Siri smiled. She was fearless. If ever Haeng stopped drooling for five minutes to listen to what she was saying, he’d hate her.
“Why didn’t you go with them?” Phosy asked.
“Where to? Indiana? No way. I wouldn’t know what to do there. I don’t know those people. This is my home. I applied for a teaching job on local rates and got it. Not enough to live on but these little junkets sustain me when they come along. Mom and Dad are pissed at the communists. They’re fund-raising right now to support the insurgency. How Christian is that?”
“I don’t think you should be telling us,” said Dtui.
“What can I say? You can’t choose your father.”
“A father’s goodness is as big as a mountain,” said Daeng, who had a Lao saying for most occasions.
“I had my own ears and eyes, auntie,” Peach replied. “First you hear it, so you must see it. Once you’ve seen it, so you must make a judgement with your heart. This is my judgement. I’m staying here.”
A counter Lao saying.
“Very well,” Siri said. “As Madame Daeng quite rightly points out, candles are not forever. So, before we are forced into our bunks, probably to be blown to kingdom come if any of us walks in our sleep, I’ve asked Peach to tell us what she’s learned from the American contingent about the mission we’re here for.”
“At last,” said Comrade Lit.
“I’m glad somebody knows,” said Civilai.
“All right,” said Peach. “Your Judge Haeng was supposed to pass all this on but he’s not in the mood, for some reason. He asked me if I’d do it. This is what I’ve learned. Or, at least, what they told me at the briefing. We are here to find one Captain Boyd Bowry or his remains. When he disappeared in 1968 he was twenty-four years of age, which would make him thirty-four if he’s still alive. He was a helicopter pilot attached to the Air America program out of Udon Thani in Thailand. I assume you all know about Air America?”
“Perhaps you could give us a quick overview so we know how the Americans see it,” Siri suggested.
“OK,” Peach went on, “I hope I can remember it all. Briefly, Air America was-still is, for all I know-an airline funded and operated by the CIA. They flew what they called “aid” missions inside Laos after the Geneva accord banned foreign military personnel. Of course the CIA continued to recruit military people, mostly marine pilots like Bowry. They took them out of uniform and maintained that they were civilian pilots working for a private company. They carried a lot more than rice, mind you. Captain Bowry was flying helicopter missions in and out of Laos for two years. As I’m sure you know, not a hundred kilometers from here were two CIA bases. One was at Sam Thong where there was a refugee camp for displaced hill tribe families. The other was at Long Cheng, the home of the CIA’s secret army. It’s where General Vang Pao and his Hmong troops were based. It’s where the CIA trained them up to fight you guys. At one stage, Long Cheng, with all its troops and US advisors and pilots, was the second most populated city in the country after Vientiane. There were so many spies there it collected the name Spook Heaven or Spook City. But that’s the big picture. We’re all here for the little picture. Captain Bowry.”
“Why him?” Phosy asked. “I mean, of all the airmen they claim are missing, why is this man at the top of Washington’s list?”
“Good question.” Peach nodded. “And as far as I can see, it pretty much comes down to influence and pressure.”
“And money,” said Civilai. “It always comes down to money.”
“You might be right, sir,” Peach agreed. “Captain Bowry is or was the son of Senator Walter Bowry from South Carolina. It appears he’s had people searching for his son for ten years. He sits on a couple of important committees and has a lot of clout in foreign policy. It’s probably due to his cronies there that money was freed up from the aid budget to offer funding to Laos. There was a lot of opposition to it. “Why should we be feeding the enemy?” That kind of thing. It really flew in the face of anti-communist feeling. So you can be sure he had some kind of pull.”
“Why this burst of excitement after ten years?” Daeng asked.
“On June tenth, someone sent the congressman photos purportedly taken inside Laos,” Peach told her. “They showed a Caucasian peering out of a bamboo cell. In one of the pictures he seems to have a briefcase or something with him which might be relevant. He could have been in his thirties. He was bearded, suntanned and a lot thinner than the father remembered, but he believed it was his son. The picture quality wasn’t that clear and other relatives weren’t so certain but the congressman was positive.”
“But he wasn’t standing beside a road sign,” Civilai said. “Wasn’t holding a copy of the national newspaper?”
Peach shook her head.
“Just him in a hut, as far as I know,” she said.
“Then there’s absolutely no way to tell where or when the photos were taken,” Civilai went on. “A hut is a hut is a hut. Could be at a theme park in Hong Kong for all they know. Am I right?”
“You’re always right,” said Siri. “But the important thing is that the photographs caused a reaction-money was made available and through just a little diplomatic extortion, this mission was instigated. And here we are, an ace team selected on merit on the basis of all the solid investigative work we’ve done in the past. The Party couldn’t have chosen a finer band of professionals to find young Boyd and bring a little peace of mind to his family.”
They toasted to this testimonial.
“What do we know as fact?” Lit asked.
“About the disappearance?” said Peach, flipping open her notepad. She paused to take a long sip of her drink then ran her finger down the page.
“It was the night of August eighth, 1968. Bowry and his Filipino flight mechanic, Nino Sebastian, had been drinking excessively at the forward air controller canteen at the Long Cheng base. They were with a pilot called Mike Wolff. He was with the FAC, the forward air control, also known as Ravens. It appears that they got hold of some LSD from somewhere and went out of their minds. At one stage, Bowry and Sebastian climbed into a cage with the mascot, a black bear, who was fortunately already sleeping off the effects of a heavy night of beer. Then, about two or three in the morning, Bowry announced he was going for a joyride in his chopper. Sebastian tried to talk him out of it but was too wasted to go after him. That wasn’t the way it was written up in the official Air America report, by the way. Officially there was engine trouble and the helicopter went down in the mountains. Our version is from interviews with eyewitnesses; the FAC pilot he’d been drinking with in the canteen and the mechanic. That was the way they recalled it. Boyd Bowry headed off into the night sky and half an hour later they heard an explosion. They sent out search and rescue teams at first light but as they had no idea what direction he’d gone in, and there’d been no mayday signal, and there was no sign of wreckage, they abandoned the search after five days.”
“If they heard the explosion he couldn’t have gone very far,” said Lit.
“And nothing else until the photos turned up?” asked Dtui. “No sightings? Reports?”
“Not a thing.”
“Any ideas who sent the photos?” Phosy asked.
“They arrived at the US embassy in Bangkok in a sealed manila envelope care of the military attache. No stamp. No frank mark. It was just there in the box along with the regular mail. The words “Laos, 78” were written on the back of the photos.”
“In English characters?” Commander Lit asked.
“Yes. No identification of the sender.”
“So, it wasn’t from a bounty hunter hoping to get a reward,” Civilai remarked casually. “It’s usually about the money, you know.”
“So you’ve said,” Siri smiled. “How did the embassy identify the airman?”
“From one of the pictures,” Peach told him. “It showed the tail section broken off the helicopter. It had the registration number H32. That was Bowry’s.”
“Does the American delegation have the photos with them?” asked Madame Daeng.
“I could ask.”
“It might help to identify the area,” Phosy put in. “Vegetation.”
“Different plants growing at different elevations,” added Commander Lit.
“If there are any locals in the pictures we might be able to identify their clothing,” said Daeng. “At least we’d
