that could have caused that look.”
“The fall from the helicopter.”
“It’s quite conclusive that he was still alive when they pushed him out.”
“I can’t imagine a more horrific death,” the commander said.
“I doubt whether it was intentional. I don’t think cruelty was the Americans’ aim. I mean, they could have
The commander sighed. “We have to track them down. I don’t want mercenaries rampaging through the land. But first things first. I want to get my hands on that damn traitor. You’ve convinced me, gentlemen. God knows how many lives have been lost as a result of the bastard’s crimes. If you’ll both excuse me, I have a very painful duty to perform.”
He shook hands with them warmly and left, taking the guard with him. The two old friends remained there in silence. Civilai sat scratching his head, exhausted. Siri sucked on his oxygen. Neither spoke for several minutes.
Slowly their smiles turned to laughter. Civilai moved to the bed and grasped Siri’s right hand in his. They squeezed each other’s fists so tightly their knuckles turned white, and they laughed as if the funniest thing in the world had just taken place.
“What are we laughing for?” Siri asked through the tears.
“It’s a nervous reaction. We’re both scared out of our wits.”
“You think this was scary, you wait till I tell you about the
? The Coroner’s Lunch ?
21
The Other Case
Khen Nahlee had never failed so ingloriously. He ached with humiliation. Revenge was an unprofessional desire, but he wanted nothing more.
He could have been excused the first miss. It was dark. Siri was a shadow against the front door. He should have gone to check the body, but the woman was always there behind her curtain. It wasn’t until the next day that he’d heard the doctor had survived.
By then, Siri had gone, left the capital. So he had to end it some other way. He’d dated the girl from the hairdresser’s. It was nothing serious. He used the Vientiane grapevine to spread the rumour that she was Comrade Kham’s minor wife. It travelled so fast, he heard it back almost at once. Mai didn’t know the comrade from a bowl of noodles, but that didn’t matter. She had enough old men chasing her. No one would be surprised.
The suicide method he selected was one he’d seen a few years earlier. The wife of some man he’d killed slashed her wrists and plunged them into boiling water. It was dramatic enough, suitable for a lover filled with remorse. He set up the crime scene exactly as he remembered it. Exactly. The Vientiane police were there, taking pictures, asking questions. When they found the note, there wasn’t a doubt in anyone’s mind that she’d killed her lover’s wife, then taken her own life.
It was all perfect. Nobody questioned it until
Khen Nahlee thought he couldn’t have hated Siri any more than he did that night. It had gone beyond an assignment. It was a personal matter. No shrivelled old quack was going to make a mockery of him.
He went to his arsenal and found a remedy for the doctor’s inquisitive disease. He was patient. He knew what time Siri had come home, so he gave him time to settle down. The old man had been drinking, so he’d tire quickly. Khen Nahlee walked through the silent temple grounds and looked up at the open window. The light was out. He was asleep. Too bad there wouldn’t be those few seconds of panic as he saw the bombs.
He pulled the pins and tossed his farewell in through the window. He didn’t need to wait. He knew what devastation they’d cause. He’d almost reached the temple gate when the explosion came, but he still didn’t bother to look back.
He considered killing the girl and the imbecile at the morgue, as his boss had suggested. But who would ever listen to them? No. All that remained was to remove the evidence. The hospital kitchen was unlocked. The cheap cooking oil burned well. The flames lapped upwards to the library and soon took hold of the dry old books. He watched, because it was a satisfying end to a good evening’s work. Finally it was all over.
He even went to report to his boss. Comrade Kham met him in the gazebo behind his house. It was one a.m. But the senior comrade rarely slept any more. These two men had taken part in hundreds of early-morning debriefings, but never one so personal.
Comrade Kham had set up the Discreet Operations Unit some twenty years earlier, when he was still in uniform. Initially, it had been a small department that collected and analysed data: a humble LPLA version of the CIA. Although very few knew about it, files were compiled on all the senior officials and anyone displaying ‘unco- operative’ or ‘unhealthy’ behaviour.
From time to time, the bad mango in the bunch turned out to be so rotten that extreme measures had to be taken. At first, they were careful to eliminate only those elements likely to cause damage to the movement. But power corrupts, and there were rumours that the only reason Kham was able to rise so rapidly through the ranks was because one or two political rivals ‘disappeared’.
As the Lao Patriotic Front grew and turned into a political force, so the DOU became more organised. One wing became a semi-autonomous death squad, and Khen Nahlee was named its head in 1970. He was ideally suited for the work. He was intelligent and dedicated to the party, and had been killing on its behalf since his early teens. Most important, he was a master of undercover work. He had gone through so many names and identities over the years that not even his own men could say they knew him.
He was a devoted disciple of the group’s founder, and carried out whatever assignments Kham gave him without question. He knew that any work he did was for the betterment of the Movement. But when Kham told him his secret at the chilly airstrip in Xiang Khouang, their relationship was forced to change. The comrade had killed his wife, and he wanted Khen to make it all right.
There had been no traditional motive, no crime of passion, no insurance claim. Kham had just grown to hate her. He hated what she had become since they moved to the capital.
In peacetime, the Lao Women’s Union was developing into a political force. She was the one interviewed by the Khaosan News Agency. She was the one who spoke on the radio. It was her they invited to talk to the students at Dong Dok. And, suddenly, who was he? He was the husband of Comrade Nitnoy. They didn’t even remember his name.
So he killed her. The cyanide tablets came into his possession as a sort of incentive. It was fate. The unhappy couple had returned drunk from a Party reception where he was the senior comrade, but she was the star. He’d been her escort. She passed out drunk on the bed, and he went to his study and put the doctored tablets into her bottle.
But it wasn’t until she’d gone off with them in her handbag the next morning that he started to think it through. Doing it wasn’t enough; he also had to get away with it. Kham left for a week in Xiang Khouang, where he met Khen Nahlee and explained what he’d done. His henchman, ever faithful, promised to make everything turn out right, as he always had. Khen went to the capital and waited. Three days later, word of Mrs Nitnoy’s death reached Kham. All Khen Nahlee needed to do was put on a uniform and pick up the evidence from the LWU.
But things didn’t go as smoothly as the comrade had hoped. The pill bottle wasn’t in her bag, and Khen didn’t want to attract attention to it by going back a second time. Kham had to hope things would work out in the course of events. But he hadn’t taken Siri’s skill into account. He’d assumed the reluctant coroner was untrained and incompetent, but that was no longer true. If he’d noticed the doctor’s determination, he might not have underestimated him so badly.
He knew. Somehow the little coroner knew, and Kham was afraid he wouldn’t be able to keep him quiet. There was little choice. He ordered Khen Nahlee to kill him before the findings became public.
The comrade had always been a staunch believer in Fate. He began projects only on auspicious dates and
