“Niece?” said Madame Voodoo. “I don’t have a niece.”
Time spent in isolation, in misery, becomes a personal infinity. The self and beyond it blend to a point where you abandon your role at the center of your universe and admit you’re nothing.
Inspector Phosy was nothing.
He no longer felt the biting insects nor the wounds nor the repulsion. He’d decided already to wait for death with dignity. There was nothing to see, but he looked toward a point where the horizon between black and black might be. The sunrise would come, he believed, from that direction. A pencil-thin crack opening to a beautiful, delicate dawn.
So when the sky opened above him and the light flooded his space, he was overwhelmed with disappointment. Dizzy from hunger, nauseated from fatigue, he could make no sense of it at all. He clamped his eyes shut but still the light burned into him. Through his lids he could make out the shapes that eclipsed his sky. Movement. An enormous hand reached down and grabbed his collar, wrenching him upward and out of his tub of filth. He was a string of beads, limp and unresponsive. When he was tossed onto the cold floor, he felt nothing. He could see the jet of water that hosed him down but had no strength to fight it as it pummeled him head to foot.
The water was turned off, and someone kicked him onto his back. His eyes were wide open now, and he could see where he was. It was some sort of rustic warehouse. The underground grave he’d been in for hell-knew-how-long had a thick zinc lid on hinges and a lock. There were three similar tombs running parallel to it. It was night. The windows were full of black, and the high-roofed room was lit by fluorescent lights. His hearing slowly returned: the growl of a generator, shouts in Chinese and some other language, mosquitoes at his ears.
Lastly came the sense of touch, although he wished it hadn’t. He had it all, discomfort and pain, a head that felt split in two and hanging loose, the soul of every bruise and gash and fracture awoken by the freezing water.
“You really should take more time on your personal hygiene,” came a voice. Phosy recognized the graveled words of Goi and found his outline carved against a ceiling light.
“Look at you,” continued the voice. “And you were so handsome when you arrived. Lucky your wife’s dead, or she’d never let you back in the house.”
Phosy felt a torrent of rage and horror well up inside him. As a soldier he had learned not to tame but to contain his considerable temper, especially when venting it would serve no purpose. His mantra over the years had always been, Never let the enemy know how you feel.
“Perhaps you didn’t hear me,” said Toothless Goi.
He was crouching now beside Phosy’s body. He wore a military topcoat and a fur hat. It made Phosy even more aware of the cold. His teeth had begun to chatter, so he forced his tongue between them.
“I said—”
“I heard you,” said Phosy. His own voice was the crushing of chalk blocks in a grinder. One of his teeth was loose.
“Surely you’re just a little sad.”
“I wasn’t that fond of her.”
“Then what about that sweet child? Malee, isn’t it? We kept her alive—just. Always helps to have one bargaining chip. She got a bit damaged in the kidnapping, but she might pull through.”
Phosy was tugging so hard on his wrist binding that he could feel it slice into his skin, feel the warmth of the blood. But his face betrayed nothing. “I’ll get over it,” he said.
Goi spat on him. Phosy considered that a victory.
“It’s been nice, this little family reunion chat, but here’s the truth of it,” said Goi. “You’re going to die. You can either die very soon and get it out of the way, or we can go through this routine two or three more times. I say three because nobody’s ever survived more than three trips to the pit. You think you’re a tough guy, but bigger men than you have given up long before that.”
“A quick death sounds good,” said Phosy. “What do I have to do?”
“You just tell me the results of your investigation—what information you sent to Vientiane.”
“You were there,” said the inspector. “You heard the results. The headman—”
Phosy was interrupted by a boot to his jaw. He spat out blood. Perhaps another tooth.
“You ignorant commie bastard,” said Goi. “Insult my intelligence again, and you go into the pit facedown. Think about that prospect before you speak again. You’re the head of special investigations at Police Headquarters. They aren’t going to send you up here to investigate a scuffle between two piddling little villages. You were sent here to look into my activities. You were cooperating with the Chinese. It’s a joint investigation. Now your stupid politburo is kicking us all out and spoiling a very nice party. Before I go, if I go, I need to know exactly what you think you learned and how much of it you shared with the Chinks.”
Phosy tried to speak, but his words came out in a dry cough. Goi nodded, and his henchman turned the water back on, drilling it into the policeman’s face. Phosy took as much in as he could without drowning. He needed the water and the time to think. Would the government have sent Phosy north to sort out a problem between two ethnic groups? Given the paranoia in the capital that the hill tribes were being recruited by the Chinese, you bet your life they would. A central subcommittee had been set up, fueled by exactly that fear. But this? This was something else.
Goi’s paranoia made the politburo seem rational. Admittedly he wielded a great deal of power in Luang Nam Tha, but he had reached a far greater status in his own mind. Everything centered around the toothless one. It was a weakness, and Phosy needed a weakness in his opponent to survive this torture. The policeman would have to admit he was at something of a disadvantage.
Some might call it a hopeless situation. But Phosy carried with him a fertile optimism. He was optimistic that his wife and child had been protected by the Vientiane network. He was optimistic that at some point he would meet Toothless face-to-face on equal terms and beat him to a mash. But in the short term he was optimistic that one more session in the pit would not be the death of him. In fact, right now, the warmth of the earth was appealing. Foreman Goi probably considered this brief encounter a victory. The bully stamps his authority. The victim understands his hopelessness. But in fact, it had given Phosy a weapon. Hope.
“Perhaps we could discuss this over a meal,” he said.
Toothless raised his boot.
“All right,” said Phosy. “That wasn’t such a good idea. Why don’t we do it like this? You list the things you’ve done wrong, and I tell you whether the Chinese know about them.”
The zinc cover slammed shut on Phosy in his damp grave. But now he had ammunition. He had knowledge. He had motivation. At his next exhumation, he would have a plan.
Or be dead.
“She’s off her head,” said a woman.
“It’s sad,” said her friend. “And at her age.”
“But look at her fancy clothes. She’s from the city. They can afford to be out of their minds most of the day.”
Madame Daeng was on her third tour of the Muang Sing market and was currently scratching at some imaginary gnat bites. She’d spent her time helping herself to fruit and embarrassing the stallholders. It has to be said that Muang Sing stall holders can take a lot before they’re embarrassed.
“Look at these legs,” shouted Daeng. She hitched her skirt even higher. “See how pretty they are? They could have been dancer’s legs. I could have been a race horse even. Then the evil spirit of arthritis took root in them and turned them into radishes. See? See this?”
Her heavy eyelids dropped shut then sprang open again. She picked up two thick radishes from the nearest stall and walked them in front of her like puppets from stall to stall. “But I’m free now,” she said.
The local policemen had gathered at one end of the market and were discussing what should be done with the unruly woman. Madame Daeng began to dance, overbalanced and fell onto a pile of carrots. She rolled around in them and laug
hed.
“I’ve found the magic,” she said, scratching at her skin as if she were coated in red ants. “Now look at these carrots. Riddled with lice they are. Riddled. How can you sell such infested carrots?”
She ripped off her blouse and scratched at her chest. This was the point at which the young policemen moved in. She protested but seemed to have little fight in her. They took an arm each and marched her out of the market. American Mae had watched the whole thing. She could have stepped in and claimed Madame Daeng as a friend, but experience had taught her that addicts rarely appreciated acts of kindness. It was best to stand back and leave them to self-destruct. But she felt sorry for the husband. The old doctor was kind and polite. He didn’t deserve a wife like this.
Nurse Dtui and Mr. Geung arrived at the central post office on Lan Xang early in the afternoon when the employees were still stodgy with lunch and lethargic from the heat. They’d be mellow and more likely to answer questions. Dtui knew the assistant manager from the days when the nurse was in gynecology and the manager was carrying her third child. She was happy to take them to the room out back that housed their mail-vetting department.
Some twenty employees, most hired and trained by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, sat at large tables and talked amicably amongst themselves while they opened private correspondence and parcels from overseas and distant provinces. Almost every item was noted in a ledger with the time of meddling and the listed contents. Every now and then, one might notice employees chomping on chocolate Tim Tams from Townsville or tooth-cracking pistachios from Pasadena, but none of those items made appearances in the ledgers.
Fortunately, Dr. Siri’s pha sin wasn’t edible, and the assistant manager found its delivery date in the registry. She called over the employee who had handled the item. She was a frail, slow-moving woman who made up for her lack of bulk by teasing and curling her hair into a masterpiece of ornamental cosmetology. She glared at Dtui through a cascade of tight curls. “Yes, I remember it,” said the woman.
“Why?” Dtui asked. “I’m sure you get a lot of articles like this. Pha sins from the countryside to relatives working in Vientiane.”
“Ah, but they would give a return address. Our workers in the country post offices would insist on it. It’s for situations when we can’t deliver the parcel, and it has to be returned, not that we have staff to perform such a service. On top of that, the frank stamp was blurred. All in all, a suspicious package.”
“So you opened it,” said Dtui.
“Yes.”
“And found?”
“A pha sin.”
“No note? No letter?”
“No. Just a pha sin.”
“And what happened to it then?”
“I attached a note to the package informing the postman that a charge had to be levied because of inappropriate notification.”
“Wh-wh-what color was it?” asked Mr. Geung.
Dtui looked at him in surprise, but the hair woman didn’t miss a beat. “It was from the north,” she said. “Lu, I think. Bands of green and pink and blue.”
“Thank you,” said Dtui, and turned to leave.
“… and a black hem,” added the woman.
8
A Little War with China
The old boys had spent the night in Muang Xai. They had both been feeling poorly after their day of post-office muggings and shape-shifting weavers, so they stayed in a room over a nightclub. It was the only place available. They’d made the effort to drink alcohol and dance to taped music with powder-faced plump girls, but their night was all over by nine. The flu or whatever it was that had accompanied them to the north kept them awake all night.
“When we were young,” said Civilai from the depths of his blankets, “a cold would last half a day. You could stand out in the rain in your underpants all afternoon and think nothing of it. Remember that?”
“Now I’ll never get to sleep with the image of you in the rain in your underpants,” said Siri. “But for the flu, we can blame the influx of foreigners.”
He hadn’t intended to sound racist. That was Civilai’s territory.
“They bring in their personal strains of flu,” he continued, “and leave us with a casserole of germs that our antibodies aren’t trained to cope with. By the year 2030, flu will be wiping out more victims than the Black Death. There’s no such thing as a slight cold anymore.”
“That makes me feel so much better,” said Civilai.
“I do my best,” said Siri.
They lay awake, inhaling the scent of cheap dancers on the counterpane and listening to the distant croaking of frogs in search of melody.
“I haven’t yet told you of Muang Nam,” said Civilai.
“Have we been there?”
“You have such a poor memory for places, I’m surprised you make it to the outhouse every morning.”
“Some days I don’t bother. Civilai, there are so many muangs and bans up here. How am I supposed to remember all of them? Where is Muang Nam?”
“Nowhere.”
“Good. Well, that’s the end of one more worthless conversation.”
“But according to Hanoi and Russian observers, it’s been occupied by Chinese troops.”
“How does a town that is nowhere become occupied, exactly?”
“According to a letter that was issued by the ambassadors of both Vietnam and the Soviet Union, an area at the Chinese border has been overrun by two units of Chinese military. They agree that unless the CRA withdraw immediately, this will become an international incident. The area in question is called Muang Nam.”
“Which does not exist. Aha. I see. So our good allies have invented an invasion to discredit the Chinese. Didn’t they think we’d know we didn’t have a Muang Nam?”
“In fact, it took awhile to be sure. A lot of documentation was lost or destroyed during the fighting. We couldn’t be absolutely sure there wasn’t a Muang Nam. We had to do a search in all the border province archives to be certain.”
“This all gets more peculiar every day.”
Siri sucked on the fumes from the last of his jar of Tiger Balm, wondering how many inhalations it might take to empty the little glass container. Could one actually suck a balm bottle dry? Was there …? And then a thought occurred to him.
“Civilai?”
“I’m asleep.”
“Then allow your subconscious to ponder this. I have a theory.”
“Good for you.”
“My theory is that you weren’t sent here as the goodwill ambassador to negotiate a peace settlement with the warring Chinese or observe enemy troop movements. Hardly a one-man job, I’d say, especially for one so frail. Especially for an ex-politburo man who argued with and upset almost everyone on the Central Committee. My theory is that you were sent up here to check the map archives of Muang Sing. That they sent half a dozen old farts like yourself to pore over curling land documents and village records of all the border provinces for a few days. Nice, safe, little job to keep you out of the way. How’s that for a theory?”
The reply was in the form of unconvincing snores from an ex-somebody, caught out.
By 5:30 they were in Agnes and on the road. They calculated that, without mishap, they’d be back in Muang Sing by lunchtime. They just needed to stop briefly in Un Mai and pick up the next clue from old Grandmother Amphone’s family. The road was named Highway One, which signified that it was the first, rather than the best, of the northern roads, but it had weathered well and allowed a good deal of uninterrupted speeding. It passed directly through Na Maw.
There was nothing spectacular about the scenery. A few hills. One or two valleys. Forgettable villages with no signs. The previous day they’d made the entire journey in three hours. Civilai had conceded that, although the Chinese couldn’t cook to save their lives, they did put together a damned decent road. Indeed, with only three stops to empty old bladders and throw up that morning’s breakfast—a greasy plate of eggs—they arrived in a little villa
ge they didn’t bother to ask the name of. It would have been perfect timing for an early lunch, but neither was feeling well enough to eat. They stocked up on fresh fruit and clean drinking water and hoped that an appetite might catch up with them on the road.
Twenty kilometers before Un Mai, on a blacktop that had been as deserted as Mars the previous day, they ran into a roadblock. It was piled high with freshly cut logs. Though unmanned, it was impossible to go around without leaving the road and crossing open terrain that sloped downward at an acute angle.
“That’s odd,” said Siri. “I didn’t notice this yesterday.”
“Me neither. In the past twenty-four hours someone has erected a barricade worthy of Les Misérables. It is obviously here to tell us that the only road to Muang Sing is now inaccessible.”
“It’s symbolic,” said Siri.
“Why so?”
“There are better places to build a roadblock. Spots where you wouldn’t be able to pass even with four-wheel drive. The barrier builders can still use the road. It’s a warning to others.”
“So what are our options?”
“We ignore the warning and continue on, or we turn around and hide out in the room above the nightclub until the road is cleared and spend the rest of our lives wondering what would have happened if we’d had the balls to keep going.”
“The rest of our lives being …?”
“In my case, it could be days.”
“So let’s do it. I mean the former.”
Agnes headed down toward the valley. There was one point so steep that the old boys instinctively leaned to their right as two wheels left the ground. The jeep hovered for a second before bumping back to earth. They scrambled up onto the roadway and heard the thump of mud against the undercarriage as the wheels cleaned themselves. The scenery hadn’t changed, but the atmosphere was thicker on this side of the barrier. Siri’s foot wasn’t so heavy on the accelerator. Civilai didn’t sing off-key French communist campfire songs. The deserted road was fraught with tension as if some evil spirit lay around every corner. And it didn’t take long to learn the reason for their apprehension.
Six and a Half Deadly Sins Page 14