Anarchy and Old Dogs

by Colin Cotterill

  “I knew, you know?” Dtui confessed.

  “Knew what?”

  “That she was going.”

  “Of course, we all had an idea.”

  “No. I mean, I knew exactly when. Last night. I hurried home to spend the last few hours with her. That’s why I wasn’t at the vegetable co-op.”

  “Auntie Bpoo told you?”

  Dtui smiled at her boss. “You went to see her, didn’t you? Didn’t I tell you?”

  “There was something disconcerting about her. I have to admit she may have certain … gifts.”

  “She told me not to waste my time sitting there with her.”

  “Just like that? She didn’t force you to sit through a poem?”

  “Oh, there’s always a poem first. Nobody has the foggiest idea what they’re all about. Yesterday was something about magic tinderboxes you can speak into and hear voices from faraway lands. Still, it makes her happy. She only asks that you listen. What did she tell you?”

  “Me? Just a lot of bunkum.”

  Dtui giggled. “Really? So why do you suddenly think she’s legitimate?”

  “I didn’t say that exactly. I just …”

  Phosy had returned from his garden adventure and decided now was as good a time as any to fall across one of the trestle tables. It collapsed beneath his weight and its empty glasses and bottles crashed to the ground. If the rolling of eyes had a sound, it would certainly have been heard from the abbot’s hut at that moment. Siri and Dtui helped Phosy back to his seat even though they were no more coordinated than he. They all agreed they needed a drink to calm their nerves after the excitement.

  “It’s a resounding pity Civilai couldn’t be here tonight,” Phosy said. He sounded remarkably sober for somebody who’d just broken a dozen rented glasses and a previously untouched bottle of Vietnamese snake hooch. Civilai was their only friend on the politburo and a kindred spirit. The fictitious date of birth Siri had conjured up for his official documents was May 21, 1904. It coincidentally turned out to be two days after Civilai’s actual birthday, so Civilai took delight in calling him “younger brother.” They’d studied socialist doctrine together in Vietnam, had been there at the founding of the Pathet Lao, and each had alienated about the same number of senior Party members. They were undiplomatic old coots who were too stubborn to play the political game by the rules. For Civilai, who was on the Central Committee, this was a major disability. Nobody in any position of authority bothered to listen to him anymore. He only had Siri to vent his frustrations on. That—and their love of food and a good stiff drink—was what made the two men so close.

  “Where is he anyway?”

  Phosy’s question had already been answered several times throughout the course of the evening.

  “He’s back in the USSR,” Dtui reminded him. “Like the Beatles.”

  “Who?”

  “He’ll be back tomorrow or whenever the Soviets let him go. I’m not telling you again.”

  “They have beetles in the USSR?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Poor old fellow’s become a cocktail Party member,” Siri lamented. He shifted his chair backward so he could see the sky but found there were no stars in the muggy soup above them. He wondered whether storm clouds might be gathering at long last and completely forgot his point.

  “I don’t think I understand that,” Dtui said.

  “All right, just look at him. He’s the one they send to attend conferences but they don’t let him speak. They put his name down for all the shows and concerts and he’s always the first one up on the dance floor. He has to meet all the visiting big nobs and take them to dinner and on to whatever tickles their fancies. He’s become so adept at small talk he’s lost the ability to make big talk. He said he feels like the comedian who warms up audiences before the star comes onstage.”

  “So why doesn’t he retire?”

  “Oh, Dtui. If they let us retire from the Party, do you think either of us would still be here? We’re symbolic old relics. They need people like us around to impress the young fellows coming up through the ranks. A statue would do the job better because stone doesn’t answer back. But we aren’t enough of a threat to justify an assassination so they have to put up with us.”

  Siri stared into his drink as he contemplated that point and suddenly felt sorry for himself. There followed another period of Lao silence during which he realized he and the abbot were the only ones still conscious. Phosy and Dtui lay with their heads on the bare wood of the tabletop, snoring back and forth. Siri smiled at the bodies. He felt victorious, like the last man standing in a battle. He took his glass of whisky to the prayer-hall steps and held it in front of his face.

  “Manoluk,” he said. “Looks like just you and me. These young folks today have no idea how to have a good time. Want to dance?”

  There were always good arguments against going to work directly from an all-night drinking binge at a temple. One—perhaps the only one—in favor was that after opening the morgue doors to make it look as if business continued as usual, one could always retire to the Mahosot Hospital canteen, where they served the muddiest and most evil coffee in the country. On top of the congealed brown sediment sat barely a mouthful of liquid coffee. No sooner was it cool enough to drink than it was necessary to order another. But that mouthful would be remembered deep into old age and could cut through a hangover like a cyclone through a barn.

  Siri, Dtui, and Phosy had defied a hundred deaths balanced on the Triumph and arrived at the morgue at five. Now, at seven, their minds were buzzing like hornets in a jam jar. They’d lost the ability to blink, and they had smiles painted across their faces just like those contented people in the propaganda posters: UNITED WORKERS ARE HAPPY WORKERS. Four Mahosot coffees could do that to a person, too.

  Finally, they found themselves back at the morgue.

  “I feel like bathroom mold,” Phosy said, his voice like a plow dragged over rocks.

  “Never mind,” Siri told him, “only ten hours and we can all go home and get some sleep.”

  Dtui was squeezing her own wrist. “I’m afraid there may be some blood left in my alcohol stream. We’re medical personnel; we should know better. Stimulate my brain, someone, before it pickles. Give me a job.”

  “I’m afraid the morgue is devoid of murder,” Siri told her.

  “Then give me some old case to go over again. See if I can solve it quicker this time.”

  “Perhaps you could help us with our dentist mystery,” Siri suggested. “Our own investigation was somewhat lacking.”

  “Lacking?” Phosy said. “Didn’t I find the house … the wife?”

  “Indeed you did,” Siri said. “And brilliant detective work it was, too. But I fear the whole story we heard was as convoluted as the note.”

  “You didn’t believe her?”

  “Have you ever played chess, Phosy?”

  “Most certainly. Once we’d castrated the pigs and plucked the chickens, and as soon as we’d worn our hands raw digging ditches, me and the other orphans would rush home for a quick game of chess before stacking the rice husks.”

  “A simple no would have sufficed.”

  “Then no. But I take it you have.”

  “It was one of the few distractions in Paris that didn’t cost any money. They played in the parks. I started off watching, fascinated. Then I began to play myself. I didn’t ever make it to the position of grand maître, but I won the odd game. The thing is, in the winter when we couldn’t play outside, there were competitions in the newspapers. They’d plot out the game in symbols and you had to work out the next best move. So I know the abbreviations, and not one item on the dentist’s list has any connection to chess.”

  “So, the widow was lying,” Phosy said.

  “Or her husband lied to her. She hadn’t learned chess so he could have told her anything. And didn’t the invisible ink story seem just a little too pat? His friend was playing a prank? Come on. He may have been able to
con his wife, but not a team of hardened cynics like us. Let’s take another look at the list and see what else we can come up with.”

  Siri went to the cutting room and stood in front of the blackboard they used to chalk up weights and lengths. With one eye on the note, he copied the list noisily. The generously donated Chinese chalk snapped itself into fractions as he wrote, leaving him with a tiny stub between his thumb and forefinger as he scratched the last symbols. He stepped back between Dtui and Phosy like an artist admiring his work. They stood there studying the list before them: standing, studying, staring, swaying. The characters merged and curled together like clothes in a spin dryer and the three would probably have stayed there all day transfixed by the meaningless letters if they hadn’t been interrupted by a shrill cough. They turned but there was nobody behind them. The sound had come from outside the morgue.

  “Who’s there?” Siri asked. But he had to wait for a reply.

  “I have a note for Dr. Siri Paiboun,” came a young voice.

  “That’s me,” Siri said. “Come on inside.”

  “Er, I think I’ll just leave it here,” said the voice.

  When Dtui went to the front step she found a white envelope on the welcome mat and saw a young girl in the black phasin skirt and white blouse of the lycée fleeing across the hospital grounds.

  “Looks like the kids at the lycée still think this place is haunted,” Dtui said, handing the letter to Siri.

  “Can’t imagine why they’d think that,” said Phosy. He looked over the doctor’s shoulder. “Is it from Oum?”

  “Well, I’ll be …” Siri smiled. “Our Australian spy has cracked it.”

  “Thank God for that. I was going giddy staring at this list.”

  “She says it came to her in the middle of a geography lesson. She hasn’t had time to work out the whole thing but she says she knows the key. It’s here, at the top.”

  “The number 22?” Dtui asked. “I was going to say that.”

  “Of course you were.” Siri retrieved another stick of chalk from the drawer and wrote “Biweekly” beneath the first set of characters. “Oum says that if we count back twenty-two places in the English alphabet from each letter in the note, words are spelled out. You go back twenty-two places with the numbers too. This is all she had time to establish. All we need is an alphabet and a little patience.”

  Dtui copied out the English alphabet on a sheet of paper and taped it beside the blackboard. Letter by letter Siri wrote out the cipher as Phosy counted back and Dtui called out the correct characters. Once they’d reached the bottom, Dtui looked at the latest version of the note. It had three distinct parts. She translated the first.

  22

  xesaaghu iaik bnki qhb

  BIWEEKLY MEMO FROM ULF

  oo ykjbeniaz bkn 24li

  SS CONFIRMED FOR 2PM

  jk kxf bnki ll

  NO OBJ FROM PP

  “Well, if it’s a message, it’s still in code. It looks more like a laundry list. There aren’t that many actual words here. It starts by saying this is a biweekly memo and it’s from someone called Ulf. Or maybe it isn’t a someone, could be a place. I’ve never heard of it. The first line is mostly abbreviations. ‘SS confirmed for 2PM’ I suppose could mean something with the initials SS is due to start at two in the afternoon. Then it says, ‘No obj from PP.’ ‘Obj’ could be objection, I guess. No objection from someone with the initials PP, unless PP’s a place—Phnom Penh?”

  She concentrated her attention then on the second part. “After the first part, there’s just a list of letters and numbers under the heading ‘New Players.’ “

  jas lhwuano

  NEW PLAYERS

  x26a/ywxo ykjbeniaz

  B4E/CABS CONFIRMED

  x28a/iwoo ykjbeniaz

  B6E/MASS CONFIRMED

  iwzx ykjbeniaz

  MADB CONFIRMED

  x24oa/cjgl ykjbeniaz

  B2SE/GNKP CONFIRMED

  x28o/cjol qjzayezaz

  B6S/GNSP UNDECIDED

  ywgg ykjbeniaz

  CAKK CONFIRMED

  ywlg ykjbeniaz

  CAPK CONFIRMED

  x30o/ykzg qjzayezaz

  B8S/CODK UNDECIDED

  x32o/iwog ykjbeniaz

  B10S/MASK CONFIRMED

  iwgg ykjbeniaz

  MAKK CONFIRMED

  “Could be some kind of game. After each set it says either ‘confirmed’ or ‘undecided.’ So, for example, this first one says, ‘B4E/CABS confirmed.’ Mean anything to you fellows?”

  “Not a thing,” Phosy confessed. “Is there any more?”

  “Just the last bit.”

  z zwu lnklkoaz wqc52

  D DAY PROPOSED AUG30

  “ ‘D day?’”

  Siri said, “I believe it’s the name the allies gave to the invasion of France in the Second World War.”

  “We’re about to be invaded by the Americans again,” Phosy said.

  “I doubt they’d be bothered,” said Siri, and turned back to Dtui. “What about the last lines?”

  nalhu zenayp

  REPLY DIRECT

  “It says to reply directly to the name at the bottom.”

  “And that is?”

  A big Dtui smile spread across her face and her rosy cheeks puffed up like the bottom of an orangutan. She read it aloud. “Reply direct to the Devil’s Vagina.”

  pda zareh’o rwcejw

  THE DEVIL’S VAGINA

  “The what?”

  “I just call them like I see them, boss,” she said. “And that’s exactly what it says.”

  “What the hell is a devil’s vagina? I don’t understand any of it. It’s even more confusing decoded. Can you make any sense out of the letters and numbers?”

  “Let’s see. Inspector Dtui can do this,” she said unblinking, still wired from the coffee and drained from the emotions of the past twenty-four hours. “Focus. This might take some time. Bear with me. What do we see here?” She was talking to herself, as Siri and Phosy could see nothing. “Almost everything on the list starts with a B. Only the third line that begins with B has two letters after the number. I get a feeling that’s the way in. Always look for an anomaly.”

  That was where she focused her coffee buzz and where, after five minutes of staring, she had her brain wave. She turned and raised her arms to the clueless men behind her.

  “What?” Phosy asked.

  “Southeast,” she said. “That’s it. SE is southeast. The others are south and east. That’s all it could be.”

  Of course, that wasn’t all it could be, but caffeine has a way of making a person see the obvious even if it isn’t there.

  “So,” Siri said. “Something in the east, the south, and the southeast that has numbers. Roads? Postal codes? Mountain elevation?”

  “Army units!” Phosy said. “Could it be referring to military bases?”

  Siri scoured his French vocabulary and came up with only one B.

  “Bataillon. Dtui, is it the same word in English?”

  “There wasn’t a lot of military vocab in my medical textbooks, Doc. But I wouldn’t put it past the French to steal words from English. Totally untrustworthy people the French.”

  Siri nodded at the policeman. “What made you think of army units?”

  “Only that I know for sure the Eighth Battalion’s in Sekong and the Sixth East is just outside Bolikham.”

  “That’s it,” Dtui said. “It fits.”

  Phosy was certain, too. “It won’t take much to match up the rest. I’ve got a feeling we’re on to something. What about the letters after the slash?”

  Dtui went down the list: MASS, MADB, GNKP, all the way to MAKK, but inspiration escaped her. She copied them onto a sheet of paper and went off to work on it at her desk. Phosy rode his lilac Vespa to temporary police headquarters on Sethathirat, where he could phone around to his old army colleagues. The word “classified” didn’t apply in friendly, for-old-times’-sake chats. A day that hadn’t exactly sta
rted with a bang for them had suddenly dawned into something exciting. Inspired by the industry of his colleagues, Siri went directly to the ward of private rooms, found one empty, and lay back on the starched sheet for a brief rest. He woke four hours later. He considered this his contribution to the project. A team needs an alert, conscious leader. To make himself even more qualified for the job, he stopped off at the canteen for noodles. These were the leadership qualities he most admired in himself.

  He reached the morgue at 1 p.m. to find his entranced colleagues swaying in front of the blackboard.

  “What have I missed?” he asked.

  They didn’t even turn to look at him. He had the feeling neither had noticed his absence.

  “We’ve got it, Siri,” Phosy said.

  “What?”

  “Your Dtui, she’s a phenomenon, a genius in white. Tell him, Dtui.”

  Dtui strode up to the blackboard with a fresh stick of chalk and drew a line between the first two and second two columns of letters.

  “It was the military reference that did it for me,” she said. “Like I said, the only English I know I got from my medical studies, so I had to spend some time with my nose in the dictionary. But I wondered whether the letters …” She jabbed at the column too enthusiastically and snapped the chalk. “Darn. I wondered whether the letters might have something to do with rank. So I looked up all the ranks and, sure enough, the first two letters in the column correspond: major, general, captain, and colonel.”

  “Ho, well done,” Siri said, stepping forward.

  “That leaves the other column, and I thought logically the letters could have been the initials of the person holding that rank.”

  “And they were,” Phosy joined in. “I spent the morning finding what battalions were stationed in what provinces. They all match this list. When Dtui told me her theory, I called back to get the name of the general attached to Southern Battalion Six. The army isn’t big on giving out names but my contact owed me a favor.”