‘Ah, he sees ’em too,’ said the headman. ‘There’s them that can.’
The diver was beside himself with anger. He paced back and forth with the canisters still attached to his back. This obviously wasn’t the type of treasure he’d been expecting. He hurried back to the river, reattached his mask, and threw himself into the water.
‘He thinks he missed something,’ said Daeng. ‘But he didn’t. Now’s our chance. We can get down there and grab the guns.’
They all stood and worked their way down a steep rocky path that led to the Elbow.
‘Probably expecting something more royal,’ said Civilai. ‘Crowns with rubies and mitres and pouches of diamonds. We talk about our national treasure and naturally everyone thinks of jewels. But each to his own. To the royals, these images were priceless because they’d been worshipped for hundreds of years. They’d clocked up a lot of merit. The king probably had them locked in a vault somewhere and kept the emeralds and pearls in his sock drawer.’
Small rocks were dislodged by their descent.
‘All that planning,’ said Daeng. ‘How frustrating would that be? The unnecessary deaths. The investment. You’d have to feel sorry for him. I wonder who he is; how he achieved all this.’
‘I was about to say that it probably couldn’t get any worse,’ said Siri who had stopped to watch the gallery of observers. They were standing now and moving towards the boat. Moving like trees swept up in a lava flow.
‘What is it, Siri?’ Daeng asked.
‘I wish I could sell tickets,’ he said.
‘Come on,’ she told him. ‘No time for ghosties.’
The grey spirits of antiquity usually had little to do with the malevolent spirits of the forest — nasty bastards who had made Siri’s life a misery on several occasions. But somebody had cut a deal somewhere in the jungle and the spirits that resided in the images began to merge into the two huge teak trees that anchored the cables. Within seconds, every last one of them had been absorbed into the wood.
‘That’s a good trick,’ said Siri.
‘Don’t keep it to yourself, old man,’ said Civilai.
‘Just keep your eyes on the two old teaks that the cables are tied around,’ said Siri.
But only he could see what was happening. Only he had stopped to view the show. He was left behind at the rear as the others hurried down the dirt path. He leaned against a large boulder that overhung the river and noticed the lack of sounds. There were no birds. No insects. Even the rumble of water as the river rounded the bend had become silent. There was an imbalance between nature and the supernatural. The first sound to invade this silence was a creak. Perhaps it was more a groan as the old trees strained against the weight of the boat. It was as if they could no longer hold it. Then, one after the other, the cables began to slice through the trees like cheese wires through Camembert. Siri looked down to see whether the others had noticed but he was alone. One second the boat was anchored, the next it was loose. At first it lurched to one side. Then it slid rapidly into the water, dragging its cables behind it. In a single breath it had vanished beneath the water and a bubble the size of a small whale belched to the surface. The gunboat was back at its resting place. Siri’s eyes returned to the two old trees. He expected them to topple to the ground like candles sliced through by a Douglas Fairbanks Jr sword. But they stood firm.
He heard the voices of his colleagues below.
‘They couldn’t have been tied very tight,’ said the headman.
‘Funny they should both come undone at the same time,’ said Civilai.
‘I think they must have snapped,’ said Daeng.
Siri looked on in amazement. Had they not seen the cables slice through the teak? Was he the only one who knew what had actually happened? In fact … had it happened?
When he reached the bank at the Elbow, all was quiet. His colleagues were standing on the bank looking out across the water. There was nothing to see. Nobody really expected the diver to reappear, but for ten minutes they watched with their AK-47s trained on the Mekhong as it passed on its way to Vientiane. But, in some way, the diver did return to the bank. And he did look forlornly at the piles of iron Buddha images before stepping into the forest to face whatever retribution the spirits might have for him. Without the air-compressor to replenish the supply, there had been barely a minute’s worth of oxygen in Tang’s tank. He’d died an agonizing death trapped in the cargo hold of the gunboat. But only Dr Siri knew any of this. If, in fact, he really did.
‘We should go now,’ said Siri.
‘He might still be alive down there,’ said the headman.
‘No, he’s gone,’ said Siri.
They all turned around and looked at the doctor.
‘What about the images?’ Daeng asked.
Siri looked at the boatman and smiled.
‘If I were a lost Buddha,’ he said. ‘And I found myself far from home for many years, I would look very kindly on anyone who volunteered to take me back to Luang Prabang. The palace is a museum now but one of the old royal temples would gladly take them in.’
‘I doubt one person could handle so much merit,’ said the headman. ‘Bit of an overload.’
‘You’re right,’ said Civilai. ‘But fifty people could share it.’
‘Aye, that they could,’ agreed the old man. ‘That they could.’
Siri headed for the trees and studied the point where the cable wound around them. He saw no evidence of magic. Madame Daeng made for the Buddha idols. When she returned she had a small package wrapped in cloth.
‘What’s that then?’ Siri asked.
‘Surely we couldn’t go through all this excitement without claiming one little souvenir,’ she smiled.
‘Daeng, you’ve seen what the curse can do.’
‘All I saw were two cables snap. Bad quality.’
‘I strongly recommend you don’t take that souvenir out of this valley.’
‘Recommendation noted. Let’s go.’
‘Be it on your own head.’
‘I suppose the saddest part of all this is that the minister didn’t get to find his brother,’ said Daeng as they walked along the bank on their way back to the longboat.
Siri laughed.
‘Something funny?’ she asked.
‘You know I wonder whether anyone actually read the Cuban medical report of Major Ly’s jaw surgery.’
‘It provided some insight into his whereabouts?’
‘Pretty much pinpointed the location. I read through it last night. The last page of the file is a letter to the Cuban surgeon from a private hospital in Bangkok. They very politely requested a copy of the surgeon’s report and the X-ray, which I doubt he sent.’
‘Bangkok? What’s Bangkok got to do with all this?’
‘Oh, I have a feeling the minister’s brother might have had enough of all the warring over here and popped across the border. I imagine he’d collected himself a little nest egg from war booty which he used to establish himself in Thailand.’
‘As what?’
‘Ooh, at a guess I’d say he bought himself a gogo bar and drank and fornicated himself to death. I doubt he ever got his jaw working properly.’
‘That’s not a guess, is it?’
‘I might have dreamed some of it.’
‘Siri.’
‘Yes, dear?’
‘I will not have you dreaming of gogo bars.’
‘Sorry.’
When we fought hand to hand in the jungle I became aware that I was killing the children of parents. Young men who were stuck for a job so joined the army expecting a few years of pineapple eating in the tropics. It concerned me that killing was becoming second nature to me. Indifferent. Indiscriminate. Anyone in a French uniform. That wasn’t the way to do it. You needed to operate at a different level to make a difference. I made the decision to leave the jungle and my rebel friends and dig in undercover in the heart of the French administration in the south: back in Pakse where my mother and I had sweated in the steam of boiled bedsheets for twenty years. Like many who feared the reprisals of the French, my mother had returned to what was left of our village. In fact, a lot of the old faces of Pakse had disappeared. I suppose my old face had disappeared with them. Nobody recognized me. I’d become hard, my features angular. My hair was short and my body was lean and muscular. If I’d made myself up with some cosmetics and dressed like the French mademoiselles, I could have had my pick of the French administrators. I could have been the mistress of any one of them. But that wouldn’t have worked. It was a small town. Belonging publicly to one man would have closed the door on others. And I would have drawn ire from the Lao. I needed to merge. Be invisible again.