Six and a Half Deadly Sins (19 page)

“Good for you.”

“My theory is that you weren’t sent here as the goodwill ambassador to negotiate a peace settlement with the warring Chinese or observe enemy troop movements. Hardly a one-man job, I’d say, especially for one so frail. Especially for an ex-politburo man who argued with and upset almost everyone on the Central Committee. My theory is that you were sent up here to check the map archives of Muang Sing. That they sent half a dozen old farts like yourself to pore over curling land documents and village records of all the border provinces for a few days. Nice, safe, little job to keep you out of the way. How’s that for a theory?”

The reply was in the form of unconvincing snores from an ex-somebody, caught out.

By 5:30 they were in Agnes and on the road. They calculated that, without mishap, they’d be back in Muang Sing by lunchtime. They just needed to stop briefly in Un Mai and pick up the next clue from old Grandmother Amphone’s family. The road was named Highway One, which signified that it was the first, rather than the best, of the northern roads, but it had weathered well and allowed a good deal of uninterrupted speeding. It passed directly through Na Maw.

There was nothing spectacular about the scenery. A few hills. One or two valleys. Forgettable villages with no signs. The previous day they’d made the entire journey in three hours. Civilai had conceded that, although the Chinese couldn’t cook to save their lives, they did put together a damned decent road. Indeed, with only three stops to empty old bladders and throw up that morning’s breakfast—a greasy plate of eggs—they arrived in a little village they didn’t bother to ask the name of. It would have been perfect timing for an early lunch, but neither was feeling well enough to eat. They stocked up on fresh fruit and clean drinking water and hoped that an appetite might catch up with them on the road.

Twenty kilometers before Un Mai, on a blacktop that had been as deserted as Mars the previous day, they ran into a roadblock. It was piled high with freshly cut logs. Though unmanned, it was impossible to go around without leaving the road and crossing open terrain that sloped downward at an acute angle.

“That’s odd,” said Siri. “I didn’t notice this yesterday.”

“Me neither. In the past twenty-four hours someone has erected a barricade worthy of
Les Misérables.
It is obviously here to tell us that the only road to Muang Sing is now inaccessible.”

“It’s symbolic,” said Siri.

“Why so?”

“There are better places to build a roadblock. Spots where you wouldn’t be able to pass even with four-wheel drive. The barrier builders can still use the road. It’s a warning to others.”

“So what are our options?”

“We ignore the warning and continue on, or we turn around and hide out in the room above the nightclub until the road is cleared and spend the rest of our lives wondering
what would have happened if we’d had the balls to keep going.”

“The rest of our lives being …?”

“In my case, it could be days.”

“So let’s do it. I mean the former.”

Agnes headed down toward the valley. There was one point so steep that the old boys instinctively leaned to their right as two wheels left the ground. The jeep hovered for a second before bumping back to earth. They scrambled up onto the roadway and heard the thump of mud against the undercarriage as the wheels cleaned themselves. The scenery hadn’t changed, but the atmosphere was thicker on this side of the barrier. Siri’s foot wasn’t so heavy on the accelerator. Civilai didn’t sing off-key French communist campfire songs. The deserted road was fraught with tension as if some evil spirit lay around every corner. And it didn’t take long to learn the reason for their apprehension.

They rounded one of many sharp bends and came to a second barrier. This was merely a single line of rocks. Siri braked, and even before the jeep had shuddered to a stop, they were surrounded by dozens of armed soldiers. They swarmed down on the jeep from every direction in their almost-matching green uniforms and dented helmets. They were yelling and screaming in Chinese and punching the muzzles of their weapons toward the old men.

“Don’t put up your hands,” said Civilai.

“Are you mad?” Siri asked.

“Just trust me. Keep your hands down.”

The swarm had reached the jeep, and despite the fact that neither Siri nor Civilai could understand Chinese, it was evident the gentlemen would have been most grateful if the Lao should put up their hands and, perhaps, get out of the jeep. One soldier went so far as to fire a bullet above their heads to emphasize the seriousness of the situation. Instead, Civilai
slowly raised his letter of introduction and held it in front of his face. He smiled as if it were an invitation from the Chinese Premier himself.

An officer barked an order, and some of the men stood back to let him approach the jeep. He said something in Chinese, and Civilai replied in Lao, “I do not speak Chinese.”

The officer tried again in English. Civilai’s only competence in those two languages was to recognize them. He replied in French, “I do not speak English.” As the officer had apparently run out of languages, Civilai said in Lao, “Sir, the least you can do is have the decency to learn the language of the country you’re invading.”

The officer snatched the paper from Civilai and looked at its unfathomable lettering. He was obviously unsure as to how to proceed. The lack of fear on the faces of the old men, their refusal to adopt a pose of subjugation, and their ages called for the intervention of a higher authority. He barked another order.

One soldier handed his gun to a colleague and climbed all over the two old men, apparently in search of weapons. He found none. The officer called his unit to regroup, all but a dozen who took up positions around the jeep. The others scrambled up the rise and were swallowed by the thick vegetation. The only sounds that remained were the chirping of birds and the clicks of the cooling jeep.

“Well,” said Siri, looking around at the silent circle of armed men, “if I was feeling a bit better, I could take them on.”

“If you were feeling better—and if you were Bruce Lee,” said Civilai.

“You’ll recall that the twelve men Bruce engages are invariably armed with little balsa-wood sticks or bath sponges. I haven’t yet seen him take on submachine gunners.”

“All right, boys?” Civilai shouted. “Anyone here speak Lao?”

If they did, nobody owned up.

“Where do we stand, brother?” Siri asked.

“I suppose that depends on whether we’ve run into a small advance party or the entire Chinese Third Army. My intuition tells me the latter.”

“What? Why?”

“Because they left us here rather than take us to their camp, where we’d see just how large a force they have. Once we knew that, they’d probably have no choice but to shoot us. I imagine their commander will want to know why we’re here and how much we—and by
we
, I mean the Lao government—know of their plan. As the roadblock wasn’t up yesterday, and we’re about twenty kilometers from the border, I suspect they’ve only just arrived. They would have hoped to make it to the Vietnamese border without any resistance. I suspect that this is the second front, hoping to sneak across Laos unnoticed.”

Siri had a huge grin on his face.

“What are you smiling about?” Civilai asked.

“You.”

“What about me?”

“For all the years I’ve known you, I thought you were quite useless.”

“Thank you.”

“I mean, pleasant company, but not exactly practical. I thought your diplomacy was all tea and compliments and taking foreign leaders to ‘wink, wink’ traditional masseurs. I’ve never been with you in your element before. I’m impressed. What’s our next move?”

“I have no idea.”

“Don’t spoil it for me. Surely you had all this planned out back in Vientiane?”

“I didn’t expect for one second we’d actually find an invading army up here.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t panic. I’ll think of something.”

Nothing happened for forty minutes. The guards got hot once the sun had broken through the mist, and they retreated to the shade of the trees. The old boys’ adrenaline drained rapidly, leaving only the symptoms of flu, diarrhea and nausea that had been Siri’s travel companions for much of the journey. They were dozing in their non-reclining seats when they were roused by the sound of a snapping to attention. They opened their eyes to see the first officer and a high-ranking commander marching toward them accompanied by a man both Siri and Civilai recognized immediately. Colonel Bouaphan had been the Lao Vice Minister of Economic Affairs until a year before. One day he’d emptied the contents of his office safe and left a note to say he’d be defecting to Communist China. Nobody, including his wife, cared very much, and nobody had heard from him since.

The first officer barked something, and the defector stepped forward. He wore a Chinese uniform that was too small for him. “Hello, comrades,” said Bouaphan. He was pigeon-toed and pigeon-chested which made him look a lot like … a pigeon.

“How’s treachery treating you?” asked Civilai.

“Ooh, can’t complain. The food’s good, and I have a sweet new wife. How’s poverty and mismanagement?”

“At least it’s our poverty and mismanagement,” said Siri.

The officer barked again. His oral skills all seemed to be canine.

“Right,” said Bouaphan. “So I’m in a bit of a spot here.”

“I really hope we’ll be able to help you out of it,” said Civilai.

“You see,” said Bouaphan, “I had certain influence in the decision to pass innocently through Lao territory on our way to Dien Viang Phu. My appraisal was that—given the Lao
inability to tie its own bootlaces—you’d not realize we were here until long after we entered Vietnam. So what I’d like to know is how you found us.”

Civilai smiled and said, “I seem to recall underestimation was your forte back at the finance ministry. That’s why nobody particularly missed you when you left.”

Bouaphan didn’t find the comment funny.

Siri coughed. It started as a
don’t push your luck
cough but soon became bronchial.

“You be nice now, Comrade Civilai,” said Bouaphan. “I’m the only one who can get you out of here in one piece.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” said Civilai. “You know who I am. Do you really think I’d just happen to be here on vacation? We’ve been monitoring your troop buildup for a week.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I know for a fact you don’t have the resources.”

“We don’t, no. But our new Big Brother does. The Soviets have been very interested in your movements. You’d be surprised what technical strides they’ve made since the tsars moved on. My mission here is to politely ask you to turn around and cross back over the border to avert, amongst other things, a third world war. If you refuse, and if my brother here and I do not arrive in Un Mai in an hour, not only will your advance meet heavy resistance long before you reach the Vietnamese border, but your retreat will have been cut off completely, and you’ll be stranded here.”

The commander had said nothing thus far, but Siri noticed that he had his head bowed slightly. He was listening to a short man who stood directly behind him. This, Siri realized, must have been an official translator. It appeared that the Chinese did not completely trust their defector.

“Utter nonsense,” said Bouaphan. “There have been no Lao troops anywhere near this border.”

“You seem to have also underestimated the hill tribe
militia,” said Civilai. “With Soviet comradeship comes Soviet funding. It’s amazing how unified a country can become with a few rubles jingling in its pockets.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Bouaphan.

“I don’t care,” said Civilai.

There was a moment of silence during which a great deal of brain matter was stirred. It was Siri who broke the deadlock. “Young man,” he called.

The interpreter leaned out from behind the officer and pointed to himself, eyebrows raised.

“Yes, you,” Siri continued. “Tell your boss that this is Laos. We’ve been an ally to China since our ancestors taught you how to make gunpowder and the paper to write about it. We’re two old men in a jeep. We’re here in the spirit of friendship. We don’t want Chinese corpses on our soil. Tell him to go home and kiss his wife and think of another plan.”

The interpreter did his job, ignoring the interruptions of Bouaphan’s stilted Chinese. The commander stared at the old men in the jeep, who shrugged and did their utmost to seem indifferent. There followed a heated discussion, a bark, and the men fell in. They followed their commander back up the rise. Before disappearing behind the tree line, the officer stopped and handed something to one of his men. The soldier ran down to the jeep and gave Siri back his key. Bouaphan was left in the no-man’s-land he’d created for himself.

“You’d better run and say farewell to your sweet concubine,” shouted Civilai. “I think you’ve underestimated yourself into a political toilet.”

The defector was lost for words. He jogged up the hill every inch a pigeon, even down to the egg he’d laid for himself.

Siri and Civilai enjoyed five minutes of silent isolation until they sighed in unison, then laughed.

“Do you suppose anyone in Vientiane will believe this?” Siri asked.

“That we averted a Chinese invasion?”

“Yes.”

“Not on your life.”

“Too bad. I’m long overdue a medal.”

“Nice touch, that wife-kissing line.”

“Civilai, you are the maestro of diplomacy. I’m going to put you in my will.”

“You have nothing I want.”

After another frustrating hour of attempting to get word to Phosy and Siri, Nurse Dtui, with Mr. Geung in tow, found the postman who had delivered the poisoned
pha sin
to Dr. Siri. He was sitting under a tree munching instant noodles directly from the packet. He washed it down with red sugar water. He was a man in need of nutritional advice amongst other things.

“Hello, Uncle,” she said.

He looked up at her, then across to Geung. “Taking the moron for a walk, are you?”

If it was a joke, it was bettered by Geung saying, “If you don’t have s-s-s-something nnnice to say, don’t say any—anything.”