“Did she say that? Really?”
“Really. And she said she loves you all very much. She always will.”
Manoly’s eyes filled with tears and she smiled. It was probably a bit deep for the other two, so they just stood there.
The younger one changed the subject. “Uncle Siri. I can almost go to school. Watch.” She reached her right arm over her head and tried to touch her left ear. It was the method they used in the countryside. If you could reach your ear, you were old enough to start school.
“Oh, you’re so close, Nok. Too bad you don’t have ears like a rabbit. You could start right away.” She giggled and jumped up on his bed.
When Dtui got back from her mother’s, she found all three of them lying there listening to a story about tree spirits in Khamuan.
“Aha. What’s going on here?”
“Are you a nurse?” Nok asked.
“No. I’m a crocodile in a nurse’s uniform.”
“Have you come to apply?” Manoly asked her.
“What for, darling?”
“To be one of Uncle Siri’s wives?”
Dtui feigned a dramatic and very noisy vomit. When Auntie Souk and the guard came rushing in, they found Dtui face-down on the floor, the girls curled up on the bed with laughing aches, and Siri coughing his house up.
Once they’d gone, Siri attempted the telephone again. Instead of getting the Security officer, he found himself talking to the hospital clerk.
“Hello. What happened to the soldier?”
“He’s gone. I suppose there was no point in staying here once he got the call he was waiting for.”
“What call’s that?”
“From Vietnam. I was just on my way home yesterday evening when it came through. Dr. Nguyen something. Don’t you remember?”
“I didn’t get a call.”
“That’s odd. The officer said he was going to transfer the caller.”
“He didn’t transfer it in this direction. Interesting. Look, can you put me through to Police Headquarters? And I want you to look up the number for the central morgue in Hanoi.”
“That’s in Vietnam.”
“It was the last time I saw it.”
“You’ll need to fill in four forms before I can let you phone internationally. You have to have the director’s signature and—”
“All I need is the number. We’ll worry about signatures later. And could you send a message for my morgue technician, Mr. Geung, to come here as soon as possible?”
Siri eventually got through to the same gruff-voiced inspector at Central he’d spoken to the day before.
“Hello, Dr. Siri. This is Inspector Tay. After we talked yesterday, it occurred to me who you were. You’re the coroner, right? I keep meaning to send someone over to see what you’re doing over there. I’m afraid your man still hasn’t been in.”
“That’s all right. I was just wondering: yesterday you said Phosy didn’t have a desk?”
“That’s right.”
“How can one of your detectives not have a desk?”
“Ah, well, he isn’t actually one of ours, you see?”
“No?”
“No. He’s sort of on special assignment. He’s down from Viengsai working on a case. He comes in now and then. He’s always running around.”
“From Viengsai?”
“Is there a problem?”
“No. It’s just that he didn’t mention he was based in the north.”
“You don’t get much information out of that one. Hardly talks to anyone. Secretive bastard, if you don’t mind me saying.”
“No. Er, thanks anyway.”
“Welcome.”
Siri slowly put down the phone. Geung had arrived and was standing beside the door, rocking slightly. Siri looked up at him but forgot for a second why he was there.
“Mr. Geung? Ah, yes. I want you to take this note,” he wrote as he spoke, “and give it to Comrade Civilai at the Assembly office. You’ve been there before.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t give it to anyone else. Not even if they rip out your toenails. You understand?”
“Yes.” He snorted and loped out of the room, laughing.
“Based in Viengsai? How could he be?”
It was early afternoon when Civilai arrived with a well-preserved old man in a crumpled suit. They both looked drained, as if they’d been up all night.
“Siri. How you feeling?”
“Did you get my note?”
“Your morgue Igor almost got himself shot delivering it. They didn’t let him through the gate, so he stood outside the fence and yelled my name till I came to the window.”
“He gets the job done.” Siri fell into a coughing fit. If anything, he was feeling worse than the previous day.
“Siri, this is Dong Van, the Commander General of the Security Section. He wanted to meet you before you choke to death.”
“Looks like you’re just in time. How are you, Commander?”
“I’m a little frazzled, Dr. Siri. This has been a very difficult time for me. Major Ngakum has been one of my most trusted colleagues for many years.”
“We got him?” Siri punched his fist into the air. Civilai put up his thumb. Dong Van obviously wasn’t viewing it as a victory yet.
“When your friend Comrade Civilai first came to see me about this, I didn’t believe a word of it. It didn’t help that he wouldn’t divulge his sources. Even when he started to come up with evidence, I was very defensive; I didn’t want to believe it. But he’s a very thorough man. He spent the whole night cross-checking the files, getting people out of their beds to give statements.”
“Good for you, Ai.”
Civilai couldn’t wait to explain. “It was all too much of a coincidence. The major was assigned to the Operations Headquarters when Hok was there. He knew the details of the Vietnamese covert mission. His unit was responsible for security arrangements when the Trans and Hok came over. He had access to all the communiqués.
“And as if that weren’t enough to circumstantiate him into jail and throw the key away, guess who was doing a survey of traffic to the islands at Nam Ngum? I bet we could get a positive ID from the district chief.”
“And now,” the commander added, “we have evidence that he had your call from Vietnam diverted to his office. What we don’t know is what that conversation was all about.”
“So we need you to call Hanoi.” Civilai picked up the phone.
“I expect the girl has the number for the morgue already, but I think I know what Nguyen Hong will have to tell me.”
The call took an age to put through. Siri spoke to several confused Vietnamese before locating his colleague.
“Hello, Nguyen Hong.”
“Dr. Nguyen Hong? It’s Siri.” There was a pause. “Nguyen Hong?”
“I was told you were dead!”
“I’m not. Did you call me yesterday evening?”
“Goodness, you’ve given me a start. Yes, but the call was transferred to your, what do you call it? Your Security Section.”
“Who to?”
“Ah. He did say his name; your Lao names all sound the same to me. But he said he was the commander.”
“I bet he did, and he told you I was killed in an explosion.”
“Yes. Then he took down all the details I wanted to give you and told me they’d be very useful. He gave me his direct line if I had anything else for him.”
“Perfect. That should be the last nail in his coffin. The man you spoke to was the one Hok was coming here to identify.”
“No!”
“I’ll write you all about it. But before we get cut off, give me everything you’ve got.”
Ten minutes later, Siri hung up. He looked at the two men at his bedside and smiled.
“Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. They should have got away with it. It was just their misfortune to come up against me and Nguyen Hong.”
“Come on, little brother. Out with it.”
> “Here’s the way I see it. Major Ngakum received the secret communiqué from Hanoi telling him Hok and his team would be coming to identify the traitor Hok had seen at the massacre. Ngakum couldn’t let them get as far as Vientiane, so he got his Black Boar gang to waylay the jeep. He knew the route and the guard postings, so it shouldn’t have been difficult.
“They found themselves with three Vietnamese. They could have just killed them and dumped the bodies. But someone had an idea.”
He was talking too fast without rest, getting too excited, running out of breath. He took some gulps of oxygen and kept the mask handy.
“It was an ideal opportunity to create a bit of a diplomatic stir. If they could convince the Vietnamese that their men had been arrested and tortured, it wouldn’t take a great leap in logic to assume that Laos had been responsible for the earlier massacre as well.
“So the Black Boars killed the three in a way that wouldn’t be easy to recognize and then set it up to look like they’d been tortured to death. They flew the bodies to Nam Ngum near the correctional facility, and dropped them into the reservoir. They anchored them to old shell casings, and used cheap string on two of them so they’d eventually bob up to the surface. The second Tran they tied with flex so someone would have to go down and discover the Chinese shells. They knew that would upset the Vietnamese.
“Ngakum ‘just happened’ to be at the reservoir doing some fictitious survey when the first two bodies were found, and he ‘recognized’ the Vietnamese tattoos. He’s the one who made sure the Vietnamese embassy was involved. Of course, the bodies had been set up. When Tran left Hanoi, he didn’t have any tattoos.”
“No?”
“Not a one. His wife knew nothing about them. They tattooed the poor fellow after he was dead.”
Civilai shook his head. “How did they actually kill them?”
“Nguyen Hong believes two of them had air pumped into their veins. It causes an air embolism that blocks the flow of blood through the heart. After a few weeks in the water, there wouldn’t be much to show what had happened. It was very professionally done, except for one small error.”
“Which was?”
“Tran, the driver, appears to have died from a massive tear in the artery in his chest. There’s only one way that could make any sense, but it’s too horrible to imagine. Tran didn’t die with his countrymen. He was a little fatter than the other two. What if they missed his vein when they injected the air?”
“Then he would have been alive when they electrocuted the bodies?”
“I pray he was unconscious, and not just playing dead. But apparently not even the torture killed him. Civilai, when he arrived at the morgue, we all noticed the expression of horror frozen on his face. There was only one thing that could have caused that look.”
“The fall from the helicopter.”
“It’s quite conclusive that he was still alive when they pushed him out.”
“I can’t imagine a more horrific death,” the commander said.
“I doubt whether it was intentional. I don’t think cruelty was the Americans’ aim. I mean, they could have actually tortured them to death if they had wanted it to look authentic.”
The commander sighed. “We have to track them down. I don’t want mercenaries rampaging through the land. But first things first. I want to get my hands on that damn traitor. You’ve convinced me, gentlemen. God knows how many lives have been lost as a result of the bastard’s crimes. If you’ll both excuse me, I have a very painful duty to perform.”
He shook hands with them warmly and left, taking the guard with him. The two old friends remained there in silence. Civilai sat scratching his head, exhausted. Siri sucked on his oxygen. Neither spoke for several minutes. Slowly their smiles turned to laughter. Civilai moved to the bed and grasped Siri’s right hand in his. They squeezed each other’s fists so tightly their knuckles turned white, and they laughed as if the funniest thing in the world had just taken place.
“What are we laughing for?” Siri asked through the tears.
“It’s a nervous reaction. We’re both scared out of our wits.”
“You think this was scary, you wait till I tell you about the other case.”
The Other Case
Khen Nahlee had never failed so ingloriously. He ached with humiliation. Revenge was an unprofessional desire, but he wanted nothing more.
He could have been excused the first miss. It was dark. Siri was a shadow against the front door. He should have gone to check the body, but the woman was always there behind her curtain. It wasn’t until the next day that he’d heard the doctor had survived.
By then, Siri had gone, left the capital. So he had to end it some other way. He’d dated the girl from the hairdresser’s. It was nothing serious. He used the Vientiane grapevine to spread the rumor that she was Comrade Kham’s minor wife. It traveled so fast, he heard it back almost at once. Mai didn’t know the comrade from a bowl of noodles, but that didn’t matter. She had enough old men chasing her. No one would be surprised.
The suicide method he selected was one he’d seen a few years earlier. The wife of some man he’d killed slashed her wrists and plunged them into boiling water. It was dramatic enough, suitable for a lover filled with remorse. He set up the crime scene exactly as he remembered it. Exactly. The Vientiane police were there, taking pictures, asking questions. When they found the note, there wasn’t a doubt in anyone’s mind that she’d killed her lover’s wife, then taken her own life.
It was all perfect. Nobody questioned it until he came back: the detective pensioner. That interfering old man. He couldn’t leave it alone. He had to poke his nose in. He stripped away the layers of deceit and exposed the truth. He was so damned proud of himself, gloating there by the river as he told his story.
Khen Nahlee thought he couldn’t have hated Siri any more than he did that night. It had gone beyond an assignment. It was a personal matter. No shriveled old quack was going to make a mockery of him.
He went to his arsenal and found a remedy for the doctor’s inquisitive disease. He was patient. He knew what time Siri had come home, so he gave him time to settle down. The old man had been drinking, so he’d tire quickly. Khen Nahlee walked through the silent temple grounds and looked up at the open window. The light was out. He was asleep. Too bad there wouldn’t be those few seconds of panic as he saw the bombs.
He pulled the pins and tossed his farewell in through the window. He didn’t need to wait. He knew what devastation they’d cause. He’d almost reached the temple gate when the explosion came, but he still didn’t bother to look back.
He considered killing the girl and the imbecile at the morgue, as his boss had suggested. But who would ever listen to them? No. All that remained was to remove the evidence. The hospital kitchen was unlocked. The cheap cooking oil burned well. The flames lapped upward to the library and soon took hold of the dry old books. He watched, because it was a satisfying end to a good evening’s work. Finally it was all over.
He even went to report to his boss. Comrade Kham met him in the gazebo behind his house. It was one A.M. But the senior comrade rarely slept any more. These two men had taken part in hundreds of early-morning debriefings, but never one so personal.
Comrade Kham had set up the Discreet Operations Unit some twenty years earlier, when he was still in uniform. Initially, it had been a small department that collected and analyzed data: a humble LPLA version of the CIA. Although very few knew about it, files were compiled on all the senior officials and anyone displaying “uncooperative” or “unhealthy” behavior.
From time to time, the bad mango in the bunch turned out to be so rotten that extreme measures had to be taken. Initially, they were careful to only eliminate those elements likely to cause damage to the movement. But power corrupts, and there were rumors that the only reason Kham was able to rise so rapidly through the ranks was because one or two political rivals “disappeared.”
As the Lao Patriotic Front gr
ew and turned into a political force, so the DOU became more organized. One wing became a semi-autonomous death squad, and Khen Nahlee was named its head in 1970. He was ideally suited for the work. He was intelligent and dedicated to the party, and had been killing on its behalf since his early teens. Most important, he was a master of undercover work. He had gone through so many names and identities over the years that not even his own men could say they knew him.
He was a devoted disciple of the group’s founder, and carried out whatever assignments Kham gave him without question. He knew that any work he did was for the betterment of the Movement. But when Kham told him his secret at the chilly airstrip in Xiang Khouang, their relationship was forced to change. The comrade had killed his wife, and he wanted Khen to make it all right.
There had been no traditional motive, no crime of passion, no insurance claim. Kham had just grown to hate her. He hated what she had become since they moved to the capital. In peacetime, the Lao Women’s Union was developing into a political force. She was the one interviewed by the Khaosan News Agency. She was the one who spoke on the radio. It was her they invited to talk to the students at Dong Dok. And, suddenly, who was he? He was the husband of Comrade Nitnoy. They didn’t even remember his name.
So he killed her. The cyanide tablets came into his possession as a sort of incentive. It was fate. The unhappy couple had returned drunk from a Party reception where he was the senior comrade, but she was the star. He’d been her escort. She passed out drunk on the bed, and he went to his study and put the doctored tablets into her bottle.
But it wasn’t until she’d gone off with them in her handbag the next morning that he started to think it through. Doing it wasn’t enough; he also had to get away with it. Kham left for a week in Xiang Khouang, where he met Khen Nahlee and explained what he’d done. His henchman, ever faithful, promised to make everything turn out right, as he always had. Khen went to the capital and waited. Three days later, word of Mrs. Nitnoy’s death reached Kham. All Khen Nahlee needed to do was put on a uniform and pick up the evidence from the LWU.
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