“I have a seventy-year-old beauty queen with a rice whisky still in the back garden. Who needs a dream? I can’t imagine anything better than that.”

“Nicely stated.”

“You’re welcome.”

“So, what’s our plan?” asked Daeng.

“I’m about thirty pages from the end of the diary,” he said. “By then, I hope we’ll know who it is that needs help and why. We make contact with locals who were in Thakhek in the forties and we trace Toshi. Then we find a nice spot on the Mekong, take a cold drink, and sit watching the sun set for a few nights.”

“When’s our flight back?”

“Our new friend Mr. Roper has to travel to the villages with his returnees. With a helicopter that shouldn’t take him so long. Three days at the most.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Roper’s a UN official. He earns more in a week than we take in a year. Does he really need to hand-deliver refugees himself? Doesn’t he have staff?”

“It’s a new program, Daeng. The UN is sending refugee camp people back to their villages. People who abandoned their country. There are those who see them as traitors. The insurgent groups based overseas would like nothing better than for them to be lined up and shot by the wicked commies. Good anti-regime propaganda. Guilt by the bucketload for those who fled successfully. Massive donations to the cause. Nice homes in the Midwest for retired royalist generals. So Mr. Roper takes photos and videos of the happy reunions, teary-eyed relatives, thankful, not-assassinated returnees, and he announces that he or other UN officials will come by every three months to monitor the situation. He makes sure the local cadre hears that, takes his photo too just to confirm he gets the idea, and there’s the safety package, living proof that repatriation works. Word gets around in the refugee camps and everyone decides to go home.”

His voice was croaking from all that shouting so they gave up and enjoyed the scenery. There’d be plenty of time to talk when they landed. Daeng smiled at the girls, who looked away, embarrassed or afraid. Daeng could not imagine what they’d been through. While they were all together she was determined to make friends with them and learn something about them.

1/11/1944

The river has become my companion. In the rainy season, once a body of water had built up on its way from China, it was a ferocious ally, thundering past impatiently, too busy to stop and chat. But in the dry season it is a trickle that seems not to be moving at all. Now it’s a lake of smoked glass with sand mounds here and there spelling out some kind of Morse code. I was at the boat port one day to receive a shipment of toys and sweets I’d ordered for children’s day.

“Oh, give me a break,” said Daeng.