The Rat Catchers' Olympics

by Colin Cotterill

  “At least we should find out something about the old couple downstairs,” said Daeng. “Eliminate them from the reckoning.”

  “If we must,” said Siri. “But, believe me, Manoi was the target of this attack and the man who killed him is right under our noses.”

  The Olympics continued oblivious to the presence of a murder inquiry. With five days still to go the spectators had already witnessed twenty-eight world records. There had been nine thousand drug tests, all of which were negative. Fortunately for the Lao administrators there were no tests for alcohol dependency. The youngest competitor in Moscow was thirteen, the oldest seventy. A Pole won the pole vault but a box did not win the boxing. That honor was taken by a Cuban heavyweight collecting his third Olympic gold in a row. The coxless pairs in men’s rowing saw two sets of identical twins claiming gold and silver. But the fairy story of the Games came in the women’s field hockey. Suddenly finding itself without opponents due to the boycott, the Soviet Hockey Association invited Zimbabwe with two months to go before the Games. The Zimbabwe ladies had never played together before and had never seen an artificial surface. Yet they won the tournament undefeated.

  “That,” said Madam Daeng,” is what the Olympics is all about.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  A Dozen Marx and Lenin Souvenir Wristwatches

  Still, with four days to go to the closing ceremony, the elders had not been able to trace the movements of Sitti, Chom, and Colonel Fah Hai on the evening of the explosion. To keep Dtui’s mind off the dangers her husband and daughter faced in Vientiane, Daeng had sent her to the media center on Acemadian Street to see if she could spot Sitti in any of the footage taken on race walk day. The staff members were delighted that somebody might appreciate their efforts enough to look through the hours of film taken at the stadium. Dtui claimed she would like background material to accompany a documentary of Khamon’s famous twenty-kilometer walk. The media center was happy to waive copyright and hand over anything Dtui liked.

  But in her mind this was a waste of time. Even if Sitti the shooter had gone to the stadium as he said, the chances of him being caught on film in a crowd of seventy thousand were remote. In fact she abandoned the attempt after only an hour as a new idea crawled into her mind. They said he’d bought them all souvenirs. Perhaps that was relevant. If she could find the stall that sold Marx and Lenin wristwatches the seller might recall the little Asian who’d bought a dozen.

  She took the metro to Sportivnaya and walked from there to the stadium. It was the way Sitti would have come. She passed a number of souvenir stalls and had the opportunity to practice the phrase, “Do you remember an Asian in a red, white and blue tracksuit buying twelve Marx and Lenin wristwatches on Thursday evening?” Nobody did. By the time she reached the stadium she’d asked twelve times. The crowd inside the arena roared and she considered going inside to watch the events. But on a bench at the feet of the Giant Lenin statue sat a suspicious-looking character in an old suit and sandals with a suitcase at his feet. He called her over.

  “You got jeans?” he asked.

  “You got jeans?” was the “Hello, how are you?” of the Moscow Olympics.

  “No,” she said.

  He opened his suitcase to display an impressive display of souvenir watches: from Misha, the mascot bear, to an air-brushed Brezhnev, the Olympic Stadium from the air, and a cartoon Stalin. But the majority of his watches were Marx and Lenin staring at each other across a hammer and sickle.

  “My brother bought several of these on Thursday evening,” said Dtui.

  “Well, listen,” he said. “Don’t blame me if they don’t all work. It’s the humidity.”

  “No, they work fine,” she said.

  He looked relieved.

  “I just wasn’t sure where he got them,” she continued.

  “Little fellow in a tracksuit,” he said. “Crew cut.”

  “That’s him. How could you remember that?”

  “I don’t often get to sell twelve of these at any one time,” he said. “And, no offense, but Asians are usually stingy bastards. Like to haggle you down to no profit at all. But your brother didn’t even bother to wind them up to see if they worked. Didn’t argue the cost at all. You want some more? I can give you a better price than any of those licensed rip-off shops.”

  He looked over her shoulder at an armed trooper patrolling the stadium grounds.

  “Might do,” said Dtui. “Are you here every day?”

  “I . . . er . . . I tend to move around a bit. But yeah, I’ll be somewhere between here and the station. Look for the suitcase.”

  The trooper was approaching them now so the watch man closed his case and headed off.

  “But it wasn’t Thursday,” he said.

  Dtui followed him. “What?”

  “He didn’t buy them on Thursday evening. I wasn’t here. Must have been Tuesday morning.”

  He broke into a jog.

  “Are you sure?” Dtui called after him.

  “Lady, you don’t get to run a successful business like this if you can’t keep your sales data in order.”

  He ran pretty fast for a man in sandals with a full suitcase. The uniformed trooper gave up the chase and returned to his patrol, giving Dtui a dirty look on the way.

  Due to some minor disagreements that had caused a diplomatic meltdown, the French embassy in Vientiane had been closed and empty for twenty-four months. It was still in the care of Monsieur Seksan, a Frenchman of Lao ancestry who’d been overlooked for ambassadorship numerous times probably because of the way he looked. He was Asian. Instead the French government was employing him as a live-in caretaker of the complex. He’d shown his joy at the placement by drinking the wine in the ambassador’s cellar, beginning with the oldest, and drawing facial hair on the oil paintings that hung in the cultural wing. If relations ever returned to normal he would accuse the Pathet Lao of childish incursions into their diplomatic sanctuary.

  More importantly, as far as Phosy was concerned, Monsieur Seksan was a fan of Dr. Siri and had been more than pleased to do favors for his team. The now-empty wine cellar currently housed a lopsided man who had at last given up shouting and swearing and was now merely grateful to be given food and drink. Although his chain had increased in length he was still tethered, this time to a thick wooden beam. He had no idea where he was. His captors, non-speaking and hooded members of Siri’s household, had moved him from site to site in Civilai’s old cream Citroën. He had become disoriented and broken.

  Nobody had spoken to him since that night in the police dormitory washroom. Four days had passed since then. Phosy walked down the steps to the cellar carrying a chair. The only light came from behind him. He put down the chair at a point just beyond the length of the chain and sat. The messenger said nothing. Phosy crossed his legs and allowed his foot to bounce up and down in midair.

  “You understand, don’t you?” said the inspector.

  “I . . . no,” said the man.

  His voice was rusty, unused.

  “It’s not really that complicated,” said Phosy. “You work for an old man with too much money. I work for people who have no love for capitalism or the hoodlums it buys.”

  “You’re police,” said the man.

  Phosy laughed. “If we were police you’d have spent a couple of hours in a cell and been released. You’d have been free to go to some other public servant’s house and threaten his two-year-old daughter.”

  “I . . . I . . .”

  “Don’t bother. The last man who did that died a very slow, very painful death. He got to see his own organs up close before he went.”

  “I’m sorry. I . . . it was just what we were told to do.”

  “Following orders. I get it. Anything it takes to make a living in these hard times. It certainly beats selling fruit from a barrow. But I’m very very sensitive about my fam
ily.”

  “Then, why . . . ?”

  “Why are you still alive?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, to tell the truth, you’re not.”

  The man shook his head.

  “I don’t understand,” he said.

  “As soon as we release you from here, you’ll be picked up by your employer’s other assistants and taken to that sprawling ranch out past the ferry terminal. And they’ll find a way to make you talk.”

  “About what?”

  “About what you’ve told us.”

  “I haven’t . . . I haven’t talked to anyone.”

  “I know. Ironic, isn’t it? But all guilty men claim not to have blabbed to the enemy, don’t they? We kept you here long enough for the word to spread that you’d been in a luxury seaside resort in Thailand living the life of a king while you spilled your guts about Thonglai and his operation. All the seedy business deals. All the ‘accidents.’”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why would you go to all this trouble?”

  “Oh, it’s been no trouble, friend. And no expense. A couple of meals. Water. I’ll enjoy watching how it pans out. You see? When you threaten a man’s child you get what you deserve. And like this, I get revenge on you and your boss loses one of his messengers. At the very least you’ll be tortured and terminated. You know how that works. At best, if we’re really lucky, the whole operation might shut down while they assess the damage you’ve done.”

  Phosy stood, grabbed his chair and headed for the staircase.

  “Bye,” he said. “We’ll be dropping you off by the Victory Monument in an hour. Good luck.”

  “No, wait!” said the man. “What if—”

  “You know you have the right to remain silent,” said the inspector. He’d always wanted to say that.

  “We can make a deal,” said the messenger.

  “You don’t have anything we want,” said Phosy.

  He climbed the stairs slowly.

  “I can tell you stuff,” said the man.

  “Nothing we don’t know already. There’s a bucket over there. Get yourself cleaned up.”

  “I do,” said the man. “I know a lot. Stuff you could never know.”

  Phosy reached the top landing and stepped through the open doorway. Once the door was closed there’d be nothing but blackness down there in the cellar. The dark can feel like the end of all hope.

  “Please,” called the messenger. “The killing in Moscow . . .”

  The door began to close.

  “What about it?” shouted Phosy.

  “We organized it. What’s that worth?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  To Catch a Rat

  Everyone in the Lao camp was excited about the Closing Ceremony and the farewell party. There had been fears that once the US and her allies dropped out, the Games would flop. But, if anything, the opposite was true. The non-boycotting world had seen 203 events in twenty-one sports. Of course the Soviet Union won the most medals. They’d paid for it, after all. Old world records were beaten and re-beaten ninety-seven times and, to Madame Daeng’s delight, the percentage of female participants was higher than for any previous Games. The Olympic spirit had not died. There were still those who believed sport was above politics. And the athletes who’d taken part felt sad for those who had put their hearts into an Olympic preparation only to be told they could not attend. Politics was arbitrary and fickle, but honest sporting achievement derived from acts of chivalry that dated back across the centuries to when ancient battles were decided by an army’s greatest warrior.

  “Just stick Brezhnev in a ring with the Mujahedeen’s head honcho,” said Civilai. “See who comes out best after three rounds. That’ll save a few billion dollars and a few million lives.”

  But, of course, nobody ever listened to philosophers.

  The Lao had lost every darned event they’d entered but won more hearts than any of the super nations at the top of the medal tables. Their Olympics was over but not their chance for glory. Their warrior, Chom the vermin eradication officer for Savanaketh, was representing his country in probably the most ridiculous competition ever staged on the fringes of the Olympic Games. There were three competitors: Chom, Sammy from Botswana, and Yusov, the official Soviet rat catcher from Moscow’s district eight. The rules had been laid out by the administrators of the Moscow Department of Rural Pest Suppression. The event was being sponsored by the Social Works Newsletter, which would run the story in its next edition as part of its In the Wake of the Games edition. Admittedly, this was no big-budget affair.

  The venue for the rat games was a condemned block of two-story terraced houses built mostly of wood and dating back to before the First World War. There were eight in the row. The reporters and judges had walked into each house with the competitors to confirm that there was no advantage to be had. The scent of rat droppings was overpowering. There was no furniture save the mildew mattresses of homeless people gone by. The competitors walked from room to room sniffing, poking at crumbling plaster, stamping on floorboards. There were suggestions that the three men might draw lots to decide which of the eight houses they’d be based in for the night. But there seemed to be no contention. The rat catchers agreed to each have a house with an empty unit on either side. Sammy was in number two, Yusov in five, and Chom in seven. In this way there would be no interference from neighboring eradicators.

  The three competitors had been given permission to carry only three items apiece into battle as well as a jar of peanut butter to use as bait. The latter had found its way into Moscow especially for the Games and would probably never be seen again. There was to be no use of electronic devices and no poison. The event was a test of the intrinsic hunting skills of the competitors. Sammy from Botswana requested a fifty-centimeter length of PVC piping, sixty centimeters of rope and a burlap sack. Yusov the Soviet representative requested a twenty-liter plastic bucket, a coat hanger and an old coffee tin with a lid.

  Chom seemed undecided at first but settled on a mallet. Through their Lao interpreter the judges tried to explain that he was allowed two more items, but he insisted the mallet would be adequate.

  The volunteers, mostly would-be Moscow rat catchers, positioned themselves in front of and behind the selected units to be sure there was no cheating. The competitors were not allowed to leave the building throughout the night and nobody could visit them. At 6 a.m. there would be the official count of rat corpses to decide the winner. The competitors shook hands and entered their respective houses. On his way into house number seven, Chom asked if he might have a light for his cigarette.

  “Do we really have to get up at six?” Civilai asked.

  “No, we have to get up at five in order to get there at six in time for the award ceremony,” said Daeng.

  “We’re VIPs,” he said. “Can’t we just send representatives?”

  “No,” said Dtui.

  “Look, doesn’t this strike anyone else as being a little . . . I don’t know, silly?” said Civilai.

  “You’re remarkably classist for a socialist, aren’t you?” said Siri. “If this were a competition between three Ferrari drivers, first to the Arc de Triomphe in time for cocktails, you’d be there waving your Lao flag in one hand and your olive in the other.”

  “At least there’d be petit fours,” said Civilai. “What do you suppose they’ll be serving for breakfast at a rat hunt? I dread to think.”

  “Oh, I love this,” said Roger, probably referring to the banter rather than the cocktails they were drinking.

  Daeng called to Sergei.

  “One more round here.”

  She’d learned to say it in Russian, “Yeshe odno butilku,” or thereabouts. It was a skill she’d have little chance to use back in the People’s Democratic Republic. It was also the last night they’d
spend with their favorite barman, so they wanted him to feel needed. He’d become a surrogate relative. They missed Laos but after all this free goodness it wasn’t going to be easy to return to a land of deprivation in just three days. They understood that none of this was real but it felt so natural.

  Madam Daeng told them a story that evening. It was about a small unit of Pathet Lao dug in on the Plain of Jars before the takeover.

  “The royalists were advancing and they outnumbered the rebels five to one,” she said. “The red commander ordered his men to load up and fire all at once. His men weren’t sure they heard him correctly. ‘But sir,’ said his sergeant, ‘we only have the one box of bullets.’

  “‘They don’t know that,’ said the commander.

  “The rebels fired their final barrage and the royalists turned tail and fled into the jungle.”

  That was how Siri saw the Moscow Olympics. The Soviets were in Afghanistan burning up their resources like a forest fire. Like Laos, the Soviet Union had become dependent on successful grain crops and Mother Nature wasn’t a girl you could bet any money on. The crops had failed once more and nobody was offering to make up the deficit. But here they were with their last pack of bullets staging the greatest show on the planet. Five thousand athletes and five thousand journalists would return to their countries with stories of the organization, the coordination, the razzmatazz and the friendship. Everything had been brilliant: the hospitality, the humanity, the cooperation. But by the time these stories had circulated the government stores would be empty again, the food queues would return and the national pride would continue to erode. That was the opinion of a cynic with fifty years of communist party membership under his belt.

  The main reason for coming together at the Nebesa was not merely to drink and pontificate. It was not to make Sergei feel needed. It wasn’t even to confirm their certainty that Sitti, the shooter, was at the top of their list of suspected assassins. It was to bemoan their own failings as detectives and celebrate the success of Dtui’s husband in Vientiane. The phone conversation with Dtui that afternoon had been two hours long and in regular, non-Arpy Lao. Phosy had been so delighted with events that he even told his wife he missed her and wanted her to hurry home. She wished that were possible.