Slash and Burn

amongst themselves or whether they have orders from above. But somebody has a whole mountain full of gold down there. I’ll be making a full report about it.”
    “Well, I’m not having it,” said Judge Haeng, now in a dry change of clothes. He’d been hiding at the far side of the table, invisible and silent since the fracas. “I’m setting up a national enquiry as soon as we get back. A good socialist….”
    Siri wrote something on a slip of paper and folded it in quarters before passing it on to the judge. Haeng read it and blanched. Whatever was written there terminated the latest motto and would keep his honor shut up for the rest of the day. Siri would tell no one what it said.
    The newcomers sat at the table and sipped at the fine Scotch whiskey.
    “Did the papers tell you anything else about Potter’s involvement in all this?” Phosy asked Siri.
    “I think he had suspicions about the illegal exploitation of air strikes, perhaps even the use of napalm. I found a copy of a letter addressed to Mr. Rhyme over there, asking him to take as many aerial photos as he could, focusing on cleared land and bomb sites. We know that the major suspected something was up in Ho Chi Minh. He had access to the same paperwork as Vogal. He knew there were discrepancies in the work placement orders. He was sending memos to the embassy in Bangkok until Vogal got wind of it. Vogal went over the ambassador’s head and had Potter removed. But the embassy was still on the major’s side. Looks like Potter and the ambassador put this little excursion together. Isn’t that right, Gordon?” he asked in Thai.
    The second secretary looked up and listened as Peach did a more formal translation of Siri’s findings.
    “I … er….” Gordon began.
    “I have a letter here from the ambassador,” said Siri. “It was in with Potter’s papers.”
    “Well then, I guess he did,” Gordon conceded.
    “I don’t think you really need to guess,” said Siri. “Seeing as your name’s right here in the letter. It says how the embassy would support Potter’s nomination as team leader and the ambassador hoped that certain outstanding issues might be cleared up as a result. His trusted aid, Mr. Mack Gordon, would be included on the team to offer any support the major might need.” Siri looked up at the American.
    “You and Potter were working on this together. You’ve known all about this right from the beginning,” said Siri.
    Gordon put down his weapon and came over to the table. He looked around at the expectant faces.
    “Not really,” he said. “I had access to some of the things Potter knew but he didn’t share everything with me. We had no idea what it was Vogal and Bowry had been doing here, only that it was illegal and it made them rich. There was other stuff I couldn’t tell you all. I’m sorry.”
    He pulled out a chair and sat.
    “The photographs sent to the embassy came with a note,” he said. “It was one of those blackmail letters you see in the movies, with the words cut out and pasted. It said something like, ‘Hi, Dad, congratulations on the promotion. As you can see, I’m alive and well. Thanks for asking. The guy you got to sabotage my chopper wasn’t the brightest. When you decide to kill your only son you really better do it right or he’ll come back from the grave at the most inconvenient time.’”
    The guards were distracted by Peach’s translation. None of them noticed the senator slowly rocking back and forth. The fence post he was tied to was loose. By leaning against it and pulling upwards, he was slowly dislodging it from the ground. Emiliano on the next post looked across and he too started to edge his post out of the dirt.
    “‘I escaped to Thailand,’” Gordon continued to recall the note. “‘I met a local girl and found work. It’s a comfortable life. I almost forgot all about you and your disloyalty, et cetera. But I see from the newspaper that you’re a bigwig now and you’ve got your finger in a money pie. So I’ve decided to claim my inheritance. I could use half a million dollars as soon as possible. Not a bad price when you consider everything I know. Everything I could tell them at your appropriations committee meetings.’ And then there were suggestions on how to get the money over here. That was the gist of it.”
    “So that’s why Senator Bowry was so confident that it was his son in the photos,” Phosy said.
    “Actually, no,” Gordon said. “He didn’t