“You must have heard,” she said. “It’s the new Thai policy to promote peace and profit across the river. Our people were invited to Nakhon Phanom to discuss ways to mutually benefit each other culturally and financially.”

In fact Beer had already told Siri and Daeng about this new fair-weather romance. A month earlier the Lao and the Thais had been firing wayward shots at each other across that waterway of peace and profit. Now the love affair was back on. No Lao official would turn down a free meal and a few cold beers with their enemy so Siri knew there would only be a skeleton staff at the council office. They’d certainly selected the most skeletal to remain behind.

“I don’t care,” said Siri. “We’ve been ordered to return with those documents before nightfall. I trust they were prepared before the junket.”

“I don’t . . .” said the girl. “Usually all documents come to me for a stamp. What are they about exactly?”

“The paperwork left behind at the end of the Japanese occupation,” said Daeng.

“By our side?” asked the girl.

“Theirs,” said Daeng.

The typist laughed and took off her glasses.

“You want all of it?” she asked.

“Of course,” said Siri.

“I hope you brought a truck,” said the girl.

The Japanese documents took up one side of a room the size of a royal French pantry. They were dusty like the ancient ledgers in horror films. Siri took down one file and had to blow the dust from the spine in order to make out the characters. Of course he couldn’t read the contents but he could make out the date. There were at least three hundred files sorted in chronological order. When the French administrators returned to their posts they were obviously under orders not to destroy any Japanese documents. But that didn’t explain why the Japanese invaders hadn’t burned the lot of them. When it is staring defeat in the face, the first thing any self-respecting army does is destroy its paperwork. Siri was about to add it to his list of mysteries when the answer came to him. The Japanese officers had been too busy blowing themselves up to follow protocol. With nobody alive who cared enough to supervise a cover-up, it was not surprising the documents had survived. He opened the file in front of him hoping to find a French translation tucked inside. There were teasing general notes in French handwritten on scraps of paper saying such things as road project to Paksane or advance on Vientiane. But there were no details. They gave nothing away of either the thoroughness of the Japanese victories or the humiliation of their defeat. Siri was certain the explanation of this mission was locked somewhere inside those elegant hieroglyphics.