Satori - Don Winslow [93]
The river was gentler below these falls. Jagged rocks and shallows, with the occasional rapids, still caused problems, but in only two days, Tasser checked the cartoon-map and happily announced, “We’re out of goddamn China.”
They were in the French colony of Laos, and the river changed its name from the Lekang to the Mekong.
In an almost mystical way, the river itself seemed to recognize the change. It broadened, slowed, and darkened with the collected silt brought all the way down from the Himalayan foothills.
“Like us,” Tasser observed. “Brown and down from Tibet.”
The mountains that flanked the river became greener, verdant with jungle vegetation, and here and there a bamboo village, its houses on stilts against the seasonal floods, appeared suddenly around a bend of the twisting river.
They put in at one of these villages to buy food, and Nicholai realized that Tasser knew a little more than he let on.
“I don’t know what you got in those goddamn crates,” Tasser said, “and I don’t want to know. But if you’re taking them where I think you’re taking them, keep your lips zipped. These are Hmong people, and they don’t much like Commies. So don’t give them any of that “Comrade” shit, or they might take one of them curvy knives and lop off your head. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Another thing,” Tasser warned as he piloted the raft onto a sandy spot along the right side of the river. “Turn a blind eye to what you see here.”
He pointed across the river. “That’s Siam over there. Land of the Thais. Also land of the poppy. This here is prime opium-growing country, and the river downstream from here is a highway for dope. The Hmong grow it, so do the Thais. It’s how they feed their kids.”
“I understand.”
“You’d better,” Tasser said. “We smile, we buy our groceries, we get back on the water pronto.”
Nicholai stayed on the raft while Tasser took two men and went to buy supplies. Naked Hmong children happily dove off a rickety bamboo pier into the water. The women, in their unique black caps, sat nearby, kept a watchful eye, and sneaked shy glances at the tall European sitting on the raft. Nicholai heard dogs barking in the village and the ubiquitous bleating of goats and cackling of chickens.
Barely half an hour later Tasser returned with mesh nets full of bananas and other fruits, greens, rice, and smoked fish. Nicholai felt ashamed of his suspicions as Tasser gave the order to shove off and the raft swirled back into the gentle current. Then the captain handed Nicholai a bottle of clear liquid.
“Take a belt,” Tasser said.
Nicholai took a swallow and felt like his stomach, lungs, and brain were on fire. “Good God, man, what is it?”
“Lao-lao,” Tasser answered. “Hmong moonshine.”
Nicholai helped one of the crew build a fire in the charcoal stove and soon they had a delicious meal of rice, fish, and bananas. Then he took his turn at an oar, and when relieved sat on the edge and enjoyed the beautiful, verdant countryside, the green mountains and limestone cliffs.
Two days later they came into Luang Prabang.
98
NICHOLAI CUT an odd figure checking in to the small guesthouse.
His clothes were torn and mud-stained, his hair long and disheveled, his face brown as a nut and weatherworn. He ignored the desk clerk’s stare with an aristocratic insouciance and asked for the best room available, preferably with a view of the river.
“Does Monsieur have luggage?”
“Monsieur does not.”
“Will it be arriving from the airport, perhaps?”
“Probably not,” Nicholai said. He produced a handful of bills from his pants pocket and laid them on the counter.
“Passport?”
Nicholai handed over the passport indentifying him as Michel Guibert. It was a calculated risk, one that might send teletypes singing in Beijing, Moscow, and Washington, but Nicholai doubted it. Luang Prabang was a backwater even in Indochina, and there were probably no alarm bells here to be rung. Still, French intelligence would no doubt have a presence here, but Nicholai was counting on that.
The clerk