Nurse Dtui, the wife of Chief Inspector Phosy, had what they call an eye for language. She’d studied and absorbed Russian without the benefit of hearing it spoken. She’d learned how to pronounce the words from the six pages at the front of the textbook that laid it all out linguistically like a mathematical table. But that suited her style. She’d done the same with English even though that language was a bugger for inconsistency and exceptions to rules. As a member of the Lao administration team at the Moscow Olympics, she had proven her value as a translator, so it was only natural they’d find a role for her at the fifth anniversary celebration. Interpreters the Pathet Lao could trust were thin on the ground. Those who had learned English from the Americans were either having a dour time up north in reeducation camps or were on their way to the West. German and Russian speakers were starting to return from the eastern bloc with dubious technical skills, but their ability in those languages was a far cry from simultaneous translation. The majority of the press corps in town to cover the celebrations was from socialist countries. The Soviets, like the French before them, were keen to spark an interest in investment in this little landlocked country overflowing with natural resources and potential.

In fact, “potential” rather than “actual” was the adjective du jour in Vientiane that week. The organized visits were mostly to demonstration sites: samples of what a successful project might look like with a bit of luck and better handling. The groups were led by Soviet Embassy officials fluent in the languages of the socialist brotherhood and accompanied by Lao minders. The government officials understood little of the live commentaries that endorsed Laos the way Madam Loulou advertised new girls to her regulars: “She may not look like much, but she has hidden promise and a surprise or two.”

And all this left Nurse Dtui’s little pack of decidedly non-Communist English speakers wondering why they’d been invited at all. She and Phosy had met them that second night at the bar of the Vieng Vilai: the Constellation Hotel of old. It was there that Air America pilots and CIA spies and USAID workers would gather in the days when the landlords of Sodom and Gomorrah still collected their taxes in Vientiane. The boys would down their cocktails at the Constellation before heading off to the late-night sin spots of the after-hours capital. Those were the days when the options were vast in number and bottomless.