The Burma Effect (17 page)

“No car. Maybe in the barn. Door to the house is open. Someone is there.”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe Khun Nathan.”

“Maybe. If it's him, no problem. If it's someone else, we may have a problem.” “I know that, Frank.”

They moved quietly a little closer, praying for no dogs. All was silent. The day was very warm. Ben was sweating heavily, his forehead beaded with perspiration.

They came into the clearing before the house. The barn was now visible behind it. No cars in sight. The door to the house was wide open. On the small table on the balcony was a large beer bottle, a portable radio and what Delaney thought might be a pistol. He motioned to Ben to move closer along with him. He reached into his pocket for the real estate agent's card, in case questioned.

They moved up the few steps onto the balcony and stood beside the table. Delaney was right; it was a pistol, a chrome 11-millimetre Colt. The bottle was half-full of beer. Suddenly, a tall figure in full camouflage fatigues and black military boots appeared in the door frame, almost filling it. He was a Westerner, very muscular, very red in the face and very angry. Delaney thought:
Mercenary.

“What the fuck?” the soldier said. He lunged for the gun on the table.

Delaney saw that coming. He grabbed the gun himself and pointed it at the soldier, who stopped dead, crossing his flattened palms in a menacing X sign, either a martial arts stance or some other clear warning that he was ready to fight. “Easy,” Delaney said. “Take it easy.”

The soldier stood stock-still; wary, waiting for Delaney to make a move.

“What the fuck you doing up here?” the soldier said in a South African accent. “You guys get out of here right now.”

“We're looking for a house to rent,” Delaney said.

“Bullshit,” the soldier said. He spat at Delaney's feet. “You know how to use that gun, you little scumbag? You sure the safety's not on? You know where the safety is on that thing?” He spat again.

“Easy, friend,” Delaney said. “We're just looking for a house to rent.”

Ben looked terrified. Delaney was still holding the real estate agent's card in his left hand. He tossed it onto the table.

“The agent sent us here.”

The soldier looked over at the card but made no move to pick it up.

“Bullshit. You guys better get the fuck out of here. Right now. You better hope I don't ever see you around here or in town again or I'll rip your damn heads off.”

“We'll go. We'll go. Just take it easy,” Delaney said.

“Who you working for, you little scumbag?” the soldier said, hands still in marital pose.

“Let's go,” Delaney said to Ben.

“OK,” Ben said.

“You better leave me my gun,” the soldier said. “You try to take that gun, I'll rip your damn head off.”

“I'll leave it out front at the road,” Delaney said.

“No way,” the soldier said. He made a massive airborne lunge at Delaney and came crashing down on top of him. The gun went off but hit no one. They both fell. Then the soldier was on his knees, pummelling Delaney where he lay, hitting him hard in the face and head with both his fists. Delaney was stunned by the blows. The soldier tried to reach over to where the gun had fallen on the balcony floor.

Ben picked up the metal chair and smashed it down over his head. Then another time. Blood rushed from two bad cuts in the soldier's cleanshaven scalp. He looked up, bellowing, and stood to face Ben. Delaney got to his feet and picked up the chair to hit him again on the side of the head. The soldier staggered, his ear gushing blood, and turned toward Delaney again. Ben hit him from behind, this time with the beer bottle. Beer and blood ran down the soldier's face and he slumped to his knees.

“I'll kill you both, you scum,” he mumbled, about ready to topple over. “You scum.” No one else appeared. No one ran out of the house. It appeared the soldier was alone.

Delaney hit him one last time with the chair and he collapsed onto his side, still conscious but badly stunned. He was bleeding badly from his series of head wounds.

“We'll have to tie this guy up,” Delaney said. His lip was cut and blood trickled from an eyebrow.

“We should go,” Ben said.

“No. We've got to look inside the house. There's no point otherwise. Then we go.”

Ben ran over to the barn and came running back with some clothesline he found there. They pulled the groggy mercenary off the balcony and up against the side of the house, and then ran the clothesline around his wrists, ankles and knees—a couple of amateurs tying up a hostage.

“Make sure you've got him very tight, Ben. This guy is very, very pissed off,” Delaney said.

The soldier was coming to his senses. Delaney gagged him with a dishtowel he found in a sink. They wedged the dazed soldier in the angle where the balcony met a wall and watched as he came around.

When the soldier found he had been bound and gagged, he went into a frenzy, violently shaking his arms and shoulders and head, kicking out against the knots, moving himself in all possible directions to get free. He ground around in the dirt, banging himself against balcony and wall. Even through the gag, they could hear his dire, very dire, threats.

I
t was still early, not yet midmorning. Rain had been threatening since sunrise and it started at last to fall. That would make the driveway difficult-going for cars, Delaney thought. It would also further enrage the trussed-up mercenary outside. Occasionally they could hear him lunging around in the dirt, trying to free himself from his bonds and cursing through his gag.

They were in the open main floor of what appeared to be a recently built house. Many Thai generals, many generals all through Southeast Asia, had made themselves very wealthy by building a series of such houses, usually for rental to foreigners. Many of these landlords demanded a year's rent in cash in advance and then used this to build their next house, and the next, over and over again.

Ben sat down on one of the straight-backed wooden chairs that surrounded a very large rectangular table made of teak. He looked badly shaken. Delaney went to the sink and rinsed his face. He looked at himself in a small mirror and saw that he had been cut in several places, but not seriously. His split lip was sore and there was a big welt on a cheekbone. His eyebrow had stopped bleeding.

He stood leaning against the sink and looked out at a very large, high-ceilinged room that served as kitchen, dining room and living room. It was furnished with heavy local wooden furniture and big local mats and cushions.

“We're going to have a good look around and then get out of here fast,” Delaney said.

“Yes, Frank. That guy out there will kill us if he gets loose.”

“I've got his gun,” Delaney said. He had stuck it in his waistband, gangster-style.

“I don't think he needs a gun to kill us, Frank. Not that guy,” Ben said. “And other people will be coming back maybe. Maybe soon.”

“It's morning, Ben. If they were here today, they have gone off somewhere else for at least a little while. It's still early in the day.”

There didn't appear to be evidence of a lot of people staying in the house, or at least having stayed there the previous night. The table was clear, except for some large local vases and baskets. In fact, the whole place looked unnaturally neat, in military order.

“I think that guy was here alone. A guard,” Delaney said.

“I hope so,” Ben said.

“We'd better look around. Maybe you go out to the barn and start there, Ben, and then let me know what you find. Then maybe stand by in the driveway in case someone comes. Let's go as fast as we can.”

“OK, Frank.”

“You want the gun?”

“No way, Frank.”

Ben went out and down the stairs off the balcony toward the barn, walking fast through the soft tropical rain. The enraged soldier lunged about and shouted muffled curses at him as he passed. Delaney turned his attention to the main room.

There was nothing remarkable about it, except perhaps its extreme order. There was no sign either of whose house it might be. He saw nothing that told him Kellner had been there. An open plan space, with a small bathroom off to one end. Kitchen cupboards full of dishes, cutlery and food. It looked as if a small stockpile of food had been laid in; many bags of rice, lots of oil, sugar, salt, spices. The fridge was jammed with beer but also with a wide assortment of goods that indicated someone who cooked, who knew how to cook.

In the bathroom, there was shaving gear on the sink, one toothbrush and a traveller's bag full of men's items that anyone would bring on a trip. Thai labels on most things, with international brand names on the rest. No clues there.

The upstairs area, however, told a very different story.

There were three large rooms up there, all approximately the same size, and a large bathroom. Delaney could see that two of the rooms would have windows facing the back and sides of the house, as would the bathroom between those two rooms. The third room was to the right of a small vestibule at the top of the stairs and would probably have windows facing the front and the right side.

All doors were closed. Delaney went to the leftrear room first.

It was like an upmarket hotel room, furnished in stylish, expensive Thai designs. A huge bed sat in the middle, with two fluffy towels and a face cloth neatly folded on the cover. Small bars of hotel-style soap sat on the facecloth. There were dried flowers in vases, small dishes of fragrant flower petals and spice. Magazines on a small round table.
Time, Newsweek, The Economist. Defence Monthly
.

There was a desk with an old black Remington upright typewriter. Inside the drawers, fresh stationary, envelopes, notebooks, rulers, pens, sharpened pencils, erasers; all unused. On the shelf above, a small selection of books, mostly political titles. Most were about Asia. Several were by Aung San Suu Kyi. The Penguin paperback edition of her
Letters from Burma
lay face up at one side of the bottom shelf. The cover showed Suu Kyi looking splendid in a peach-coloured cotton tunic and an enormous Burmese-style straw hat, with peach-coloured roses gathered fetchingly at the nape of her neck.

There was a silk bookmark inserted. Delaney opened the book at that page. A line had been highlighted in yellow. It read:
“The names of those who perform meritorious acts are entered in the golden book.”

On the wall between the bottom shelf and the desktop was a small black-and-white photograph in a wooden frame. Delaney recognized the picture immediately as Suu Kyi's decaying colonial house in Burma. A world famous address: 54 University Avenue, Rangoon, from behind the fence of which she staged increasingly popular political rallies despite being under house arrest. Her home and prison, both at once.

Kellner is insane
, Delaney thought.
This is his house and he is insane
.

He went back out to the vestibule and then into the bathroom. More hotel-style comforts. A fluffy white bathrobe, wrapped in plastic, on a hanger behind the door. A wide selection of women's creams, oils, shampoos on a shelf. All new, never used. Drawers full of tissues, cotton wool, makeup pads, nail files, hairpins. Bottles of perfume. Every need anticipated, everything in intact packaging, ready, it appeared, for an honoured guest to arrive.

There was a door on either side of the bathroom. The left-hand one opened onto what could only be called the woman's room, the hotel room. The righthand one was bolted. Delaney slid the bolt and walked into what he saw immediately was Kellner's room. It looked very like his study in Bangkok, but in this case a small bed was pushed against the far wall, near a side window that overlooked part of the yard and the barn.

On one wall was a poster-sized picture of Suu Kyi.
Obsessed with this woman,
Delaney thought.

He went to Kellner's desk. Again, on shelves above it, political books, and Suu Kyi books. Not in such careful order as in the other room. There were also papers, files, folders, notebooks in the shelves. This was a room that was in use.

The desk drawers were also jammed with papers, notebooks, files. As in Bangkok, the bottom drawer held marijuana, hashish and opium. Lighters, matches, rolling papers, pipes. The shallow middle drawer was locked. Delaney looked around for a key.

He found it in a small lacquerware box near the bed. Another key lay inside, beside it. Delaney pocketed that one and went back to the desk to open the drawer. Inside he found an 11-millimetre pistol not unlike the one now tucked into his jeans. Two boxes of bullets. And a couple of large coil-bound notebooks. On both, the word
Burma
was written in felt pen.

Delaney knew he should not linger and that he could read the notebooks later, after they had left the house. But he skimmed the contents quickly, unable to contain his curiosity despite the danger.

The notebooks were a combination of record keeping, planning documents, agenda and inventory. As Delaney read, he became more and more convinced that Kellner was at best delusional, at worst insane.

Entries had begun about a year earlier. They recorded, as a journalist might, meetings with contacts. Businessmen, in this case, at first. Facts, nu bers, place names, bits of interview quotes. It appeared that Kellner had been meeting Australian businessmen, to discuss construction and road projects in northern Thailand and Burma. Perhaps for a story. But then it became clear from the entries that Kellner, as Delaney had suspected, was acting as consultant and fixer to a consortium with big ambitions and big anxieties.They wanted advice on security, on doing business with the Burmese generals, on which industries and activities were open to foreigners who were willing to work with the regime.

Delaney knew that the Burmese military, and particularly the powerful military intelligence people, were fully fledged criminal entrepreneurs, making huge amounts of cash from drugs, people trafficking, prostitution and gambling. But, bizarrely, they also had recently received instructions from the highest level to branch out into quasi-legitimate businesses to help fund their activities and the regime itself. So, or so Delaney had read, military intelligence ran such things as a prawn farm and a printing business. Another division of the military had cornered the country's concrete industry. Another, trucking.

Often these activities involved foreign partners, often from China, but increasingly from other Asian nations and Australia. Western businesses, however, wanted more security, certainly more than was usual in this part of the world and mercenaries were sometimes hired by them to do guard duty, to escort shipments or to protect executives, usually with at least tacit consent from the generals.

Kellner's notebooks, after a very quick reading by Delaney, indicated he was involved in a complex deal to help protect an Australian-backed road project in the virtually lawless area around Mongla on the Chinese border. Warlord country.

Then things became very murky. Delaney would need to study the notebooks more slowly to get a real sense of what Kellner had in mind. But it appeared he also planned to use the big proceeds from his mercenary support deal with the Australians, and possibly with the Burmese generals themselves, to finance some other operation in Rangoon itself, possibly linked to Aung San Suu Kyi or to her NLD party.

Idiot
, Delaney thought.
Surely Kellner was not going to involve himself in Burmese politics.
He began to understand why the Canadian intelligence service had started to get nervous, if they had got even the slightest hint that a Canadian citizen, let alone one of their own operatives, was even considering a foray into Burma's domestic affairs. Kellner had prepared a sort of timeline, a cryptic timeline, that showed something very complicated and very risky, was about to happen.

Weeks 1 through 3 or 4: Mercs assemble, Mae Sot house. Briefings.

Week 5 (latest): Cross border ex Mae Sai. Payments.

Truck ex SPDC.

Delaney recognized SPDC as the acronym for the State Peace and Development Council, the name for the Burmese military government that had recently replaced the even more ominous former name, SLORC: the State Law and Order Restoration Council. By any appellation, still the same band of unpredictable, utterly corrupt and murderous thugs.

Week 6: Mongla divert and sting. Pullout/payoffs.

Fixed wingex Kengtung. Regroup N. Rangoon. Week 7: Payoffs, final. Gen. Thein facilitates trucks/logistics for next feint. Mercs wait Rangoon safe house.

Week 8: Thein out. Institute Plan B for the lady.

Chopper ex Mae Sot. Return Mae Sot house.

What on earth, Delaney asked himself, could this crazy planning really be about? Kellner's game could not have been more dangerous, no matter what the final objective, if he was even pondering a deal of some kind with an SPDC general. Surely, Delaney thought, Kellner could not have planned to bring a band of mercenaries right into Rangoon itself?

Delaney heard Ben calling him through the side window. He went over and looked out. Ben was standing in the yard, looking up through the gentle rain. His thin hair was plastered over his scalp and the big bald spot on top glistened.

“We better go soon, Frank,” he called up.

“What's over in the barn?” Delaney asked.

“I will tell you as we go,” Ben said.

“Just tell me what you've got. I'm almost done up here.”

“Looks like a small barracks, Frank. For about 10 or 12 guys maybe. Bunk beds in three rooms upstairs. Really messy. Beer bottles all over the place. There's a sort of kitchen. Bad smells.”

“No cars downstairs?”

“Two motorbikes. Trail bikes. That's all.”

“Weapons?”

“No. Frank, I think we should go now,” Ben said.

“Please.”

Delaney knew Ben was getting really frightened. He was a gentle man and the fracas on the balcony earlier would have left him very rattled.

“OK, Ben. I will just have a fast look in the last room and then we go. You wait in the car. If you see anything, give a quick honk on the horn and I will come out fast and we go. OK? Park so we can head out quick.”

“I think you should come now, Frank. I have a bad feeling now.”

“Five minutes,” Delaney said. “Take this gun.” He held the pistol out the window. “I will come down.”