doctor relieved Vogal and Emiliano of their weapons. Auntie Bpoo and Daeng took the guns from the other guards. There was no resistance. Civilai had been unable to put his finger in both ears as one was missing so he had succumbed to the sound.
When Vogal and the guards came round they were staring down the barrels of their own guns. The Thais thought it was all quite comical; two old relics and a drag queen having the drop on them. But Emiliano was a professional. He knew your average citizen would never be able to fire at a living being in cold blood. He started to walk toward the kindly looking old lady.
“One more step and I shoot,” said Daeng, realizing too late that he couldn’t understand her.
He took one more step.
She shot.
The bullet made a mess of the fingers of his left hand but he was determined to call her bluff. He took another step. The second bullet went into his shin and he dropped to the other knee. He looked up into the woman’s eyes and she smiled. And he knew this was no ordinary old lady. He and the other bodyguards could tell the next bullet would be aimed at his heart and there’d be no hesitation in pulling the trigger.
“And you think you can shoot me, too?” said Vogal with far less confidence than the words warranted. “I’m a United States senator. If I don’t return in one piece it’ll be enough to start another war.”
Bpoo translated.
“Tell him he thinks far too much of himself,” said Siri. He walked up close to the sweating senator and pushed the pistol into his belly. “The way I heard it, any old criminal can buy themselves a senate seat. Your country will be glad to see the back of you. You’re a murderer. And there are twenty witnesses here who heard you threaten me and confess to Potter’s killing.”
Bpoo passed on the message.
“They don’t know what they heard,” Vogal tried again. “Look at them. They’re all stoned.”
“Then they’ll just have to believe what we tell them, won’t they. And there’s a bullet in that poor Chinese girl over there which certainly matches your gun. Either way, you’re in very deep manure, Senator Vogal.”
“It won’t work, little doctor. You have no idea about the process of international diplomacy. A deal will be made. They’ll exchange me for some political prisoner and I’ll be released with a clean record.”
Both Siri and Bpoo laughed.
“Senator, where do you think you are? This is Laos. Diplomacy is a long way off for us. We can barely scrape together enough literate men to act as foreign ambassadors. We don’t have any political prisoners. The only benefit our Politburo could possibly get from this situation is the enjoyment of watching you humiliated and your government squirm. We’ll follow your case as it passes through the courts and have a little party when they lock you away. No, wait. I do believe you have electric chairs. That would be one to watch.”
“You….”
At last, the senator was lost for words.
23
The truck with Lit driving like a madman skidded along the gravel in front of the Friendship and bumped so hard into the front steps that three of them were destroyed. Both he and Phosy were out of the cab and into the Friendship before the engine had died. Dtui and John Johnson were close behind. They headed first for the dining room which was empty. Likewise the kitchen. It was Dtui who first noticed the stain on their way out.
“It’s blood,” she said. “A lot of it.”
The search became more frenzied as they went from room to room along first the east wing then the west. None of them was locked and all were empty. All that remained were the cabins at the rear and the old opium warehouse. And it was in the open-sided godown that they found everybody. Civilai looked up to see them arrive. His head was wrapped in a white bandage. He looked like a Sikh.
“We need to touch on the subject of punctuality,” he called to them. He was one of seven-the others being Daeng, Dr. Yamaguchi, Secretary Gordon, General Suvan and the two old musketeers-who sat on the edge of the raised concrete floor with their weapons trained toward the fence. And there, tied to the wooden posts, were Senator Vogal and the four guards. They were dressed in only their underpants. Whether they were shivering from the cold or from fear seemed hardly relevant. Rhyme was at the fence using the last of his film to snap Vogal in his teddy bear undies. Like the others, the journalist had remained stoned throughout the whole hostage drama. He’d learned what had actually happened from Siri and Auntie Bpoo. He fully intended to write it all up as a “live at the scene” piece which would include every one of Bpoo’s exaggerations. The transvestite had been good to her word by drinking the cold tea in Potter’s room and was now every bit as wasted as the others had been.
“My idea,” she boasted. “Taking off their clothes. My idea.” And roared with laughter.
Dtui, relieved that none of her fears had been realized, ran to grab her friends’ hands and rub their backs-her own Lao hug. Those not assigned to sentry duty were seated around the large table with glasses in front of them. They all seemed to be squinting from the effects of the tea.
“What happened to your face?” Siri asked Phosy.
“Walked into a mountain,” said the inspector.
“But it was a mountain full of gold,” Lit added.
“There’s gold in Laos?” Siri raised his bushy eyebrows.
“Absolutely not,” Civilai called across to him. “Don’t you think the Politburo would have announced it if there was? No, sir, they’d give everybody a chance to help themselves before the government could lay its hands on the stuff. It’s all a rumor.”
“Well, a little lump of that rumor accidently fell into my pack when I was treating my husband,” said Dtui, pulling out a small nugget which appeared to be pure gold. She passed it around the table while Commander Lit explained the theory of what had happened toward the end of the war. Siri shared his own findings from Potter’s documents and between them the neat logic of the operation became apparent.
“This was all about gold?” said Daeng.
“Enough to make some people very rich,” said Lit.
“And a lot of others very dead,” Phosy added. “They obliterated two villages in order to ship out their war booty.”
“There’s still plenty left,” said Lit. “I don’t know whether the local battalion are guarding it to share out amongst themselves or whether they have orders from above. But somebody has a whole mountain full of gold down there. I’ll be making a full report about it.”
“Well, I’m not having it,” said Judge Haeng, now in a dry change of clothes. He’d been hiding at the far side of the table, invisible and silent since the fracas. “I’m setting up a national enquiry as soon as we get back. A good socialist….”
Siri wrote something on a slip of paper and folded it in quarters before passing it on to the judge. Haeng read it and blanched. Whatever was written there terminated the latest motto and would keep his honor shut up for the rest of the day. Siri would tell no one what it said.
The newcomers sat at the table and sipped at the fine Scotch whiskey.
“Did the papers tell you anything else about Potter’s involvement in all this?” Phosy asked Siri.
“I think he had suspicions about the illegal exploitation of air strikes, perhaps even the use of napalm. I found a copy of a letter addressed to Mr. Rhyme over there, asking him to take as many aerial photos as he could, focusing on cleared land and bomb sites. We know that the major suspected something was up in Ho Chi Minh. He had access to the same paperwork as Vogal. He knew there were discrepancies in the work placement orders. He was sending memos to the embassy in Bangkok until Vogal got wind of it. Vogal went over the ambassador’s head and had Potter removed. But the embassy was still on the major’s side. Looks like Potter and the ambassador put this little excursion together. Isn’t that right, Gordon?” he asked in Thai.
The second secretary looked up and listened as Peach did a more formal translation of Siri’s findings.
“I … er….” Gordon began.
