Colin Cotterill - Disco for the Departed

The intake of misguided capitalist lackeys had dried up until after the concert. In two days the first delegates would be arriving in Vieng Xai. Those not invited to stay as honored guests of the Lao politburo members in their houses would be put up here in the guesthouse. It was hoped that Guesthouse Number Two, under construction at a frenzied pace at the far side of town, would be ready to accept the overflow. But, until all this happened, the workers at Guesthouse Number One had nothing much to do other than fall in love with a four-year-old orphan.

Yet, despite their free time, the staff still didn’t allow any flexibility when it came to the guests’ timetable. Siri and Dtui had left before breakfast time, yet still had two hours before they’d be allowed lunch. They sat on the veranda drinking tea and nibbling sunflower seeds, watching Panoy talking happily to the two-dimensional royal family. Fortunately, Lit turned up at ten thirty with two slabs of peanut brittle that the three of them devoured with relish. Putting considerable effort into making eye contact with his intended, Lit told them what he had discovered when he completed the task Siri had entrusted to him earlier.

Before giving up his information, he wanted to firmly establish that what he was about to tell them was absolutely confidential, as it concerned a mission that was still classified. This information could go no further than the veranda upon which they sat. It was, he informed them, a national security issue. Siri reminded him that nobody at the table, including Panoy, was likely to pass anything on to the Americans, so he should get on with it.

“Very well,” Lit began. “The unit-and it was only a unit-that was stationed at the Xam Neua intersection the night Isandro was killed, was a guerilla outfit whose mission was to conduct clandestine operations inside Hmong-occupied territory. It was set up shortly after the ambush of Colonel Ha Hung’s men, two months earlier. A number of its members had been in Ha Hung’s battalion, and most had been involved in the earlier search for their commander’s kidnapped daughter.”

The unit had since been disbanded and the men dispatched to other sections, but Lit proudly produced a carbon copy of the names of its original members. He handed it to Siri, who ran his finger down the list. Although he doubted a list of the names of Vietnamese soldiers would have much meaning to him, one name leaped from the paper. Siri took a pencil from his top pocket and encircled it. He smiled at Dtui and Lit, but didn’t bother to explain.

“Are you free, Comrade Lit?” Siri asked.

“Dr. Siri, in two days, I have to ensure the safety of sixty foreign dignitaries, almost our entire cabinet and forty odd generals. Before then, I have to solve a murder mystery to the satisfaction of the president. If you could do anything to make that possible, I would gladly give up sleeping for the next seventy-two hours.”

“Good. Then let’s go for a drive.”

As Lit drove and Dtui sat silent in the backseat, Siri described, perhaps in too great detail for his auditor’s comprehension, the findings of the autopsy. The young man nodded at the right times, but Siri could see that he was out of his depth. He was doing a job he saw as temporary but knew he had to do to the best of his ability in order to leave it. Thus he was willing to afford Siri every ounce of cooperation he had to offer. Often, Lit looked in his rearview mirror, not to check whether they were being followed, but in order to establish the day’s first eye contact with Dtui. In spite of the width of his mirror and the breadth of his fiancйe, she always managed to be somehow just outside the frame. In fact, the journey almost ended in disaster at one point. Lit, with his eyes on the mirror, failed to notice that the road led directly into the river. Siri had awakened from his catnap just in time to yell a warning.

Siri knew the route well. When they turned off at the appropriate kilometer marker, the same ragamuffin Lao guard was there beneath his straw shelter. They didn’t even stop to be lied to by him. The poor man slowly got his hunting rifle from his shoulder and eventually maneuvered it into a firing position, but by then the jeep was long gone. Not a problem as he didn’t actually have any bullets.

Ten minutes later, Siri, Lit, and Dtui were sitting around a table in a tent that contained nothing else. Siri had pulled his old friend, Captain Vo, to one side to explain the situation. This was no longer just an informal chat. Events had reached an official level that involved military protocol and records and witnesses. So while the Vietnamese were setting up all the official rigmarole, Siri had nothing to do but sit between Dtui and Lit like an Italian grandmother chaperoning a date. Dtui was grateful; Lit, annoyed.

The silence was relieved by a procession of serious men in dress uniform who filled up all but one of the remaining seats around the table. It occurred to Siri that this was probably not the most likely atmosphere in which to induce a career soldier to admit to premeditated murder. In his head, he went through a number of strategies for eliciting a confession, but even as Sergeant Major Giap walked escorted into the tent, saluted, and sat in the final seat, Siri still hadn’t the vaguest idea of how he could get the man to talk. As it turned out, he had nothing to worry about. Captain Vo took the lead.

“Sergeant. Major Giap…?”

“Yes, sir?”

“In January of this year, you were a member of a unit of Vietminh troops stationed twenty miles from Xam Neua.”

Giap looked around at the faces of the strangers and realized the army expected him to tell what he knew, secret operation or not. “That’s right, sir.”

“One night,” Vo continued, “a tradesman working in Vieng Xai came to your camp and reported that he’d seen the two missing Cubans. Is that correct?”

Siri supposed that if the sergeant major had said no at this point, the matter might be dropped. But once again the old soldier looked around at the expressionless faces of his accusers and seemed to know instinctively that these were all questions to which there were already answers.

“Yes.”

The captain looked harshly into his eyes. Siri saw that this was no longer the laughing man with whom he’d played chess deep in nameless jungles. Captain Vo had hardened into a leader who demanded unswerving loyalty and total honesty from the men under him.

“When Dr. Siri was here before,” he continued, “you apparently found it unnecessary to mention this rather important fact. Could you explain to us why that was?”

“He didn’t ask, sir.”

The captain quickly produced a smile that covered a lot of fury. “He’s asking now, Sergeant Major.”

There was no halfway for the old soldier: he could be silent and get shot, lie and get shot, or spill the beans and get court-martialed and then get shot. It wasn’t a great choice. This was the Vietnamese army. There was nowhere to appeal. If you screwed up, justice was swift.

“We were picked individually by our lieutenant,” he began. As he spoke, one of the uniformed officers recorded his words in shorthand. “He rushed around and only selected those of us who’d served directly under the colonel. Some of us had been involved in the search for his daughter. We were given the choice to join in or not. Of course, we all did. There were seven of us, I suppose eight, if you include the old Hmong scout. It all had to be discreet-no guns. We had no authority to do what we planned to do. We made a vow not to talk to anyone about it, whatever happened.

“We set out as quick as we could. We weren’t sure how long the Cubans were going to be around. We went in one truck, parked half a mile from the cave, and ran in.”