They had no idea how good a chef he was because the food was spicy enough to strip the paint off a tank. Every mouthful was like swallowing fire. They were hungry so they persevered, but it was only the introduction of two bottles of 33 Beer that allowed them to put out the flames. They completely forgot the “no drinking on duty” rule.

At first, Phosy put the dizziness down to the temperature and the food. Then he looked across the table at Jiep, whose eyelids were drooping. And when the spoon dropped from the chief inspector’s numb fingers, he knew what had happened but it was too late to do anything about it. The scenery closed in on him and the last thing he remembered was Ouan standing behind Jiep with a satisfied look on his mangy face.

“You do realize he still hasn’t flown anywhere?” said Daeng. “He claims to be a pilot yet he still hasn’t left the ground.”

“He’ll take off eventually,” said her husband, somewhat less confidently than on the many other occasions he’d said it. Toshi’s diary had continued to meander through weird territory.

“And have you not started to wonder about the people he lives with?” Daeng pushed on. “They’re freaks, every last one of them; hunchbacked, grossly fat, half blind and legless. Were the Japs really so benevolent that they’d provide work opportunities for the mentally and physically handicapped?”

“It was wartime,” Siri reminded her. “They selected a team to prepare a base for the invaders away from the front line. They were probably excluded from fighting because of their physical limitations but were ideal for the work they were called on to do.”

“Then what was Toshi doing there?” Daeng asked. “If they really did select a team of misfits, what, apart from dull writing, was his disability?”

Despite the lack of excitement, Siri had persevered with his reading. Toshi’s diary may have been dull but it was beautifully written and Siri was enjoying every image. He knew few of his countrymen could produce such handsome prose. His invitation to help the writer was no longer a rescue mission in his mind and more of a desire to meet the man who’d fashioned the work. It would be the getting together of a writer and a fan.

They were in the reception area at UNDP; the UN’s development program, what Comrade Civilai had described as the United Nations’ center of ill-advised, overfunded, pie-in-the-sky, misoperations in Laos. Siri was kinder. Even though the UN in Laos wasn’t itself sure of what it was doing there, it did pump in lots of money, some of which filtered down to the communities. Perhaps that was not the way it had been intended but the most successful aid projects were invariably those which wrote corruption into the budget.