Curse of the Pogo Stick Read Online Free PDF Page B

what would be going through your mind on the day of the bombing?” And I said I’d want to make sure my bomb actually went off and did its damage, seeing as there’d be no chance of its making the evening agricultural broadcast on the wireless. And you said, “That means the bomber would have to be on the hospital grounds that afternoon.””
    “It was the only way he could be sure.”
    “And you said, “Perhaps we could ask the staff whether they noticed anyone hanging around all afternoon on Friday.””
    “Right, but it was you who remembered the nurses and the photographs. It wouldn’t have entered my head.”
    “Yes it would. And it probably won’t help anyway. When the prints come back from the shop tomorrow all we’ll see is smiling nurses and flowers. Not a bomber in sight. He’s hardly likely to pose with them, is he now?”
    “So little faith in one so young. Remember, anything’s possible.”
    “There must be more we can do. If only we could get access to the army bomb squad report or the police investigations. I’m sure we could do more than the boy wonders.”
    “Until Siri and Phosy come back it’s just you and me. I have all kinds of contacts in high places in the south but nobody up here – not yet.”
    Dtui poured Daeng another shot from the misty bottle and filled her own glass with water. They toasted the diners across the river.
    “I do,” Dtui said.
    “Do what?”
    “Have an influential friend. You do too. Or at least an ex-influential friend.”
    “You don’t mean Civilai?”
    “I certainly do.”
    “Oh, Dtui. He’s retired.”
    “Cronyism doesn’t just go away overnight.”
    “He isn’t going to be in any state to help us.” Daeng knew of several other reasons why the ex-politburo member would be reluctant to help them. A few months earlier, Siri had uncovered a plot to overthrow the Lao government. Dtui and Phosy had crossed over to a refugee camp in Thailand to spy on the deposed Royalists. Information they gleaned there had led to the failure of the coup. But in the aftermath, Siri had discovered that his old friend, Civilai, was in line to take a post in the proposed revolutionary administration. He was a traitor, a fact that only Siri and Daeng were privy to. Civilai had taken early retirement in return for their silence. Daeng doubted the old politician would be prepared to step back into the quicksand from which he’d so recently escaped.
    Dtui knew none of this. “Let’s find out,” she said.
     
    In the words of Comrade Civilai, the rainy season of ‘77 had been as brief and unconvincing as a politician’s credibility…and he should know. Since his strongly encouraged retirement from the politburo three months earlier, officially for health reasons, he’d had a lot of free time to perfect his witticisms. His best friend, Dr Siri, had been afraid the traumatic events leading up to the old mans fall from grace might have driven him to despair and an early visit to the pyre. But far from it. Civilai had expanded in all directions like a man released from the grip of atmospheric pressure. His mind had been given rein to consider philosophies beyond Marx and Lenin. He’d begun to listen to the lyrics of his grandniece’s pop music and see merit in them. He’d started reading the novels hidden in his loft and breathing in their beauty. Not since his French education had his mind been so liberated.
    His body too had expanded. His skin no longer stuck to his bones like pie crust. Always a food connoisseur, Civilai now had endless hours to engage in his passion. He delighted in his wife’s cooking and experimented with his own. He invited friends for dinners, performing miracles with the scant offerings on sale at the morning market and the Party co-op. He had, they all agreed, blossomed and bloated as a result of his divorce from politics.
    Dtui and Daeng sat with him at the round kitchen table in a house that had once belonged to the director of the