That night, the general spent more time on the toilet than in his bunk. Sometimes the two overlapped. It gave him many hours to think about his encounter with Captain Jame. It hardly seemed possible the old man was able to read his mind but that “hardly” was doubt enough. He hadn’t seen the many prewritten entries in the ledger that covered all the possible greetings the general was likely to make. He hadn’t seen the ladder up which I carried the cockerel. He hadn’t seen me creep into his tent during the afternoon and put a laxative called nigari in his green tea. And so, in his mind, there were the seeds of doubt. And the next time he met Captain Jame to play shogi, the general was so busy thinking and double-thinking for both of them that he lost every game. Jame was inside his head and would remain there forever.
“Nonsense,” said Daeng. “It’s all nonsense. What we need is a good murder.”
Chapter Five
The Pole Jumper
Chief Inspector Phosy stepped off the military plane onto the uneven grass landing strip in Vang Vieng. A small herd of goats had panicked when the Antonov landed, then they regrouped when it took off. Phosy was accompanied by Second Lieutenant Jiep, one of the bright young generation of policemen handpicked by the chief inspector himself. There were so few men and women he could trust in his own police force. Phosy was intent on building a department he could be proud of. In total he managed two thousand officers nationwide, many of whom he had no cause to respect. Some, not threatening enough to be sent for reeducation, were left over from the old regime. Most had taken a sideways step from the military, undergone a crash course in peacetime law enforcement, and returned to their hometowns to extort money from the few people who had any. It would be an uphill task to change such a system.
Phosy was forty-nine years old in a country where the life expectancy was fifty-two. That gave him three years to fulfill his dream of a slick, efficient law enforcement network. He hoped it might grow from the twenty young people he’d selected and trained and whom he referred to as “the squad.” He’d logged his absence from his office as a training day for Jiep. There were those who questioned Phosy’s habit of running off and conducting investigations when he should have been signing papers and shaking hands. But he’d lost contact with an officer. Sihot was a friend. They’d worked together on numerous cases. And, as Phosy reminded everyone, no one was better qualified to find a missing person than he was.
His first call was to the police station at the intersection of the main highway; more a kiosk, as it turned out. He’d sent a message ahead to say he’d be arriving but wasn’t surprised not to be met at the airstrip. So when the Antonov resumed its journey to the military camp at Kasi, they were alone all but for a herd of goats and a 1953 Renault with the word taxi written on a cardboard sign on the dashboard. The driver had picked up Sihot four days earlier and taken him to the police box on the north-south highway. As the officers headed there, Phosy admired the beautiful setting. The dark emerald karsts stood proud above lime green rice paddies that bordered the fast-flowing river. He could understand why the Vietnamese might select this area to get away from the frantic pace of Hanoi.