The Burma Legacy

by Geoffrey Archer

  Doubts crept in again. How could any man of that vintage travel halfway round the world to kill someone?

  He approached the pair.

  ‘Excuse me. I’m looking for Robert Wetherby …’

  ‘Oh he’ll be along.’ The old man’s voice was surprisingly strong. ‘Never misses a free drink. Know him, do you?’

  ‘No. No I don’t.’

  ‘Purple birthmark on the side of his face. Spot him a mile off. What’s it about?’ The old soldier’s eyes burned with curiosity.

  ‘Oh, a family matter.’ Sam saw the gallery doors being opened behind them. ‘Enjoy the reception.’

  The old men turned to look. ‘Kicking off, are they? Come on Frank. Let’s get at it.’ They marched unsteadily towards the drinks table.

  The lift disgorged a steady stream of war veterans. Most could walk unaided, but two were being wheeled by fitter colleagues.

  It was a quarter past twelve before the man he was looking for emerged. Straight-backed and with a thin slick of grey hair, he wore a thorn-proof suit of brown and green. Sam stepped forward.

  ‘Mr Wetherby?’

  The man’s birthmark made his smile appear lopsided.

  ‘How d’you do …’

  ‘My name’s Stephen Maxwell. I work for the Foreign Office.’

  Wetherby’s face darkened, his eyes flickering with alarm. ‘Nothing to do with this?’ He swung an arm towards the gallery.

  ‘No. I wanted to talk to you about Perry Harrison. We’re very concerned about him.’

  ‘Are you?’ Wetherby sounded wary.

  ‘I’ve been told you were one of his oldest friends and hoped you’d know where he was.’

  ‘I’m sure Perry will make his whereabouts known if he wants to be found.’

  Sam gritted his teeth. This wasn’t going to be easy.

  ‘I spoke to his son Charles. He told me his father hasn’t long to live, Mr Wetherby. Would you mind – after the reception – if we had a chat?’

  ‘There’s no point. I can’t tell you anything.’ The old man waved at another veteran and called across to say he’d be joining him in a minute. ‘What did you say your name was?’

  ‘Maxwell. Stephen Maxwell.’

  ‘How did you know I’d be here?’

  ‘Your wife …’

  Wetherby’s eyes registered annoyance. ‘All right. We can talk. In about an hour. After this shindig’s over. Where will you be?’

  ‘Here. I’ll be waiting for you. And there’s a café on the ground floor we could go to.’

  ‘Very well.’ Wetherby turned and made a beeline for the drinks table beyond the glass doors.

  Sam took the lift to the ground floor and whiled away the time looking at the displays.

  It was one o’clock when he returned to the upper level. The frailer veterans were already leaving. Wetherby was still inside however, laughing with a couple of comrades at the far end of the room.

  Ten minutes later he emerged, pausing by the door to compose himself before coming across to Sam.

  ‘They must mean a lot, occasions like these,’ Sam ventured as they took the lift to the ground floor.

  ‘It’s a chance for a laugh. But there are fewer of us each time.’ He said it quite matter-of-factly.

  ‘Would Perry normally have come to a do like this?’

  ‘Probably not. He wasn’t good at reunions.’

  Sam led the way into the café, found them a table, then queued at the counter. Wetherby had asked for tea. When he returned with the tray the old soldier cocked his head and narrowed his eyes.

  ‘Look, it’s no good asking me where Perry is,’ he said, ‘because I don’t know.’

  In terms of his precise location it was probably true, Sam guessed. ‘When did you last see him?’

  Wetherby thought carefully about his answer. ‘Sometime around Christmas.’ The eyes flickered when he said it. Sam suspected it was more recently than that.

  ‘You’ve known each other since the war?’

  ‘We were prisoners together in Rangoon. Before that we’d each been held at different internment centres. Fought with different units too. My lot fell into Jap hands when they invaded in 1942, so I had a year more of being locked up than Perry. We knew of each other’s existence in the prison but weren’t friends particularly. That came later.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Oh, long after the war.’ He picked up his cup and sipped the tea, beginning to look more at ease. ‘Nineteen-sixty-three to be precise. We bumped into each other – at Green Park tube. Literally. At the top of the steps. He nearly knocked me down them. Apologised profusely for his carelessness, then we both recognised each other.’

  ‘And that was it?’

  ‘Well, yes. We’ve been friends ever since. I suppose we discovered we had more in common than we’d thought.’

  ‘Your past, you mean?’

  ‘And our present. The same sort of problems.’ He picked a sugar lump from the bowl on the table and rolled it across the surface like a dice.

  ‘Nightmares? That sort of thing?’

  ‘Well, yes. Most of us had those, although Perry’s seemed more persistent than mine. And there was guilt – you’d seen your mates being used for bayonet practice or wasting away in prison, and you sort of felt bad about surviving. Hard to talk about except with somebody else who’d been through it.’

  ‘You’d had similar experiences after the war?’

  ‘No. Very different. I’d been a regular soldier before ’39 and stayed in afterwards for another five years. And I got married soon after coming back. Both of those things gave stability to my life. I mean Perry got hitched too, but it didn’t work out. He’s like a man suffering from tinnitus, you know. Or with a mosquito in his ear. Some irritation in his head that’s always made it hard for him to settle. Never worked out if it’s because of what he went through in Burma or whether it’s in the genes.’

  ‘But after that reunion you saw each other regularly?’

  ‘Perry was of no fixed abode at that point. He’d just left Dorothy for the second time. Full of grandiose plans for founding his commune. I invited him to stay with us until he got himself somewhere permanent.’

  ‘Were you living in Suffolk then?’

  ‘Yes. I’d set up an electronics business in Bury St Edmunds. Servicing and spare parts for hi-fi and TV sets. Employed 135 people at one stage,’ he added proudly. ‘We’d moved into computers by the time I sold out.’

  Sam’s antennae twitched. ‘You must be quite a techie.’

  ‘Trained in the Royal Signals.’

  So he would almost certainly know how to format a hard-drive, Sam surmised.

  ‘Did he talk to you about his illness?’

  ‘Not much.’ Wetherby leaned back and folded his arms as if deciding he’d said enough. ‘Look, I’m sorry I can’t help you.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Need to be on my way in a minute. There’s a train at a quarter past the hour.’

  ‘Charles said his father had unresolved issues from his past.’

  ‘Wouldn’t know about that …’

  ‘In Burma. His ex-wife. And a son who’s a political prisoner. Khin Thein?’

  ‘I couldn’t say.’

  ‘He talked to you about them?’

  ‘If he did it’d have been in confidence.’

  The loyalty of Perry Harrison’s friends was getting on Sam’s nerves.

  ‘That Jap who tortured him …’

  Wetherby put a hand up to his birthmark.

  ‘… Perry wants him dead. Yes?’

  ‘I don’t know about that.’

  ‘And he’s gone to Burma because he thinks he’ll find Kamata there.’

  Wetherby shook his head. ‘It’s no good making all these wild allegations.’

  ‘There’s a man’s life at stake, Mr Wetherby. Maybe several lives. If you know something …’

  The old soldier licked his lips. The shutters had come down.

  ‘Ever been back to Burma?�
�� Sam asked in a desperate attempt to get him to say something else.

  ‘Never. England’s good enough for me.’

  ‘You mean you don’t like travelling abroad?’

  ‘Don’t even have a passport.’

  Sam’s throat went dry.

  ‘You’ve never had one?’

  ‘Nope.’

  So there’d be no record of a Robert Wetherby at the passport office. Which meant that if Perry Harrison happened to have applied for a travel document in that name a few weeks ago, the powers that be would have had no reason to deny it to him.

  Wetherby pushed his chair back and got stiffly to his feet. ‘That train …’ he muttered uncomfortably. ‘I’ll miss it if I don’t go now.’

  ‘Yes of course.’ Sam stood up too.

  ‘Sorry you’ve wasted your time.’

  Sam gave him a kindly smile. He hadn’t.

  Fifteen

  Bordhill Manor

  1.15 p.m.

  Melissa Dennis had been found on the floor of Ingrid Madsen’s office soon after 7 a.m. by Ingrid herself. She’d been quite unable to explain how she’d got there and had no memory of what had happened the previous evening. She’d hardly been able to stand and her voice was slurred. Despite the absence of alcohol on her breath, Ingrid had chided her for yet another episode of drunkenness.

  Eventually, after Melissa’s voluble protests of innocence, a doctor had been called. He could find no reason for her state and proclaimed her to be perfectly fit but suggested she should spend the day lying down.

  Now it was lunchtime and Melissa was fed up with her bed. She felt fine again, apart from a headache and the strange inability to remember what she’d done last night. She recollected her intention to enter Perry Harrison’s private quarters and had a vague memory of setting out to do so. But how she got into the manor and ended up in a drugged sleep in Ingrid’s office she had no idea.

  Drugged. She was sure that’s what had occurred. No other explanation. But how and at whose hands she couldn’t imagine. She’d read in the papers about date rape drugs which made you forget, but there was nothing to suggest her body had been interfered with sexually.

  She was experiencing the vaguest of recollections, merely a tickle, that she’d actually opened the door to Perry’s apartment and stepped inside. Suppose, just suppose, Perry hadn’t disappeared at all but had been hiding in there … All her plans for travelling to Burma the next day would be a waste of time.

  So she had to find out. And there was no other way but to go back in and look. Not in the night this time but during the supper break when everybody else would be in the dining room and the top floor deserted.

  And this time she would go armed with the battery-powered rape/attack alarm which she’d bought a year ago on a visit to London.

  West London

  3.15 p.m.

  Sam put down the phone.

  Waddell had just confirmed it. An ‘R. Wetherby’ had travelled alone to Bangkok last Saturday, the 8th of January. Then yesterday – Monday the 10th – he’d flown on to Yangon, the Myanmar capital, the return flights left open.

  Sam himself was now booked on a Qantas to Bangkok at half past ten that night.

  He’d asked Waddell if Tokyo had anything on Kamata visiting Myanmar, but the answer was negative. Wheels were in motion, he’d said. The station head would be given a fresh kick up the backside and the SIS rep in Myanmar would be ordered to check the Yangon hotels to see if a Wetherby was registered. But because of the time difference and communication problems it’d be morning before they heard anything.

  Sam stared blankly at the walls of the flat. There was something very basic about the emerging scenario which still didn’t make sense to him. Harrison was seventy-seven and terminally ill. It was inconceivable to him that he could mount a murderous assault in a far off land without help. The man had been away from Burma for thirty-eight years.

  The phone rang again.

  ‘Hello?’

  Silence. Then a click as the line cut.

  ‘Shit.’

  He banged the receiver down.

  Jack, no doubt. Expecting to get the answerphone and being surprised by a male voice. Fresh doubts set in about Julie’s protestations of innocence.

  This was a mad time to be disappearing. Daft to be heading for trouble on the other side of the world when there was a personal battle to be won right here.

  The phone rang one more time. He decided to leave it. Let the machine pick it up.

  ‘Sam. Ring me straight back.’ Waddell’s voice.

  He snatched up the receiver.

  ‘Ah. Caught you in the bog, did I?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Listen. IT have broken Harrison’s email password. There’s a stack of messages sent and received that didn’t appear on the newsgroups. They’ve downloaded the lot and are sifting them. Anything interesting’ll be copied to you. Give them five minutes then go online again.’

  ‘Brilliant.’ He pondered for a moment. ‘Out of curiosity, did you try to get through a few seconds earlier?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Transport have arranged a car to take you to the airport at seven. Ring me when you get to Bangkok and keep checking your email. And good luck.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He was going to need it.

  He rang off, then went to the bedroom to get his suitcase together.

  Five minutes later with the task uncompleted he returned to the living room and logged on. The cover note from IT was brief.

  The four attachments are all to the same bloke and look highly relevant. We’re having a crack at breaking ‘Rip’s’ password, but no success yet. We’ll keep you posted.

  When Sam opened the first of Harrison’s emails the last of his doubts disappeared.

  From: Myoman

  Date: 28 December 1999

  To: Rip

  Subject: Past conversations

  Dear Rip,

  I have recently gone ‘online’ as I believe it’s called, and have decided to contact you via the email address you gave me some time ago. Ever since we first met at the Chindit reunion in 1995, you have repeatedly offered me your help in any counterstrike venture I might eventually contemplate. Such a moment has now come and I should like to avail myself of your assistance. I’m not as strong as I was and need someone who knows the ropes. You told me in your last letter that your work now takes you to the Far East. I shall be travelling to Bangkok shortly, and would like to meet and discuss what I have in mind.

  For security reasons I am not signing my normal name, but I’m quite certain I have said enough for you to know who I am!

  Yours ever,

  Myoman

  December 28th. Two days before Harrison’s disappearance from Bordhill. Sam clicked on the next attachment. Dated the 29th, it was the reply.

  Myoman. Bangkok is a city I pass through frequently and will make sure one of my visits coincides with yours. I am intrigued to know what you plan to do. Email me your flight dates as soon as you have them. Rip

  The third attachment was from Harrison again. A week later. Detailing the BA flight he was on and the name of a hotel he’d booked in Bangkok.

  The fourth, dated January the 9th, the Sunday just past, bore a more plaintive message.

  Dear Rip,

  Sorry not to find any word from you at the hotel in Bangkok when I arrived. Realised I forgot to tell you I was travelling in the name of Robert Wetherby. Please do get in touch if you can. I’m rather relying on you.

  My plan is to fly to Rangoon tomorrow. (They’ll never make me call it Yangon.) Time is of the essence. Please join me in Burma if we don’t meet here in Bangkok. When I’m sure about where I’m staying I shall email you the details.

  Yours in hope,

  Myoman

  Sam stroked his chin. Harrison’s ‘plan’ seemed long on aspiration but short on strategy. And did ‘time is of the essence’ refer to his failing h
ealth, or to the imminence of Kamata’s arrival in Burma?

  The former, he suspected, because if SIS was having a hard time discovering Kamata’s plans, it’d surely be almost impossible for an elderly pensioner.

  He wondered for a moment if they were panicking over nothing. Looking at the bungle he’d got himself into, there was a good chance Harrison would fail of his own accord.

  He heard the key in the lock. Julie was back.

  ‘Hi. I’m home,’ she called.

  He got up and walked into the hall. She was standing by the open bedroom door, her sopping coat halfway off. She’d seen his suitcase.

  Julie turned to him, her face crumpling with disappointment.

  Sam put a hand on her arm.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry sweetheart. It won’t be for long. I promise.’

  Bordhill Manor

  7.00 p.m.

  Melissa found it ridiculously easy to creep up the stairs to the first floor without being seen. Heart thudding and with a quick glance back to the main stairwell to ensure the coast was clear, she tapped in the numbers on the lock to Perry’s apartment. Clutching the battery-powered screecher, she stepped inside, closed the door and listened.

  Nothing. Not even the distant clink of cutlery from the dining room downstairs. These quarters had been designed for Perry to be able to shut out the community he’d founded.

  Melissa tiptoed to the bedroom. The door was wide open and the bed showed no signs of having been slept in recently. She checked the bathroom and kitchenette. Clean, tidy and unused. Perry always left his imprint. He couldn’t have been living here in secret. So who had attacked her last night?

  She walked warily into the day room, crossed to the corner and switched on the computer. While waiting for it to power up, she opened the filing cabinet and began checking folders. What exactly she was looking for she didn’t know. Something under ‘travel’ or ‘family’, but there was nothing. She turned her attention to the computer, clicking through his file folders in My Docs.

  Gone. Everything deleted. The emails too.