someone from the street tried to approach Siri, one of the men would step between them and push the person off roughly. Even though many were twice the size of the little Vietnamese, they yielded to the bodyguards.
Every now and then, Siri recognised passers-by and tried to greet them. There were friends from the north, colleagues, even Dtui and Geung were walking along that street. But he was embarrassed, because every time they came to say hello, the Vietnamese fought them off. Tran, Tran and Hok looked as they must have looked in life. They seemed happy, enjoying their rude work. They didn’t speak, just shielded Siri and hurried him along the road.
A child in the crisp elementary-school uniform of the republic stood in front of them. He looked nervous and held a pencil in one hand and a pad of paper in the other. Even though Siri’s entourage could have trampled over him, he bravely stood his ground and held out the pad. He wanted Siri’s autograph. The four men stopped.
The doctor reached forward. He cupped his fingers as if he were holding a treat and crouched down. The child smiled; what teeth he had were red with betel nut. He took a step forward, but before Siri could take the pencil from him, the Vietnamese pounced on the child and beat him. They kicked and trampled him. Siri was appalled. He tried to pull the men off, but they had immense strength.
Through the hole that passed through Hok’s chest, he could see the boy’s face. He was dying, but he was changing also. The childlike face peeled away to reveal the face of an old man. The guards stood back and the man, now dressed in the uniform of the People’s Liberation Army, lay dead in a pool of blood. Beside him was a broken syringe; Siri had mistaken it for a pencil. The acid it contained bubbled and hissed on the footpath. A crowd had formed of the people who’d passed them earlier. Each of them held a syringe that dripped with acid.
¦
Siri snapped awake from his dream and was suddenly fearful of the silence and darkness around him. There was no moonlight. Although he could see nothing, he had a feeling there were people in the room. He could sense their movements.
“Who’s there?”
There was no answer. He pulled his mosquito net to one side and held his breath. He concentrated on the blackness, trying to pick out familiar shadows in the room, movement, but he couldn’t even see the outline of the window.
The dog chorus rose gradually in the distance, pained, high-pitched howls. And out of that chorus came the voices. He knew whose they were. There were three, speaking Vietnamese. Chanting, rather: “The black boar is still here. The black boar is still here.”
¦
And Siri woke again. This time the alarm clock yanked him conscious. It was still dark, but some dull natural light now bled through the window. The luminous dials of the clock confirmed that it was indeed four-thirty. He felt like he hadn’t slept at all. The mosquito net was off him, and the insects had feasted on his blood.
He dressed clumsily, grabbed his bag, and walked downstairs in some sort of trance. He used his flashlight to illuminate the way. The front door creaked open, and he shined the beam out along the path. Saloop wasn’t on duty, and the house seemed oblivious to his leaving. He closed the door and used the light to inspect it. It was about twelve centimetres thick and must have been magnificent when the house was still loved and the hinges oiled, the panels varnished. Now it was clumsy and crooked.
He felt a chill when the light of the torch found the two bullet holes at chest level. There was no question what they were. The shells hadn’t been able to pass through the solid teak. If Siri hadn’t bent down when he did, he was certain those two shells would now be in him.
? The Coroner’s Lunch ?
10
To Khamuan by Yak
The Yak-40 lifted uncomfortably, like an overfed goose. Like the two Soviet pilots sitting at the controls, it wasn’t pretty to look at. Siri couldn’t imagine what deal had been struck to make this clumsy aeroplane and its original crew available twenty-four hours a day to Lao VIPs. Neither could he think what the pilots must have done wrong to be punished so. But for six months it had ferried generals and ministers around the country, courtesy of the Soviet Union.
Siri was the only passenger. The co-pilot pointed to a bench seat and the safety harness when he came aboard, and grunted. That was the end of the in-flight service. But he was glad to be alone. He needed time to think. He’d been in battles, been shot at often enough. But assassination was a different matter altogether. It was personal and rude. He was more angry than afraid.
On his way to the airport he’d made two stops. He’d awakened Nguyen Hong and warned him to be careful. He suggested he write down everything they knew and leave it in an envelope at the embassy, to be opened in case of any ‘accident’.
Then he’d stopped at Dtui’s. She was already awake. Her mother was in a bad way. Neither of them had slept. This was hardly a time for more bad news. He didn’t mention getting shot at, but he told her if anyone came by to ask, she should deny all knowledge of any case having to do with any Vietnamese. She was a cleaner and Geung was a day labourer, and they wouldn’t know a head from a pair of feet. From his tone, she could tell he was deadly serious.
¦
The plane growled its way south, the Mekhong to its right, the rising sun to its left dazzling through the tiny portholes. Siri felt like there were hornets in his head. It wasn’t just from the vibration of the fuselage: so many ideas were buzzing out of order in there, reality and fantasy were getting jumbled.
He tried to interpret last night’s dream. The Vietnamese were obviously protecting him. Perhaps they were warning him not to trust anyone. Who was the boy with his blood-red smile? What had Siri discovered that made him dangerous enough to kill? Or, more likely, what did they suspect he’d discovered? And who were ‘they’?
It was clear that he was getting close to an answer, close enough to make one side or the other nervous. He just hoped he could work it all out before they managed to do away with him. How frustrating it would be to spend eternity in the afterlife with an unsolved puzzle.
The Yak bounced along the makeshift Air America airstrip in Khamuan as if they’d forgotten to put wheels on the thing. It kicked up clouds of dust and jerked to a stop just as the runway came to an end. The co-pilot came back to open the door and virtually pushed Siri through it. They weren’t stopping. The plane was on its way to Pakse to collect the prime minister and the Cuban delegation.
Siri ran off the runway to avoid being decapitated by the pirouetting Yak, and watched as it hurled itself into the morning sky. Once the engine sounds had faded, there were no others to replace it. He stood at the end of two hundred metres of straight earth surrounded by lush jungle vegetation, alone.
The only comfort he could derive from the situation was that this was Khamuan. This was the province he’d apparently been born in and lived in for the first ten years of his life. He hadn’t been back since. Nothing he saw now brought back any memories. Jungle looked pretty much the same everywhere.
Twenty minutes later, he heard the sound of a vehicle searching for the right gear. It got closer. He left his shady spot and walked out to the strip. An old Chinese army truck lurched through the vegetation at the far end of the runway and stopped there. Siri stood at his end and the truck stayed at the other, like gunslingers weighing each other up.
When it was obvious he wasn’t going to walk to them, the truck sped down the strip and skidded to a halt in front of Siri, leaving him with a coating of dust. Two soldiers jumped down from the truck and saluted.
“Dr Siri?” Given the circumstances, he wasn’t likely to be anyone else.
“Captain Kumsing?”
“That’s me.” The other man, the one standing back and wearing an unmarked uniform, spoke. “It’s nice of you to come so soon. One more day and the bodies would have been walking around.” It was a joke, but Mrs Nitnoy sprang to Siri’s mind.
“Yes. They tend to do that.”
In the truck on their way to the project base, Captain Kumsing did his best to summarise what had been happening out there in the wilds. This, he explained, was a military programme. It was a pilot development project
