Slash and Burn

a marvelous choice, a true professional medical man with a stunning record, was his own tucked down there at the bottom. So, that was why they’d dragged him along. They didn’t even have the good manners to consult with him beforehand. Well, he thought, I’ll be taking a dip in the Mekhong with rocks tied to my old fellow before they get me on a joint task force to Xiang Khouang. Dream on, Politburo. Unless….

To the great, almost visible relief of the delegates, the vice-minister announced they’d be breaking for lunch and would talk about details and dates early in the afternoon. A room never cleared so fast. In seconds, only Siri and Minister Bounchu remained. They’d been through countless campaigns together. Siri knew the general to be a sincere but simple man. He knew the soldier saw Siri’s educational background as a barrier between them, as did many of the jungle elite. Siri’s lack of respect for the Party line didn’t help to bring the two old men together. They admired each other for their respective skills; Bounchu’s expertise at inflicting damage on men, Siri’s at repairing them. But they had never been, and could never be, friends.

“You’re going to make this difficult for me, aren’t you, Siri?” Bounchu said, leaning back on his creaking chair. He avoided looking into Siri’s emerald green eyes. Eyes that intimidated so many.

“Not at all,” Siri replied. “I’m going to make it dead simple.”

“You can’t not go, you know?”

“Oh, I can.”

“You’d embarrass the Party, Siri. Not for the first time, I know. The Americans are aware we have just the one coroner. They specifically mentioned your name.”

“They’re looking for bones, Comrade. I don’t know a humerus from a whale’s appendage.”

“Listen. If you didn’t go, they’d be the experts.”

“They are the experts. I’m a converted bush surgeon. They have a decorated forensic pathologist on their team. A real one.”

“Well, for some reason, they hold you in esteem, Siri. They know about the cases you’ve worked on. It’s what they believe you are that counts, not what you consider yourself to be. We need someone there who can keep a professional eye on them. Like it or not, you’re the only one we’ve got.”

“Don’t you read the Pasason Lao, Comrade Bounchu? I’ve just come back from a very traumatic holiday in Cambodia.” He ran a finger across the tick-shaped scar on his forehead. “I’m not fit for service. I’d never pass the medical.”

“Yes, I’ve heard all about it. It was unfortunate, I give you that.”

“Unfortunate? You’re right. Torture and starvation and near death could get a little troublesome. By rights I shouldn’t be here today. And it’s for that very reason that I don’t have to take any more damned fool orders from you lot. You can’t do any worse to me than the Khmer Rouge did. What were you thinking, Bounchu? That you’d drag me into this meeting stone cold, show me no respect, and expect me to be so fired up with national pride after a morning with the enemy that I’d gladly traipse up north on a bone hunt? It might work with your young brainwashed cadres but I’m over the hill and happily rolling down the far side. I’m a renegade. Out of control. So you either shoot me for disobedience or put up with me telling you where you can stick your task force.”

Siri drank his green Fanta as a sort of visual exclamation mark. It was warm and syrupy and he wished he hadn’t but it was a fittingly dramatic touch. Bounchu wasn’t the type to fly into a rage. One of his qualities as a leader was his poker face. You could never tell whether he was about to shake your hand or shoot you. It wasn’t until he smiled that Siri knew the minister wouldn’t be reaching for his Kalashnikov.

“Siri, old friend,” he said. “We’ve been through a lot together.”

A drastic change of tactic, Siri noted. He recognized the sudden lowering of the red flag and the hoisting of a white one in its place. Now they were old friends?

“I’m really in a tough situation here,” Bounchu said softly. “The prime minister really wants this mission to go well and he insisted I do everything humanly possible to convince you. I don’t want to put any pressure on you, comrade. I know what you’ve been through. But, surely for old time’s sake you could help me out just this once. Five days in the north? Is that too much to ask?”

Siri shook his head slowly.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“I’d consider it a personal favor.”

“There might be a way.”

“Name it.”

“So, tell me again,” said Madame Daeng.

“No matter how many times I tell it, the story won’t change,” Siri assured her. “Unless of course you ask me again in three weeks by which time I will have forgotten the original story and be forced to come up with something far more entertaining to tell you.”

Siri was attempting to understand American culture by reading Henry James’s The American, translated into French. But either the translator lacked the ability to extract the precious ore from the dense seams in James’s prose, or James learned his craft writing radio scripts for Thai soap operas. Either way, Siri’s confidence was beginning to ebb. He doubted the book would help him understand Americans in the three weeks he had left to familiarize himself. He was thinking of switching to Melville. He had other translated works in his secret library: Harper Lee, even Scott Fitzgerald. He firmly believed that you could learn most about a people by reading the works their academics convinced them were worthy of the title “classical.”

“Then let me just see if I’ve got the facts right,” Daeng continued. She was standing in the doorway of the Paiboun memorial library-their back bedroom-with her arms folded. “Call me cynical if you like….”

“I would never dare.”

“But, for some reason, none of this seems to ring true.”

“Then I must be lying. I’m hurt.”

“Siri, I would never accuse you of lying even if I know for a fact that you were. It’s not what a good wife does. But you do have the ability to leave out strategic parts of stories and what remains, although not exactly a lie, plays a substantially different tune to the truth.”

“So sing me what you have.”

“Minister Bounchu calls you into his office and asks you to lead a team-”

“Technically, General Suvan’s the team leader.”

“Right. But he drools a lot and forgets where he is. He’s obviously only on the team as a charitable political appointee. His name was next in line for a junket.”

“A fair appraisal.”

“And, with no pressure whatsoever from you, no coercion or bribery, the minister accepts the list of names you put together for a task force to head off into the jungle with the Americans. And your list just happens to include your wife, your nurse and her husband, your morgue assistant and your best friend.”

“And Commander Lit from Vieng Xai.”

“Who you befriended on a case.”

“He’s a good man.”

“And Minister Bounchu said, “Good one, Siri. Nice choices.”

“Something not unlike that, yes.”

“Siri?”

“Yes?”

“Did you blackmail the Minister of Justice?”

“How could you even suggest such a thing?”

“Threaten to expose something from his past? Things only a doctor would know?”

“I told you about that?”

“Siri?”

“Absolutely not.”

“You know I’ll find out eventually.”

“Yes, but I enjoy your interrogation methods. Come on, Daeng. We’ll have a grand old time.”

“Which brings me to the purpose of this mission; what you’ve been calling our group vacation to the northeast. We are to team up with a bunch of American professionals and head off into the jungle to look for the remains of a downed aircraft.”

“And its pilot.”