Sea of Lies: An Espionage Thriller

by Bradley West

  The entire scene was devoid of life. Up the runway another one hundred fifty yards was the object of Millie’s fascination. A single-story corrugated iron shed under camouflage netting within one hundred feet of the putative road wasn’t Highway Department standard issue.

  He clicked off a few shots with his camera phone, but they might be too grainy to be of much use. The sun was setting. He reversed course, taking less time to conceal himself than on the way in, given the failing light. He wanted to get back to town.

  Forty minutes later, he was back almost to his starting point. As he came down the last hillside in the high grass, he saw the midnight-blue embassy Sonata blocked by a hulking forest-green Escalade. Kyaw knelt by the front of the Hyundai, head bowed and hands over his groin. The driver rolled over and writhed on his back.

  “Oh, shit,” Nolan exclaimed. He recognized the brown-green uniform and familiar stance. At this distance, the single gunman looked just like the US soldiers in Iraq who had covered him when he tapped junction boxes. Nolan raised his own arms an instant later when the second uniformed man entered his peripheral vision from the left rear, tactical weapon at his hip. God only knew how long Gunman Two had been tracking him. Nolan took a closer look. Those weapons were the same issue as the Rangers carried in Fallujah. Even the web gear looked identical.

  While Nolan walked the last thirty feet toward the car, Kyaw staggered upright. Immediately Gunman One barked, “On knees. Hands on head!” An unseen third person bent over in the back of the SUV. He backed out, straightened up and closed the passenger door without turning around. He had on a dark blue shirt and a black baseball hat. Broad-shouldered, but well below Nolan’s 6’1” height. The man turned around and revealed himself to be an old Caucasian. He stepped toward his two prisoners, giving Nolan the eye as he did so.

  Nolan didn’t wait for further instructions; he knelt down near Kyaw and put his hands on his head. My cargo pants are ruined ran through his numb mind as he stared at the tattered knees.

  He looked up at his captor. Mirrored wraparounds shielded a creased, deeply tanned face offset by thin white hair. The boss growled through thick lips, “Get over there,” his hand indicating the hood of the Kia. Nolan stood up and complied, noting an American accent as he awaited further orders. The Old Man with Attitude spoke again, “OK, pal. Your driver already told us you were from the US embassy. So what the fuck are you doing out here?”

  Nolan recognized that voice. That face. “Rob? Robin Teller? It’s Nolan . . . Bob Nolan. Bangkok, 1985. CIA.”

  “I don’t know you. I have no idea who Teller is. So drop the ‘best buds’ angle or you’ll be digging your own graves in one minute.”

  Nolan was pleading for their lives now. “Rob, it’s Bob Nolan from the Counterintel Division in Bangkok. I worked with Ned Windham, Frank Coulter and you on the Double Llama Trading clean-up in 1985. I delivered the passport you used to get out.”

  Robin Teller was perhaps the single worst example of an ex-US military man Nolan had ever met. After Double Llama Trading collapsed in 1985, CEO Teller had convened a board meeting and told his fellow directors that if they talked to anyone, he’d kill their wives in front of them. Teller was a no-bullshit ex-Ranger from Vietnam with a specialization in counterinsurgency tactics. His taste in personal accoutrements tended toward ear necklaces.

  “Take off your sunglasses and hat, but keep your hands on your head.” After a pause that aged Nolan five years, he said, “Well I’ll be a damned fool. Bob fucking Nolan!”

  “Yes, yes, it’s me, Rob. And I retire at the end of March after nearly thirty-three years. So please, just let us go.” Neither guard acknowledged the thaw in relations; the guns stayed leveled.

  “Still on a desk, using one-time pads and listening to your shortwave at night?”

  “Very much so, Rob. I’m actually over in Burma on a preretirement vacation to see a friend. I’m out here doing a day trip as a favor for the chief of station—”

  “Lloyd Matthews? That incompetent brown-noser. He couldn’t sell pussy on credit in prison. Why did he send you to a stinking marsh?”

  “It seemed like an easier gig than trying to sneak into Shan State and ending up with my head on the end of a spear. Rob, we’re looking for MH370 . . . a Malaysia commercial jet that went missing around midnight last night. Some shedheads in Langley think it could be on the ground in Shan or Kachin States. I’m out here killing an afternoon at Matthews’s request.”

  “Let me see your wallet.” Nolan obliged and Teller confirmed his name. Looking at Nolan again, he said, “You think you understand, but you’re stupid. Rob Teller is no more. My name is Jay Toffer. I’m a longtime resident and run security for the late Khun Sa’s estate. What you need to do is get the hell out of here and not come back. I don’t know what you thought you saw, but it was nothing more than an abandoned construction site for a misconceived toll road. We were building it on the cheap, and now that the free labor isn’t available, we stopped work. It’s over. Finito. Am I making myself understood?”

  “Very clear, Mr. Toffer.”

  “Alright. If I find you or”—he glanced at Nolan’s driver—“Mr. Piss-Pants out here again, or if anyone from the embassy ever visits this site, I’m taking it personally.” Teller inspected Nolan’s wallet. “Got any kids?”

  “Yes, Rob . . . er, Jay . . . a daughter and a son.”

  “Yep. Here they are. Good-looking children. Congratulations. Your wife’s a looker, too. If I ever see any one of Matthews’s people or you again, I will DHL you pieces of your family. Now give me your cell phones and that GPS.”

  Nolan and Kyaw did as he said. Teller had pulled three photos out of Nolan’s wallet, and he now conspicuously tucked those into his shirt pocket. Done with the wallet, he tossed it onto the hood of the Hyundai and flipped the car keys to Kyaw. The keys bounced off Kyaw's chest and fell to the ground. Nolan took this as a cue to lower his hands. One of the henchmen started the Escalade, and Teller and the other gunman climbed in. Nolan and Kyaw remained motionless until the green monster was out of sight.

  CHAPTER TWO

  LET’S MAKE A DEAL

  SATURDAY AFTERNOON, MARCH 8, IRRAWADDY DELTA, BURMA

  Kyaw labored to his feet. He had tears running down his cheeks and swayed back and forth.

  “What happened before I came back?” Nolan asked.

  Kyaw held out his left forearm. He had his right hand clenched around his wrist. “He stabbed my . . . my . . . arm.” Nolan quickly walked over and took a look, but when Kyaw unclenched his right hand the blood flooded out. The grass was stained where he’d been kneeling.

  “Damn. This isn’t good. Can you move your fingers?” Nolan asked. Kyaw indicated “no” with an inaudible answer and a shake of his head.

  Nolan pocketed his wallet, noting the dent and small slit in the hood where the knife point had penetrated after exiting Kyaw’s wrist. It had been one hell of a blow.

  “We need to get you to a hospital. It’ll be dark soon. Give me the keys and show me the fastest way back to town after we dress that wound.”

  Nolan was on the move, dropping Kyaw’s wallet in the driver’s back pocket and opening the trunk even as he continued. “Did you make Teller angry or try to run away?”

  “No.”

  “Did he say anything to you?”

  “He asked my name and looked at embassy ID. He asked who you are. I told him someone from the embassy in Singapore. He said that he would cut my throat if I lied. He also took your files from the back seat. I tried to stop him. He grabbed my arm, forced it onto top of car and stabbed me with a big knife. It went all the way through my arm. Then you came back.”

  Nolan experienced a second round of heart palpitations. He hadn’t bothered to open Millie’s background briefing files yet, so he didn’t know what was in them other than that grainy sat photo. That black circle around the disguised building and GPS coordinates on the back would be enough to tip Teller. Anything else would be nails in
their coffins. When Teller had seen enough, he would turn that green SUV around and come back.

  “Give me the keys. I need to look at your arm.” Nolan took a lug wrench from the repair kit in the trunk, stripped off the thin cloth belt from his cargo pants and fashioned a tourniquet with a partial turn of the lug wrench to tighten or loosen the belt. “Keep this as tight as you can stand it. You have to stop the bleeding.” Nolan was outwardly calm, helping Kyaw around to the passenger seat and belting him in. He started the car and drove fast.

  He recalled the old stories from the Bangkok days about Teller’s background. Teller found the Ranger combat operations exciting, but there were too many rear echelon motherfuckers second-guessing his methods. So he bid goodbye to the REMFs and in 1970 took up an offer to join the CIA’s Phoenix Program.

  Phoenix rooted out Vietcong cadres in rural South Vietnam, killing, incarcerating or otherwise neutralizing over eighty thousand people in its short, infamous life. The South Vietnamese and their US advisors weren’t overly concerned with due process. Once they knew who the bad people were, they either captured or killed them without the benefit of a trial. The lefties and Constitution-huggers back home succeeded in shuttering Phoenix in 1972, aided by evidence that Phoenix claimed more than a few innocent lives alongside the multitudinous guilty ones.

  Nolan kept the pedal punched as far as he dared while his brain whirled. There was only one main road back to Rangoon and it ran through Einme. He could circle around and try to return via a different trajectory, but there were few roads and even fewer bridges. Besides, if he took too long Kyaw might lose the use of his hand or bleed to death. Of course, if they drove straight back into an ambush, they would both lose more than a hand. If it was to be the road through Einme, they had to ditch the Hyundai.

  Kyaw was leaning back, eyes shut against the pain. Nolan the agnostic said a silent prayer that Teller hadn’t opened Millie’s files yet.

  Nolan drove as fast as he dared, cognizant of the Hyundai’s low clearance and the chance that they’d either catch up to Teller or drive into a trap. In ten minutes, they were at the turnoff. Nolan took a right, away from where he figured Teller had headed. He put his foot down until they were doing fifty miles an hour; previously, thirty had felt fast. It was all relative: the fear of dying in a car accident was far less than that of facing Teller again.

  Fifteen minutes later, they were still barreling around blind turns in the twilight. He didn’t see a motorized soul aside from a couple of scared scooter riders. They crossed a bridge over a creek that still held water and passed a better-than-average-looking cinderblock home fronting mottled rice paddies. To the side stood a battered pickup truck.

  Nolan slammed on the brakes and pulled into the soggy gravel lot that passed for a front yard. He roused Kyaw. Fumbling first in his pants pockets, he then delved into his sock and found the three mint US hundred dollar bills he always had on him for special occasions. He’d learned that lesson early on in his first tour of Asia when Frank Coulter taught him the non-Biblical Golden Rule: “He who has the gold makes the rules.” Amen to that.

  They got out of the car. Nolan made up the plan on the spot. “Kyaw, leave your tourniquet on the seat. Knock on the front door. Tell the owner that we want to rent his truck for a day. We’ll pay him two hundred dollars cash and leave the Hyundai as collateral.”

  A middle-aged woman stooped by a lifetime of work in the sun opened the door and stared. She probably didn’t get many expatriate CIA employees as callers. Kyaw spoke in Burmese. She looked incredulous. Nolan held out the bills. She turned away from the doorway and called. The house was dark and not much cooler than outside.

  Nolan wanted to step into the shade, out of the setting sun and the gunsights that might be at this very moment settling between his shoulder blades.

  A disheveled man in his forties wearing a tank top and a longyi wrapped around his waist shuffled toward them barefoot. He rubbed his eyes and smoothed his rumpled hair and gestured for Kyaw and Nolan to enter. The living room had wooden chairs around a homemade table, a floor fan, a battered sofa and two kerosene lanterns. There was a TV in the corner hooked to a VCR. Nolan deduced that they fired up the generator occasionally, and maybe ran it to screen the latest Bollywood blockbuster or turn the lights on when friends or relatives came to dinner.

  Kyaw repeated the offer. The husband’s tone hinted at incredulity. The two spoke for several minutes. Nolan was antsy; either the fellow wanted to make two hundred US dollars, or he didn’t. Time was short, and Nolan didn’t have a backup plan: they’d have to keep looking.

  The wife returned with tea. Nolan drank too soon, scalding his lips and tongue. Kyaw left his untouched to better conceal his bloodied wrist.

  “Ask him to start his truck so we can see if it runs.”

  “He hasn’t agreed to your offer. He thinks that Hyundai could be stolen, and he will get in trouble.”

  “Tell him I’ll leave my US passport as a guarantee that we’ll bring the truck back.”

  As Kyaw translated, Nolan pulled out his passport and opened it to the photo page. The husband looked as if he’d been offered a splinter of the True Cross. A US passport was solid gold everywhere in the developing world. It had passed Nolan through many a checkpoint, although it had also nearly gotten him killed a couple of times. He hated leaving the real deal behind while he had a perfectly good forgery in his pocket identifying him as Toronto’s Derrick Larson, but a Canada passport didn’t have the same cachet.

  Kyaw and the husband sealed the deal with a final animated exchange. “He wants to hold the keys to the Hyundai, too.”

  “Sure. Fine.” They walked outside. “Be sure to check the gas,” Nolan said.

  Nolan did the pre-rental walk-around out of habit, but he wasn’t in any position to ask for another car off the Hertz lot. The tires needed air. The right rear brake light cover was broken. The bed had a couple of buckets, a stepladder, a toolbox and four 50kg bags of cement. Nolan noted that the bags had yellow elephants printed on them: another quality product from the employer of the man who wanted to kill them.

  Kyaw started the pickup with a throaty rumble then shut it off.

  “Tell our host he should clear out the back except for the bags of cement.” Kyaw did so, and the owner got busy. Nolan slid the bags back over the wheel wells. Empty pickup trucks didn’t corner at speed worth a damn. The extra weight would help if they were driving for their lives.

  Nolan handed the farmer his passport and those two big bills. Kyaw held his bloody left forearm behind his back as he passed Nolan the keys to the Hyundai.

  Nolan watched the one-armed Kyaw clamber in on the passenger side. Good luck if you’re looking for a seatbelt, Nolan thought as he got behind the wheel. “Listen carefully. I’m going to put it in gear. Only then do you tell the farmer to pull the Hyundai behind his house and hide it. Tell him not to drive it, as there are bad people looking for it. We will send out someone from the US embassy tomorrow to return his truck, take back the car and collect my passport.”

  They started forward with a lurch, Nolan rusty with the clutch. Kyaw hailed the man and spoke earnestly as Nolan jounced at a walking pace toward the road. Kyaw paused for breath. A glance out the side window told Nolan their savior was having second thoughts.

  He slammed into second gear and they were on their way back the way they’d come, last glimmers of sunset over their shoulders. He looked back a hundred feet later to see the farmer standing in the middle of the road, staring at them.

  Nolan handed Kyaw one of the large bottles he’d liberated from the Hyundai. “Drink. You’ve lost a lot of blood.” Kyaw ended up spilling a quarter and drank most of the rest. Nolan finished it. Fishing around in his cargo pants, he came up with a clean handkerchief in a baggie and gave it to Kyaw to sop up the blood oozing from under the reapplied tourniquet.

  “We aren’t safe yet, but short of a roadblock or ambush around Einme, we’ll make it back to Rangoon. I don’t know
where the hell I am, so don’t fall asleep.” Neither headlight focused on the road, the twin beams askew. There were no side mirrors, and the rearview mirror wobbled every time they pounded through a pothole.

  The drive back wasn’t as complicated as Nolan had feared. With the white pickup providing cover, he stuck to the bigger roads. Within forty minutes, they were on the outskirts of Einme. What had been a hick hamlet at 2 p.m. now felt like Manhattan after the Yankees had won the World Series. Even so, when the single stoplight turned red, Nolan’s heart stopped for the thirty seconds it took the light to change. He kept scouting left and right for the green SUV to barrel down on them, guns blazing.

  The fuel gauge was down to three-eighths, so he bought four gallons on a side street from a kid who siphoned gas from a barrel. He decided he’d rather take the chance of contaminated gas than fuel up in a modern gas station under bright lights. Then they were back on the good road. Rangoon lay eighty miles due east. There was much less traffic than on the way out, although half of the vehicles were unlit. The grim game of dodgem-for-keeps continued. Kyaw passed out. Nolan wasn’t surprised given how much blood was in the cab and on his clothes.

  Nolan’s thoughts turned toward their adversary. The incongruous reappearance of long-dead-to-the-Agency Robin Teller was a shock. Teller had to be sixty-five years old, but he was still menacing. “What was Teller doing hiding out in Burma? And what explanation could there be for his presence at an abandoned toll road site on a Saturday afternoon with two Special Forces troops in tow?” Nolan spoke aloud to combat his fatigue.