Colin Cotterill - Thirty-Three Teeth

“There is. They gave me a white talisman in Khamuan.”

“Show me.”

“I don’t carry it.”

“You’re foolish. It must be with you always. Where is it?”

“In Vientiane. In my house.”

“Then I suggest you get there as soon as you can. I don’t value your chances of cheating death twice. Remember this: if you die a natural death, Yeh Ming can rest in peace; if you suffer a violent unnatural death, he will be cursed to eternal hell amongst the evil spirits. You must avoid the latter at all costs.”

“Right. I’ll see what I can do.”

It was while he was searching for Mr. Inthanet’s house on Kitsalat, while simultaneously endeavoring to avoid a violent and unnatural death, that Siri ran into the man from his dream. It was so unusual for living people to appear in his dreams that his natural first assumption was that this was a dead person walking along the main street.

It was the footman who’d served the king beneath the fig tree and exploded messily after introducing the helicopter pilots. He had the same straggly chin beard and hair that hung like a hula skirt around a bald dome. If anything, he looked more Ceylonese than Chinese and, to Siri’s professional eye, very much alive.

Without putting too much thought into why, he changed direction and followed the man at a distance. He had a confident Western swing to his gait, and his clothes suggested that some thought had gone into their selection. His large stomach was accentuated by the tonic sheen of his traditional Lao shirt. It was as if he wore such clothes through choice, not obligation.

The man crossed the street and walked along the short drive into the Hotel Phousy. Through the glass door, Siri saw him take a newspaper from the stand at reception, exchange a few friendly words with the clerk, and walk through another door into the dining room. This told Siri one or two things.

A man would only eat in a sophisticated hotel if he were a guest or comparatively wealthy. As the newspaper was Lao, he wasn’t a foreign tourist. And the cut of his clothes announced that he wasn’t a waiter or cook.

Siri pushed open the double doors and walked into the small lobby. The receptionist was a middle-aged man whose spectacles only had a lens on the left side. The right was open to the elements.

“Good day, Comrade,” he said, suspicious of this bagless visitor.

“Good health. I was just passing and I thought I saw someone I once knew come in here: a dark man with a beard and a stomach.”

“That would be Mr. Kumron?”

“Kumron-that’s right. I haven’t seen him for such a long time, I wasn’t sure it was him. He’s put on weight. What’s he doing these days?”

“You can go and ask him yourself. He’s in the restaurant.”

“Oh, I don’t want to trouble him. I doubt he’d remember me. But my sister would probably be interested to hear how he got on. They once had a … relationship.”

“I see. Well, she’d be pleased to hear he’s done very nicely for himself, very nicely indeed.”

“Oh, good.”

“In fact, until recently, he was an adviser and confidant to …” he lowered his voice “… the Royal Family.”

“You don’t say?”

“I do. He and the king were like this.” He crossed his fingers in front of his nose.

“Goodness.”

It was then that the clerk seemed to suddenly remember some advice he’d once been given about not trusting strangers. Although it may not have been exactly memorized, he did have a speech at hand for such an occasion.

“The Royal Family has been sucking the blood from the country and its people for centuries. It’s a relief that we’re now free of the tyrant and can work together to rebuild our great land.”

It was an uninspired rendition.

“So, old Kumron’s probably on his way to re-education too, if he was part of that blood-sucking.”

“Ah, no, Comrade. Mr. Kumron is a very intelligent human being. The party has found a way to use his expertise to further its advances in the northern region.”

“The Party gave him a job?”

“He’s running several large projects, I believe.”

It all became crystal-clear: the king’s adviser, the attempted rescue, the removal of the Royal Family, and the payoff. The pilots had said it: “We were betrayed.”

For what other reason would a living man appear in his dream, if not that he had died in some other way? Siri was no fan of royalty; he wasn’t even that fond of communism; but he was a man of principle. He believed that whatever creed a man chose, he was dependent on the trust and honor of the men and women who followed the same creed. In Siri’s mind, a betrayal of that trust was sinful.

He’d survived his forty-odd years of jungle warfare not only because of his ability to fight when necessary or run when necessary-any animal could do that; he’d survived because of the people around him. Their lives were interconnected. You had to know that a comrade was good to his word and would sooner give up his own life than sacrifice yours. That’s how it had been in the early days, anyway.

Kumron had achieved the exalted position of adviser to the king. He had earned a place in the old man’s soul. But in order to save his own status, he’d given up information about the escape attempt. He had ended the Royal Family’s last hope of survival. With so few true friends left, this betrayal would have been a final poisonous arrow in the kwun of the Royals. The man shouldn’t have been rewarded. If honor meant anything in this day and age, he should have been executed. But did anyone know?

Siri realized that he was still at the counter and the clerk was staring through his single lens, waiting for the next question. He also realized that he was the only one in a position to do anything.

“You know?” Siri said. “Perhaps I will go and say hello after all.”

He walked through to the brown wood and red vinyl dining room. Its air was being conditioned by a large grumbling machine along the back wall. The small tables were unlaid, apart from one. There Kumron sat with his back to the door reading the newspaper. In front of him was a sight rarer in Laos than a two-headed naga serpent-a cool bottle of beer.

Siri knew that what little success this attack might have depended on how cleanly Kumron believed he had gotten away with his betrayal and how guilty he felt about it. The doctor walked around the table and cast a shadow on the newspaper. When Kumron realized he wasn’t the waiter, he looked up.

“Do you believe in ghosts, Comrade Kumron?”

Kumron was a calm, dignified man who seemed unflustered by this question from a stranger. He smiled politely. “Perhaps I could ask the name of the person asking the question.”

“In the long run, my name won’t make any difference. I’m just a messenger.”

The waiter in a short-sleeved once-white shirt and kipper tie assumed Siri was joining Kumron and dragged over a second chair.

“Please,” the waiter said, but Siri didn’t sit. The boy retired to the kitchen doorway.

“On the evening of the tenth, I spent his last night with a mutual friend at an orchard in Pak Xang.”

“I see. Then won’t you join me?”

There was something slightly less authoritative about his voice. “No. We talked of a number of things. He surprised me at how forgiving he was when it came to the dealings of the pl. He held no animosity toward the local cadres here who had thrown him out of his palace. There was only-”

“Sir, if this is a private conversation I think it would be better conducted elsewhere. Would you like to join me in a beer?”

He no longer looked at Siri’s green eyes, which had burned uncomfortably into his own.