“Why did you not run out then, if you had been attacked? Why did you wait so long that the others returned and shot Mr. Yongchaiyudh? Would it not be a normal thing to run away at that point, Mr. Delaney?”
“I wanted to find out where Mr. Kellner was.”
“So you asked Mr. Yongchaiyudh to wait in the road, where there might be danger, and you searched the house you say you thought belonged to your friend.”
“I didn’t think Mr. Yongchaiyudh was in danger,” Delaney said.
“Someone you said was a mercenary attacked you and you felt it necessary to beat him over the head with a chair and tie him up. You did not think there was danger that day?”
“We didn’t know what to expect next.”
“Wouldn’t a normal response be to run away to safety?”
“I wanted to find out where Kellner was,” Delaney said again.
“Was that so important that you would put your driver in such danger, Mr. Delaney?” Chatichai asked.
Delaney felt anger welling up. His guilt over Ben’s death was not police business. He would deal with that privately. Rawson raised his hand ever so slightly, urging Delaney to stay calm.
“What was it that you were actually looking for that day, Mr. Delaney?” Chatichai asked again. “What was so important that a Thai citizen needed to be shot while you searched a farmhouse in Mae Sot?”
“I’ve answered that question, General,” Delaney said.
“And then they took you to Burma.”
“Yes.”
“They shot the Thai national and they brought the Canadian national with them by road all the way to Burma.”
“Yes.”
“You are very fortunate to be Canadian, Mr. Delaney.”
“Mr. Delaney had a very difficult time in Burma, General,” Rawson said. “He was abducted and treated very roughly by the mercenaries and then by the Burmese authorities.”
Chatichai threw Delaney’s written statement down on the desk.
“And now your government wants me to simply close this file, just like that,” he said.
“That would be a police decision, General, not one for my government to make,” Rawson said. “We have given you our full cooperation.”
*
The interview did not get any better. Chatichai went through the motions of questioning Delaney and went through the motions of expressing outrage but, in the end, politics and diplomacy prevailed over police work and he showed them the door. No handshakes, no wai. A distinct lack of Thai hospitality.
“I intend to order that this file be left open,” the general said as they stood by the doorway. “That is your prerogative,” Rawson said.
“I reserve the right to continue the investigation.”
“Again, a police prerogative.”
“Mr. Delaney, we may have more questions for you the next time you decide to visit Thailand,” Chatichai said. “Any time you come back again.” “Is that a threat, General?” Delaney said. Chatichai looked like he would explode. “It is a statement of fact,” he said.
Kate was waiting for him at the pool when Delaney got back to the hotel around noon. She was already deep in holiday mode, in a yellow swimsuit and an RCMP ball cap.
“Well, at least they didn’t keep you in overnight,” she said when she saw him.
“Almost,” he said. “You cops are a tough bunch.”
“Let’s get out of here,” she said.
“Right,” he said. “Tomorrow. We’ll have to shake the embassy guys first.” “Outlaws,” she said.
*
There was one last bit of business before they could go in holiday mode to Ko Chang. Delaney needed to speak at last to his editor, to explain that he was taking some more time off before returning to Montreal. He would leave out the part about his planning to write a long piece about Kellner and the Suu Kyi plot for Asia Weekly. The editor there, who Delaney knew well, had been more than delighted, even on the vaguest of descriptions of what the article would entail, to commission something over the telephone from Singapore. They would hold pages open for him in the next issue. With the current edition about to go to press, that gave Delaney about ten days grace to write and file.
Rawson was off somewhere doing spy business. Delaney and Kate sunned themselves for the afternoon and ate an early dinner in the dining room with well-heeled tourists and business types. Rawson found them there as they were finishing and sat down at their table.
“Yes, you can buy me an aperitif,” Rawson said. “No, I am not offended that you failed to ask me to join you this evening for dinner. Now that the pressure is off. Gin and tonic, please.”
“Our friend General Chatichai doesn’t think the pressure is off,” Delaney said after the waiter had gone.
“Kate here will appreciate his desire to close the case properly. Imagine how an RCMP inspector would react if he was told to let something like this slide. No police officer would be happy with that.”
“The perpetrators are dead, Jon,” Kate said.
“Chatichai can’t be sure of that,” Rawson said. “He wants bodies, motive, murder weapons, DNA, fingerprints, witness statements, chapter and verse.”
“He’ll just have to let it go,” Delaney said.
“You’ll just have to get out of his country,” Rawson said.
“Soon, Jon,” Delaney said.
“Tomorrow,” Rawson said. “Thai Airways to Vancouver.”
“This time next week. Same flight,” Delaney said.
“Bad move,” Rawson said. “Very bad.” Harden was very agitated indeed.
“Frank,” he said when Delaney reached him by telephone that evening, “you must think we’re running some kind of sheltered workshop just for you over here. You drift in and out, filing the odd column whenever you damn well please, ignoring the wishes and suggestions of your section editor. You spend more time on your own book projects than you do on your column. Then you drift over to Europe without my say-so or Patricia’s, apparently to do research there, god knows why, for a column that is supposed to be about Canadian politics and issues. I see no story proposal, no forms filled out, no request for air travel, nothing, nothing. You drop completely out of sight for almost a month and then we get an urgent call from External Affairs saying you are in a jail cell somewhere in Rangoon and can we please confirm to the Burmese authorities and the Thais and whoever the hell else wants to know that, yes, you’re on assignment for the Tribune or you may never get out. Frank, I’ve been in the newspaper business for more than 30 years. You’re in for about 25, or thereabouts. What is your best guess about what an editor-in-chief, and a son of a bitch of one at that, would say to a staffer who messes up like that?”
“Ed, there’s a lot more to it than that. I’ll explain it all to you when I get back.”
“Have you got something to file? What all this about Nathan Kellner? Where’s he fit into all this? Can you at least file something after all this nonsense?”
“I’m not sure it’s a Tribune story, Ed,” Delaney said.
“What in Christ’s name is that supposed to mean? You’re over there and you’re working for me and you’re telling me whatever it is you’ve got is not a Tribune story?”
“I think it’s really more like something for a world readership, Ed.”
“Frank, I’m going to ignore that. I’m going to pretend I never heard you say that. You’re a Tribune staffer . . .”
“I’m a contract columnist, Ed,” Delaney said.
“Frank, are you out of your mind? I’ve been very patient with you for years. Very patient because you’re good at what you do. Don’t push your luck any further, OK? You are on very thin ice at this news paper as it is. I want you to come in to see me the minute you get back and we’ll thrash all of this out once and for all. Patricia has some ideas for changes.”
�
��Let’s sort it all out then,” Delaney said.
“Yes, let’s do that,” Harden said. “When are you coming back in?” “Next week,” Delaney said.
“You really are out of your mind,” Harden said.
Delaney had not been dreaming much since his release from Insein Prison. There was never any predicting when he might have what the Jungians would call a big dream. In Bangkok, however, before heading out with Kate, he dreamed this:
He is deep in Quebec woods, the same place where Natalia was killed. But it is summer, not winter. All the snow is gone and the maple trees and the elms and the oaks provide a green canopy, shading him from the hot sun. Cicadas whine and there is birdsong. All is peaceful. He walks slowly through the trees, knowing exactly where he is to go. He comes into a large clearing and there before him is a round lake, smooth as glass. A perfectly circular mirror. The still water reflects the blue sky and white clouds overhead. There is a long narrow dock heading out to the centre but it does not quite come all the way in to shore. He must make a leap from the water’s edge onto the wooden slats of the dock, one last leap before he can walk out to the exact centre of the lake. He is almost at his destination. He hesitates, and the dream ends.
*
Rawson had, on the face of it, given up. He was not in the hotel lobby when Delaney and Kate appeared the next morning, ready to set off for Ko Chang.Ted Green was not there either. Delaney expected they would have arranged some sort of subtle surveillance, if not of the six-hour drive to Trat and the ferry ride to the island, then at least of their stay there. Delaney had thought it sensible, given the dangers and the various interests they had offended, to at least tell Rawson where they were going and when they planned to come back.
Delaney and Kate did their best to avoid being followed because there was no telling whose faction might want to come along: Canadians, Thai police, Burmese agents, perhaps even a representative of the much aggrieved Australian businessmen.
There were car rental desks in the lobby but Delaney had arranged instead to get a car from Hualamphong Station. It might appear to those interested that they were taking a train south, and the sprawling station itself would give them opportunity to disappear into throngs of locals and backpackers hurrying for the platforms.
He looked behind them many times in the taxi as they headed from the hotel to the station but he saw no overt sign of interest. Certainly there was no white Land Cruiser in sight. The absence of any interest whatsoever seemed odd to him, but it would be equally odd to complain of no interest after complaining all week about too much. He settled back into the seat beside Kate and tried to relax.
At the station, they signed out their Toyota Corolla and retrieved it in the station’s vast underground car park. The dim coolness there gave them a sense of privacy for the first time that day.
“Alone at last, lover boy,” Kate said as they put bags and Delaney’s laptop computer into the car. She smiled at him across the metallic roof.
“Looks like it,” he said. “We may just be able to pull this off. I would have expected more of an escort.”
“Lucky,” Kate said.
Getting out of Bangkok by car was always arduous. It was almost an hour before they were on open road heading toward Chon Buri and, beyond that, the coastal highway along the Gulf of Thailand to Trat near the Cambodian border.
It was a typical Southeast Asian highway: narrow, rutted in places, choked with belching trucks and swarms of motorcycles and three-wheeled vans. After Chon Buri and Sattahip, they were truly in the Thai hinterland. Few villages, traffic thinner, heavy rainforest on both sides of the road.
Delaney had always liked a long car journey in rural Asia or South America. It brought you out of the international cocoon of airports and aircraft and taxis and business hotels. The sounds and the smells of a country came cascading over you on a road trip and Delaney revelled in them as he drove. He also revelled in the presence of a good-looking woman at his side, with neither of them in any hurry to get anywhere and problems left behind.
They had lunch at a truckstop noodle house just past Rayong. From there, if they wished, they could have gone over to Ko Samet but Delaney knew the island had been badly overdeveloped. They would carry on to Ko Chang, where they had a reservation at a hotel on at the northwestern tip that Delaney knew would give them what they wanted: quiet, solitude, beach time and a place where he could produce the Asia Weekly article by deadline.
They were the only farangs in the truckstop. A dozen heavy vehicles idled outside. The drivers clearly appreciated the presence of a good-looking Western woman, but they expressed their appreciation with restraint. Delaney knew of a lot of cultures where Kate would have caused a stir in a place like that, perhaps trouble. Mexico came to mind.
The afternoon had become very hot. They were both sweating after their lunch and the walk back to the car. Perspiration beaded on their foreheads and they shivered as the car’s air conditioning kicked in and cooled their skin. As they waited, a massive khaki-coloured Bedford dump truck moved out just before them, spewing diesel fumes and groaning angrily as the driver changed gears.
“I’ll have to get past this guy if we want to breathe this afternoon,” Delaney said, sleepy from his pad thai lunch and a large beer. “No hurry,” Kate said.
The truck moved at a snail’s pace, even though it carried no load. Delaney tried a couple of times to get around, but the driver, apparently just as sleepy as they were, was swaying back and forth across the middle line, so passing was a challenge.
“Lucky there’s not much traffic out here this afternoon or he’d be a road statistic,” Kate said.
“The guy really seems to want to drive on both sides at once,” Delaney said.
He looked in his rearview before making another attempt to pass and knew instantly they were in trouble. A white Land Cruiser was immediately behind them, appearing as if from nowhere. He could not see the driver through the vehicle’s dark windshield, but he had no doubt it was the same one that had been trailing him in Bangkok.
“Kate, I think we’re got a problem here,” he said. “Our friends in the Land Cruiser are with us all of a sudden.”
She saw him looking in the mirror and looked back herself.
“Where on earth did they come from? Do you think it’s the same car?”
“I really do, Kate. This is not good.”
“Let’s go back to the restaurant.There are a lot of people there.”
“Hard to turn around here, Kate. If we stop we may be in even more trouble.”
“Maybe they’re just following us to see where we’re going.” “Maybe.”
Delaney tried again to pass the dump truck ahead but could not squeeze by. “Christ,” he said.
The Land Cruiser drew up closer behind them. The truck ahead slowed even more. Delaney realized suddenly what was happening and knew that trouble had truly come.
“Kate, quick now, get me that gun out of my bag. They’re going to squeeze us in, maybe put us off the road.”
There was very little shoulder to pull onto and deep concrete culverts on both sides of the road. Kate moved fast, a policewoman in an emergency. She reached back to open Delaney’s sports bag and rummaged quickly around to get the pistol and bullets out of a bundled T-shirt. She expertly loaded eight rounds into the Walther’s magazine and set it firmly into the handle, slapping the bottom to set it. She pulled the action and placed the gun down on the seat between them.
“Good to have a police officer along,” Delaney said grimly.
“This doesn’t look good at all, Frank,” Kate said.
The truck in front of them suddenly stopped dead. Delaney hit the brakes and skidded to a halt less than a metre from its high hulking cargo box. The Land Cruiser raced up and hit them from behind with its steel bumper bars, shaking them up and shoving their light Japanese rental car right up into the truck i
n front, wedging them in.
“Let’s get out Frank,” Kate said.
“No cover between here and the trees. And that ditch will be tough to cross fast.”
The passenger door of the Land Cruiser opened and a wiry Asian man in his thirties climbed out, moving fast. He wore a dark blue tracksuit, wraparound sunglasses and a black baseball cap. He was carrying what looked like a vintage Colt automatic, holding it low against his thigh.
“Not good, Kate, not good,” Delaney said. “Get down low.”
Kate slid lower in her seat, hand on the door handle.
“Careful, Frank, careful,” she said. “Let me have the gun. I think I can take him through the glass.”
“No, no, not from that angle. And when he sees the weapon he’ll start to shoot. I’ll wait until he comes around to the side.”
The gunman went around behind his car, and came up cautiously on the driver’s side of theirs. Delaney cradled the gun. He knew he would have only one chance.
“At that range the rounds will go straight through him, Frank,” Kate said. “You’ll need to get off more than one to take him down.”
Delaney said nothing. The gunman was at the window, gun visible but still held low at his thigh pointing down. He looked briefly behind him to the road and then motioned for Frank to lower the window.
As the electric window wound down, Delaney got ready. As soon as the glass disappeared into the car door, he raised the Walther and fired three quick rounds into the gunman’s chest. The man reeled immediately back into the road, one hand clutching at crimson wounds, the other hand firing off a useless round of his own into the blacktop.
“Out out out, go go go,” Delaney shouted to Kate.
He leaped with her out of the passenger door and down into the stinking weed-choked drain culvert. They scrambled up the sloping concrete on the other side and ran for the rainforest. Delaney looked back briefly and saw the driver of the Land Cruiser running over to his partner’s body on the road. He saw the truck driver climbing out of his cab, carrying an AK-47 assault rifle.
The Burma Effect Page 29