Read Online Anarchy and Old Dogs (Dr. Siri Paiboun) by Colin Cotterill - Free Book Online

put his arm around his friend's shoulder. "I'd been wondering whether there were any nationalist embers left burning in your grate. I was starting to think your cynicism had pissed them all out."
    "Me? Great, coming from a man who called the prime minister a toad."
    "That was an accident. I meant 'slug.' I just couldn't think of the word on the spur of the moment." Siri laughed and his bout of gravity came to an end. "We're both ornery old warhorses," Civilai continued, "but they need asses like us. If they refuse to put us out to pasture, they have to expect a kick every now and then."
    "So what do you say we put our asinine minds together and see if we can't come up with something to avert this coup."
    Civilai slowly began to unwrap the baguettes. "I know people," he said.
    "Who?"
    The first drop of rain landed on Siri's knee. It was as thick and heavy as a cow pat.
    "I don't think I should tell you just yet."
    "Why on earth not?"

    Civilai produced two perfect loaves--delights, works of art--but not even their splendor could cheer Siri's mood. A second drop of rain smashed into the crispy leaves above their heads. Civilai handed a baguette to Siri, who just held on to it, still awaiting an answer to his question.
    "Because," Civilai said, "when conducting a countercoup, one has to consider what the status quo would be if the coup was successful. The leaders would round up whoever was instrumental in the attempt to oppose them. They'd be the first to be liquidated. The fewer middlemen the better."
    "I'm not a middleman. Let them liquidate me. Or, what? You think I'd crumble under interrogation and implicate all your 'people'?"
    Large jellyfish-sized globules of rain were falling in countable drops all around them.
    "No," Civilai said, biting into one end of his lunch. "All they'd have to do is offer you a decent supply of coffee and a carefree life and you'd squeal your guts out."
    "If the coup were successful I'd march up to the buggers and tell them what I damn well think of them."
    "That's the diplomacy that got you where you are today. If you--" A huge blob of rain somehow avoided the tree and landed with a smack in Civilai's face. Siri laughed and wiped his friend's glasses clean with a tissue from the lunch bag. The seriousness of politics quickly gave way to the seriousness of eating. The bread was fresh and the stuffing delicious. These were two men who appreciated a good baguette. And they knew exactly the drink with which to complement it. Siri offered his flask of pennywort juice to Civilai. No cabernet sauvignon could have enhanced a sandwich more. They ate without speaking and watched the heavy drops of rain land in the river, never gaining enough momentum to be called a shower.
    Despite their present predicament, this was when Siri was at his happiest, eating and drinking on the bank of the Mekhong beside his best friend. He turned to look at Civilai. When trying to describe him to others, Siri had worked his way through a long list of insects--ant, hornet, wasp-- before finally arriving at the simile that suited him best. Civilai was undoubtedly like a grasshopper. His head was a large, skin-covered helmet of a thing, mostly posterior. At its front, on his pointy nose, sat a huge pair of black-framed glasses. His grasshopper body was all gangly bones and angular joints. As he ate, an enormous Adam's apple traveled up and down his long neck like an elevator.
    "If you don't stop staring at me, I'll slap you," Civilai said without looking at Siri.
    "I can't help it. You're such a glamour-puss."
    "You obviously spend too much time with the dead, Dr. Siri."
    Like Siri, Civilai had France to thank for his academic degree and to blame for his political leanings. Whereas Siri had found his way to Paris via a temple education and charity, Civilai had been groomed for excellence by his parents. His wealthy Lao-Chinese father had been selectively married into an even more affluent Vietnamese-Chinese family, and even