The Burma Legacy

by Geoffrey Archer

  Squires hooked an arm round her and pinned her to his side.

  ‘Don’t disappear, darlin’. This bloke spends a lot of time in Singapore. You’ll have things to talk about.’

  The man approaching them looked more Chinese than Thai. A hard, square face with slicked back hair. He marched along the line of boats like a military commander, a small leather attaché case under his arm.

  Midge began to panic. ‘Get off me!’ she snapped, struggling to escape Squires’ grip. But the drug-runner had no plans to let her go.

  Sam sprang forward and wrenched Squires’ arm from her shoulders. Midge ducked away and stumbled across the deck towards the saloon. The former soldier bunched his fists.

  ‘I don’t know who the fuck you two jokers are, my friend …’ He raised his right hand as if to give it to Sam full on the nose, but instead the fingers formed into the shape of a pistol which he jabbed against the middle of his forehead. ‘But if I come across you again, you’re dead!’

  Holding his gaze for a couple of seconds, he turned away and hopped onto the pontoon, a hand snaking out to greet his guest.

  Sam ducked inside the saloon, heart pounding. Midge was scrabbling through lockers. ‘Handset …’ she hissed. ‘Where the fuck’s the …?’

  Sam pulled the police radio from a drawer and gave it to her.

  ‘Tell me …’

  ‘Know his face.’ She turned the set on. ‘From photos in the files. Works for Yang Lai, the guy I was telling you about. Golden Triangle. He’s number two or three in the organisation. Name’s Hu Sin. And for some reason I can’t explain, the bastard seems to know me.’

  From outside there was an explosive roar as the Estelle’s engines started up. Sam heard feet on the deck and spun round.

  Hu Sin filled the doorway. In his hand was a gun, its barrel extended by a silencer.

  Sam stopped breathing. Midge had the handset to her mouth, but couldn’t speak, transfixed by the pistol levelled at her head.

  Packer backed against the galley counter, remembering the wrench they’d left on the worktop. Fingers closing round its shaft, he lunged forward, cracking it down on Hu Sin’s arm.

  The man yelped and the gun clattered to the floor. Midge unfroze and made a dive for it. His face twisting with pain, Hu Sin spun round and fled the saloon. The policewoman grappled with the pistol and took aim.

  ‘Leave him!’ Sam snapped. ‘He’s not the one you want.’

  They heard the clunk of feet on the finger pontoon as mooring lines were freed. Then the engine noise declined as the Estelle reversed from the berth.

  ‘Fuck!’ Midge hissed. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’

  ‘How does he know you?’ Sam growled, furious at coming so close to death for a cause she’d told him so little about.

  ‘I don’t know …’ she howled. Then she caught herself, put a fist to her mouth and closed her eyes. She’d remembered.

  Through the wide stern window of the saloon they saw the Estelle accelerate away. Jimmy Squires was at the wheel. On the cruiser’s aft deck Jan and Hu Sin stood side by side, the man talking on a mobile phone, the woman clicking with a long-lensed camera.

  Sam turned his face away. Theirs was a photo album he had no wish to grace.

  Two

  They had their bags packed within minutes. The charter agent looked outraged when they returned the boat keys and asked for a taxi to the airport.

  ‘But, this is New Year Eve,’ he protested, as if no sane person would abandon plans for a millennium celebration.

  Their haste to get away was being driven by Midge.

  ‘Hu Sin was on the phone. You saw. Yang Lai’s mob won’t waste time. People who get in their way don’t live long.’

  At the airport they hid in a crowd of European tourists, then got lucky at the check-in. An extra flight had been put on for the busy Bangkok run and within minutes they were boarding an Airbus.

  They spoke little on the flight, but by the time they landed in the Thai capital an hour later both had recovered their composure.

  ‘It was that twat of a narcotics agent at the marina café,’ Midge muttered, as they walked through the terminal to the baggage collection. ‘Might as well have had a label on his head.’

  With their luggage on a trolley they queued at an agency desk to find a hotel.

  ‘Two rooms,’ Midge stressed, to the surprise of the girl behind the counter.

  They took a taxi to the centre, checked in to an anonymous tourist monolith and began the painful process of reporting back to their respective headquarters, agreeing to meet up later.

  Sam was startled by his controller’s lack of concern. The man was a dry Ulsterman called Duncan Waddell.

  ‘It was an Oz operation, Sam. From what you’ve just told me, no mud will stick to the firm.’

  ‘That’s hardly the point, Duncan. Jimmy Squires …’

  ‘They’ll catch him eventually,’ Waddell interjected. ‘And when they do, our concerns about the man will be history. Essentially he’s their problem, not ours.’

  Clean hands. All that mattered to a bureaucrat.

  ‘Anyone who threatens to kill me is my problem,’ Sam snapped.

  ‘You’re off the case, and that’s an order. Look, the main reason for getting you involved was that we owed the Aussies a favour. You did the deed. Now we’re evens.’

  But Sam wasn’t. And he wouldn’t be until Jimmy Squires was sorted out.

  After finishing his call to London, he went into the streets and found one of the internet booths that dot the centre of Bangkok. He dialled into his email and downloaded a couple of messages. One was from Julie wishing him a Happy New Year. The other had been sent by his controller just after he’d left Singapore – a more detailed background file on Jimmy Squires. He printed it, checked there were no copies stored on the computer, posted a reply to Julie saying he’d try to ring her later, then logged off.

  It was early evening before he and Midge met up again. She came to his room and her eyes suggested she’d been crying.

  ‘Problems?’ he asked.

  She screwed up her face, making out it didn’t matter.

  ‘Gave me a roasting, that’s all.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’ll get over it.’

  He told her about his email. ‘There’s some personal stuff on Squires. Comments from his former mates. Adds a little colour.’

  ‘I’d like to see it.’

  He handed her the printout. ‘Basically it says he was never happier than sleeping in a ditch. Had a reputation for putting up with any amount of shit and terror so long as there was a good piss-up and a willing woman at the end of it. But a little out of his depth in the real world. And not used to handling big sums of money.’

  ‘Times have changed, then.’ She frowned down at the sheet of paper. ‘What’s all this about him being fascinated by military history? World War Two in particular.’

  ‘Simply that his views on national characteristics are pretty much formed by the past. All Germans are Nazis … Japs are torturers. That sort of stuff. Half the UK population thinks that way.’

  ‘And the people who use his smack are cockroaches, I suppose …’

  ‘Yeah.’ Once again her bitterness flagged some personal motive in her quest to nail the man. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll get another crack at him.’

  ‘Unless he gets his crack in first.’ Her face was pale and drawn. ‘I have to be honest, Steve. He’s got me scared, him and Hu Sin.’

  Sam wanted to give her a big hug and tell her it’d be okay, but feared she might sink her teeth into his neck. She handed the email back to him.

  ‘Tell you what,’ he suggested, ‘why don’t we find some cosy bar where they do food, and forget all about it for the night. It’s New Year’s Eve.’

  ‘I don’t want to go anywhere. Just for tonight I’ve lost my nerve.’

  ‘Then let’s get some booze and a takeaway and we’ll eat here in my room.’

  She agre
ed to that and he took himself off to a nearby shopping mall to get in supplies. On his way he paused by an international call centre, thinking of ringing Julie. Then he remembered Bangkok was seven hours ahead of London. She’d be at work. Better to wait until after midnight his time and try to catch her at home before she went out.

  Three quarters of an hour later he and Midge started on the first bottle of Australian Chardonnay, with CNN’s world coverage of the Millennium celebrations flickering on the TV in the corner. Midge ignored it. She was fidgeting.

  ‘You asked why Hu Sin knew me,’ she said eventually, thrusting fingers through her hair, then clenching them as if trying to tear the stuff out by its roots. ‘I’ll tell you why. I got photographed a few weeks ago. Walking into a government building in Bangkok. There was a Narcotics Bureau seminar going on. Meant to be covert, but somebody found out about it. The cameraman rode off on a motorbike.’ She let out a long sigh. ‘And here comes the confession. I didn’t take it seriously enough. Should have changed my appearance afterwards. I’ve even kept the same bloody hair colour, Steve. Talk about unprofessional. They’ll string me up when I get home.’

  He reached across the table and squeezed her hand. ‘Been there, done that.’ He told her how he’d been snapped by a newspaper photographer in London a year ago and identified in the press as an MI6 agent. ‘It’s why I’m here. Sent to Singapore in the hope my face wouldn’t be so familiar.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I guess we all blow it sometime or other.’

  They looked at one another across the table and knew what they had to do. The only possible way to see out a century that had ended so badly.

  As they set about the task of getting drunk, easing the wine’s impact with plates of chicken, prawns, noodles and rice, Sam did his best to lighten the mood by indulging in a little mild flirtation. This was a woman who’d shared his bed and shown no interest in having sex with him – a challenge, if ever there was. But Midge didn’t respond to his gentle advances. Hardly noticed them, her mind firmly elsewhere.

  Soon the TV in the corner began emitting whoops and cries as people closer to the international dateline began welcoming the new century. Midge glanced at the screen and raised her glass.

  ‘To a better world,’ she said sombrely.

  ‘Fat chance,’ Sam replied, emptying his again.

  At 9.00 p.m. Bangkok time, it was Australia’s turn to enter the year 2000 and they swung their chairs towards the screen. Midge hugged herself and bit her lip as the Sydney Harbour Bridge erupted with fireworks. A few moments later she fell apart, tears streaming down her cheeks. Sam moved his chair next to hers and put an arm round her shoulder. She sobbed into his shirt.

  ‘Shit! I’m not going to do this …’ She dried her face on one of the napkins that had come with the food, then cut the TV sound and turned her back on the set. ‘Jee-sus! They’re only bloody fireworks.’

  As the hours ticked on towards their own midnight, she drank with a growing determination. Her conversation began to ramble. Sam got an impression of a life peopled by bosses out to get her and by male colleagues jealous of her success.

  Before long the name ‘Barry’ began featuring in her babble. Sam soon twigged the man had been a teenage sweetheart, but was now dead. A ‘loveable loser’ she called him, someone who’d dropped out of the rat race just when she began winning heats.

  ‘So your ways parted,’ Sam suggested.

  ‘I guess we had different expectations of life.’

  ‘But you went on loving him?’

  ‘Sure I did.’ She chewed her lip again. ‘Then he passed away. In a squat. Poisoned by contaminated heroin.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Now he understood why her pursuit of Jimmy Squires had become a crusade.

  ‘It’s history,’ she insisted, but Sam knew it was her present too. He felt powerfully drawn to her. Women with tortured pasts were as tempting to him as caviar.

  By the time Bangkok’s midnight approached they were both extremely sozzled. When the hour struck and the city beyond the hotel windows began clattering with firecrackers, they slumped together in a Millennium embrace. Midge made no attempt to end it this time, so he kissed her. When she still didn’t push him away, he put a hand on her breast and was encouraged by the sound of her breath quickening.

  Her face was a blur to him. He cupped it in his hands and tried to articulate his feelings.

  ‘Wanna go to bed with you.’

  ‘I guessed.’

  ‘Make love.’

  ‘Not for a zizz, then?’

  His brain was alert enough to realise that although joking with him she wasn’t saying no.

  ‘Historic moment,’ he mumbled, hopes rising along with his relevant body part. ‘Be able to tell your gran’children how you cebre … celebrated the great 2K. Did it with a bang …’ He grinned at the silliness of his joke. ‘Unique opportunity. Always regret it if we don’t …’

  He began trying to get her tee-shirt off, but his hands seemed to have lost their dexterity. She stopped him, her face twisting into a sloppy smile.

  ‘I don’t even know how old you are,’ she said, as if it mattered.

  ‘Gonna be forty this year,’ he told her sombrely.

  ‘Guessed as much.’ She wobbled to her feet, keeping her eyes playfully on his, then groped her way to the door. ‘Don’ go away.’ She stepped out into the corridor.

  In his hormone-pickled mind he imagined she was returning to her own room for condoms, but she didn’t return. After a few minutes he looked into the passageway. Her room was opposite and the door was closed. A Do Not Disturb tag hung from the handle.

  The next morning when he eventually came round from a head-rumbling sleep, he discovered she’d checked out at dawn and taken a cab to the airport.

  Not feeling up to a phone conversation with Julie, he sent her an email apologising for failing to ring her the night before. Then in the evening he flew back to Singapore. On the plane he reread the backgrounder on Jimmy Squires. It wasn’t enough. Service record stuff. He wanted more. The inside track on the man. Everything, down to the size of his shoes. He knew a man in London who might help, an SAS officer currently running a desk in the MoD. He resolved to contact him.

  His controller’s cavalier attitude to the Squires case had annoyed him. The ex-special forces man was their concern. UK government had given the sergeant precious skills and now he was misusing them.

  When he returned to his flat overlooking Singapore’s Botanical Gardens, Packer plugged in his laptop and composed an email to Duncan Waddell, setting out reasons why he should stay on the case.

  Then he remembered a message he’d left in his outbox waiting to be sent. A resignation letter he’d penned a couple of days ago in response to Julie’s threat to pull the plug on him.

  Things had changed. He opened the file and deleted it.

  Three

  Singapore Airlines flight SQ 322 to London

  The night of Wednesday 5 to Thursday 6 January 2000

  He hated long flights, particularly at night. Seated on the aisle, he’d decided to ignore the movies and try to sleep, but with little success. He’d twisted his body into endless new positions, but each time he nodded off one of the two beer-swilling Scots sitting to his right would scramble over his legs to take a leak.

  He was being summoned back to London, not because they’d responded positively to his email on Jimmy Squires, but to be briefed on a totally new operation. He’d protested strongly, but had been told once again that the former SAS man was none of his business any more.

  The good side of going home was that for the next few days he would be with Julie. She’d sounded over the moon when he’d phoned her – having given him a hard time on the 1st of January for his silence on New Year’s Eve.

  In the row behind him a child began to cry. Sam groaned and conceded defeat, undoing the lap strap and standing up to extend his legs. A few others were doing the same. They passed in the darkened cabin like spe
ctres seeking release from their earthly shackles. At the back of the plane where the aisle was wider he paused for a stretch, raising himself up and down on his toes. He looked at the rows of slumbering bodies. The woman nearest was elderly, but had her head resting on her partner’s shoulder. It affected him.

  It was a moment or two before he recognised the emotion fluttering weakly in his chest as envy. He was nearly forty. Halfway to a natural death and he’d still not experienced what these people had. A lasting partnership. A sense of belonging with another human being. He wondered what had united this particular couple. Brilliant sex? Or something mundane like a fondness for country walks?

  He let his eyes wander up and down the aisles. Most of the passengers seemed to be travelling in pairs.

  Settling into married life wasn’t something he’d consciously avoided. Simply that he’d met few obvious candidates. His ten years as a Royal Navy officer had seen plenty of decent women putting themselves his way, level-headed creatures longing to envelop his life in soft furnishings. But he hadn’t wanted them. The women who turned him on were the hard cases. The ambitious and dissatisfied. The unhappily marrieds. Those with a past.

  Julie was one of those. And in the next few days he would have to make up his mind about her.

  Sam knew that if he were to pop the question, she would say yes. And the auguries weren’t bad. They managed to spend time together without getting on each other’s nerves. They were more than compatible in bed. And he was pretty sure he loved her and she loved him. What held him back was the same thing that had stopped him in the past. The fear of choosing wrongly and regretting it for a long, long time.

  Something else worried him. His own inability to resist temptation. If Midge had played along on New Year’s Eve, he’d have felt no guilt. Would have treated it as a bit of fun, irrelevant to his relationship with Julie. But the state of marriage would demand different standards of him.

  He looked down at the elderly couple again. The way their bodies propped each other up said ‘trust’. And trusting anybody, particularly a woman, was something he’d never mastered.