The Greatest Lie Part 16

As soon as we were safely back in our hooch, I retrieved the iBook from its hiding place under the floor and opened up Spartan's main Excel spreadsheet. I re-sorted the list against the data from the last three weeks of our frustrating field work, by district, language group, age, and every other category on the spreadsheet, working methodically from left to right.

By the time I reached the mysterious A's, B's, C's and D's, I was so frazzled that I was ready to chuck the whole project. But when I sorted our interviewees by letter category, I was stunned. Of the twenty-five subjects from the initial list we had found and seen in Chiang Mai, seventeen were A's, five were B's, two were C's, and only one was a D. Yet the original list had divided the Chiang Mai subjects amongst the four categories evenly.

"There's something strange going on here," I said with alarm. The alarming infection rate in the study, Pranatop's e-mail, the sudden clampdown by Third Army security on CMU's farang students, and even our own weird reactions to sex while using Spartan's products formed an alarming pattern: but of what?

Tran studied a map of Chiang Rai Province against the spreadsheet on the iBook and observed, "Three of these disappeared C's and D's are from Hmong hamlets near Cheng Meng. I'll have Liang's guy take me there, and a couple of more places," she said, changing into her Hmong ethnic costume and sandals.

"OK, then Nancee and I will check out the few remaining names we have in town, then go to the Baan Pewan Cheewit AIDS hospice and see if anyone ended up there, and talk to Lin about what's going on with the A, B, C, and D categories. After that, we're done here. We'll pack your stuff, Tran, and you can meet us at the place Eddie got us in Pattapong." I was looking forward to getting out from under the thumb of the Third Army.

Nancee and I hugged Tran good-bye. I stashed the iBook and our necklaces in their hiding place, and Nancee and I set off carrying the rest of the vouchers, to use today or throw away as far as possible from the hooch.