“I’m on my way to Phnom Penh,” she said. “This was just a temporary posting.”

“You’re fluent in Lao and they send you to Cambodia?”

“I speak a fair bit of Cambodian too.”

“Multitalented.”

“My offer of help still stands.”

“You’ve only been here, what? Nine days?”

“Fourteen,” she said, “but my work here is done.”

“Two weeks? That’s most efficient of you,” said Siri.

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

The Wake

“Bruce, my boy, you don’t have to film the wake,” said Siri.

“It’s like they say back home in Sydney,” said Bruce. “You can make a bit of money filming a wedding, but you make a hell of a lot more filming the honeymoon.”

Siri laughed and slapped him on the back. The restaurant was packed to the point where they’d had to move the tables out to the roadside so the guests could fit inside. Daeng had felt obliged to make noodles for everyone, but Siri had put his foot down. Instead they chewed on baguettes with assorted dips and salads.

“You think this gathering might degenerate into an orgy?” Siri asked.

“You never know, Doctor,” said Bruce. “Sometimes you just have to point the camera and it makes things happen.”

Daeng arrived, put her arm around her husband and asked to borrow him.

“Phosy and Dtui and Sihot are upstairs,” she said. “We’re looking at the US documents. You want to join us?”

“It’s Civilai’s wake,” said Siri.

“He’ll understand.”

They sat cross-legged on the floor in the skirt-bank room. With Malee asleep on a pile of sins, Dtui did her best to translate the relevant documents. There were a lot of them.

“All right,” said Phosy. “Originally, I thought we were down to the last threat. We can pretty much discount the first—the Corsican in Paris. I’ll get back to the second suspect later.”

“What do you mean?” said Siri.

“One at a time,” said Phosy. “We’ll start with Henry in Hanoi in ’72. The last contact you had with him was Christmas that year. He sent a Christmas card to you, Doctor. You picked it up on your next visit to Hanoi. What do you remember about that card?”

“Reindeer. Glitter,” said Siri.

“Not helpful,” said Daeng.

“Let me remind you,” said Phosy. “The message read ‘To you and your loved ones. With nothing but unnatural death to look forward to. I shall kill you all. I’ll be seeing you, Siri Paiboun. I promise you that.’ Once the pilot had been exposed as a fraud, the North Vietnamese plan was to fly him to Saigon with the other three pilots and let the US military sort out the punishment.”

“That’s the last I knew,” said Siri.