Slash and Burn

and spoke very quietly. Potter listened attentively then seemed to ask for clarification. Vinai spoke again. The major removed his arm from Vinai’s shoulder and looked around, presumably for Peach. The American spoke once more, slower, enunciating every word with such precision that Mr. Geung could have understood it. Vinai, aware now that his grasp on credibility was slipping, said, “The major was here … on holiday.”
    Like the US cavalry, Peach arrived at that moment and fell into a discussion with Potter. It appeared the major wanted to wish everyone good luck on the day’s mission, lay down a few simple ground rules and inform the teams of the subgroups they’d be working in. Nothing at all about holidays. At some time during this housekeeping talk, Cousin Vinai slunk away.
    When the others were loading the choppers, Siri, Commander Lit, Phosy and Civilai found him hiding in his room and surrounded him. Phosy had been designated the roles of good, bad and only cop while the others looked menacing.
    “Comrade Vinai,” said Phosy.
    “Yes?” said Vinai.
    “The English language.”
    “What about it?”
    “Do you speak it?”
    “I am the head of the foreign languages department affiliated to the Ministry of Justice.”
    “Congratulations. But the question was, do you speak English?”
    “I’ve translated entire documents into Lao.”
    “From English?”
    “Some.”
    “And so you speak it?”
    There followed a long pause during which Vinai appeared to be searching the ceiling for an answer.
    “Not exactly,” he said.
    The Lao felt obliged to inform the Americans of this turn of events. In fact, they had no choice. The loss of an interpreter was crucial to their work. They found Peach and took her to the major’s room where the team leader was sitting on the edge of his mattress going over a map of the region. The corner of a crate of whiskey peeked from beneath the bed between his feet. He crossed his legs to hide it. They tried to be as diplomatic and humble as possible, explaining that although Vinai was a leading authority on English language text, he had little opportunity to listen to the spoken form and he found the American accent to be almost incomprehensible. The major seemed unfazed by this news.
    “Major Potter says it’s no big deal,” Peach translated. “We should just use the big woman.”
    Siri assumed the major was referring to Dtui. Yes, she was … not fat exactly but casually ovoid. Definitely not big by American standards. And she most certainly had a vast repertoire of vocabulary that would be ideal when dealing with the forensic surgeon. But he didn’t understand how the major would know such a thing. He stared at Phosy whose buckled eyebrows seemed to mirror his own confusion.
    “How does the major know about Nurse Dtui’s English skills?” Siri asked Peach.
    “He’s not talking about Dtui,” she said after a short interlude.
    “Then…?”
    “He means the large gruff Lao woman who traveled on our helicopter yesterday. I didn’t notice her myself. The major says her English is fluent.”
    “There weren’t any Lao scheduled to travel on your flight apart from the pilots,” Commander Lit said. “I checked the security arrangements.”
    “This one turned up late. Your chopper had taken off and she hitched a ride with us.”
    “But our team was complete, too,” Phosy said, shaking his head. “That’s why we took off. Nobody was missing.”
    “And where is she now?” asked Civilai. “I didn’t notice any strange Lao in the breakfast room.”
    Peach asked the major who laughed and got clumsily to his feet, nonchalantly back-heeling the crate under the bed as he did so. He put his arm around Civilai and led him to the window. He’d obviously missed the cultural sensitivity day at orientation. He pulled the flimsy curtain aside and pointed to a spot way beyond the back fence almost twenty meters into the no-go area. There on a deckchair in a one-piece orange bathing suit was a rotund woman in dark glasses and a sunhat. All this, irrespective of the fact that the morning sun had barely made a crack in the early mist.
    “What on earth…?” said Commander Lit. “None of that land out there has been cleared of unexploded ordnance. Didn’t she see the signs? What’s she playing at? Is she mad? Who is she?”
    But the other Lao in the group knew only too well who had followed them to Xiang Khouang, and it wasn’t a she .
    Auntie Bpoo was as common a