John sat at the bar smiling at everyone and sipping slowly on a Virgin Mary. This expensive creation was advertised as a non-alcoholic relative of the Bloody Mary, and tasted, not surprisingly, like tomato soup. He was in the middle of Plan B. Plan A had failed miserably that afternoon.
The SPDC press office at the Information Ministry had the word “INFORMATION ” on the door. The word “NO” must have dropped off.
"Why should we tell you something like that?" the woman had asked in beautiful but nasty English.
"I'm writing a book,"' John had lied. "Major Bohmu Din was a legend in the north. He'll be the main character."
"What other books have you written?"
"My biography of Colin Powell is on its second print run. And there was my very popular in-depth look at Churchill. That was nominated for the Booker Prize."
"The Booker Prize is for fiction."
"Right. It was written through the eyes of Churchill's fictional gay lover."
She pursed her lips. "Your name is not familiar to me, and besides that, the information you want is not in the public domain."
"Is there any way I can find out?"
"No."
"Just what information do you give out here exactly?"
She ignored the question and left him floating there like a fart. Plan A had seemed so straightforward, it was the only plan he'd brought with him.
It was the know-all bellboy at his hotel who furnished him with a Plan B. "They go there all the time," he'd said. "All the fat generals."
So there he was: in the piano lounge of the Strand.
But John was beginning to look towards a Plan C. Three Virgins and two hours and he hadn't seen so much as a postman. He'd told the barman he wanted to meet a real soldier. The barman looked at him as if he were deranged, but promised to point one out if he saw one. At last, the door opened and the barman gestured towards the men entering.
One was snappily dressed: silk shirt, dyed hair, and contacts that made his eyes red. He'd been celebrating elsewhere, and staggered through the door on the arm of an aide. When the hostesses caught sight of him, he pushed off the aide and posed for them like a muscle man. They considered this hilarious, so he was obviously a big tipper. They escorted him to a stool at the bar and helped him settle upon it.
Over the next few hours, it wasn't extracting information that was the problem for John. It was interpreting and filtering it. The general was proud of his English, but unaware of its incomprehensibility. It was he who struck up the conversation, he who got around to skirmishes at the front, and he who first mentioned the name of Bohmu Din. He had warmed to John immediately, and was only too delighted to share personal and state secrets with him.
He was obviously not used to people listening to him, and launched into private philosophy on . . . well, on everything. His account of Major— now General—Din was long and involved. Once John had learned what he needed to know, he excused himself to go to the bathroom, and fled without paying his bill.
*
At Norbert's on the balcony, John impersonated the Burmese general and his constant sliding from the stool like a pigeon on an icy telegraph pole. His hosts enjoyed the rendition so much, they ordered a repeat. Kruamart laughed with delight. John relished the chance to be with his friends that evening even more, knowing he’d be leaving the next day and crossing back to the dark side.
Kruamart returned to her deft weaving of fine slivers of rattan into the shape of a purse. She seemed to have so many talents John was sure she would be a fascinating person to talk to. He wished they could speak without Norbert's crude interpretations.
He and Norbert huddled over the table and put together their collective thoughts. They mapped them onto a sheet of paper.
"So, this is how it goes," John began. "It appears he climbed through the ranks more on his reputation than personality. The plum prize for these remnants of battle was a diplomatic post with all its uncontrolled importing and exporting of contraband. He’d already served as military attaché to consulates in this region before his present post."
"You telling me Burma's got an embassy in South Africa?"
"Yeah. I could hardly believe it myself. But I looked it up on the net. It's true."
"Shit. What the hell they need one there for?"
"I imagine there's a lot of mutual benefit in bartering."
"Drugs for diamonds?"
"You're such a pessimist. I didn't say that. Perhaps there's the exchange of Zulu war shields for silk skirts."
"Right. Didn't think of that. How long's he been stationed there?"
"About eight months."
"That would be about right."
"It all fits. The cheapest flights are Ethiopian, via Nairobi. He had plenty of opportunities to stop off there on his way through, and sidetrack to England. I can check that out when I get back. I figure, now we're at the diplomatic level, the Secret Service lads can officially get involved again. Don't you?"
"You got any real evidence?"
"If we can get a photo from South Africa, we can get a positive ID from the kids in Mombassa."
"You understand there are a thousand reasons why this could come to a dead end, John boy: diplomatic immunity, unreliability of witnesses, no extradition agreements. . . ."
"I know. I know. But at last I've got something. Up till now he's been a cloud. There was nothing to grab at. If I can confirm just one thing, it means I have the drop on him. I'll be in control for the first time since this nightmare started."
"Well, I wish you luck, little buddy. If there's anything I can do from this end, you know my number."
"You've already done so much. I don't know how I can repay you."
"That's easy man. Bread. Give me bread."
"All right. I'll send you half a dozen loaves as soon as I get back."
Norbert complained that the only one of his father's traits John had inherited was his dumb sense of humour. They poured over the chart for some while before John got around to the question that had been gnawing at him all the way back. Norbert had been afraid it would come.
"You heard anything from inside?"
There was something uneasy in his friend's reaction. "You talking about the doctor?"
"In fact, yes."
Norbert looked over to his wife as she worked. He picked at his teeth with his tongue.
"What is it?"
"Look man. It might be false information, right?"
John leaned across the table to urge him on.
"Well. The raid on the camp. . . . Your doctor was reported missing."
"Shit."
"Only missing. There was no body. At first they thought she'd run off into the jungle and gotten lost. But they searched all over and there was no sign of her."
"So what are you saying?"
"One theory is they captured her."
"Only her? That doesn't make sense."
"No. Unless she's got something they wanted."
"She's a doctor."
"No man. They got their own doctors. Plenty of 'em."
"Then what?" He remembered when they'd discussed the kidnap theory before; the idea of them looking for a woman had come up.
"Beats me, John. But, I told you she was asking about your major. Maybe she's got a past, too. You can bet yours isn't the only life he's screwed up."
"My God. What would they do to her?"
Norbert shook his head, and John felt a heavy turbulence around where his heart was just learning to fly. She'd been his every thought since Camp G. She was as clear in his imagination as she had been at the clinic. Now she was gone. He was being unrealistic to imagine anything between them. But to be robbed of even the fantasy was cruel. This loss was personal.
Norbert recognized the emotion, and in another of the gestures John had come to love in him, he walked around the table, stood beside his friend’s seat and stroked John’s hair.
"You wanna come and say good-bye to your papa?"
"Eh?"
*
"You mean you just stole it?"
"Not 'just.' It ain't easy walking out of a morgue with 180 pounds of friend."
"And they let you go?"
"Nobody stopped me. And I was wearing a doctor's coat and driving an ambulance. Hell, he woulda haunted me to death if I'd let them cremate him and put him in a drawer somewhere."
"You're a good man."
"I know it."
"A toast." He raised the joint.
Norbert stood and saluted. "To Jim Jessel, one crazy son of a bitch."
"To my dad."
*
Old Bruiser snored in the back of the jeep while John and Norbert hugged. The metamorphosis of his father's feelings into himself was complete. Norbert had quite happily transplanted his love for James into the son. They were one and the same person.
"You promised now, boy."
"I know. I'll be back. I'll have Bohmu Din's balls in a Tupperware container, so you'd better leave a space in the fridge. I'll move in with you forever, have a wild love affair with Kruamart, and you'll shoot me."
"I look forward to it." He pulled John's head down towards him and kissed him on the forehead as if imparting a blessing. He climbed behind the wheel and gunned the motor. "And don't get killed like your stupid old man."
"Okay."
And the jeep sped off, and John and his cricket bag were left bathing in the moist afternoon air on the car park of Chiang Mai Airport.
39
They called for First- and Business-Class passengers and anyone with small children to board the flight to Bangkok. John had cleared Immigration and was looking forward to the flight home.
He was a different passenger to the one Thai Airways had dumped there two weeks earlier. His hands were steady. His body was healthier than it had ever been, and his confidence to tackle Te Pao could not have been stronger. Only the loss of Shirley dented his new armour. Love was a horrible feeling.
"Mr. Jessel?" The ground hostess smiled a Business -Class smile, which was slightly narrower than a First-Class smile, but much brighter than Economy.
"Yes."
"This is for you. It was delivered by courier from your office."
"My office?" He took the padded envelope from the girl and thanked her. He felt a familiar grip on his insides whenever unexpected parcels reached him. Only Norbert knew his travel arrangements, and they'd just said good-bye at the airport. He hadn't been prepared for the game to be back on so soon.
For some reason, he could neither throw it into the bin or rip it open there in the queue. Instead, he carried it to his seat and placed it in the pocket in front of him. It frightened him. It peeked out, unmarked, sealed, secret.
He didn't take it out until they were airborne. He slowly unpeeled the tape that held it shut. It contained some twenty sheets photocopied from lined writing paper. The handwriting was large and neat. There was no cover letter. There was nothing to explain why he should read it, but he knew he had to. And once he was inside its story, he was numb to everything around him, deaf and dumb to the fussings of the steward and the probings of his neighbour. There was nothing but the story:
Sherri’s Story,
I was too shocked to move, too stunned to scream. My mother had been cut down in front of me, and I couldn’t cry. There were bodies all around me. Their blood was being soaked up by the dry earth. They were people I’d known all my young life. Some bodies still twitched around looking for their heads. I could only watch them dance. I realize now that I was in deep shock and my emotions had shut down. But for many years I wondered why I didn’t scream or cry.
The young soldiers took us away. They led us through the jungle. We weren’t tied or held. We just followed them obediently. We'd already seen their power. Only the young mother cried quietly for her relatives. We children walked silently, trying to make sense of everything. We tried so hard to be good. Even when we were tired or hungry, we dared not complain. We walked.
The sun was down when we reached the outpost. When we walked through the gate, the cicadas stopped singing. It was as if they knew what would happen to us. They dragged off the women to another place and led the children into the main hut. A man sat there on a mat. His uniform was unbuttoned. It seemed his stomach had spilled from it like rice out of a cupboard. He wasn’t fat, but his belly was.
His face had been left pockmarked by some childhood disease, and his skin was dark and vaguely purple like a mangosteen. He was eating. He didn’t look up when we entered, and he ignored us until he'd finished his meal. I’d never been so scared of the sight of a person eating. I remembered a story I’d heard of a great Burmese soldier who could kill people just by clicking his tongue.
He wiped his mouth, looked at us, pointed at me, and that was the end of it. The others were taken out and I never saw them again. I stood there by myself like a vase. I just stood. He didn’t speak to me. He didn’t even look up at me for another hour. He read some papers, signed things, and drank water, and I stood, hungry and bursting to pee.
He got up slowly, went to the corner of the hut, and unrolled a dark green army blanket. He beckoned me to him with his fingers. I thought he was allowing me to sleep.
*
The men in the camp must have heard my screams that night, and every night for a week. But nobody came to help. The pain didn’t stop then, but my lungs got tired of screaming. The more I cried, the more he beat me. When I stopped complaining, he started to feed me.
It was three months before we had some sort of conversation. I asked him why he was doing these things to me. Even now I can’t bring myself to write down what he did. I was only six years old, so there were still many things I didn’t understand about the world. It was a brave question. He’d already thrashed me on a number of occasions with his bamboo switch for less. But this time he answered: "Mind your own business.”
So that was how I learned that what happened to my body was not my concern. As my body was no longer mine, I removed it from my mind. Still, twenty years later, we aren’t really re-attached.
*
Major (Bohmu) Din was a cadre of the Burmese Military Council. In the village I’d heard them called Tatmadaw. They were always monsters in the stories the older children told us. But I’m sure you know all this.
Like you, I am a Karen. We are the most stubborn of the Tatmadaw’s enemies. They could not defeat our army in hand-to-hand battle so they waged a war of terror against our non-combatants. All Karen, no matter how old or weak, were fair game for revenge. They raped our women, kidnapped our children, killed our youth, and took our elderly to be porters in the jungle. They hoped they could break the spirit of our soldiers by making their kin suffer.
But of course I knew nothing of all this. I was six. Bohmu Din wasn’t a symbol of oppression. He was my owner, my violator, and my enemy. I heard him tell the guards, if they ever saw me more than three yards from the hut, I was to be shot. I was a prisoner of the camp as they moved around from place to place. I didn’t ever find out where the other children from my village went to.
One woman they brought with us was your sister, the youngest daughter of your mother, No Ay Me, whom I loved very much. Everybody in the village loved your mother. She was always sad that she had lost touch with you. She told me she had a daughter that she had to leave behind in Rangoon. It has taken me so long to find you.
When she escaped from the student uprising that followed the military takeover in 1962, your mother found her way to our little village. She had taught at the university, and she told me that the soldiers were afraid of educated people. That’s why they killed the students and forced the teachers to escape into the jungle. She was already quite old, and she was a real city lady. But she helped us so much. She shared the work and taught the children. I was very young but I learned to read b
asic Burmese and English from her because she was so patient.
She was a wonderful teacher. You would have been so proud of her. It was No Ay Me and her words that gave me the strength to fight through those years. I really believed that education was a weapon I could use against my enemy.
That is why I am writing to you. I apologize for using English but my Burmese has been long neglected.
I am sorry to tell you the soldiers forced your sister to be a camp sex slave. She had once been such a pretty girl. They filled her with opium so she would not know what she was doing. She soon lost me from her memory. She died before the end of the first year. She had stopped being pretty long before that. I had always wanted to be like her, until I saw what being pretty had forced upon her.
I was a sex slave also, but I was the exclusive property of Bohmu Din. The unit appeared to have some autonomy from Rangoon. They were given free reign to burn, pillage, and terrorize any Karen village as they pleased. Bohmu Din was in his element. He took pleasure from inflicting misery. I saw him kill so many times. I saw him watch impassively as his troops raped and murdered. I never once saw remorse or pity in him.
I listened to his hatred of my people. When he was away, I used his books to teach myself many things. I improved my language skills. He didn’t know I could read (or think, or feel), so he left his secret documents unlocked in his desk. I read all of them. I know so much about his orders and the plans of his superiors. I know who controlled what, and which officers were taking what bribes, and troop movements. From his private mail I learned of coup plots and gossip about the leaders in Rangoon.
Evil in the Land Without Page 16