Curse of the Pogo Stick by Colin Cotterill Read Free Book Online Page A

called a highway were deep and crested as if a choppy sea had been carved out of dry mud. In places there was nothing flat to drive on at all. The soldiers in the lead car would jump from their vehicle with spades and attempt to level a way through the clay breakers. They were barely thirty kilometres from Phonsavan when the captain in charge – the setting sun already turning him into a silhouette – summoned the men to pitch their tents and call it a day.
    Siri unplugged the leaves from his ears and smiled at Judge Haeng;
    “Not bad,” he said. “Thirty kilometres already. At this rate you’ll be my age by the time we get to Luang Prabang.”
    “Yes, Doctor?” said Haeng. “And where will that leave you?”
    “In a far better place, Judge.”
     
    In the jungles of Xiang Khouang there were wild tigers, Malay bears, and wolves. Very few of them lusted for human flesh but the ominous night chorus they broadcast would leave a young city boy with fears for his life. Although Haeng had grown up in the north-east he wasn’t the hardy, outdoors type. The son of an affluent Chinese businessman who chose his allies well, Haeng had been a child of the Party, a red scarf-wearing zealot, the type who gladly informed on his schoolmates. While his father was trafficking arms in one direction and opium in the other, Haeng’s Lao mother had nurtured in her son a sense of fair play and equality, but as in most privileged upbringings, equality didn’t amount to giving away their wealth and sharing what they had with the lower classes. This dichotomy had continued to confuse young Haeng even when his father decided the time was ripe to send his eldest son to study in the Eastern Bloc. A second boy was sent to China and a third to Australia to hedge all bets. One could never tell in which direction the political winds would blow in the region.
    Even in Laos the businessman had been canny. Unbeknownst to the Pathet Lao, the astute Chinese had played both sides right up until the cease fire in ‘73. When it became clear the Royalists were unlikely to triumph, he focused his allegiance and large sums of money on the communists. By then the ideological investment he’d made in his first son was reaping dividends. Haeng was already a senior Party Youth cadre in the Soviet Union and had done well in school. He’d studied law to a level students from the third world were permitted to reach and it seemed plausible the boy would soon be able to return to Laos in some senior management position. But his father wanted more. It took a generous contribution to the Soviet Ministry of Justice to persuade them that an expeditious course in advanced law for Indochinese students would be invaluable to his son. So, in nine months, a second-class law degree that carried no weight in the USSR was upgraded to a judgeship in Laos, which had even less meaning.
    While his fellow Party members had lived in caves for a generation, Haeng had managed to completely avoid fighting and roughing it in the jungle. In fact, hard as it might be to believe, he’d lived something of a playboy lifestyle in Moscow. Even in the sixties there was fun to be had in the Soviet Union for the children of the Marxist capitalists. He had lived well there and returned reluctantly to Laos to take over a justice system vacated by the fleeing Royalists. There was no longer a constitution, which meant there were no laws so his role was largely ornamental. Other than trying the odd divorce, frolicking with cheap and easy nightclub singers, and drinking the nights away, he had little to busy himself with.
    But there was plenty to occupy his mind on this first night of their road trip. He lay wide awake in his tent as the light from the fire danced its fingers against the canvas. The ground was hard and lumpy. The air was so cold he could see his breath. And, all around, wild beasts reminded him that he was invading their territory. He hated the prime minister’s office for