Slash and Burn (6 page)
“OK,” Peach went on, “I hope I can remember it all. Briefly, Air America was—still is, for all I know—an airline funded and operated by the CIA. They flew what they called “aid” missions inside Laos after the Geneva accord banned foreign military personnel. Of course the CIA continued to recruit military people, mostly marine pilots like Bowry. They took them out of uniform and maintained that they were civilian pilots working for a private company. They carried a lot more than rice, mind you. Captain Bowry was flying helicopter missions in and out of Laos for two years. As I’m sure you know, not a hundred kilometers from here were two CIA bases. One was at Sam Thong where there was a refugee camp for displaced hill tribe families. The other was at Long Cheng, the home of the CIA’s secret army. It’s where General Vang Pao and his Hmong troops were based. It’s where the CIA trained them up to fight you guys. At one stage, Long Cheng, with all its troops and US advisors and pilots, was the second most populated city in the country after Vientiane. There were so many spies there it collected the name Spook Heaven or Spook City. But that’s the big picture. We’re all here for the little picture. Captain Bowry.”
“Why him?” Phosy asked. “I mean, of all the airmen they claim are missing, why is this man at the top of Washington’s list?”
“Good question.” Peach nodded. “And as far as I can see, it pretty much comes down to influence and pressure.”
“And money,” said Civilai. “It always comes down to money.”
“You might be right, sir,” Peach agreed. “Captain Bowry is or was the son of Senator Walter Bowry from South Carolina. It appears he’s had people searching for his son for ten years. He sits on a couple of important committees and has a lot of clout in foreign policy. It’s probably due to his cronies there that money was freed up from the aid budget to offer funding to Laos. There was a lot of opposition to it. “Why should we be feeding the enemy?” That kind of thing. It really flew in the face of anti-communist feeling. So you can be sure he had some kind of pull.”
“Why this burst of excitement after ten years?” Daeng asked.
“On June tenth, someone sent the congressman photos purportedly taken inside Laos,” Peach told her. “They showed a Caucasian peering out of a bamboo cell. In one of the pictures he seems to have a briefcase or something with him which might be relevant. He could have been in his thirties. He was bearded, suntanned and a lot thinner than the father remembered, but he believed it was his son. The picture quality wasn’t that clear and other relatives weren’t so certain but the congressman was positive.”
“But he wasn’t standing beside a road sign,” Civilai said. “Wasn’t holding a copy of the national newspaper?”
Peach shook her head.
“Just him in a hut, as far as I know,” she said.
“Then there’s absolutely no way to tell where or when the photos were taken,” Civilai went on. “A hut is a hut is a hut. Could be at a theme park in Hong Kong for all they know. Am I right?”
“You’re always right,” said Siri. “But the important thing is that the photographs caused a reaction—money was made available and through just a little diplomatic extortion, this mission was instigated. And here we are, an ace team selected on merit on the basis of all the solid investigative work we’ve done in the past. The Party couldn’t have chosen a finer band of professionals to find young Boyd and bring a little peace of mind to his family.”
They toasted to this testimonial.
“What do we know as fact?” Lit asked.
“About the disappearance?” said Peach, flipping open her notepad. She paused to take a long sip of her drink then ran her finger down the page.
“It was the night of August eighth, 1968. Bowry and his Filipino flight mechanic, Nino Sebastian, had been drinking excessively at the forward air controller canteen at the Long Cheng base. They were with a pilot called Mike Wolff. He was with the FAC, the forward air control, also known as Ravens. It appears that they got hold of some LSD from somewhere and went out of their minds. At one stage, Bowry and Sebastian climbed into a cage with the mascot, a black bear, who was fortunately already sleeping off the effects of a heavy night of beer. Then, about two or three in the morning, Bowry announced he was going for a joyride in his chopper. Sebastian tried to talk him out of it but was too wasted to go after him. That wasn’t the way it was written up in the official Air America report, by the way. Officially there was engine trouble and the helicopter went down in the mountains. Our version is from interviews with eyewitnesses; the FAC pilot he’d been drinking with in the canteen and the mechanic. That was the way they recalled it. Boyd Bowry headed off into the night sky and half an hour later they heard an explosion. They sent out search and rescue teams at first light but as they had no idea what direction he’d gone in, and there’d been no mayday signal, and there was no sign of wreckage, they abandoned the search after five days.”
“If they heard the explosion he couldn’t have gone very far,” said Lit.
“And nothing else until the photos turned up?” asked Dtui. “No sightings? Reports?”
“Not a thing.”
“Any ideas who sent the photos?” Phosy asked.
“They arrived at the US embassy in Bangkok in a sealed manila envelope care of the military attaché. No stamp. No frank mark. It was just there in the box along with the regular mail. The words “Laos, 78” were written on the back of the photos.”
“In English characters?” Commander Lit asked.
“Yes. No identification of the sender.”
“So, it wasn’t from a bounty hunter hoping to get a reward,” Civilai remarked casually. “It’s usually about the money, you know.”
“So you’ve said,” Siri smiled. “How did the embassy identify the airman?”
“From one of the pictures,” Peach told him. “It showed the tail section broken off the helicopter. It had the registration number H32. That was Bowry’s.”
“Does the American delegation have the photos with them?” asked Madame Daeng.
“I could ask.”
“It might help to identify the area,” Phosy put in. “Vegetation.”
“Different plants growing at different elevations,” added Commander Lit.
“If there are any locals in the pictures we might be able to identify their clothing,” said Daeng. “At least we’d know what ethnic group we’re looking for.”
“Even the pilot himself,” Siri added. “After all these years he’d be wearing the clothes they provided. That could give us a clue.”
“The weave of a sarong,” said Daeng.
“Just the style of putting together the bamboo hut,” Phosy suggested. “Unique to different regions.”
“Really,” Commander Lit agreed, “there’s a lot to be picked up from photographs if you know what you’re looking for.”
The group was suddenly aware of their American guest staring wide-eyed at the interaction and smiling warmly.
“Have you had a thought?” Siri asked.
“No.”
“Then…. ?”
“You guys. You’re….”
“What?”
“Capable.”
“Be careful now,” laughed Civilai. “Such lavish praise might go to our heads.”
“No, I’m serious. There I was thinking Dr. Siri put this guest list together so his friends and family could have an all-expenses-paid trip to the mountains. Nepotism, you know? That wouldn’t have surprised me at all. But, you guys….”
“Yes?”
“You’re the real thing. You actually know what you’re doing.’
‘Too kind,” said Daeng. “This calls for another round.”
“I’m serious,” said Peach.
“As am I,” said Daeng. “And it wouldn’t surprise me if you saw one or two other flashes of brilliance from us before the week’s out. Hold on to your hat.”
Siri smiled at this interaction, impressed at how Peach slotted so naturally into a Lao setting. She seemed mature and wise beyond her years.
Corned beef and crackers turned out to be a very appropriate complement to Xiang Khouang rice whiskey, especially with a good dollop of mustard. They refilled and re-drank and the conversation meandered around a myriad of subjects and drunkenness arrived with the night mist. Before they staggered off on their separate ways, they vowed not to rest until they found their young airman. Siri reminded them to use the signposted latrines rather than hopping over the back fence. Prostheses, said Civilai, after several stabs at the word, had come a long way since the peg but were still very poor substitutes for actual legs. The only people not to head off in search of their rooms that night were Siri and Daeng. Siri had tried to leave but Daeng reminded him that they had hosted the meeting in their own room. To be honest, she only remembered that at the last moment when she saw her corduroy working trousers hanging from the curtain rod. As the guests had taken one candle each to see their ways home, only two stunted candles remained on the grass mat. The room was a salon of slow dancing shadows.
“It’s cold up here,” said Daeng.
“We should huddle together for warmth,” Siri suggested.
Siri’s attempts at blowing out the candle flames left him coughing and wheezing.
“That’s not a very promising sign for huddling,” said Daeng.
“I’ll be fine. It only happens when I exhale violently. I’m rather good at inhaling.”
He licked his fingers, pinched, and the last flame died. The room could have been draped in black velvet, so rich was the darkness. They skirted the island of bottles and glasses and made their way to the bed. As was his habit, Siri took the window side. The bed was covered with a quilt so thick that he almost needed a tire lever to lift it and insert himself underneath. He reached for his wife.
“My goodness, you aren’t cold at all,” he said.
“Patience. I’ll be with you in a few seconds,” she replied.
To his surprise, her voice had come not from the bed but from several meters away.
“Oh dear.”
Siri extricated himself from the quilt as quickly as he was able.
“What’s wrong?” Daeng asked.
“Do we have a flashlight in the bags?”
“Of course.”
“Then we should turn it on. I think I may have just been unfaithful to you.”
After a good deal of searching Daeng unearthed the lamp and shone the beam on a lump in the bed covers.
“Who on earth…?” asked Daeng.
“Well, I tell you it certainly isn’t one of the men.”
He heaved off the quilt and there, sleeping like the dead, was Peach Short.
“Siri?”
“I didn’t know. Honestly.”
“Couples have been divorced over less.”
“I thought she was you.”
“When exactly did you realize she wasn’t … no, perhaps you shouldn’t answer that. We should take her to her room. She has a big day tomorrow.”
“She looks so peaceful. Perhaps we should let her….”
“Siri!”
“That was a joke, my dearest.”
Despite all the lugging and manhandling and door opening and laying out, Peach didn’t awaken from her drunken slumber when they sent her home. But by the time they got back to their room, Siri and Daeng were completely tuckered out. The only sound as they held hands under the covers was of their chests rising and falling. A new adventure was about to begin. The only thing certain about tomorrow was that their young American interpreter was going to have a very serious hangover.
The knock on the door might as well have been directly on the inside of Siri’s head. Somebody was in his skull with a wrecking ball trying to get out. The groan from Daeng’s side of the bed told him that she wasn’t faring any better. If it was morning, the day was doing its damnedest not to show it. An early mist had oozed in through the open window and was swirling around the bed like dry ice. In the distance could be heard the thump of artillery fire as the joint Vietnamese/Lao forces began their daylight offensive against the last stubborn pocket of Hmong resistance at the Phu Bia mountain. While the Americans slept soundly in their beds, their discarded allies fought for their lives. The sound was the only sign that dawn had officially cracked. The knocking continued.
“Go away,” said Siri, both to the hangover and the unwanted visitor.
“That rice whiskey…?” said Daeng with a voice like a shovel through pebbles.
“I forgot to mention the day after,” Siri confessed.
“I feel like….”
“Me too.”
“Was that a knock at the door or my eyelids banging together?”
Siri shuddered as he left the warmth of the quilt and quick-stepped across the cold floor to the door. Peach stood in the doorway with a massive smile on her face.
“Morning, Doctor,” she said brightly and slid past Siri into the room. “I was gonna bring you doughnuts and coffee but the nearest deli’s nine hundred kilometers away.”
Daeng peered over the quilt.
“How on earth can you be this jolly?” she asked. “You were paralytic last night.”
“I have a missionary’s constitution. We get back on our feet really fast.”
“Do you … er, remember anything about last night?” Siri asked.
“Absolutely,” she smiled.
“Oh, really?”
“Yes. I remember taking a quick nap on your bed then waking up in my own. I guess showing off with fuel-injected rice whiskey isn’t such a smart idea. Who…?”
“Me and the doctor,” said Daeng, unburdening herself of the bedcover.
“Well, I appreciate it.”
“All part of the service. To what do we owe this wake-up call?”
“Orientation. Remember?” I told you I’d warn you what to expect at the start of each day? She opened her notebook. “OK, today will begin with the ‘Getting to know you’ breakfast at seven thirty. Once we all know each other we fly off to Long Cheng.”
“Because?” Daeng asked.
“I guess because that was the last place anyone saw Boyd Bowry alive.”
“And they think they might have misplaced him in a cupboard somewhere?”
“I doubt there are any cupboards left,” Siri said. “I get the impression there isn’t much remaining of the original outpost. Lost to mother nature and pillaging once the place was overrun, so they tell me.”
“Maybe so,” said Peach, “but, for whatever reason, that’s where the surrounding villagers have been told to assemble with their war booty. You’ve heard the heavy artillery? It means we have to take a very circuitous route to avoid the hostilities. It should take over an hour to get to good old Spook City. The task force sets up a base camp there and we go through the stories and evidence until we get a plausible lead. Then we head off to investigate.”
“I assume we’ll have a packed lunch?” asked Daeng, massaging her temples with her thumbs.
“I don’t think we’ll need to worry about food on this entire trip, Madame Daeng,” Peach laughed. “The chopper that brought us here could barely lift off from the weight of the provisions. They had the team all squashed up at the front. ‘Leave not one can of spam behind’ was the call.”
“And everyone on the list turned up?” Siri asked.
“Pretty much. Senator Vogal and his secretary Miss Chin are on standby.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, it means he may not come. But they still needed to get official permission for the both of them, just in case.”
“In case of what?”
“Success. If we rescue the pilot or we find his remains, he’ll show his face up here. Right now he’s slumming it at the Oriental in Bangkok for the five days of the mission. If he gets news of a breakthrough, they’ll fly him in. He’ll pose for pictures, shake a lot of hands, give quotes to the press. There’ll be maximum exposure back home. Headlines. I doubt he’ll stay here overnight. They’ll fly him back to civilization the same day and he can go home. Job done.”
“And why should he be involved at all?” Daeng asked.
“Well, he’s big on the MIA lobby, for one. If they find a live one there’s a lot of bucks to be had to keep looking. It’s a sensitive issue in Washington. Big political strides to be made by supporting the vets, and, in turn, the military. And, two, he’s Senator Bowry’s best pal. Their kids played together. He knew Boyd. The family want him over here keeping tabs on the investigation.”
“But he doesn’t want to roll up his sleeves and help us dig,” Siri remarked.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Peach. “He’s in Bangkok. If you’re on your recliner TV chair in the States that’s every bit as good as being in the Lao jungle. “Senator Ulysses Vogal the third is in Southeast Asia supervising an MIA joint force mission.” Good line. Nobody questions whether he’s in the sweaty forests of northern Laos or doing cocktails in the lounge. Just the word “Asia” is scary enough over there. He’ll be a hero. If we find Boyd it’ll be his photo on the front page of the
Post
with his arm around the young man, sweat stains around his armpits. You and your team won’t so much as crack a mention. “Local diggers” they’ll call you.”
“What if the boy’s dead?” Daeng asked.
“Same difference. ‘After a prolonged search, Senator Vogal sadly carries the remains of his best friend’s war hero son across the bitumen to board the TWA flight home.’ Votes a-plenty there from the female electorate. He’ll do great in farming communities.”
“You’re impressively cynical for such a young thing,” Daeng smiled.
“Madame Daeng, you try growing up white in Southeast Asia during an American war. The lines between them and us and right and wrong get real fuzzy. It was people like Vogal who decided there should be intervention over here to stop the communist takeover of the world. It was a policy experiment to prop up the fading popularity of the president. Another snow job to con the gullible general voters of North America.”
There was a long silence in the misty room.
“Very well,” said Siri. “As we haven’t even begun to look for the pilot, we’re still quite a way from finding him. It’s possible we won’t have to disturb the senator from his cocktails. Let’s take it from the introduction breakfast and see how we progress from there. Little Peach, do you foresee any disasters over our communal rice porridge?”
“Do you really want to know?” she asked.
“Major Harold Potter would like to welcome all the Lao delegates and says that he greatly respects the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos for everything the socialist administration has achieved in the past three years.”
Judge Haeng’s cousin Vinai, the director of the Office of Interpretation Services, was standing at the end of the dining room at a beautifully carved but wonky dais. The audience sat at two long parallel tables. The Friendship Hotel restaurant had once been the entire building. It was constructed of sturdy hand-sawn lumber and its pillars were sunk deep. But the tin roof had been replaced with concrete tiling and, apart from the doors and window frames, very little wood had been used to complete the new lodge. Perhaps this was why only the dining room felt comfortable. It was as if the laid-back ghosts of the Corsicans watched over their inn from the solid rafters. Even the inevitable breakfast speeches seemed mellow.
Siri turned to Daeng.
“The major said all that in four words?”
“You’d have to assume English is a lot more succinct than Lao,” Daeng decided.
Siri had studied French at a Lao
lycée
then become fluent during his years in Paris, but he’d had no cause to dally with the English language. Cousin Vinai’s English rendition of the American major’s comment had sounded authentic but he had no idea how accurate a trans lation it was. It was the conflicting word count and the bewildered faces of Peach and Nurse Dtui that alerted him to the possibility that something might be amiss. Cousin Vinai had been allotted the role of senior interpreter for the mission, yet since their arrival in Phonsavan he’d avoided all contact with the aliens. The judge suggested this was because of Vinai’s laryngitis and that he wanted to preserve his voice for the first day of activities. That day had arrived and he had supposedly translated General Suvan’s opening address word for word from his own script.
To Vinai’s left at the VIP table, which was resplendent with plastic hibiscus, sat General Suvan in full dress uniform. In fact, Lao full dress uniform was not as impressive as it sounded. He might have been mistaken for a postman in any other country. Although the same age as Siri, the balding old man made the doctor look like a teenager. His movements were languid and his reactions showed a lack of reflex. In front of him on the table was the three-page speech he’d just delivered. It was dog-eared and crumpled so he’d either slept on it or it was a well-used address. Vinai had his own copy. During the speech, the fried eggs and crispy bacon and steaming pots of instant coffee arrived and, as there was still a pervading atmosphere of nervous cultural tension between the two groups, nobody tucked in. So the guests watched their food slowly cool in front of them. Another half an hour would render the meal inedible which probably explained the brevity of the American major’s own greeting. But, to their horror, Judge Haeng seated to the general’s left reached into his own briefcase and pulled out a wad of paper twice as thick as that of the general. Cousin Vinai produced a translation of equal thickness. The judge slid back his chair but Siri got to his feet before him.
“With respect, Judge,” he said, wondering whether that counted as an oxymoron. If looks could kill, Judge Haeng was standing over Siri’s body with bloody fingers.
“As this is a special occasion,” Siri went on, “I suggest that it would be a courtesy to our American guests if we followed their culture and ate while we listened to your probably insightful and humorous early morning discourse.”
He still had little idea about American culture or whether they ate during speeches in the United States—Henry James certainly didn’t—but he was hungry. Judging from the ensuing round of applause once the translation had reached the visitors’ table, they were hungry too. And so, Judge Haeng’s speech and its purportedly English translation were all but drowned out by the clattering of American knives and forks and the hum of conversation. Nobody failed to notice the fact that Haeng glared at Siri the entire time. Siri seemed not to care. He was taking the opportunity to study the colorful assembly of Americans opposite.
The retired major, Potter, wore a large flowery Hawaiian shirt, green shorts with an impressive collection of pockets, huge boots, and a Dodgers baseball cap. Siri could think of no better word to describe his complexion than “ripe.” He was flushed and bloated like a man dropped into boiling water and left there to simmer, the result of blood vessels expanding. His nose was a crimson golf ball. He was, Siri decided, a man lost to alcoholism. This voracious appetite extended to food. Peach, seated beside him, looked on in amazement as he forked a mountain of potatoes into himself.
“Honey,” he said.
Peach looked around for the bar girl he might have been soliciting. She saw nobody.
“Are you talking to me, Major?”
“You’re the interpreter, right?”
“I am.”
“Then shouldn’t you be telling us what these two guys are saying?”
“Well”—she looked over her shoulder—“one of these guys is Judge Haeng and he’s giving a long talk about the tolerant nature of the Pathet Lao to former imperialist oppressors. And the other guy is translating it into English.”
“What?” The major put down his fork for the first time and cocked an ear in the direction of cousin Vinai. “That’s English?”
“Apparently.”
“I can’t understand a goddamned word. Can’t they get the interpreter to do it?”
“Comrade Vinai is the head interpreter, Major.”
“What about the big woman?”
“What big woman would that be, sir?”
“The one they put on our chopper yesterday. She spoke pretty good.”
“On our helicopter?”
“Yeah, you didn’t see her? She was the only Laotian on board.”
“I was stuck at the back behind a wall of cans, but, no, can’t say I noticed her.”
“Well, she was damned good.”
Once the Judge Haeng/Cousin Vinai double act was over and the plates emptied, everyone sat with their coffee waiting for the main event. Peach tapped the major’s arm.
“You’re up, Major,” she said.
Potter wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and inflated to a standing position. He said something loud and full of expression and then paused. There was an embarrassing silence. All eyes were on Cousin Vinai who was burrowing down into a bowl of rice soup. He waved his spoon at Peach.
“You take it, little sister,” he said. “This is the first chance I’ve had to eat.”
So, once again, Peach assumed the mantle of interpreter. She explained that Major Potter had planned a small activity as an icebreaker for the two sides to get to know each other. It was an adaptation of the game charades, of which none of the Lao apart from Siri and Civilai had heard. Siri gritted his teeth. For charades to be fun—if it ever truly was—you had to be three sheets to the wind, not hungover and stone-cold sober at breakfast. But there was no fighting it. Sergeant Johnson, perhaps the blackest live man Siri had seen in Laos, handed out cards apologetically. He was a marine based at the US Consulate in Vientiane. He had a booming sugary voice. He leaned into his walk like a meatless Nebraska Man in a hurry to catch up with evolution. But his gait put his smile out in front of him and it was a marvelous smile. It fitted on that handsome face with its gleaming eyes that took in everything around them.