Colin Cotterill - Anarchy and the Old Dogs

“What are you hunting?” Dtui asked.

“Rabbits. Stringy little bastards they are around here, but we don’t stand a chance of catching anything better with all them hungry scumbags next door.” He lifted his chin in the direction of the bamboo fence.

“Do you live around here?” she asked. She’d started to walk beside him across the denuded land.

“Over yonder. Just a little hut, but I was born there, so it’s home.”

“So, you remember when the Americans were here.”

“Sure do,” he said in English, squeezing the brim of his hat. “Where do you think I got this from?”

“And they say this whole camp used to be their armory storage ground.”

“Armory and camp. That’s why they needed so much land. They had to keep a space between the houses and the bombs, just in case. All this land we’re walking on used to be inside the camp. The fence was once way over there.” He pointed to the far side of the clearing.

“You mean they made the refugee camp smaller?”

“Yeah. Odd, isn’t it? It spreads out in every other direction the more it fills up, but they don’t touch this bit here. It must be because of the A-bomb.”

“What A-bomb?”

“The Americans had their A-bombs stored here and the radiation killed the land and made it dangerous.”

“Who told you that?”

“The soldiers.”

“American soldiers?”

“No, Lao. They told the wife and me not to come over here after dark. They said the radiation’s worse at night.”

“You saw Lao soldiers here?”

“Yeah.”

“In uniform?”

“They didn’t need to be in uniform. I can tell.”

“So you don’t come here at night. And you believe this radiation story.”

“Not really. But if a bunch of boys with guns tell me not to hang around at night, I’d believe anything they told me. Wouldn’t you?”

“One last question.”

“Are you with the radio?”

“Eh?”

“We listen sometimes, when we can get batteries. We listen to the women on Lao radio. They all talk nice like you. Are you a reporter?”

“Kind of. Last question: Did they-I mean the Americans-did they store all their weapons in the open air?”

“Most of ‘em. They covered ‘em with camouflage netting and leaves and stuff. But some they put in the cellars.”

“You wouldn’t remember where those cellars are, would you?

“No, never seen ‘em. I only know about ‘em cause my nephew used to porter for the Americans. That’s how I got my hat. Like it?”

“It’s lovely.”

Dtui sat sweating in the shade of the Devil’s Vagina tree. It seemed to give off more heat than it stopped. She’d walked every inch of the clearing stamping her feet-expecting a clunk, but getting nothing. There had to be something here. Siri had mentioned the tree in his note and its name was code for the operation. Phosy had disappeared from a spot just inside the fence. There had to be a connection and it had to be at this place.

She’d been sitting contemplating for an hour when the earth moved. A piece of sod rose from the ground some thirty yards in front of her. It was a foot thick and beneath it was a head she recognized belonging to Mr. Kumhuk, the deputy section chief. He checked in all directions, obviously confused Dtui for a shadow, and threw the block of earth to one side. He pulled himself out of the ground, replaced the divot, and sprinted to the fence, where he vanished through the gap.

Dtui hurried over to where Mr. Kumhuk had emerged but she saw no obvious entrance. There were tufts of grass and rocks but no lines or handles. Then she saw it, a slight discoloration of the vegetation, a small area of deliberate landscaping. She grabbed a handful of grass and realized straightaway that it was fake, some kind of synthetic material. She pulled with all her might and was able to lift an uneven area of ground surprisingly easily. She shoved it to one side and looked down. Another black hole in the ground. Hadn’t she had enough of those? She seemed to have a magnetic attraction to eerie confined spaces. Earlier in the year she’d almost died from heading blindly down a dark tunnel. Oh, well. Que sera sera.

She picked out the steps with her feet and lowered herself down gradually. The stairway was concrete and led deep inside the earth. She was already feeling claustrophobic by the time she saw the breaker switch at the foot of the stairs. She pushed the handle up and banks of fluorescent lights flicked on one by one across a vast concrete silo. There were tables and camp beds and hundreds-perhaps thousands-of enormous crates. Banks of artillery lined the walls as well as uniforms in neat piles. This was the home base for the Devil’s Vagina insurgents; there was no doubt in her mind. There was also no doubt that the Thais had rebuilt the camp boundary wall so no prying United Nations officials would stumble across this nest of vipers inside a supposedly neutral camp. The Thais were in on it. No surprise there. The Thai military was riddled with Red paranoia. And there was enough American memorabilia around to suggest the U.S. wasn’t about to lose the war gracefully either. Dtui doubted the Americans had merely forgotten to take it all with them.

There were no side rooms or annexes. This was one slab of space. An area had been set aside for planning. Chairs with hinged writing trays stood in rows facing a large blackboard, and various pin boards of maps and charts written in Lao stood on easels. She wondered what the best course of action might be. Grab as many documents as possible and make a run for it? To where? She was forty miles from the nearest point on the Lao border. How far was she likely to get? She couldn’t memorize all the names and dates. She couldn’t even remember how to calculate lost calories. Perhaps she should just set fire to the place and blow it all to hell. That might slow them down long enough to get word to Siri and Civilai in…

Her discovery, her euphoria, her dreams of saving her country, her heartbeat were all interrupted by the sound of a deep male throat-clearing cough from just a few yards behind her.

Siri sat in the six-foot concrete pipe section beneath the unfinished Soviet bridge. He was looking at the crayon-and-pencil decorations that turned a lump of sewer connection into a clubhouse for two ten-year-old friends. Cracked coffee cups and glasses and little plates piled with river pebbles, a cardboard box with a hole ripped out of it in the shape of a TV screen, a string-and-sardine-tin burglar alarm he’d tripped when he arrived. These were the evidence of happy childhood fantasies, good moments that should never have been erased so suddenly.

Siri wiped away the tears again and put his hand on the amulet beneath his shirt. It seemed pleased with its beautiful new plaited string but it had nothing to tell him about Sing’s disappearance that day. The boy’s soul was far away, frolicking with the dolphins, but his death remained unsolved and unavenged.

Siri thought about the little fellow, playing truant from school, sitting here in his clubhouse, looking for mischief. He knew he’d be picked up by some do-gooder if he wandered the streets in his uniform. So, with no choice, he’d hung out here, nothing but a plate of river pebbles to eat, nothing but a cardboard TV to entertain him. How long could a hyperactive imp stand it? Did he get bored and go for a swim, get into trouble? Everyone in the village agreed he could outswim and outdive even the most experienced fisherman. Did he fall and hit his head and drown? There had been no evidence of head trauma or of being snagged on an underwater root or a net. Besides, none of those answers would explain the anomalies: the five-day gap between his disappearance and the discovery, the different rates of decomposition between the top and bottom halves of his body, the splinters, the insect bites.