Slash and Burn

decorated forensic pathologist on their team. A real one.”
    “Well, for some reason, they hold you in esteem, Siri. They know about the cases you’ve worked on. It’s what they believe you are that counts, not what you consider yourself to be. We need someone there who can keep a professional eye on them. Like it or not, you’re the only one we’ve got.”
    “Don’t you read the Pasason Lao , Comrade Bounchu? I’ve just come back from a very traumatic holiday in Cambodia.” He ran a finger across the tick-shaped scar on his forehead. “I’m not fit for service. I’d never pass the medical.”
    “Yes, I’ve heard all about it. It was unfortunate, I give you that.”
    “Unfortunate? You’re right. Torture and starvation and near death could get a little troublesome. By rights I shouldn’t be here today. And it’s for that very reason that I don’t have to take any more damned fool orders from you lot. You can’t do any worse to me than the Khmer Rouge did. What were you thinking, Bounchu? That you’d drag me into this meeting stone cold, show me no respect, and expect me to be so fired up with national pride after a morning with the enemy that I’d gladly traipse up north on a bone hunt? It might work with your young brainwashed cadres but I’m over the hill and happily rolling down the far side. I’m a renegade. Out of control. So you either shoot me for disobedience or put up with me telling you where you can stick your task force.”
    Siri drank his green Fanta as a sort of visual exclamation mark. It was warm and syrupy and he wished he hadn’t but it was a fittingly dramatic touch. Bounchu wasn’t the type to fly into a rage. One of his qualities as a leader was his poker face. You could never tell whether he was about to shake your hand or shoot you. It wasn’t until he smiled that Siri knew the minister wouldn’t be reaching for his Kalashnikov.
    “Siri, old friend,” he said. “We’ve been through a lot together.”
    A drastic change of tactic, Siri noted. He recognized the sudden lowering of the red flag and the hoisting of a white one in its place. Now they were old friends?
    “I’m really in a tough situation here,” Bounchu said softly. “The prime minister really wants this mission to go well and he insisted I do everything humanly possible to convince you. I don’t want to put any pressure on you, comrade. I know what you’ve been through. But, surely for old time’s sake you could help me out just this once. Five days in the north? Is that too much to ask?”
    Siri shook his head slowly.
    “I don’t know,” he said.
    “I’d consider it a personal favor.”
    “There might be a way.”
    “Name it.”
    “So, tell me again,” said Madame Daeng.
    “No matter how many times I tell it, the story won’t change,” Siri assured her. “Unless of course you ask me again in three weeks by which time I will have forgotten the original story and be forced to come up with something far more entertaining to tell you.”
    Siri was attempting to understand American culture by reading Henry James’s The American , translated into French. But either the translator lacked the ability to extract the precious ore from the dense seams in James’s prose, or James learned his craft writing radio scripts for Thai soap operas. Either way, Siri’s confidence was beginning to ebb. He doubted the book would help him understand Americans in the three weeks he had left to familiarize himself. He was thinking of switching to Melville. He had other translated works in his secret library: Harper Lee, even Scott Fitzgerald. He firmly believed that you could learn most about a people by reading the works their academics convinced them were worthy of the title “classical.”
    “Then let me just see if I’ve got the facts right,” Daeng continued. She was standing in the doorway of the Paiboun memorial library—their back bedroom—with her arms folded. “Call me cynical if you like….”
    “I would never dare.”
    “But, for some reason, none of this seems to ring true.”
    “Then I must be lying. I’m hurt.”
    “Siri, I would never accuse you of lying even if I know for a fact that you were. It’s not what a good wife does. But you do have the ability to leave out strategic parts of stories and what remains, although not exactly a lie, plays a substantially different tune to the truth.”
    “So sing me what you have.”
    “Minister Bounchu calls you into his office and