The Burma Legacy

by Geoffrey Archer

  ‘Has she any idea where they took him?’

  Tun asked and it was clear the answer was no.

  Sam stared at the memorial. ‘How many Japanese died around here in the war?’ he asked.

  Tun checked. ‘More than one thousand.’

  So many casualties and yet the memorial was so simple. No tablets. No lists of names. So different from the massive commemorations of human sacrifice made by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. It was as if the memorial had been erected in a hurry by people who didn’t want to remember what had happened here.

  They made their way back to the car, Sam fighting off a sense of hopelessness. If Kamata had been kidnapped seven hours ago, the chances were he would already be dead.

  ‘How well do you know this area, Tun?’

  ‘I been here some time, but it not my home. What you want to know?’

  ‘Some ideas about where they could’ve taken Mr Kamata.’

  ‘I cannot tell that.’

  Of course he couldn’t. Sam swung himself into the passenger seat of the 4-wheel drive. If there was an answer to his question, he had to find it. He tried to think himself into Perry Harrison’s mind. The man was controlled by the past. So perhaps it’d be in his past that he’d locate the answer.

  Something niggled at the back of his mind. He dug into his rucksack for A Jungle Path to Hell, turning to the chapter where Harrison described the day he’d decided to marry Tin Su. He fingered through the pages until he found the section he was looking for.

  I was totally infatuated with this young woman, and wanted to be alone with her. I realised that if I was to get her to submit to me I had to move her away from her familiar surroundings. To knock her off balance and crack that veneer of self-control that many Burmese women affect to disguise their shyness. I knew she would not be able to resist me so easily if I could destabilise her a little. And my determination to have sexual intercourse with her was extremely strong.

  I hired a car and driver for the day and we took off into the hills. It is a pretty landscape around Mong Lai. Because of the altitude there is no thick jungle in this part of Burma. Temperatures at night can drop below freezing. The earth is red and fertile and in the lower-lying areas much of the land was richly cultivated. The place I instructed our driver to take us to was a pretty waterfall called Pak Chin, which even in the driest parts of the year had crystal clear water passing over it. I knew it from when I was a child. In those days an expedition there from my home in another hill town had involved a three-day trek with mules.

  I had had more recent experience of the place, however, because in 1943 my platoon used the falls as a source of drinking water. We had been there on the day before my capture by the Japanese. The village where we were ambushed was not far from the falls and the place where I had hidden after being wounded was a ruined temple at the top of an escarpment above them.

  I felt a certain sense of trepidation as we neared the place. There were ghosts to be laid and I was not sure I would be able to cope. The falls were accessible by a bumpy track. When we reached them the driver parked in the shade and proceeded to go to sleep. My desire to make love with Tin Su was extremely strong and I am sure if she had been a European woman nothing could have stopped us. But I was very conscious that simply by being alone with me in such circumstances Tin Su had already cast her culture’s social customs to the four winds. To try to take her further down the Western road of intimacy without her believing that I was strongly committed to her, would have been grossly unfair.

  We had our picnic by the waterfall. It was a late lunch because our departure from Mong Lai had been delayed by problems finding sufficient petrol for the journey and then by a puncture. It was already mid-afternoon, and the more we talked the more I became both enchanted by her and, unusually for me, determined to control myself and respect her ways. In the back of my mind, unsettling me, was the knowledge that not far from where we lay in the shade of a tree was the place where my descent into hell had begun ten years earlier.

  I knew I could not leave that place without seeing the ruins again. The sun was beginning to get low in the sky when I suggested we climb up to the ridge to watch it go down. Heart in my mouth, we set off. There was no track as such, so we scrambled diagonally up a bank of loose stones. Twice she lost her footing and I had to reach out a hand. Necessity made her take it, and it was the first actual physical contact we had had that day, so mindful had I been about her sensitivities.

  At the top of the ridge we stopped to catch our breath. The old temple was not as I had remembered it. More dilapidated. More overgrown. And it felt a place of great peace, whereas ten years before I had lain there in fear, a throbbing wound in my side, listening to the rustlings in the scrub around me, terrified that every crack of a twig marked the footfall of the approaching Japanese.

  The main zedi had been constructed of mud bricks, the paint and plaster that had originally coated it washed away by centuries of rain. The bell shape had collapsed on one side, creating a small cave. This was where I had hidden in 1943. It was strangely liberating to see the spot again, because, as I said before, the place felt so peaceful now. I thought for a brief moment that I would tell Tin Su of the last time I had been here, but quickly stopped myself, knowing that her questions could lead to a territory I could not bear to revisit.

  We stood on the edge of the zedi’s base watching the sun go down. The magic of the moment overwhelmed me and before I knew what had happened, I had asked Tin Su to marry me. Not only that, but she had accepted. The power of that place must have had a remarkable effect on us because for my part I had had no intention of marrying again. I was not even divorced. And I suspect that until that moment Tin Su had also never considered marrying a man not of her culture.

  We made our way down the slope again, so the driver could negotiate the worst of the track before darkness enveloped us. Tin Su let me hold her hand in the car. I can remember to this day its smallness and its delicacy, but as we bumped our way back to Mong Lai, a part of my mind was still up there at the old temple. I recall resolving never to visit it again until all my ghosts had been laid to rest. Which meant being certain that the man who had tortured me would never be in a position to harm me again.

  Sam snapped the book shut and beckoned to the driver. ‘Pak Chin, Tun Kyaw. Know where that is?’

  The Burman slid onto his seat, his brow furrowed.

  ‘It’s a waterfall near Mong Lai. You know it?’

  ‘No boss.’

  ‘Then ask someone.’

  Tun Kyaw drove the Suzuki from the field and back onto the rough track leading to the town. On the outskirts was a tea shop where he stopped to consult the customers. While he went inside, Sam watched three young girls walk past. Dressed in white blouses and carrying woven bags for their schoolbooks, their smooth-skinned faces were caked with thanakha paste as a protection from the sun. They smiled shyly at him, then quickened their pace, turning to one another to giggle.

  Tun climbed back behind the wheel.

  ‘How far?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Maybe one hour.’

  Sam clicked his tongue. Sixty minutes on a gamble that might prove fruitless.

  ‘They all talk ’bout Mr Kamata,’ Tun said suddenly.

  ‘In there? What are they saying?’

  ‘That he taken away by two Englishmen and police not know where they gone.’

  ‘Then we have an outside chance of finding them first,’ said Sam, grimly.

  Tun Kyaw drove for twenty minutes on the road east, heading ever closer to the Shan lands controlled by the Wa. Twice they were halted at military roadblocks where Tun’s connections came up trumps. At each he produced a paper which turned scowls into smiles and salutes. But Sam’s relief at the strength of the Burman’s contacts was tinged with unease. To be that close to the military who ruled this divided land, Tun Kyaw had to be working for them too.

  ‘They grow poppies around here?’ Sam asked, after the second roadbloc
k.

  ‘I don’t know, boss.’

  ‘The Tatmadaw still seem to be in charge.’

  ‘For thirty kilometres more. Then Myanmar soldiers finish.’

  ‘We’re going that far?’

  ‘No, boss. Very dangerous. We turn off road very soon. You see the paya?’

  He pointed ahead where a zedi stood incongruously in the middle of a small field to their left. Its bell looked recently gilded and garishly out of place in this seemingly empty landscape. Tun slowed down, searching for the track which he’d been told was just past it. The lane when they found it was the width of a single vehicle. The Suzuki bounced and banged over its stony surface. The first stretch was on level ground between rice paddies worked by women wearing coolie hats. Then the road began to climb and the ground on either side became rougher. Cultivation was replaced by scrub peppered with wild flowers and punctuated by stands of bamboo and eucalyptus.

  Sam looked behind as they climbed. A plume of dust lay in their wake, its colour warmed by the late afternoon light. They’d be visible from miles away.

  ‘Stop, Tun.’

  The driver braked, then turned to him expectantly. ‘What matter, boss?’

  ‘You’ve never been here before, right?’

  ‘No boss.’

  ‘So you have no idea of the layout of this place. What other roads there may be.’

  Tun appeared not to understand. ‘In the restaurant they tell me waterfall is five kilometres from main road.’

  ‘The place we need to get to is above the waterfall. On a hill. A ruined paya. And if the people we’re looking for are there, it’s better they don’t see us coming.’

  ‘Then when we get close, maybe it better you walk, boss.’

  Sam noted he’d said it in the singular. He couldn’t blame him. This wasn’t his fight.

  ‘Okay. Drive on. But try to keep the dust down.’

  The ground undulated, an inhospitable landscape of boulders and outcrops of rock. At times the track became all but invisible and Tun slowed the Suzuki to crawling pace to negotiate the stones.

  Sam felt appallingly unprepared. He had no idea what to expect. If the Englishman with Harrison was the elusive Rip, then the man must have significant contacts to have conjured up two armed local men as escorts.

  And he was unarmed, his sole weapon his tongue. His only hope lay in trying to talk Harrison out of whatever he planned to do – if he hadn’t already done it. That’s if he could get to him without being shot to pieces first.

  Ahead of them the skyline was marked by an almost continuous escarpment. Sam scanned it for evidence of a ruined temple but couldn’t see any. A lookout up there would have had a perfect view of their approach and there was nothing they could do about it. As they neared the place, the track began to follow the course of a stream. Most of its bed was dry, but a thin sliver of water wetted the middle. White wading birds pecked in the shingle for grubs.

  Sam clasped his hands until the knuckles went white. Uncertainty gnawed at his belly. He had no instinctive feeling this time, nothing to tell him this was the place Harrison had come to with his prisoner. He looked around at the terrain they were crossing, trying to visualise Japs and Brits bayoneting each other half a century ago.

  Soon they reached a denser clump of trees and the track petered out. Tun Kyaw stopped the car.

  ‘Now you walk, boss.’ It sounded more a command than a suggestion.

  ‘You’re not coming with me?’

  ‘I stay with car. In case someone steal it.’

  Sam smiled cynically. They hadn’t seen another human for miles. He opened the door and got out.

  ‘Don’t go away,’ he cautioned.

  Over to his left the sun was nearing the horizon. He reached onto the back seat of the Suzuki and undid the side flap of his rucksack. There was a torch in it which he stuffed into a trouser pocket.

  He set off into the trees, lured by the sound of water splashing. The waterfall, when he came to it, was a thin rope of silver, dropping thirty metres onto a slope of polished rock. A tranquil place. Perfect for the seduction Perry Harrison planned all those years ago. He looked up. The face of the escarpment behind was almost vertical. Wherever the couple had made their climb, it couldn’t have been from this spot.

  There was the semblance of a path heading off to the right. He followed it and soon reached the edge of the trees. The cliff stretched ahead of him, still impossible to scale. He looked for some break in its profile which might indicate the start of a steep track to the top. But there was nothing visible.

  From now on there’d be no more cover. He peered up at the ridge for signs of being watched, conscious of his vulnerability – if anyone was up there. Seeing nothing untoward, he stepped into the open and continued across the stony ground.

  A few moments later he stopped abruptly. In front of him were tyre tracks, faint marks in the dust revealing some other vehicle had come here, which must have skirted the trees at the waterfall to strike out across the rough terrain. Suddenly this was for real. Anxiety racking up, he followed them until they turned sharply left, passing through a fissure in the rock face. Beyond it was a steep incline.

  Full of trepidation he began to climb. In places the tyre tracks were smudged where the wheels had fought for a grip. Every so often he paused to listen, but heard nothing other than the thudding of his own heart.

  Soon the tops of trees appeared over the escarpment edge. Somewhere amongst them birds were shrieking. The slope began to level out. A stationary car came into view and he stopped, crouching down while he tried to see if there was any movement in or around it. He listened again. Still nothing. The vehicle was a large Mazda jeep and seemed to be empty. Beyond it was dense bush, the reason, he presumed, why it had gone no further. He took a chance and ran across to it, crouching by the rear wheel arch. Then he raised himself to look inside. On the back seat was a piece of apparatus like an oversize notebook computer. A satellite telephone.

  Suddenly there were voices. From deep in that scrub which began a few metres away. Or rather a single voice – speaking in some local tongue but with an accent that was unmistakably English. And it was getting nearer.

  He ducked behind the rear door of the Mazda. Footsteps crunched towards him. With nowhere else to hide and no means of defending himself, he slid beneath the car, his head scraping the hump of the rear differential.

  From beneath the chassis he watched the feet approach. Dark green jungle boots with black trousers tucked into them. The man dumped a rifle onto the ground, leaning its barrel against the bodywork. Then he opened the rear passenger door and took out something heavy, which Sam assumed to be the satphone. The feet moved to the front and the equipment was lifted onto the bonnet.

  Sam heard expletives as the man fiddled with the antenna. The voice – it sounded disturbingly familiar.

  He eyed the rifle. If his suspicions were confirmed he was going to need it. As he eased himself closer to the vital weapon, he heard the beeps of the satphone’s dialler.

  The man cleared his throat to speak.

  When he did so Sam knew that the search for Harrison had just taken a most extraordinary turn.

  ‘Jan. It’s Jimmy. I’m in one fuck of a mess here. This bloke Harrison’s gone off his rocker.’

  Twenty-five

  Jimmy Squires.

  Sam’s brain corkscrewed. Why? What possible connection could that man have with Perry Harrison?

  Then it dawned on him. Of course Squires was ‘Rip’. The clues had been there and he hadn’t seen them – the background file saying the former SAS sergeant was obsessed with World War Two – Harrison’s email talking of meeting Rip at a Chindit reunion. And even the name. Squires had been brought up in Ripley. Midge had told him. Ripley, Yorkshire.

  The ex-soldier was talking again. More urgently this time.

  ‘Listen, Jan, I need a lift across the border. Tomorrow. And a stamp in my passport. Talk to them, eh? You can fix it.’

&n
bsp; Jan. The woman Squires had been with on the boat at Phuket. Linked to Yang Lai’s heroin gang. Squires was still plugged into the system, just as Midge had said.

  Sam’s brain went into overdrive. His missions had fused, suddenly. He faced the incredible possibility of saving Kamata’s life and delivering Squires to Midge in one fell swoop. If he could get control.

  The rifle was within touching distance now.

  He listened, waiting for his moment. Squires was speaking again, agitatedly.

  ‘I know your friends don’t fucking like me anymore. But you can fix it, Jan. And you’ve got to. No. It’ll be me on my own. I’m going to leave the old men here.’

  Men. Sam’s hopes rose. It sounded like confirmation that Kamata was still alive.

  ‘Soon as I’m well clear, in a couple of hours say, I’ll get word to the Tatmadaw telling them where to find ’em.’

  Squires cleared his throat again, with annoyance. Sam had the impression the woman was questioning him more closely than he wanted.

  ‘I’ll tell you what’s changed, darlin’. Harrison asked me to negotiate a deal with the SPDC, that’s what – saying they can have Kamata back if they release his son from prison. The daft old bugger wants a swap. I’ve told him there’s no way I’m going to stick my head in a noose on that score.’

  Stifling his incredulity that Harrison could have had such an ambitious scheme, Sam concentrated on the timing of his emergence from beneath the car. It was critical. Too soon and Squires could use his phone call to rally help. Too late and the former soldier would have repossessed the gun. In readiness, he eased his body from under the sill of the car, checking that Squires’ view of him was blocked by the broad spread of the bonnet. The rifle butt was inches from his head.

  ‘Anyway, just fix me a way out of Myanmar, okay?’ Squires ordered. ‘I’ll call again in a couple of hours.’ The phone clicked back on its rest.