Six and a Half Deadly Sins by Colin Cotterill Page B

random demarcation. Goi had studied engineering in Peking and risen to the rank of sergeant in thePeople’s Liberation Army. He had been accused of some unlisted infringements that were never proven, but he had been kicked out of the military. Soon he was managing engineering crews as a civil engineer in the southern provinces. There his language skills made him invaluable to the monolingual Chinese. His personal record was clouded with accusations of violence, cruelty and profiteering, but his professional accomplishments were many. His teams were always the most efficient and effective. His projects were concluded under budget and to the satisfaction of the regional cadres. Once the Chinese road program was launched in Laos, Goi was given instructions to get the job done without draining the limited resources of the People’s Republic of China. It appeared nobody looked too deeply into how he achieved that.
    Rumors were a national pastime in Laos, and nowhere were they more extravagant than along the border. But even if rumors about Foreman Goi were greatly exaggerated, they all pointed in one direction. The man was criminally insane. There were stories of executions, of beatings and torture. Goi had become a dark legend in the north, and his name spread fear in the hearts of those who worked for and with him. Phosy had felt that manic energy, and there was no doubt in his mind that Foreman Goi was a dangerous man. To make matters worse, his influence extended beyond Luang Nam Tha all the way to the capital. He had to have contacts in Vientiane to have been able to gather information about Phosy’s wife and child. Those same contacts proved a constant threat to their lives. Phosy could have called for backup from Vientiane, but he felt he’d need a small army to compete with Goi and his road builders. And waging war against a warlord had never proven wise or successful.
    Phosy and Tang might have been able to glean more information from Vientiane about Goi’s record, butcommunication had been down for twenty-four hours. The border post was completely cut off from the outside world. Even their shortwave signals had been blocked. And, for some reason, traffic into Laos from China had halted completely.
    “They do it every now and then,” said Tang. “The Chinese. They get a new directive from Peking and shut border crossings. Then they show off with their technical skills. It’ll all be back to normal in a day or so.”
    With no observers and no police escort, Phosy returned to the Akha village at Ban Bouree. He parked well off the main road behind a patch of untidy banana trees. From there he walked along the track leading to the village. At one point, he passed a small gaggle of women dressed in threadbare costumes that didn’t seem to represent any clan he’d ever seen. The women were carrying baskets of firewood on their backs. The basket straps formed a band across their foreheads. Phosy nodded. The older women ignored him. The younger ones giggled and probably made some ribald comments in their language, because everyone laughed.
    It was a young girl at the back of the group who caught his attention like the tongue of a cartoon frog lassoing a fly. She was stunningly beautiful, but not in a modest girlish way. She was about fifteen, sweet and ripe as an orange mango, and she walked as if she’d learned the arts of grace and poise at a finishing school. He stopped to watch her pass. She looked back, smiled, rolled her hips and licked her lips. Phosy’s heart bunched like a fist.
    It had been a brief encounter, the details of which he would most certainly not be sharing with his wife when he returned to Vientiane. He was disturbed by how the girl had made him feel. Phosy was not a flirtatious man, and very rarely was he excited at the sight of a teenaged girl, no matter how pretty.But this young vixen had made a papaya salad of his hormones and thrown in a handful of chillies. Any other man would have been