“My young friend, are you awake?”
“Yes, why?”
“You did not seem to hear me. I asked if your allies are being held in the command headquarters.” I nodded. “And there is how much time until the murder?”
“A few hours.”
“If you could gain access to the command post, if you could manage to slip inside, would you have any chance of success?”
“Possibly, I don’t know. But the guards-”
“Perhaps I can dispose of the guards.”
“How?”
He held up a hand and waved the question aside. An odd smile played on his thin old lips. I finished the tea, and he dipped my cup into the pot and filled it again. I sipped it and looked up at him. He was humming the “Marseillaise.”
“Le jour de gloire,” he sang softly. His eyes flashed at me. “Perhaps the day of glory has indeed arrived, my little friend. Perhaps it is so. Do you think it is possible?”
“I don’t understand.”
“We must return to town,” he said. “Finish your tea, there is time. I will lead the animal, and you must ride in the cart. You will need your strength later in the day. The day of glory. When you leave the building, how will you flee the town? Have you a plan?”
“No.”
“There is a river east of the town. If you had a small boat moored at the bank, it would be a great asset to you, would it not? Gold will buy a boat. There is enough left of what you have given me.”
“But-”
“No time, not now. Finish your tea, that is a good boy. Can you get to your feet? I will help you-”
“I can manage.”
“Good, very good. And now we will go to town, but first you must darken your face once more. Was it my tobacco that you used?”
“Yes.”
“I hope there is enough left to do the job. Go ahead, it is all right. I will not need more now. Go ahead.”
The taste of the tobacco almost made me sick again, but I chewed it and rubbed the resulting liquid into my face. I gave my hands and forearms the same treatment. It didn’t take so long this time, perhaps because the fever was beginning to endow me with a yellowish color all my own.
“And now we go,” he said. “You will mingle with the crowds, you will stay close to the entrance of the command headquarters. I will see to the rest.”
“What time-”
“You will know when it is time, my friend. I only hope that it can be done before it is too late.”
Chapter 11
I don’t remember very much of the ride to town. I kept telling myself over and over again that I couldn’t have plague or cholera and that I had not yet been bitten by a rabid skunk. Nor had I walked through any caves cluttered with bat crap. I would tell myself this, and then the fever would pick up steam again, and I would become slightly delirious. I was in fairly good control of myself, however. Each time I had to vomit, I managed to lean over the side of the cart.
In Tao Dan the old man parked the bullock and took me to a little restaurant. He knew the proprietor and spoke rapidly to him before leading me to a small booth at the rear. Then he pressed a few well-creased little bank notes into my mind.
“I have told him to continue bringing you cups of herbal tea,” he said. “I have said that you have a weakness of the brain and cannot speak clearly. Thus it will not be necessary for you to say anything, and you may remain here until I return. No one will disturb you.”
I nodded.
“I will be back shortly. I will arrange for a boat. I had thought to take you with me, but it may be more readily done this way. Then I will tell you how to find the boat after I return. You will wait here? You will not move?”
“There is little time-”
“I know. I shall not be long.”
He left. I looked down at the table top. It was wooden, and the finish had long ago been worn away. My eyes saw intricate patterns in the scarred surface, patterns alive with aesthetic implications. Fever does weird things to one’s mind.
Then the waitress was bringing my cup of herb tea. She was a tiny thing and looked to be about twelve years old. I thought at first that she was a very pretty child, but when I looked more closely, I saw that one of her eyes was missing. The empty socket was black inside. She smiled shyly and set the tea down before me. I tried not to look at her face. I felt tears welling up behind my own eyes and blamed them on the fever. The world, after all, is filled with blind children who envy the one-eyed ones, and legless men who envy cripples, and millionaires who envy billionaires. One has to maintain a sense of proportion…
I smiled at the girl. I held my thumb and forefinger an inch apart, brought them to my lips, and made chewing motions.
“You are to have only tea,” she said. “You are not to have food. The man said.”
I shook my head, smiled again, and went through the routine once more. This time I made motions of chewing and spitting, chewing and spitting.
“Not food?”
I shook my head.
She smiled, pleased with the game. “Show me again.” I did. “Betel nut? You wish betel nut?”
I smiled and nodded enthusiastically. “I will get it for you. I ask my father if you may have. You wait.”
She rushed away. In a few moments she came tripping back with a slice of betel nut wrapped in the usual leaf. The flavoring agent was different from that used in Dhang’s betel but by no means unpleasant. I smiled my thanks, chewed, spat. The girl giggled happily, made a small but very courtly bow, and scampered away.
I found myself thinking of Minna and hoping that she was all right. I knew that Kitty Bazerian would take good care of her, and I was privately convinced that the child was sufficiently adaptable to get along almost anywhere; she possessed both charm and pragmatism far beyond her years. But she was happiest at home with me in the apartment on 107th Street, which was why I would undoubtedly never get around to having her adopted, or sending her to school, or doing any of the things one really ought to do with a child her age.
Thoughts of Minna drew me out of my role, and I caught myself letting my eyes widen and my mouth relax. I narrowed my eyes to slits once more and pursed my lips. I had to get out of this mess, I told myself. After all, I wasn’t entirely a carefree adventurer any more. I was a man with responsibilities – Minna, Todor, another child on the way. I had to get a grip on myself.
Perhaps the betel nut was an imperfect idea. I had ordered it because I wanted it, which seemed motivation enough at the time. But the slight narcotic properties of the betel nut seemed to be working in tandem with the fever. My head was doing unusual things. From time to time I would catch myself staring off into space with the purposeless intensity of the catatonic, spending endless minutes in stoic contemplation of nothing whatsoever, with not a thought passing through my mind. Then I would force myself to move an arm or a foot, to drink some of the ever-present tea, to chew and spit.
When my teacup was empty, the girl returned for it and brought it back full again. I handed her all of the notes the old man had left with me; I didn’t want to run up a tab higher than my bankroll. She started to give some of them back to me, and I motioned her to keep the lot. She smiled, and her eye brightened. She returned again in a little while and slipped me a handful of betel, giggling as she did so and either winking or blinking, whatever you prefer. I put the betel in the pocket of my tunic.
My time sense was completely shot. When the old man sat down opposite me – I hadn’t even noticed his approach, which shows how magnificently I was functioning – I had no idea whether he had been gone an unusually short time or an exceedingly long time. I really did not know. It could have been fifteen minutes or several hours.
In French he whispered, “It is arranged. I have purchased a boat. It is small, but I believe it will accommodate three persons. You and the Thai and the Princess.”
“What about yourself?”
“Do not worry yourself about me. Now” – his finger traced l
ines on the scarred table top – “we are here. Here is the command headquarters. You see? The front of the building here, a rear entrance here. Down this way is a street that leads to the river. It runs just so. You follow me? You take that street and do not leave it, and it will lead you directly to the bank of the river. The boat is hidden in the rushes perhaps fifty paces in this direction. You see the route you must take? This way from the building, and down the road to its end, and then to your left and along the shore perhaps fifty paces, perhaps sixty. The boat is well hidden, I cut reeds and placed them atop it. You will be able to find it?”
“I think so.”
“I am sure that you will. There will be very little time. You must hurry into the building and liberate the two prisoners and hurry out again as quickly as possible. You may find this useful.”
He put a hand under the table, and I reached to take what he handed me. It was a dagger with an eight-inch blade, razor sharp, with deep blood grooves running the length of the blade on either side. The hilt was covered with tightly wrapped leather. The dagger had not been washed since its last use, and there were traces of blood in the grooves. I concealed it as well as I could in a fold of the tunic.
“Go, now,” the old man said. “We are in time, your friends have not yet been executed. Get as close to the entranceway as you can. When the moment is at hand, seize it. Do not spend time watching me.”
“What are you going to do?”
He looked at me, and over my shoulder, and miles past me. Perhaps he was seeing a parade in the Place de la Concorde.
“I shall do what I must,” he said.
“But-”
“It is time.” A smile. “The day of glory has arrived. Do not ask questions, young friend. Go now. The day of glory has arrived.”
I put both hands on the table top and pushed myself to my feet. The day of glory has arrived, I told myself. My knees buckled. I took a deep breath and walked unsteadily to the doorway. My little waitress blinked good-bye. I stepped out into the heat of the glaring afternoon sun, waited for a moment to get my bearings, then found my way quickly to the command headquarters.
The four heads stared at me as before, but this time they had no effect upon me. Perhaps I was prepared; perhaps the fever and the betel nut had combined to render me impervious to horror. I looked at the heads, and they looked back, and I walked past them to the side of the entranceway, where notices were posted on a bulletin board. Some were hand-lettered, others were printed, and all of them were equally meaningless to me. I can speak Khmer but cannot read it at all and after I had looked at a few notices, I found it hard to believe that anybody could read it. It has frequently occurred to me that the high illiteracy rate in certain countries is at least partially attributable to the impenetrability of their alphabets. It amazes me that people learn to speak at all, let alone read and write. I went on scanning the bulletin board. The fever caught me, then let me go. For a moment I was quite unsteady and didn’t think I could stay on my feet, and I moved to one side and turned around, leaning against the building in what I hoped was a casual fashion. The street was beginning to fill with the local citizenry, all of whom seemed interested in the command post. Though public executions had been abolished, it was evidently quite the thing to watch new heads being installed on the ceremonial head posts. Perfectly reasonable, I decided. With no movie theater and no television, the people needed something to take their minds off their troubles.
I slipped my hand under my tunic and touched the handle of the dagger. Its presence was somehow reassuring. I looked at the squat concrete building. If we left it by its rear door, we would have to run off to the right to the street the old man had indicated, then turn to the left and follow that street to the river, then look off to the left some fifty paces for the boat. I pictured his finger tracing the route on the table top and I closed my eyes and fixed the image of his map in my mind.
In the street a jeep made its way through the crowd. The driver confirmed the popular notion of the Oriental view that human life is cheap, driving with a fine disdain for the throngs in front of him. Magically the crowd melted aside just in time to let him pull to a stop in front of the building. The driver remained in the car. Two men climbed out of the back seat. One of them was middle-aged and looked important. The other younger and in a less impressive uniform, hurried to open the door for him. The guards stood aside, and the two men walked on into command headquarters.
Wonderful, I thought. By the time I made my move, half the soldiers in Laos would be inside the concrete structure. I looked around, wondering what the old man had planned. For a moment I had thought he might have organized some sort of riot, with the mob storming the building, but the crowd did not have the look of potential rioters. They were just a mass of bored yokels waiting for something to happen.
I chewed a fresh piece of betel and spat a stream of red juice at the dusty ground. The sun burned down. The deluge of the night before was barely a memory, and what had been mud a few hours ago was now baked as hard as earthenware. I chewed and spat and, like the mindless crowd, I waited for something to happen.
Then something happened.
I didn’t even recognize the old man at first, but I stared at him anyhow, just like everyone else. He was a sight. He was riding in my cart, and my bullock was pulling it, and all of that was normal enough, but that was where normalcy stopped. For the bullock was moving faster than it had ever moved in its life, faster, I suspect, than any bullock had ever moved since the species first evolved. The bullock tore through the crowd like a bull at Pamplona, tossing its head and snorting, bouncing the little cart on the bumpy roadway, while the old man prodded its rump with fire.
I do not speak metaphorically. The old colonial boy held a long stick like a shepherd’s crook, and on the end of that stick was a rag soaked in kerosene or something of the sort, and the rag was burning. He kept poking the flaming end of the stick into the tormented end of the bullock, and the results were spectacular.
All hell broke loose. The crowd stampeded. The jeep parked in front happened to be in the way, and the bullock came down on its hood and struck a mighty blow against the forces of automation. The animal caromed off the wrecked vehicle, tossed its head wildly, then charged for a mass of onlookers. They broke and ran; some of them got away and some of them did not.
The guards didn’t know what to do. They had drawn their guns and were now waving them uncertainly in the air, evidently feeling that the situation could be solved only by a show of force but not knowing where the force ought to be directed. And through it all the old man prepared for his finest hour. The day of glory has arrived –
He was in costume, for one thing. He wore the uniform of a French Legionaire. God knows where he found it; perhaps he had kept it hidden as a relic of better times. It fit him like a glove on a pencil. The pants covered his feet and the jacket’s sleeves came down well over his hands, and the shriveled little old man inside disappeared completely. He paused, kept the fire away from the bullock’s rear for a moment, and his little voice rang out over the crowd.
“Long live King Charles de Gaulle! Long live the beautiful France! Lafayette is here! Long live Napoleon! To hell with Marx! To hell with Lenin! To hell with the Pathet Lao! To hell with Mao Tse-tung! Long live Jeanne d’Arc!”
Everyone’s attention was drawn to him. The doors to the command post were open, and soldiers from within crowded the doorway, staring out at the wild old man with the wild young bullock. I could have pushed through them without their paying the slightest bit of attention to me, but at the moment I was utterly transfixed by his display. Wild bullocks couldn’t have moved me.
“‘Allons, enfants de la patrie – ’”
Singing the “Marseillaise” at the top of his lungs, he began waving a tin can around madly. He splashed something from it, soaking the straw around him, soaking the fine French Legion uniform, soaking the flanks of the unfortunate bullock.
Then, still singing bravely,
he brought the day of glory to its peak. He touched his torch to the straw beneath his feet. And, as the straw and the cart and the bullock and the old man burst suddenly into flame, with the maddened bullock veering sharply to his right and crashing head-on into a cluster of ramshackle wooden huts, with bullets flying overhead, and with the final death-echoes of the French national anthem sounding around me, I drew my dagger and rushed into the building.
Chapter 12
Behind me the crowd hooted and wailed hysterically. Soldiers rushed into the mob to stare mutely at the spreading fire. Someone began shooting at something. I moved quickly, mind and body oddly disassociated. At the head of the stairs a soldier blocked my path and snapped a command at me. I thrust the dagger hilt-deep into his chest. He gasped and died, and no one noticed. I drew the dagger free and entered the building.
The corridors inside were uniformly olive drab, floors and walls and ceilings, a study in institutional monotony. The entire place was in an uproar, with uniformed men barking commands and rushing to and fro. I too rushed to and fro, and to as little purpose. I felt like a moth who against all odds had managed to penetrate a screen and fly into a fireplace. I was a great success, but at any moment the flames would realize I was there and fry me to a crisp.
“Outside!” I bellowed. “All men to their posts in the streets. At once!”
That got rid of a few of them, but there were still too many soldiers around. I looked into one room, then another, but there was no sign of either Dhang or Tuppence. And I couldn’t peek into every damned room in the place. There simply wasn’t time; in a few moments the shock value of the old man’s act would wear off, and somebody would begin to wonder just who in hell I was.
I started into a third room. A soldier on his way out met me with pistol in hand. If I had had time to think about it I would probably have stood there like a ninny while he shot me, but I acted without thought, plunging the dagger into his belly and ripping upward. He pitched forward, and I spun away from him and on down the corridor.
The Scoreless Thai (aka Two For Tanner) Page 11