by Jason Kasper
“Yes.” He nodded excitedly. “Yes. Now you understand. Your item is in junta possession, and they will burn it with everything else whenever they leave.”
I closed my eyes and drew a long breath, formulating what I’d have to do in the time it took me to finish inhaling. But first I’d need to find the real decision maker, not the messenger.
I rolled my head to the side, cracking my neck. “What’s your name, brother?”
“I am Cong.”
“Cong, you need to let me speak with whoever is in charge.”
“My cousin is waiting outside—”
“Not your cousin. I mean whoever is in charge of my employer’s order for this item. That person.”
“He is not here. It is forbidden for you to speak to him.”
“We’ll see about that. Go fetch your cousin, if he’s the highest-ranking person here.”
Cong bowed his head and backed out the door, closing it behind him and leaving the bag of money on the floor. Amateur, I thought. Maybe they all were—I’d just come to retrieve an order worth over a half-million dollars, and they’d sent a child to deliver Sage’s refund and apology.
Cong opened the door and re-entered with the words, “This is my cousin, Tiao.”
Then he stepped aside to make way for a thickly muscled Burmese man with a square jaw. He was nearly my height, making him taller than every Myanmarese I’d seen since arriving.
“Nice to meet you, Tiao.”
Tiao’s eyes ticked downward to the bag of money, then back up to me. He looked offended by my presence, and spat a long string of Chinese at a chagrined Cong.
I gestured to my ear. “Can you speak English, please? So I may understand.”
Tiao folded thick forearms across his chest. “My cousin had one job. This first time we trust him, talk to client. Once his grandfather hear of failure, the last.”
“Tiao,” I said, “this is not Cong’s fault. He explained the situation. But the woman who sent me entrusted a great deal of money to obtain this item.”
“My people made sacrifice—money just one. Great effort, lives lost. Gain and transport item. Only for junta seize it.”
“My employer and I are deeply grateful for your efforts, and those of your people. Does the junta know that they have the item?”
He shook his head with grave import. “No. It is hidden. If your employer care, she answer phone.”
I conceded, “She’s rarely in a position to accept calls. So it will be more appropriate if I discuss the situation with the highest decision maker before I depart.”
Tiao unfolded his arms to thrust an index finger into my sternum, rocking me back on my heels as he spoke. “If boss want speak to you, America, he be here. Not me.”
I shook my head in response, though I’d have to tread lightly. I was a stranger in a strange land, and this guy was simultaneously in control and pissed off—I could handle one or the other, but both at once was a tricky proposition. “There must be many dangers in traveling cross-country for a man of his status. I do not ask for him to come here. Instead, please take me to him. Allow me one conversation, and then I will take the refund and leave.”
“You have no right,” he countered, frowning at my persistence.
“That is his decision to make. If I bring my employer a refund without speaking to your boss in person, she will demand a meeting with him.”
“If he want speak, then you drive. Five hour to him. To meet, maybe five minute. Then five hour back. No better off.”
“I would then depart,” I pointed out, “able to inform my employer that I was met with the greatest courtesy and personally briefed by the man who accepted the commission for the item. This will satisfy her acceptance of the refund, and our business will be complete.”
Tiao’s massive jaw settled firmly as he watched me with contempt.
Then he produced a cell phone and dialed, holding it to his ear. Cong had been shamed to silence, studying the floor as Tiao’s call connected and he conversed in Chinese. The entire call lasted less than a minute, after which he hung up and pocketed the phone, looking to me.
“You get wish. We now drive ten hour. For my boss to tell you same thing, in different voice.” His lips curved into a sarcastic grin. “Fine job, America.”
We exited into a back alley, walking through warm rain and slipping into a tiny parked sedan. Tiao struggled to lower himself into the passenger seat with the bag of cash while I did the same in the back, my shoulder almost touching Cong beside me in the cramped vehicle. A bad pothole would cause my head to bang on the ceiling.
A driver was behind the wheel, older than Cong but younger than Tiao. Maybe mid-twenties, I guessed. He looked back with a cheerful expression that turned to stone when he saw me getting into the backseat. He glared at Tiao, who said something in Chinese before nodding toward Cong. Cong, looking humiliated and ashamed, gazed out the window.
The driver pulled out of the alley and into the street, racing forward as he and Tiao engaged in some kind of verbal feud.
“English?” I asked the driver.
Tiao replied, “Peng not speak English.”
“Sure he does,” I replied. “You and Cong speak excellent English, so I’m going to wager no expense was spared in your education. Peng included. You guys are all related, aren’t you?”
No response.
We headed out of Lashio, quickly passing into the countryside. Vehicle traffic was interspersed with tiny motorbikes bearing multiple riders and pickups stacked high with crates, adults clinging to the moving cargo like lampreys on a whale shark, oblivious to the rain that fell steadily from cobalt clouds. Humped cattle moseyed at the ends of leashes held by genderless owners in ankle-length leg wraps, their faces shielded by straw rice hats. Then we passed a single-file row of civilians that stretched nearly a mile, their umbrellas bobbing in a solemn march.
“Funeral procession,” Cong explained.
Suddenly the driver spoke. “You want English? I asked what in the fuck you are doing here. You were supposed to take refund and go. Not demand personal taxi to Laukkai. The Kokang people struggled long before you come, will struggle long after you go. You delay us by one day, but do nothing to help us. Or your item.”
I leaned forward, trying to sound respectful. “Can you help me understand why the junta is defending the place with the item if their only intent is to burn it before they leave?”
“I see Cong did not explain. As anticipated. The junta did not invade Laukkai for holiday. Weeks ago they try to inspect our depot. Kokang fighters stopped them. Now junta is holding depot to send message. Not because of item.”
“What do you mean, your depot?”
“Defended building. We protect shipments there. Drugs, guns, anything valuable to us.”
I watched a cargo truck dwarfed by the load of soaked hay exploding out of its back, riders on the load and roof of the cab. “And the item is in this depot?”
“Yes. Most valuable thing there.”
“You’re sure it hasn’t been destroyed yet?”
“It is hidden. In a marked box among many others. Routine shipment. I was on my way to recover, when junta invaded. Now depot is defended. Myanmar fighters will burn depot for same purpose as seizing it: to send message. Against Kokang for opposing the inspection.”
Two huge passenger buses roared past at breakneck speed, both adorned in psychedelic color schemes. Peng swerved our car around a motorcycle riding low beneath long bundles strapped sideways and extending to the width of a truck.
“What kind of defenses does the junta have around the depot?”
“Enough to defend. Why you care?”
“We’re stuck in a car together for five hours. It’ll pass the time.”
“The depot is on hill. They have cannon at top.”
“Cannon?”
“Yes. Anti-aircraft.”
“I doubt it’s anti-aircraft, unless the Kokang have their own helicopters. Can you describe the weapon
?”
Tiao stifled a laugh.
“Of course,” Peng sneered. “Soviet S-60. Supplied by China. 57-millimeter round. Rate of fire 120 round per minute, cyclic. Accuracy is four thousand meters. And the cannon not for aircraft. Pointed downhill, so Kokang Army cannot approach it.”
I sat back in my seat, astounded.
“Peng, you used to be in the junta, didn’t you?”
“Ah,” Tiao said, “you think, America? You sure?”
Peng answered, “Three years. Then bring training to Kokang Army. Tiao was five years, infantry. Cong”—Tiao interrupted him with a phrase in Chinese, to which Peng snickered before continuing—“Cong will go when he older. Tiao say, when his balls drop.”
I nodded. “So that’s how the Kokang Army learns how to fight. You send representatives to serve in the junta.”
“Only a few. Chosen ones.”
“But you know a hell of a lot about that S-60, don’t you? What were you, air defense? Field artillery?”
“Air Defense. Eastern Sector. I have shot S-60. Many times. Seen what it does to target. So I know: Kokang Army not get depot back.”
I thought about that for long minutes as I took in the terrain outside the window.
As we traveled northeast, jungled hills rose from rice paddies. Families and erratic clusters of children waved from roadsides bordered by telephone lines. Soon a placid river spread to our left, guarded by a jagged mountain beyond. The landscape became increasingly more desolate, the agricultural modifications erased as rice paddies gave way to scrub brush and endless rainy views devoid of people. The road threaded alongside a rugged cliff face.
Gone was the stunning tropical city and surrounding area teeming with brightly clothed civilians. A cargo truck rattled by, bullet holes between its headlights, the bed packed with people leaving our destination and, for all intents and purposes, quite happy to be doing so.
When buildings reappeared, they weren’t the exquisitely adorned retail spaces of Lashio. Instead, we passed low-slung structures, brown and drab and dull, as if the architecture didn’t want to call attention to itself. By the time I saw a few gloomy red roofs, they appeared almost psychedelic by comparison. A man and woman wandered along the trash-strewn streets carrying suitcases and bundles strapped to their backs, a small child following in their wake. We passed mud-covered streets, rickety gates, and construction additions made of sheet metal and plywood. A few billboards decked in Mandarin script and pictures of attractive women went unnoticed by the desolate streets. The few colored buildings in town appeared awkwardly painted and out of place.
Of course I was approaching a shithole, I mused. Like the other places I’d been, from Afghanistan to Iraq, Somalia to Brazil, I was seeing the paradox of a beautiful place ripped apart by war, where the civilians had either escaped or remained trapped, where tourists dared not tread. Only the shooters were left to experience the natural beauty of a landscape largely abandoned by those not seeking to kill. War didn’t coincide with ugliness, it was the other way around—the most stunning of surroundings could be rendered horrid by combat, the natural world matching the ugliness of man blow-for-blow, calling the bluff of my species.
As the car neared Kokang my jet lag got the better of me. Lapsing into a fitful sleep, I had racing thoughts of the war in South America and my role in it, and the enemy leader who dared take on the Handler’s organization. Then I saw another face—Agustin, the bearded man who’d drolly held an intimate and quasi-religious conversation with me as we observed the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio, then personally led a kill team to hunt down Parvaneh and me in the favela.
It would be some time before I saw him again, I knew. But see him I would, after the Handler had been assassinated and Ian was free, and I was sent to join the war in South America. Once I found myself back on the same continent as Agustin, tasked with eliminating his organization, I’d make it my mission in life to personally hunt him down. I’d put a .454 revolver to his head and blow him away, just like I’d thought about doing to myself a million times in the past few years of my existence.
We approached the town of Laukkai at dusk.
Peng stopped the car at a turn in the mountain pass, glancing uphill as he flashed the high beams twice. From a cluster of trees atop the mountain to our left, a flashlight signaled five times in return.
We pulled forward again as Tiao made a call on his cell phone.
“Security is set,” he said, hanging up. “We proceed.”
Peng asked, “Which site?”
“Temple.”
Peng muttered something that I took to be a curse in Chinese, then drove us another mile before stopping a final time.
We exited the car into a warm, muggy drizzle, my clothes immediately sticking to me with humidity. It felt smothering after my months in the crisp mountain heights of British Columbia. I thought back to that first freezing night in the cabin, hiding from a grizzly, amused at how far I’d come since then—literally and figuratively.
I followed the other three up a winding, crumbling trail toward a craggy rock face rising into a mountain above us.
Peng stopped me and pointed back the way we’d come. “That is Laukkai. The depot, on hill.”
Through the fading light, I scanned an adjacent hilltop slightly higher than our current altitude that was marbled with swaths of buildings, roads, and footpaths. It was only two miles distant, if that, so close that despite Peng’s warnings of the military defenses surrounding the depot, it felt like I could stroll up the hill and retrieve the item whenever I pleased.
Our trail ended at a set of stairs carved into the mountain, and we ascended them to a small, dark opening in the rock wall flanked by thin waterfalls splashing down the face. As we passed under a high red scroll marked with golden script, the rush of the waterfall receded into a swirling echo as we entered the mouth of a dimly lit cave.
The trio stopped abruptly, turning toward the staircase to stand watch.
Peng spoke to me in a low, monotone whisper. “You go alone. To end of cave. He will meet there.”
“Who is ‘he?’”
“The boss.”
I nodded and took two steps into the cave before Tiao grabbed my shoulder and said, “No shoes.”
“You’re serious?”
He seemed to read my tone. “You give respect, America.”
I stepped out of my shoes and, finding the ground to be a water-soaked slick of smooth rock, pulled off my socks as well before following a serpentine tunnel deeper into the mountain.
Periodic light bulbs glowed from a thin cord snaking across the jagged cave ceiling, shining dully upon intricate gold and white Buddha statues perched on every rock outcropping—hundreds of them spanning both sides of the wall as far as I could see, some small enough to hold in your palm and some larger than I was. Their serene expressions glowed among a universe of lit candles as they placidly watched me slip down the abandoned tunnel.
The rustle of my movements echoed between drips of water from above. Everything about the cave was a far cry from the muggy outdoors; the air inside was cool and clean, its own comfortable atmosphere alight with the smell of melted candle wax and wet rock.
Within minutes I reached a dead end, a final circular cavern whose walls were lined with more Buddha statues resting on rock outcroppings from floor to ceiling. Their shapes were cast in the pale glow of a final light bulb, and water dripped from the ceiling like a symphony of ticking clocks.
I whirled around at the sound of movement behind me, seeing a shadowy figure aiming a rifle at me while blocking the single path out. Where had he come from? There was zero chance that he’d followed me all that way unheard, but by the time this thought occurred I caught further movement in the cavern behind me.
Looking sideways, I glimpsed the shadows of the countless Buddha statues begin crawling across the walls, as if a single dark organism shifted around me. In the gloomy darkness I could discern men stepping out from behind the statue
s, rifles at the ready.
Did they send me here to be executed? Tiao might not have even spoken to the man in charge, or maybe he had, and I was being captured for ransom—or worse yet, sold to the Handler as a living conspirator long thought dead.
For endless seconds no one moved, least of all me.
Finally I said to no one in particular, “Surely you’re not planning on damaging any of these statues with rifle fire. You guys trying to walk me out alive or what?”
No response. Dripping water, the guardians frozen against the walls around me.
“Anyone speak English?”
Another few seconds of quiet.
“How about Latin?”
An elderly voice rasped behind me, “My Latin is quite poor…”
I turned toward a giant Buddha at the end of the cavern as a shadow slipped out from behind it and approached me.
The shape passed under the muted glimmer of the lone light bulb and transformed into an old man, who finished, “…but my English? Passable.”
He was barefoot too, walking lightly but with a slight hunch, hands clasped behind his back. As he stopped before me, I could see that he was bald, with a long face and bushy silver eyebrows slanted downward to the creases of his eyes.
A wave of relief overcame me. No kidnapping, this, nor an execution attempt—I’d just walked into a maelstrom of personal guards protecting someone very powerful.
I gave a respectful nod. “Thank you for coming, sir.”
“My name is Kun. Not sir. Why have you come to this place, David?”
“As you know, there is an item in the Laukkai depot that I need.”
“Not the item alone, then, but what I can make it.”
“I don’t follow.”
“There are two parts to the item you seek. One is in my possession, the other is in the depot. Either on its own is quite useless to you.”
“But once you combine them, they become invaluable?”
