No byte markers, it really looks as if it's just taking two bytes per character, rather than one. SO I tried to break it down to an even more basic level, with the following:

open (READ, "<:encoding(UCS2)", "z:/test.txt") or die "unable to open 
+file";

foreach (<READ>) {
  print $_;
}
[download]

with test.txt being a copy of the config file I'm trying to open. (BTW, UCS2 fails with quite glorious results, involving much beeping :))