, the transvestite not only translated his words using a fair impersonation of his voice, but also mimicked his mannerisms. The show obviously improved the old soldier’s mood. Siri and Phosy asked what exactly had caused the explosion that morning.

  “I’ve been trying to work that out all day,” said Bpoo as Potter. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Is there any way you might have accidently armed the dynamite when you were … tired last night?” Siri asked.

  “I’d have to be more than tired to do a damned fool thing like that,” the major said. “I could be knock-down drunk and still I’d have respect for the tools of my trade. Any of you guys work with dynamite before?”

  Phosy had. He knew that unarmed dynamite was unlikely to explode from a small knock unless it was old and unstable. The type of explosives they used in the military had come a long way since Mr. Nobel blew up his family and friends while he was inventing the stuff.

  “And did you recheck your bag before we left this morning?” Siri asked.

  “No,” said the major. “I’d put the dynamite in a pocket of my pack the day before and I’d had no cause to use it. But it was under my bed all night and the chargers were in a different bag. None of them is missing. Look, I know what you guys are thinking,” he said. “I like a drink now and then. You’ve got it into your heads that I got shitfaced and did something stupid.”

  Neither Phosy nor Siri indicated that they thought otherwise. Bpoo, as Potter, continued.

  “But let me tell you this. I’ve been plenty drunk often enough. But it wouldn’t happen that I lost that instinct for personal survival. The dynamite was fresh and safe. That pack exploded ’cause someone wanted it to.”

  “You think it was sabotage?” said Siri.

  “I tell you, I’m real sorry this happened, but it had nothing to do with incompetence. In thirty years I never made a mistake. Not once. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to change the subject to weird sex.”

  The Lao were shocked. They wondered whether they’d misheard the translation. Siri turned to Auntie Bpoo.

  “What did he say?”

  “I’m sorry, he said he wants to change the subject to, you know, sex,” she told him.

  “He did not.”

  “Yes, he … OK, but I bet he’d join in soon enough if we started,” Bpoo smiled. “He’s got some great stories.”

  Siri laughed.

  “Bpoo, you’re an interpreter. You can’t just make it up as you go along. Just tell us what he’s actually saying, will you?”

  “You may recall I’m not an interpreter at all. I’m a fortuneteller, local celebrity and bon vivant. And I’m excruciatingly bored with all this dynamite talk. Get little miss teen dream over if you want a serious job done. Life’s too short for being morose.”

  The major was feeling left out. He interrupted Bpoo and they locked into a serious discussion before she grabbed hold of his hand and started to read his palm. She was lost to the world of interpretation.

  13

  LIPSTICK AND TOO TIGHT UNDERWEAR

  Had there been a sun visible, they would have seen it setting just as they arrived at the Friendship. The building was nestled in a thick mist like a blurry uncle in a soft gray armchair. The senator and his secretary were seated on the rattan chairs on the front veranda wearing borrowed mufflers. They were writing flip charts for their next dangerous mission. There were coffee cups in front of them and various files and folders. Siri climbed down from the truck and did an inventory of his aches by cracking all his bones. He marveled at the number of tunes his skeleton had learned to play over recent years. He and Civilai often discussed joining a traditional orchestra as the percussion section. He stood back and observed the teams as they entered the building.
There was a lot to be learned from the way people interacted.

  Judge Haeng on two sound legs raced across to the senator and bowed low in front of him, offering the kind of nop reserved for great-grandmothers of royal blood. This was astounding considering the judge’s open hostility to the practice. The senator obviously didn’t recognize Haeng despite the judge’s fawning of the previous evening. He nodded with a “Who is this guy?” expression on his face. They both looked around hopefully for interpreters but, as none was available, they settled for a four-handed shake and words that neither understood. Haeng was clearly up to something.

  As the Americans filed past him, the senator exchanged jokes and pleasantries. Siri noticed Major Potter slide by in the background without acknowledging him at all. As far as he could recall, the two hadn’t exchanged a single word. With the Lao, the senator laughed and shouted a newly learned “Sawatdee krap” hello, which was actually Thai but as near as damn it. Auntie Bpoo knelt in front of him and kissed his wedding ring. She then licked his finger and winked. Recovering from this, Senator Vogal patted Mr. Geung on the back long enough for Ethel Chin to take a photo then blew a kiss to Madame Daeng who matched his smile and, in southern Lao, told him he was related to a bog lizard. The others were Lao polite and left the VIP feeling that he’d built cultural bridges and mended wounds.

  Everyone wore their topcoats to dinner that night. The normally chill air had become even crisper since the sun was no longer allowed through to warm the earth. The dinner tables had been rearranged yet again. Tonight, with the arrival of the emperor, there was now a long head table facing the common masses. His Excellency sat dead center. To his left was General Suvan wearing a blank expression. A stray noodle dangled at the end of his chin. To the senator’s right was the vacant seat of Major Potter. Beside that sat Judge Haeng in a strikingly awful pale blue safari suit. He hadn’t yet dared move into the major’s seat but he eyed it with desire. As always, he attempted to catch the eye of Peach, perhaps believing the suit had rendered him irresistible. As always, she ignored him.