The Rat Catchers' Olympics

by Colin Cotterill

  “But why would the man want to have his own son assassinated?” Roger asked. He’d arrived late.

  They had a new round of cocktails and vodka shots in front of them so the time was ripe to sit back on their comfortable armchairs and put together all the pieces of the Vientiane investigation. Dtui was the storyteller.

  “Comrade Thonglai, Manoi’s father, had started to invest in the communist takeover even back in the sixties,” she said. “He came from a well-to-do family that was being drained by the corrupt royalist government in Vientiane. The family was cheated out of land deals and taxed excessively on imports. The generals were queuing up for their handouts. But Comrade Thonglai had a friend from the north. They’d worked together on some shady deals and become friends.”

  “That was the old man, Pinit Saopeng, who was shot in Vientiane after meeting with Phosy,” said Siri.

  “Let her tell it,” said Daeng.

  “Sorry.”

  “Pinit could see how frustrated his friend was and asked if he’d be interested to meet a Russian who was looking for a broker to smuggle in arms for the rebels in the northeast. A similar network had already been established for the Vietcong in Vietnam. Relations with China were much better then and it was comparatively easy to bring Chinese weapons across the border. But the Soviets wanted to invest in what they saw as the inevitable socialist future of Southeast Asia. They knew the Vietnamese would not tolerate a Chinese-sponsored insurgency and assumed the Lao would follow suit. They’d need support from the big bear. Comrade Thonglai had a similar vision, although his aims were less ideological and more financial. He hadn’t lost his love for his country but his dream was a Laos run like a business with a head of state with an organized, logical mind. Someone not beholden to the Vietnamese. Someone more like himself.

  “The three allies were very effective. The Russian came often to the region as an exporter of teak furniture to Europe. He eventually established a home and family in Laos. He paid the police and the immigration department and ministry officials and everyone left him alone. Pinit Saopeng was a lieutenant in the Royal Lao army but also an undercover communist agent. He wormed his way into a position at the central command in Vientiane as head of supplies. Thonglai’s network operated undetected until ’75. The Socialists took over and the three men went their separate ways. A job well done.

  “After many years of travel as a gun runner, the Russian returned to Moscow, well respected by the Party for his contribution to the spread of communism. Comrade Thonglai left his family compound and built his own estate out beyond the river ferry port. He too was a hero to the revolutionaries and was handed the plum business deals by his old military comrades. Pinit Saopeng, older than the other two, retired. He’d made enough money to live a comfortable life. But he missed the intrigue. He continued to take on the odd job for his old friend, Comrade Thonglai. He had a good house in the countryside with servants but as a veteran he registered for a room in a retirement block in the city to use as a cover. It was the base of operations for anything from bringing in dollars from Nong Kai to moving people back and forth. And it was the bank. It was where they did their deals and hired and paid their killers.”

  “Excuse me, Dtui,” said Roger. “But how did your husband learn all this?”

  “An informant,” said Dtui.

  “A very talkative informant,” said Roger.

  “My husband can be very persuasive,” she said.

  “All right,” said Civilai, “this brings us to the son.”

  “Yes,” said Dtui. “When Comrade Thonglai first met the Russian they arranged to send one of his sons to Moscow to finish high school and go on to university. The Russian was the boy’s guarantor. It would have looked too suspicious to send all three boys to the Soviet Union so he selected his brightest, the boy who was most like himself. Manoi was the most likely to succeed. Within a year the boy was speaking Russian and reading texts his teachers had considered too difficult for an Asian. He made friends easily. Everything was going to plan.

  “But it was then that young Manoi took a step into the gutter. Despite his run-ins with the royalists, his father was still wealthy. He had been sending an extremely generous monthly allowance to his son. Comrade Thonglai believed that a gentleman needed money to pave his own path through life. The boy, sixteen then, in high school in a foreign country, unchaperoned and rich, did what any teenager would do. First it was alcohol, then soft drugs and sex. Then came some of the new designer drugs from the West. He became reckless, almost lost his life on a couple of occasions.

  “By the time he graduated, his classmates had begun to fear him. He was a wild man. He’d started to mix with an older, more dangerous crowd. Many were the offspring, legitimate and otherwise, of politburo men, the sons of Red Army generals. To impress them, Manoi became more extreme. He slowly grew to be independent of his father’s money as he started to make profits from the drugs and women he’d sampled in high school. Twice in his freshman year the university threatened to expel him. But a phone call from somebody’s father or great uncle and he was back.

  “It was uncertain when he had his first adversary killed. There were rumors that even in high school he’d paid to have rivals beaten up. In his second year at university he was arrested. A lecturer in Political Science had been pulled out of the icy sludge of the Moscow River. He’d been shot. The day before, Manoi had turned up for the lecturer’s class late and drunk. The teacher had humiliated him and thrown him out of the room. A hundred students witnessed the debacle but nobody came forward as a witness to the murder. And Manoi had an unshakeable alibi.

  “There were other incidents but the father knew nothing of these. The boy wrote to him diligently every month and told of his normal, hard-working life in Moscow. Once Laos had been rescued from the tyrants and took its first baby communist steps, Comrade Thonglai’s empire flourished. He was the familiar capitalist face to the outside world. He imported. He negotiated deals. And the poorer the country became the more it relied on him. Nothing could go wrong. He’d gold-plated his future and the future of his son.

  “But then the letter arrived from his friend the Russian. It was in the Soviet diplomatic pouch, twenty-seven pages long. The Russian had just returned to Moscow and he’d been asking around about his friend’s son, the boy for whom he’d acted as guarantor.

  “‘Manoi is out of control,’ he wrote. ‘He’s looking many years beyond his age from the ravages of excess. He runs a gang of desperate young men who’d do anything he told them. They see themselves as the disciples of the next president of Laos. That’s how he touts himself. “A national leader in waiting.” He’s lost interest in studies. There are suspicions his undergraduate degree was paid for, as would be his doctorate. And with his unearned degrees in his hand he would go home a national hero.’

  “But perhaps the line that frightened Comrade Thonglai most of all was the one that read, ‘The Vietnamese have been courting your boy for the past couple of years. I fear that he no longer shares your hatred of Hanoi.’

  “Comrade Thonglai blamed most of his country’s ills on Vietnamese intrusion into its affairs. He could not allow a son of his to become one of their puppets.

  “‘I know he’s intelligent,’ said the Russian at the end of the letter. ‘In fact he has qualities that would make him a good leader. But he’s been off the rails for too long.’

  “Comrade Thonglai wrote back and begged his friend to help. He told him his other two sons had decided not to return to Laos. Manoi was his country’s only chance. Manoi was his true heir. He just needed cleaning up. If the Russian could intervene, steer the boy back onto an honest path, one heading away from Vietnam, he would be eternally in his friend’s debt. The Russian reluctantly agreed. His first meeting with young Manoi began genially enough. It was lunch in an expensive restaurant. The boy had ordered a bottle of 1954 Pinot Noir and drank most of it himself. Somewher
e deep in the boy’s eyes there were memories. Recollections of days when he was still innocent. Barbeques in the Russian’s garden. Playing football with the Russian’s son and swimming naked in their duck pond. They talked of those days and laughed and the Russian had hopes that he might be able to pull the boy out of the mud. He’d written so in his letter to the father. But he made one mistake before the lunch was over. He mentioned Comrade Thonglai’s concerns.

  “‘Your father’s worried about you,’ he said.

  “When the Russian looked up he saw a different person. There were occasions in the final half of their lunch together—some gestures, the odd expression—that caused the Russian to shudder with fear. The young man was rude to the waiter, caused heads to turn when he shouted for another bottle of wine, and was an obnoxious drunk. That’s when the Russian realized that Manoi was dangerous. A man shows his true colors when under the influence of alcohol. But the friend would persevere in spite of his fears, as he’d promised his old comrade.

  “Four months after their meal together the Russian was hit by a car. It stopped and reversed over him a second time. The number plates were taped over. He died on his way to the hospital.

  “Before his death the Russian had sent one last letter. He wrote, ‘Your son tells me he has all the support he needs from the Lao Central Committee and Hanoi. He has six months to go on his doctorate although I haven’t seen him attend any classes or work on a dissertation. Then he’ll be heading back to Vientiane. I imagine he’ll be patient but all I can see is that his long-term plan will be to get rid of you and what he calls the stooges you’ve planted. I shall make one more attempt to talk some sense into him but I think you should take this threat seriously.’”

  “Nasty piece of work,” said Daeng.

  “And he seemed like such a polite chap,” said Siri.

  “You’re lucky you made it out of there in one piece,” said Daeng.

  “Phosy has the letters from the Russian,” said Dtui.

  “How on earth did he get hold of those?” asked Civilai.

  “The informant had provided a lot of very useful information about Comrade Thonglai’s compound,” said Dtui. “It included the location of the guards, how the security system worked, when the boss was due to be on his next overseas trip with his bodyguards, etcetera. Phosy put together a group of men he trusted and they raided the ranch. They turned off the alarms and caught the guards by surprise. They knew exactly where to find the incriminating documents. Comrade Thonglai had been overconfident about his status. Most of the cabinets were unlocked.

  “There had been a suggestion from the informant that somebody high up in the police department might have been receiving gifts from Comrade Thonglai’s company for his cooperation—the type of gifts that left a paper trail. Phosy had been suspicious of his boss for some time. But here was a possibility to collect proof of the man’s wrongdoings. Oudomxai, the chief of police, had a cabinet to himself at the ranch with itemized payments for his services.

  “Phosy went directly to the minister with his findings and, to cut a long story short, my husband is currently the acting chief of police of Vientiane. Comrade Thonglai is presently out of the country but he’ll be arrested as soon as he returns.”

  They raised their glasses to Phosy.

  “Did he find anything on who had the contract for the killing here in Moscow?” Siri asked.

  “No,” said Dtui. “It seems Comrade Thonglai arranged it himself. Something personal. Not even the informant knew. He was just responsible for packing the explosive into the team’s equipment.”

  “They shipped it over from there?” said Daeng.

  “It makes sense,” said Civilai. “The Soviets have been pumping weapons and explosives in for years to shore up our military failings. These things go missing all the time.”

  “Thonglai’s man loaded it in the chest with the boxing equipment the Soviets had donated to us six months earlier,” said Dtui. “The explosive was plastic. It wouldn’t have taken up much space. The markings on the chest were all in Russian. It seems the customs and immigration at Sheremetyevo had a directive to hurry the athletes through with the minimum of fuss.”

  “Apart from the illegal import of lahp,” said Civilai.

  “Nobody even looked at our suitcases,” said Siri. “We could have walked off the plane with grenade launchers on our shoulders and the Customs officers would have wished us well and asked if we had jeans to sell.”

  “So, should we be looking for a boxer now?” asked Roger.

  “Not necessarily,” said Siri. “The military were quick to offload the equipment and carry it to the coaches. We weren’t really paying attention. Anyone could have had access to it. But you know what? We could just stop looking now.”

  “What do you mean?” said Civilai.

  “I mean, Phosy’s solved everything in Vientiane. We were too late to prevent a killing here. And what if Sitti did sneak off and do away with Manoi? In retrospect, the assassination might not have been such a bad thing.”

  “You’re doing Judge Bao again,” said Daeng.

  “I am not.”

  “Yes you are. Arbitrarily dispensing justice. You’ve decided you don’t much like the victim so it’s okay if someone blows up his apartment.”

  “In that case, yes I am,” said Siri. “Who has time to wait for fate to dispense with its undesirables?”

  “So how did the old soldier—the one who got himself shot in Vientiane—how did he fit into the story?” said Civilai. “I thought he was on Comrade Thonglai’s side.”

  “And so he was,” said Dtui. “The informant had no idea who killed him or why. He was confident it wasn’t connected to the dealings over here. Phosy wondered whether it might have had something to do with the money.”

  “What money?” asked Daeng.

  “The old man had forty thousand dollars hidden in his room,” said Dtui. “Phosy’s commandeered it for his departmental budget. He thinks it might have been intended to pay off the assassin once it was all over. If someone had learned he had such a large amount in his possession, that was motive enough to kill him. But the informant didn’t seem to know about it and the sniper didn’t get his hands on it. And if Comrade Thonglai had wanted Pinit killed I doubt he would have entrusted so much money to him beforehand.”

  “I still don’t see it as a coincidence that he was talking to Phosy when he was shot,” said Siri. “Comrade Thonglai would have learned from the telexes that Phosy was going to the Good Luck café. He’d have sent his man Pinit there to see what, if anything, Phosy knew about the plot in Moscow. It was good news for them that we had the wrong man. No, the killing had to be something else. Something unconnected.”

  “That would mean there was a third party,” said Daeng. “Someone who saw Phosy get together with Pinit and was afraid of what the old soldier might say.”

  “I think we should tell Phosy to go back to the Good Luck and look around for another suspect with another motive,” said Siri.

  “I’ll pass that on,” said Dtui.

  “Why did Comrade Thonglai recruit Phosy and us to search for Manoi’s assassin if he already knew who it was?” asked Roger.

  “Confirmation that his man had got away with it,” said Daeng. “If we didn’t know who the killer was, nobody did.”

  Sergei had put on a cassette tape of jolly Chechnyan folk songs. The Lao were already tapping their feet.

  “Oh, and do you think you can handle any more good news?” asked Dtui.

  “You can never have too much,” said Civilai.

  “Phosy said Comrade Noo is out of his coma,” she said. “It’s looking like he’ll pull through. Siri, your friend Dr. Porn is looking in every day and she said the recovery was sudden and dramatic. She said it was as if the old monk had suddenly found a reason to live.”

  Siri and Daeng performed one
of their elaborate high-fives and everyone cheered and toasted their friend back in Vientiane.

  “Would you have had something to do with that?” asked Dtui.

  Siri had no idea but he hoped his pep talk in business class that day might have had some influence on Noo’s condition. He still had little confidence in his own ability as a shaman but it was just possible he’d made contact with Noo’s disgruntled spirit and put it back on its flight path. If so, Dr. Siri had earned his wings.

  The suburb in which the row of condemned houses stood was, for obvious reasons, not visible on the illustrated tourist map. It was therefore surprising that such a large crowd could have assembled there in the street even before the first of the three competitors stepped out of his designated unit. The newsletter organizers had set up tables and brought along weighing machines just in case the decision came down to grams.

  Despite the early hour, the Lao supporters were all in attendance, still amazed that the sun could ever rise at 4 a.m. The shooters were there. They had been given two nights at the Village rather than the three they’d requested. They wanted to join their compatriots in all the activities that remained. Sitti was one of them, quiet, shadowy, unemotional. Daeng, who knew her fair share of killers, watched him and wondered what thoughts were ticking over in his mind. Did he think he’d got away with it? Was he already planning his next hit?

  The runners were there to support their knight of the sewers and the boxers had brought their drums.

  “I’m not going to mention this in my final report,” said Civilai.

  “What if we win?” said Dtui.

  “Especially not if we win.”

  There were announcements in Russian that Dtui did her best to translate for the Lao even though the language was unnecessarily literary. A newsletter official went to the second house in the block and knocked on the door. Sammy emerged with a large burlap sack over his shoulder. The African supporters were not as vociferous as the Lao but they let everybody know they were there. Even at that unearthly hour the women were dressed in bright costumes waving the national flag that looked like one of the Licorice Allsorts. If there was a prize for glamour, the Batswana would have taken first place. Sammy stepped to the front of the judge’s table and upended his sack. A pile of dead rats, entwined like figures at the Kama Sutra temple in Madhya Pradesh, formed a pyramid on the stone footpath.