This was the last thought that passed through Siri’s mind at the Friends of Socialism Ball. Dtui turned back from the dance floor.
“Where did Siri go?” she asked.
“Oh, you know the doctor,” said Daeng. “He’s always disappearing.”
She was surprised how often she could get away with that statement. Nobody ever took it literally.
Chapter Seven
Get Carter
Morning coffee at the Good Luck restaurant was a religion far more sacred than Buddhism for the retired cadres in Vientiane. The place was open-air and set back from the street with a small area under a tarpaulin in case it rained. It was somewhere the disillusioned could rekindle their socialist fire, where they might find evidence that communism was still working. Often it was just a gathering place for grumpy old men.
But on this sunny July morning there was a surprising atmosphere of joy. A Thai gunboat had drifted over to the wrong bank of the Mekhong and a Lao river guard had picked off the captain with one shot. The Thais claimed the boat was in neutral territory but everyone in the Good Luck knew Lao guards couldn’t shoot that far. The Thais demanded an apology and compensation even though they knew they were in the wrong. The Lao told them to get lost.
Consequently, Thailand closed its border crossings once again and ceased its exports of goods. Within a week the markets were empty and the new Thai prime minister was joining China in its diatribe against the Vietnamese lackeys across the river. It was exactly what the old cadres needed to cheer themselves up. This purely economic love affair with their lifelong enemies had turned their stomachs. They resented the condescending Thai attitude to “poor Laos.” Thailand had signed an international agreement allowing right of passage to landlocked countries but had never observed it for the Lao. Yet the Thais were happy enough to accept 930,000 megawatt-hours of electricity from their northern neighbors at budget prices. The old soldiers were sick of kowtowing.
So on the day Inspector Phosy joined them for breakfast they were already abuzz on thick Lao coffee, sweet condensed milk and nationalism. It wouldn’t take much to nudge the conversations around to the topic the policeman had come to learn about.
They greeted him warmly. He knew many of the old men and had fought beside and behind a number of them in the battle for independence.“What brings you down to the geriatric ward?” asked one old soldier in a Lenin cap.
“My wife’s off in Moscow,” he said. “I haven’t eaten for a week.”
“Wives have no right to go gallivanting around the world,” said a crusty old fellow with flakes of skin on his dark green epaulettes.
“That’s right,” said Lenin Cap. “A woman should be at home where she belongs.”
And those two comments explained well enough why the Good Luck was an exclusively stag location. Even Mint, the owner, a wiry old fellow with saggy eyes, joined in the applause. Phosy ordered coffee and baguettes. Thanks to the to-do with Thailand there was no butter. He settled for Lao-made strawberry jam, which was basically pink sugar granules.
“Moscow, you say?” A shadowy character in a trench coat leaned across his table. He had a grey beard trimmed short.
“Olympics,” said Phosy.
“Competing, is she?” asked Lenin Cap.
Phosy laughed. “You obviously haven’t seen my wife,” he said.
“Sporting prowess isn’t something you can necessarily recognize by appearance,” said Trench Coat. “Look at the Sumo wrestlers. If one of them walked down Lan Xang Avenue the tykes would be throwing sticks and calling them ‘Fatty.’ But at home they’re great athletes.”
“And look at Vilyphone Virachat,” said Flakey.
They all looked at him.
“Never heard of him,” said Lenin Cap.
“Sixth battalion flyweight boxer. Skinny as a blade of corn.”
“And he beat everyone?” asked Lenin Cap.
“No,” said Flakey. “Never won a match. Had no right calling himself a boxer.”
“Thought so,” said Lenin Cap. “You never do catch the point, do you?”
“You speak for yourself,” said Flakey through the laughter that surrounded him.
“Ignore him,” said the owner. Mint was wearing a once-white singlet that had taken on the appearance of abstract art over the years.
While Phosy ate, the boys flitted between subjects, got angry, fought, made up, joked and laughed a lot. He could see why Civilai had suggested a visit to the Good Luck. It wasn’t long before the inspector had an in to his topic.
“Fifteen times they’ve tried to kill him,” said a small oval man in a tracksuit. “Fifteen times and his bodyguards prevented most, but it was good fortune that’s kept him alive. He’s blessed.”
“Or the assassins are hopeless,” said Lenin Cap.
“He’s a god on earth,” said Oval Man. “He was a great warrior and great warriors earn credit on the battleground. He’s indestructible.”
Phosy knew only too well of the assassination attempts against the president. He’d investigated most of them. There had been eight that he knew of. Four of them were sponsored by insurgents across the river or across the Pacific.
“Who would you kill?” Phosy asked nobody in particular.
“Say what?” said Trench Coat.
“Let’s say you were in Moscow with all those world leaders and politicians. If it was for the sake of the republic and you had a pistol in your hand and only three weeks left to live, who would you—”
“Get Carter,” said Flakey. “He’d have to go first.”
“He won’t be there,” said Phosy. “The Americans have boycotted the Games.”
“Then Mao,” said Flakey. “He’s a troublemaker. Knock him off and all those idiot generals and there’d be none of this expansionist bullshit.”
“He’s not going either,” said Lenin Cap. “No Chinese.”
“Plus he’s already dead,” said Trench Coat.
“No Chinese, no Americans?” said Flakey “Well that’s no fun.”
There was more laughter.
“Come on,” said Phosy, “you’re an intelligent bunch of fellows. Whose sudden demise would benefit Laos or Vietnam?”
Everyone had his favorites, from middle-ranking Soviets who wanted to see finances withdrawn from third world countries to staunch anti-communists like Taipei. One quiet gentleman asked if it would be all right if he shot Margaret Thatcher if only because he didn’t like the idea of a woman being prime minister.
“I wouldn’t limit myself to visitors of the Games,” said Trench Coat.
“What do you mean?” Phosy asked.
“Just that there might be Lao or Vietnamese living in Moscow that deserve a bullet.”
“What would a Lao be doing living in Moscow?” said Flakey.
“I’m just saying,” said Trench Coat.
Despite the odd burst of senility, most of the opinions were sensible and well-considered. The most confident of the old men had plenty to say and their points were interesting. But Phosy had been trained to notice those in the shadows who kept their thoughts to themselves but gave off a sort of aura. One such man was sitting at the back not drinking his coffee nor eating his bread. His eyes followed the conversations as if his mind were recording everything. Phosy decided to bring him in to the dialogue.
“Comrade,” he said, “what thoughts do you have?”
The man was old and shriveled inside his clothes as if he were getting smaller by the minute. He looked out from his collar and smiled a mouth of brown teeth.
“None,” he said, but Phosy felt that was untrue.
Twice more he tried and failed to bring forth the old man’s point of view. The breakfast broke up at eleven although some stayed for lunch. The others climbed on bicycles as old as themselves or headed off on foot to their dormitories. Brown Teeth had
a bicycle but it only had one pedal so it wasn’t so hard for Phosy to catch up to him on his department Vespa.
“Off home?” he asked.
“It’s not a home,” said Brown Teeth. “It’s a dog kennel.”
“You’re a veteran,” said Phosy. “Why don’t you apply for a house?”
“Name’s been on the list for five years. They keep slotting in more deserving patriots above me. “
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too. Look, why don’t you leave me alone? I have nothing to say to you.”
“You didn’t have any thoughts on who you’d assassinate back there.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a hypothetical game I’d sooner not play.”
“What if it wasn’t hypothetical? What if there’s a military man in Moscow with orders to kill someone?”
The old soldier stopped and squinted painfully as if the rusty cogs were changing position in his head.
“Does this have something to do with the photo in the newspaper?” he asked.
Phosy was surprised he’d make that connection. “You read Pasason Lao?” he asked.
“Somebody has to,” he said. “So, does it?”
“It might.”
“Readers were told to contact police headquarters if they recognized him. You’re from police headquarters.”
“That’s very observant of you.”
“You’ve got a loose cannon in Russia and you want to know who he’s there to kill. Did you get his name?”
The old man’s face seemed to relax as if Phosy had removed some obstacle from his life.
“Yes,” said Phosy. “Sompoo. Do you have any idea why he might be there?”
“I might.”
“Is he—”
It was a crack rather than an explosion. The gun was fired from distance. A sniper. Phosy instinctively threw himself to the ground and made himself as small a target as possible. Two shots hit the old man, one in the back of the head, the other between the shoulder blades. Phosy looked up to see a burnt sienna smile on the man’s face even though his nose and eyes were nothing but an exit wound. He fell sideways onto the grass verge, still mounted on his bicycle.
Chapter Eight
It Takes a Village
Dorothy and Toto could not have been more awestruck by Oz than were the Lao team on their first day at the Olympic Village. To a Lao mind, a village was a community of bamboo and grass huts with pigs and chickens running wild and naked children playing in mud pools. It most certainly was not what they discovered hidden deep in a 264-acre park in the southwest of the city. The village was a henge of eighteen blue and white skyscrapers towering over landscaped gardens. There were banks of apartments and covered pools and sports fields and gymnasia. There was a huge civic center and restaurants and bars. By comparison the Ukraina had been a hardship posting. Whoever christened this a village wanted their head examined.
Previous Olympic research had taught that athletes preferred not to travel too far from their accommodation so the Soviets had brought Moscow to the village. Roger smiled as he listed the facilities in his beautiful Lao.
“We have,” he said, “in no particular order, three cafeterias open from five in the morning till midnight and one more for non-sleepers which is open twenty-four hours. There are smaller Russian tea houses and ice-cream parlors and milk bars which also serve alcoholic beverages. We have hairdressers and barbers, manicurists, pedicurists, and cosmeticians. Photographers will take as many pictures of you as you wish at leisure and whilst competing and they may be picked up at the service kiosks free of charge. We have a lost property office, and a fax and telephone exchange. In the cultural center we have concerts and assorted entertainment every night you’re here. There are three cinemas showing feature films, documentaries and cartoons, respectively. There are TV viewing rooms, a reading library, individual and group music listening booths, slot machines, rooms reserved for religious observance with a spiritual leader of your choice, and a dance hall with discotheque music. All of this information plus a lot more can be found in your program” (he held one up) “which I have personally translated into Lao. Any questions?”
The group was too stunned to respond. Much of what Roger told them had soared hawk-like over their heads, as many of the facilities were not even figments of the imagination for the Lao. But they could smell fun a kilometer off and they knew they’d landed on their feet by being included on the Lao Olympic ticket.
“We didn’t even die and here we are in Communist heaven,” said Siri.
“It was Karl’s vision,” said Civilai, “a pinball table and hot tub in every home.”
“I bet they’re really pissed the Americans aren’t here to see it all,” said Dtui.
The accommodation only brought them slightly down to earth. The rooms smelled of paint and wallpaper paste with a sub-aroma of hopeful potpourri. The color coordination may have adhered to some cultural principle but Madam Daeng had never been a fan of purple and green as a duet. Civilai’s pink and royal blue suite didn’t seem to worry him at all. The light switches were three-quarters of the way up the wall and the room fridges deep-froze the drinks but nobody on the Lao team was likely to complain. They were several years away from Nirvana but this preview made them eager to experience the main feature.
When the orientation was over, Madam Daeng called Maen the boxer to one side.
“Bad news,” she said. “They’ve segregated the women. All your potential conquests are behind barbed wire.”
“No problem, Auntie,” said Maen. “When a woman gets the scent she’ll find me. I don’t have to hunt.”
“Yes, I thought I could smell something,” said Daeng. “But listen. If I hear you’ve touched any of our girls—so much as a tickle—you’ll find a vacant space where your balls used to be.”
He smiled his arrogant smile but she opened her shoulder bag where the sharp end of a meat knife protruded from her event program.
Inspector Phosy was lost. He’d asked all the “who, how, why” questions and had received nothing helpful in return. He’d walked back along the road from the scene of the shooting but could see no vantage point for a gunman. Even if someone from the restaurant had felt threatened by his questioning or his contact with the old soldier there was no way they’d get their hands on a rifle. As far as he could remember, none of the old boys was carrying a violin case. None drove cars so there was no chance of taking a weapon from the trunk. And who would take a gun to a coffee shop anyway? There was no phone for the drinkers to call someone to come from outside.
The obvious course was to find out all he could about the old soldier with brown teeth. At the moment he knew nothing. All he could wonder was whether the shooting was connected to the discussion at the restaurant. Had the old soldier been singled out for some other reason? But that was the type of coincidence he usually ruled out early in an investigation. There was another possibility he chose to ignore: that the gunman was not aiming at the old man at all.
Each national Olympic committee or NOC had been allocated a meeting room on the second floor of whichever building they’d been billeted in. At the center of the room was a conference table so large there was barely enough space to pull out the chairs. It was outside Siri’s parameters of sabai; too regimented, too dull, too far from a drink, so in his quest to find an alternative he discovered a very comfortable milk bar on the eighth floor. It was called the Nebesa Milk Nook. It had armchairs and ottomans and alcohol and a personable bar man called Sergei. He was tall and swarthy as a pirate. It was at the Nebesa that the Lao administrators set up base. Like small, septuagenarian gods, Siri and Civilai could summon anyone with official business to meet them there. They’d put a notice and a map on the door of the assigned meeting room.
Sergei never seemed to go home and on their first afternoon in the
village he was delighted to bring them cocktails of his own design. They were currently engaged in a very early happy hour. Nebesa had a white telephone on a long cord and with it, Sergei was able to contact anyone they wanted or order anything they needed.
“Shouldn’t you be out coordinating or something?” Siri asked Civilai.
“My role is decorative,” said Civilai. “Not quite as decorative as General Suvan, who rarely knows what country he’s in, but more like the US President, whose decisions are all made by somebody else. My only purpose is to take flack when something goes wrong. I just dress nicely and smile a lot. And what about you? Shouldn’t you be tending to the injured and dying?”
“Brother, in this one complex they have more medical expertise than in the whole of Southeast Asia. If we were to fall down drunk there’d be an ambulance here in twenty seconds.”
“We’re on the eighth floor.”
“A helicopter then. They’ll hoist us out through the window and we’d be in rehab before we regained consciousness.”
“Which reminds me, I think it’s time you had a cup of coffee.”
“You of all people are telling me to sober up?”
“Just a warning that for the next six hours you’ll be observing our assassin. You have to relieve Dtui at six.”
“Really? Whose idiotic idea was that?”
“Yours, Siri.”
“Well, we found him easily enough at the orientation, false name and everything. What’s he calling himself?”
“Nokasad.”
“Can’t we just phone their coordinator, Corporal . . .”
“Colonel Fah Hai.”
“That’s him. Can’t we just phone him and tell him to keep an eye on our Sompoo alias Nokasad and let us know if he runs off and shoots someone?”
Civilai called over to Sergei, “Two strong black coffees please.”
The Rat Catchers' Olympics Page 7
