by Lee Weeks
‘Do you remember what the five were doing when you last saw them that afternoon?’
Run Run looked at Riley. She seemed suddenly flustered or confused, Mann didn’t know which.
‘They were waiting.’
‘Waiting for what?’ asked Mann.
Run Run tried to recall. ‘I asked Anna, one of the girls, what are you doing still here? She told me they were still waiting for their lift, it was late.’
Mann turned to Riley. ‘You said they had their own transport.’
‘Not these kids. They got a lift with me. That’s what I mean about NAP—they just expected me to do everything for them.’
‘But who gave them a lift that day if you were ill?’
‘Some other volunteers staying at Mary’s offered.’
The baby had started grizzling in earnest and Run Run could not placate him.
‘They will kill many more if they are not stopped,’ she said. ‘I want to help you in the search for the volunteers. But we will need money if we want people to help us. We need supplies.’
‘I have money,’ answered Mann.
‘Bring it later. I will buy what you need with it.’ She turned to address Riley. ‘Can you get me a pass to leave the camp tonight?’
‘Shouldn’t be a problem. I will say I need you to help with some translation.’
She stood and picked up the baby. He was no more than three months old. His cry was quivery, his mouth like a young bird’s as he turned and searched for food at her breast. She stood, kissed the baby’s head and handed him to Riley.
‘Please give him to Dao. He wants something I do not have it in me to give him. You will find her across from here. She will feed him. I will see you later.’ She said, bowing again, ‘Tonight I will take you to meet the last of the great KNLA leaders. His name is Alak.’
56
With a look of disgust, Shrimp walked past the armed men on the door and exited the police station. He headed down the road to the Thai boxing stadium. Posters were pinned all over the entrance and the outside walls.
El Supremo remains unbeaten. Thursday evening free-for-all challenge to win the thousand dollars.
Inside the place all was quiet except for six youngsters and their trainer sparring with one another.
‘Hey.’ Shrimp nodded in the direction of the trainer. ‘Mind if I watch?’
‘You are welcome.’ The trainer walked towards him. ‘My name is Pan.’ He reminded Shrimp of the man who had taught him Taekwondo when he was a boy. He had been a dedicated kind man and a wise person. Someone who the children could aspire to be like, certainly not a bully.
‘And mine is Li. It’s a great place you have here.’ Shrimp scanned the large auditorium. It could easily seat three hundred people.
‘It’s not mine,’ Pan smiled. He left the boys sparring. ‘I wish it was.’
‘Who owns it? El Supremo and the coach?’
‘Ha! No…They wish they did too. They just run it for the owner. They’re from overseas.’
‘Can you teach me the basics?’
The boys started laughing.
‘Shush…’ Pan admonished. ‘Don’t be rude.’ He turned back to Shrimp. ‘I see by the way that you move that you know martial arts.’
Shrimp nodded. The boys’ stares became more respectful.
‘I have had some success, yes. But I know nothing about this particular discipline.’
‘I will teach you the basics—it will be good for the boys to see how others fight. Thai boxing is all about hands, knees, elbows, kicks and punches. Here.’ He called two of the boys forward. ‘Show Mr Li how it works.’
The young boys began sparring. There came a voice from behind Shrimp.
‘We’ll show Mr Li how it works.’
El Supremo, Coach and the two policemen Shrimp had just seen at the station had entered the boxing stadium and were now closing the doors behind them.
Pan stepped closer to Shrimp and bowed respectfully to the men at the door. ‘He is having instruction, that’s all. There is no need to threaten him.’
‘Get the children out. Lessons are over for today. This man is causing civil unrest here. Thailand is full of political activists causing trouble—he is just one more.’
‘I am sorry, my friend, you are on your own,’ Pan whispered under his breath as he bowed again and backed away. ‘I cannot help you now.’
Shrimp looked at the policemen. They looked like they were dying for an excuse to try out their guns. Pan started to back away. ‘I suggest you allow yourself to take the beating and try and survive it. You fight back…they will kill you.’
57
‘Alak is the number one suspect at the moment,’ Mann mused as he and Riley left Run Run’s hut. ‘Can we trust him? Can we trust Run Run?’
They crossed the lane with the grizzling baby to interrupt Dao from her weaving. Her own baby was sleeping soundly in a basket beside her. Dao took the infant from Riley and lifted her top to allow him to suckle as she carried on weaving one handed. Riley led Mann onwards through the camp. Mann said, ‘If it goes wrong tonight this could turn out to be a very short trip for me.’
‘You can trust Run Run. I can’t vouch for Alak. I have never met him. But he’s a hero round here. Normally he spends his time carrying out raids behind the Burmese border but Run Run says he is willing to meet with us in the mountains to the north and see what can be done. He is taking a big risk—if he’s caught he will be handed straight over to the Burmese junta to be executed. Run Run says he wants to help you to find the volunteers.’
‘Run Run knows him personally?’
‘I think she knows him very personally. I think they were childhood sweethearts, they grew up together. There was talk of them marrying but her mother put a stop to that—he’s a Buddhist and she’s a Christian. But Alak will die fighting, that is a certainty, and Run Run will probably live out her life here in the camp; that too is a sad fact.’
‘How did she end up in here?’
‘She was on the run for most of her life because of her mother. Run Run was brought up fighting the Burmese. Her mother is a famous fighter. Her name’s Mo. She once commanded a platoon of fighting women who were feared all over Burma. They took out many armed Burmese units. Sometimes through direct combat, other times they were used as decoys. Either way, she was feared and revered. She was a force to be reckoned with. She and her children were on the run from the Burmese for many years but, to keep them safe, Mo went into hiding and has remained there. She can have nothing to do with her children if they’re to have a hope of staying alive. They would be prime targets for assassination by the Burmese. Run Run settled here and looks after abandoned kids, women without families, those who are disabled, rape victims, victims of sex trafficking…she is a great woman. Never says much, just gets on with it. She’s a tough cookie. She maintains strong links with the KNLA.’
‘Is that why she isn’t married, Riley—because of Alak?’
‘Partly, and maybe because when she was a teenager the Burmese sacked the village she was staying in, and they took her and six others as porters and comfort women. They were imprisoned in the camp for six months, made to carry forty-kilo loads all day and service the men at night. Most of them died. But Run Run managed to escape.’
‘How?’
‘One night she persuaded one of the guards to take her to an area at the edge of the camp. Whilst he was raping her she smashed his skull with a rock. They didn’t discover she was missing for twelve hours. By that time she had been found by the KNLA. The man who rescued her was Mongkut. He was a ferocious fighter. He was a good man. He didn’t deserve to die.’
‘Are we sure he was targeted?’
‘Yes.’ Riley stopped in his tracks and looked hard at Mann. ‘As were the five volunteers. Someone chose them for a reason, Mann.’
58
Mann wiped the sweat from his brow. They had been waiting for nearly an hour. Mann was out of sight in the back of Riley’s batte
red old Suzuki jeep, opposite the camp entrance watching the four policemen sitting on the logs, eating their dinner.
Riley switched the headlights off and they sat and waited. It could be a while; time arrangements were never an exact thing in refugee camps. Night descended so fast that only the mosquitoes saw it coming—they were out in force tonight. Mann could hear them as they did the rounds of the car, searching for warm blood. Mann was lucky—for some reason they never bit him. Riley was not so fortunate; he slapped his neck and squashed a fat one as it sat feasting. Then they saw Run Run. Riley switched the lights back on. She appeared at the camp entrance.
‘If she has any trouble getting out I will go over and try and help but I don’t want to unless I have to—sometimes it just makes it worse to interfere, especially when they’ve been drinking. They can turn nasty.’
Mann watched Run Run negotiating her way past the policemen. It was a curious thing to watch. They wanted to make sure she wasn’t carrying anything, they wanted to frisk her. The inspection would not be hurried; they had all night and nothing to do but talk about women and get drunk. Run Run knew the best strategy to survive. She used it now, laughing and flirting coyly with the eager-faced guards. As she walked away Mann watched them grin gormlessly at her dis appearing back as their eyes slipped down to watch the merest suggestion of a wiggle. Her body might be still playing the game but she had stopped smiling the instant she turned her back on them—job done. She was one of those women whose beauty was just a tool for her. It had not brought her happiness. She made her way across the road to Riley’s jeep. She walked, purposefully but unhurriedly, to the car.
Riley turned the engine on and gave the police a friendly wave, muttering ‘wankers’ under his breath. Mann kept out of sight. Run Run got into the front passenger seat.
‘Wait a few minutes. The women will help us,’ said Run Run. ‘We cannot be seen to go into the hills. They will make a diversion.’ On cue there was a rush of action and screaming and a plume of smoke began rising from the far end of the camp. The four policemen ran off in the direction of the new building. ‘Now we must turn around,’ she said. Riley did as he was told, spinning the car quietly round and heading away from the camp and further north into the hills. As they set off Mann saw Run Run reach inside her shawl and take out a small wrapped cloth bundle she had been hiding.
Either side of the unlit road was thick darkness. They drove for an hour and a half before turning onto one of the tracks that cut a narrow road up into the hills. Their headlights flashed vivid green over fleshy leaves and myriad small eyes peered back at them from the canopy of trees. Mann was starting to wonder how much more the old jeep was going to be able to take—this was definitely all-terrain country and the road was losing its battle to cut a clean path through the hillside. But as they climbed the trees got sparser and stars appeared overhead. Run Run tapped Riley’s shoulder. In the distance, between the black undergrowth on the far side of the slope, a torch was flashing. Riley dimmed the headlights to signal he had seen and they wound their way carefully off road and down to the edge of a wooded area.
A face lit by torchlight appeared at the driver’s window. The man was minus one eye—a scar sliced his face diagonally in half, so that one side no longer fitted the other. Another face peered in at the passenger side, an M36 rifle raised and pointed casually at Mann as it nestled in the crook of an arm that narrowed to a callused stump. The man wore a shortsleeved army shirt and on it was the badge of the KNLA: a white star on a blue background, topped by a red rising sun.
The man pointed his rifle butt towards a clearing further down and across the hillside. Riley inched the jeep slowly forward, over and down the edge of a cleared forest, where once a thriving village had stood but now nothing but the skeleton of a community remained. In front of the jeep, more men started to appear. Some were dressed in combat trousers and shirts, others wore dark T-shirts and cut-offs. They were all heavily armed.
Mann could see that these were hard, battle-torn men. Most were young, their sinewy forms moving slowly around the edge of the scene. Their faces were lit by the green cheroots they smoked, their eyes alert with tired wariness. These were men who were born to run and knew nothing but army life; they never got a day off and they never got a homecoming. They were men who looked as if they had lost their souls along the way and now had no idea what a life without struggle was like. They lived in an unreal world where the only hope was in believing that hope was enough. They took it in turns to stare suspiciously into the car. They eventually waved the car on. The jeep was being steered towards the left, down a sharp incline and then onto a level area. Once there, one of the fighters held up his hand for them to stop and get out of the car.
Mann and Riley were frisked. They missed Delilah, tucked into Mann’s boot. Escorted by the soldiers, they were led single file into the jungle. The layers of vege ta tion crackled beneath their feet as they wove their way between the trees. With only torchlight to guide them and the canopy of trees above them, not even the stars were visible. Mann had never been in a forest so dense or a situation so strange. He was a city boy, used to the low life and the high rise, or being on a beach with a surfboard in his hand, but he had never been so lost in a jungle before. They moved through the forest, away from the old village and deep into the safety of the woods until they could hear the low hum of men talking, the crackling of a fire and the smell of food being cooked. There were maybe thirty soldiers in all, sitting around in small groups. The air was filled with the smell of sweat and guns, the damp smell of steaming rice, and the tangy smoke of cooked chilli and fish paste wafted over to them in waves.
From the darkness a figure in combats emerged and strode towards them. He was a powerful-looking man, wild and handsome in a Che Guevara way, with haunted, hollow cheeks sunken into a broad face. His dark bushy eyebrows came low over deep set eyes. He had unkempt hair and he wore a red bandanna around his head. He walked up and shook Riley’s hand.
‘I have heard many good things about you,’ he said as he took Riley’s hand and shook it warmly.
‘Same here, Captain Alak.’
Then the man turned towards Mann and Mann felt his sharp scrutiny. Mann eyeballed him back. What Mann saw was a man who was in his prime but who was never destined to get old. Alak was relying on every tissue in his body to keep him alive in the moment. But, to judge by his expression when he had glanced at Run Run, it was every tissue that made up his muscle and bone—but none that lay in his heart. He was a man who could be allowed only to dream of the future. Deep in Alak’s dark eyes, Mann saw the demon of doubt.
Then, just at the moment when the situation began to look awkward, Alak gave a smile and he reached out to shake Mann’s hand.
‘It is good to meet you, Johnny Mann.’
‘And you, Alak.’
They followed Alak to a cleared area where logs were laid out for them to sit on. Above his head Mann could see a few stars squeezing through the black jungle canopy. As he sat down Mann eased Delilah out of his boot and slipped her into the palm of his hand, pushing her hilt up under his shirt sleeve. He felt the coldness of her steel against his arm. It was reassuring to him to feel her there. He had the feeling he would need her before long.
59
‘I’m all right, Summer, really,’ said Shrimp. Summer couldn’t stop crying. ‘It looks worse than it is.’
She howled louder. She had come to find Shrimp in his digs. He was lying on his bed, the window open, the smell of the sea filling the room. ‘Shhh, Summer, please, you’re not helping.’
‘I am sorry, hon. Truly sorry. Here…’ Summer opened her bag and took out a bundle of papers. ‘It’s what you wanted. Some of the people made copies of the legal stuff.’
Shrimp sat bolt upright and took the papers from her. She began overzealously plumping his pillows. He flicked through the documents quickly.
‘Perfect,’ he said. ‘I will come and talk to you later and tell you what I need you to do.
’ Summer started crying again. ‘But only if you promise to stop crying.’
Shrimp spent the next five hours laid out reading the papers from Summer. They all added up to the same thing—the people had been deceived into signing away their homes or businesses. It wasn’t just a local fraud going on. Lots of the buyers for these businesses or strips of coastland were from overseas. Even if they had not wittingly thrown a farmer off his land, in the end, they had built a hotel on what used to be his home. Someone in the middle had brokered these deals. Shrimp was pos itive he could find enough evidence to take their cases to an international court. He was also positive that the charities commission would want to know that one of their Dutch charities had been the middleman on some of these deals.
Later that day he managed to rouse himself from his bed. Very slowly and gingerly, he walked down Patong Beach and along to the boxing stadium.
The children looked up as Shrimp entered. One of his shoulders hung lower than the other where it had been dislocated. His battered face was unrecognisable. Only his hair gave him away—gelled into a peak at the front.
Pan came towards him.
‘You are a brave man. I am happy to see you alive.’
‘Yesss.’ Shrimp could not speak properly, his lips were so swollen. He walked slowly forward. There was no part of him that hadn’t been bruised by the beating.
‘What do you want here?’
‘To learn how to Thai box.’
‘Still?’
Shrimp nodded.
60
Mann looked at Run Run. Her eyes were locked on Alak’s, shining in the firelight. One of Alak’s men brought over some glasses and a bottle. Naked to the chest, the skin on his back was cut and there was a folded area where he had lost muscle and flesh from a massive injury. Alak poured them each a shot of rum.