The Burma Effect (24 page)

“He did,” Dima said gravely.

“One hundred thousand?”

“Yes. As agreed.”

“And now he has to produce,” Sam said.

“He will produce,” Dima said. “And then we will produce, and our people in Mae Sot will produce for us, and we will be taken out of there and back to the farm and this operation will be one for the history books.”

“And a story for reporter man, eventually,” Stefan said, looking over at Delaney. “If we can keep him with us on this thing.” “We shall see,” Dima said.

General Thein took them that night to an officers' club on a hillside outside town. Delaney had been in many such police and soldiers' clubs before, on assignment in Nigeria, in Philippines, in El Salvador, elsewhere. They were all designed to do the same thing. They were to leave no doubt in the minds of those lucky enough to use them that being a senior man in a particular army was so beneficial, so lucrative, had such pleasant fringe benefits, that lifelong loyalty to the soldiering tribe was the only sensible, the only consistently rewarding course.

Delaney was invited along, if only, apparently, because it was easier to watch him there than at the hotel. And also, he started to realize, because this mercenary band really did want a scribe along with them, someone to witness their lifestyle and their heroics. He drank and ate like the others that night—exhausted, resigned, he saw no sense in any further futile acts of resistance.

As always at such officers' clubs, the food, the liquor, the surroundings, the women, were top of the line. In this one, there were tables laden with Western and Asian dishes, heavy on imported beef and other expensive protein sources required for fighting men. Waiters in white jackets grilled and barbequed and sliced for them. Wine was opened, and beer, cognac, creamy liqueurs—in no particular order, for no particular meal course.

Eventually, in such situations in Asia there was karaoke—in this instance on long, curved sofas in a small private low-ceilinged lounge. General Thein in civilian clothes, a floral-patterned shirt, casual trousers and immaculately polished black Gucci loafers. Young, very young, Thai girls in cheap Western-style party dresses were shown in.

“Singing partners, choose one, choose one each gentlemen please,” Thein said.

The girls, exuding perfume, sat with their soldiers, snuggling close and calling out the names of songs as they came up on the karaoke screen. General Thein and his girl, who was no more than 18, delivered the first duo, a heartfelt rendition of “Feelings.” The general drank from a large tumbler of Remy Martin cognac, and nibbled at small skewers of barbequed chicken.

“Congratulations, congratulations my friends,” Thein called out again and again. Sweat poured from his face, despite the blasts of air conditioning on all sides. His girl kissed him repeatedly on his weathered cheek and whispered in his ear. Soon, Delaney knew, Thein and the others would begin to disappear from the karaoke room with their girls, some for longer than others depending on what services they required elsewhere in the building.

Delaney's girl was called Meg, after Meg Ryan, the Hollywood star, she told him. “You are a quiet man,” she said.

“Yes,” Delaney said.

“You are not happy with me?” she said.

“You're a nice girl,” Delaney said. “No problem.”

“You want to make nice now, maybe? Whole body massage for you, maybe?”

“No thanks.”

“General Thein says to make nice with everybody tonight.” “That's kind of him.”

“You have a special sweetheart girl somewhere?” she said.

The liquor and the heavy food and the stale air had started the room spinning slowly on an axis Delaney could not see. “Somewhere,” he said.

No matter how many times Delaney rolled the problem around in his mind, he could not imagine why the Burmese military, or Thein's faction anyway, would allow a group of mercenaries to move at will throughout the country with AK-47s and other deadly gear in tow. No matter how persuasive Kellner might have been, no matter how much money Thein and others thought they were going to be paid in some other scheme, the whole thing just did not add up. And if anybody at all in the Burmese military knew anything about the wild plan to take Suu Kyi, Delaney was sure they would not have allowed the mercenary team, or Thein himself, to get even this far.

Delaney thought things through one more time as he stood late the next day on the steaming tarmac of Kengtung's small military airport, watching the mercenary gear being loaded onto a wide Spanish built turbo-prop for the flight to Rangoon. His travelling companions, even the normally level-headed Dima, all looked very much the worse for wear after their night of R&R at the officer's club.

Delaney, too, had had far too much to drink. He vaguely remembered being helped down from the little bus that ferried them back to the hotel; he could not remember who had given him a helping hand. He vaguely remembered the two British mercenaries slapping him on the back throughout the evening and saying what a fine chap he was after all, that he mustn't mind Bobby and Abbey, that they were all proud and delighted to have a journalist of his excellent, no, extraordinary, stature along with them on this adventure. Et cetera.

The night of drinking and male bonding seemed to have defused the tension somewhat, for all except Bobby. Even Abbey seemed more relaxed around Delaney, at the hotel and later at the airport as they waited to board their plane. Only Bobby still scowled at Delaney, displayed menace. The beating Delaney and Ben had given him back at Mae Sot would never be forgotten, it seemed.

The flight to Rangoon took them over the rugged hills of Shan country, where the army was doing its best to wipe out a longstanding rebellion and, if other accounts were to be believed, the entire ethnic Shan population as well. Most good reporters in Bangkok had written about the massive relocation of Shan civilians, the forced labour, the packed refugee camps on the Thai side of the border. Kellner would have filed his share of such stories too.

They landed at dusk at a military airport on the southern outskirts of Rangoon. Yet another Toyota bus took them through the city, heading north. A small truck followed with their crates. The hot claustrophobic streets of the Burmese capital were teeming; corner teashops everywhere were crammed, the streets were crammed with aging Chevrolet buses, motorcycles, bicycles, bicycle rickshaws. The crumbling pavements were crowded with stalls, each selling only one or two items; perhaps soap, matches and lighter fluid in one, packets of rice and noodles in another. No one seemed to be buying.

At every intersection stood teenage soldiers with AK-47s and fixed bayonets, clearly under instruction to crash down on the slightest hint of trouble. Since the riots and the arrests and killings after the 1990 elections, and since Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest, the Burmese capital was tense, with only a chipped varnish of normality.

They left the buzzing city centre and moved through quieter colonial era-suburbs of dark dilapidated mansions showing no signs of life within. Aung San Suu Kyi was closeted in just such a mansion, near the University of Rangoon, on a lake that dominates that part of the city. Their driver did not take them anywhere near Suu Kyi's household, which had become the focus of the pro-democracy movement and where squads of soldiers were always at the ready in nearby troop carriers in case one of the rallies outside Suu Kyi's fence ever got out of hand.

Into that scene, the mercenaries now riding with Delaney on a small bus intended soon to thrust themselves, to extricate Suu Kyi and ascend out of danger in a blast of testosterone-fuelled glory.

Their driver pulled up outside a six-story apartment building in a grim cluster of concrete blocks north of the capital. The government had relocated thousands of people, potential troublemakers they argued, from the city centre to the northern suburbs where they would have a far less easy time fomenting revolution. Rangoon was a city of passbooks and curfews and police checks; even visits to family were tightly controlled. In these forlorn modern apartment blocks lived many of the opponents, and victims, of the military regime.

It was an odd place for a band of mercenaries to be left off as night fell. After unloading their crates, they manhandled them up to a sprawling first-floor flat, with four bedrooms and a couple of dark enclosed balconies and little in the way of furniture except mattresses, a fifties-era kitchen table and a few rattan sofas. Their driver, and two other soldiers who had materialized when they arrived, did not offer to help them.They saw no one else in the silent neighbourhood.

The entire building, dying of concrete cancer, and the surrounding streets were virtually deserted. Eventually, a lone ancient lady in a broad straw hat made her way unsteadily along the hot pavement in front of their building. She took no notice of the activity there, too frightened or perhaps too wise to do anything except to make her way past them as quickly as she could.

Tom stood at the filthy kitchen sink and turned on a tap. The faucet coughed and wheezed and spat out a dab of copper-coloured paste.

“Guess it's room service tonight, boys,” he said. He opened a sorry-looking Kelvinator refrigerator and felt one of the racks. “Cool, not cold,” he said.

“Empty anyway,” Clive said.

“We're out of luck for beer,” Sam said.

Their driver and the two soldiers had come up the dank concrete stairway to the first floor. The driver spoke reasonable English.

“General Thein says you must wait here,” he said. “He will send you supplies tonight, they are on their way. He says there will be meetings as soon as possible.”

“How long?” Stefan said, looking at Dima.

“He did not say, sir,” the driver said.

“We are waiting for one more man on our team,” Dima said. “Kellner. When will he come?” “Sorry sir,” the driver said.

As he spoke, two impossibly young-looking soldiers in wraparound sunglasses and olive green Tshirts, but unarmed, came inside with cardboard boxes of food and drink. They went back downstairs several times for more. Sam and Clive unpacked, stowing tins and small sacks in kitchen cupboards, water and beer in the fridge. For a moment, it was a disconcertingly domestic scene.

“That beer will barely last us the night,” Tom said.

“Shit, man,” Abbey said. “How long we got here anyway?”

Stefan and Dima both motioned to him at the same time to be quiet.

After the Burmese soldiers left, Bobby and Abbey smoked some marijuana they got from one of the bar girls the night before. No one else smoked. The humid Asian night closed in and they could hear, finally, the sounds of life and meal preparation from apartment windows nearby. But the neighbourhood was still far from busy.

“We've got to find Kellner,” Bobby said. “We can't do this thing without him. Where the fuck is he?”

Delaney sat off to one side, watching and saying nothing.

“We all know the plan,” Dima said.

“Yeah, but it's Kellner's plan. We can't go ahead without him.” “We can,” Dima said.

“What is the point, man? It is his plan, his lady he wants to take,” Abbey said. “I don't give a shit for no Suu Kyi.”

“That's the job we're here to do. That's what we're getting paid to do,” Stefan said.

“Without the man himself,” Bobby said.

“We'll get General Thein to track him down for us. Relax. Just relax,” Stefan said.

Clive and Sam, the Brits, tough but never talking about it, drank beer quietly, taking everything in.

“Maybe someone took him out,” Bobby said, exhaling smoke and passing the joint to Abbey.

“Then we'd be toast too,” Tom said.

“Toast,” Abbey said dreamily.

“We'll find out what's what with Kellner tomorrow,” Stefan said. He looked over at Delaney. “Where do you think he is?”

“What the fuck would Delaney know?” Bobby said.

“I think it's obvious someone's got to him,” Delaney said. “Kellner's been missing for well over a month now. Almost two months. No one has seen him. His girlfriend hasn't seen him, Cohen, no one. His editor hasn't heard a word from him. This is Burma. If they had so much as a hint he was going to try something crazy with Suu Kyi, they would kill him.”

“He has the military onside,” Stefan said.

“All of it?” Delaney said.“And what do they think he's going to do? I don't care what faction he thought he had onside, there is no way he could mess with Suu Kyi. She is off limits, absolutely off limits, to everybody. They simply won't care who it is or who thought they were onside, or not.” “Back off, Delaney,” Bobby said.

“We'll locate him tomorrow,” Dima said.

“And we have to contact our chopper pilot in Mae Sot,” Stefan said. “That's the priority.”

Dima went to his pack and pulled out an ordinance map. He spread it out on the kitchen table and everyone except Bobby, Abbey and Delaney crowded around to look. Delaney just shook his head. Bobby saw him and flicked the last glowing stub of marijuana across the room at him.