Colin Cotterill - Slash and Burn

“I’m so happy. I knew it was you,” said the young man.

Manuel Castillo, or whatever his name was, threw his arms around the ex-pilot before the old boy could get out of his way. His cufflink caught on Cueball Dave’s neck. Then the lights went out.

The Baby Booby Agogo didn’t exactly close. It wound down and then wound back up again depending on how many customers were there and how much money they were spending. Cueball Dave wasn’t spending any money and he was taking up valuable space. He’d been unconscious on the countertop for an hour and he made the place look low class. The mamasan , a sprightly old lady whose makeup appeared lime green under the mood lights, decided that, regular customer or not, Dave had overstayed his welcome. She shook him roughly but he didn’t react. After her second attempt to rouse him, she felt for his pulse. She was a woman of vast experience so her next reaction was to take out his wallet, remove all but twenty baht , replace the wallet and shout for the bar manager. Another customer had chosen the Baby Booby as his final resting place.

The Friendship Hotel in Phonsavan, designed like a hunting lodge, so they say, had originally been called the Snow Leopard Inn. It was very close to the old airfield and a short walk from one of the many jar clusters on the Plain of Jars. The hotel was built and occupied for many years by Corsican drug dealers in the heyday of the plain’s notorious opium trade. The building served as a warehouse for pressed opium and the mafia pilots made daily stops at the heroin processing plants before delivering their wicked wares to the poor saps fighting in Vietnam. When local politics and war forced the Europeans out of business, the building was renovated and rooms were added. There was nothing remarkable about the Friendship Hotel other than the miracle of its continued presence. It stood amid a landscape of craters in the most bombed area of the war. It somehow avoided the total decimation of every recognizable structure from hospitals to pig pens and nobody could explain why it was still standing, not even allowing for the well-documented lack of expertise of the Royal Lao bomber pilots. There was overwhelming evidence of near misses. The surrounding countryside was littered with unexploded ordnance and large signs at the hotel perimeter warned guests not to venture beyond the fence. The signs were written in Lao and Russian.

Whether the USMIA task-force members were aware they’d be sleeping in the one-time hub of the Indochinese drug trade was hard to say. But they’d certainly been briefed on the dangers of taking leisurely strolls through the countryside. The hotel manager, a small bubbly Hmong by the name of Toua, had assured the government that the grounds had been cleared of explosives before the extra bungalows were erected behind the main building. Even so, as they hurriedly assembled the bamboo chalets for the MIA teams, a worker had run his hoe into a cluster bomb and lost a foot. He’d become a member of a sizeable club. Few of the residents of Phonsavan could claim a complete set of limbs or appendages. Between 1964 and 1973 there were some 500,000 bombing missions in Laos. Two-point-three million tons of ordnance were rained upon the land. Almost half of this was in the form of cluster bombs; “bombies” as they were affectionately known. And a third of those hadn’t gone off. Not yet. Since the ceasefire, the sly little devils had claimed another twenty-thousand victims. Operation Rain Dance had begun to pepper the Plain of Jars with bombs in 1969 and no clearance operation could ever rid the region of the danger. To everyone’s relief, nothing untoward had happened since the arrival of the Lao and American delegations at the Friendship Hotel. But manager Toua was keeping his three remaining fingers crossed.

The key personnel of the two delegations were billeted in opposite wings of the lodge in rather basic but clean rooms. Those considered to be of a lower status were put up in the bungalows at the rear. These decisions had been taken by Judge Haeng, who, despite his socialist background, was ever conscious of class and status. The security detail comprised two elderly gentlemen with antique muskets who appeared to be on twenty-four-hour shifts as they were ever-present. Even with the noisy generator rattling and clunking at full throttle, electricity was only available from 6:00 until 9:00 P.M. Thence, the guests were left to their own devices. Flashlight beams sabred through the curtains of the American west wing and loud but incomprehensible voices were carried away on cool breezes into the tar-black night.

In the east wing, General Suvan, the Lao team leader, had retired early. The old soldier spent a good deal of his time either napping or being completely asleep. Even when he was awake he had that saggy facial skin that made him look as if his features were permanently drowsy. Judge Haeng and his cousin Vinai, the Lao interpreter, were sharing a double. Mumbled secrets could be heard through the stucco walls of their darkened room. These three had been the only “non-negotiable” members of the Lao delegation. Minister Bounchu had to maintain some face, after all.

At the furthest extremity of the east wing, a circle of lit candles inside a circle of people illuminated a dozen bottles of rice whisky. The bottles had handwritten labels and cardboard stoppers wrapped in plastic so their pedigree was in no doubt. The taste, however, was exemplary. The mixer of choice was locally produced papaya juice and the finger food was corned beef from cans and graham crackers, both pilfered from the huge stock of supplies brought in by the Americans.

“Exactly how long are they planning to stay up here?” asked Civilai. The ex-Politburo pain-in-the-backside had beaten his best friend Siri into retirement by twelve months. He’d spent most of that time eating. For many years no more than a stick figure with a balding globe at its apex, Civilai’s parts were slowly starting to swell, led most triumphantly by his stomach. Not fat by any stretch of the imagination but the old gentleman carried his paunch around proudly like a monk with a new silver alms bowl.

“Theirs is an eating culture,” Siri explained to him. “Like the Thais. Whereas we’re more of a drinking culture. Good luck!”

He raised his glass and all those seated around on the grass floor matting mirrored the gesture and echoed “Good luck” in hushed but enthusiastic tones. They swigged their fruity nightcaps.

“And here’s to Malee,” Siri continued. “Beautiful daughter of Nurse Dtui here and her handsome beau, Inspector Phosy.” Again the group raised their glasses and swigged. “Malee is experiencing her first week away from her parents. Let’s hope she doesn’t get into any bad habits at the state creche.”

“Here here,” said Dtui.

“And,” Siri said, “as the scene at Wattay airport was characteristically chaotic and I didn’t get a chance to introduce him properly, allow me to welcome our old friend, Commander Lit from the security division. The Minister insisted we have someone from security on the team and I could think of nobody better.”

The applause was deliberately muffled as nobody wanted to alert Judge Haeng to their soiree. Lit was a tall, gangly bespectacled man, stiff as a teak plank. His smile was easy and his eyes keen.

“Lit has recently been promoted and transferred to the third garrison in Vientiane, “Siri added. “I had the pleasure of working with him in Vieng Xai and I know he’ll be a most splendid member of our team.”

Siri could have added more. He could have mentioned, for example, that the young officer had been so taken with his Nurse Dtui during that trip that he had asked her to marry him. As Dtui had turned him down and as her current husband was now sitting beside her, Siri decided nothing would be gained from that announcement apart from a little sport with Inspector Phosy. But that could wait. “Lit,” he said, “there are some people here you don’t know. This gentleman to my left is our morgue expert and the most hard-working person in Vientiane: Mr. Geung Watajak. Geung, you really don’t have to stand u-oh, very well.”