The time had come. Sam rolled clear, grabbed the gun and levelled it at the former SAS man.
Squires gaped in astonishment. ‘What the fuck …?’
For several seconds they stared at one another. Then Sam got to his feet.
‘Move away from the jeep. Over there.’ He gestured with the rifle. ‘I want you down on the ground facing the trees.’
For a couple of moments Sam thought Squires would rush him. Then, very slowly, the man complied. When he was sitting on the stony earth he twisted his head round.
‘What the fuck are you doing here, shitface?’
‘Harrison,’ Sam growled.
‘What?’ He looked utterly confused. ‘Who the hell are you?’
‘I work for the government.’
‘Whose?’
‘Yours …’ Sam kept an eye on the tree line beyond Squires, fearing the sudden intervention of the two ‘dacoits’. ‘Where are your men?’
‘No idea.’
There was a thwacking noise from deep in the thicket. Like someone knocking in tent pegs.
‘What’s happening here?’
Squires ignored his question. ‘That blonde tart with you? Beth?’
‘Maybe.’
Squires eyed him coldly. ‘I said I’d kill you if I ever saw you again.’
‘So you did.’
Sam knew his hold on this situation was perilously weak. At any moment one of Squires’ gunmen could take a shot at him. The rifle aimed at the small of their master’s back might or might not deter them.
‘What’s Harrison done to Kamata?’
‘Let’s see. What’s the best way to put it?’ Squires ruminated for a moment. ‘I’d say he’s been making him understand how he feels about life.’
‘How?’
‘Oh, knocking him about a bit. And helping him get a suntan.’
Staking prisoners out in the midday heat until sunburn and dehydration drove them mad – it’s what the Japs had done to their POWs.
‘And before you ask, this wasn’t my idea,’ Squires added quickly. ‘Anyway, what are you – SIS?’
‘Something like that.’
‘And why do you care about Harrison?’
‘Because if Kamata dies, so does a whole load of Anglo-Japanese trade.’
‘Yeah, but in Phuket you weren’t …’
‘That was different. I was helping the Aussies out. Now, where’s Harrison?’
Squires fell silent. He seemed to be digesting the situation. Calculating his next move. Quietly racking up the pressure on Sam.
‘On your feet again,’ Sam snapped. ‘Hands on head.’
He faced an almost impossible task. Even if he managed to resolve the immediate situation, he knew it’d be a marathon undertaking to get Harrison and Kamata back to civilisation. And to persuade the Jap to tell the Myanmar authorities his abduction had been a misunderstanding. And then, to get Squires into Midge’s little hands in Thailand. Simply handing the man over to the Tatmadaw wouldn’t work. The chances were they’d give him safe passage out of the country. No. By one means or another he was going to have to hand Squires over to Midge in person, and at this point he hadn’t a clue how.
The thwacking in the trees intensified. With a surge of horror he realised the object being hit was a human being.
‘Move.’ He prodded Squires with the barrel.
‘Perry won’t be pleased to see you.’
‘Too bad. Where are your men?’
‘Around.’
‘I want them disarmed. Any farting about and you get a bullet in your back.’
‘You wouldn’t dare. Fucking boy scout …’
‘Don’t tempt me.’
They elbowed their way through the bush. Then Squires stopped and turned.
‘Tell me something, Steve, or whatever your name is. Just curious. How the fuck did you find us?’
The man was far too composed for Sam’s liking. As if knowing damned well it’d be him holding the gun again before long.
‘Harrison told me about this place,’ said Sam cryptically.
Squires scowled. ‘Do me a favour.’
‘It was in his book. Ever read it?’
‘Course I have.’ He began parting the foliage again, swiping at branches with his arms. ‘That book’s what made me a fan of his. Blokes like Perry – they’re the forgotten heroes of World War Two.’ He said it with a bitter edge to his voice, as if Sam were part of the establishment that had turned its back on the veterans. He stopped one more time, glaring at Sam with narrowed eyes. ‘Look Mr SIS man. Let’s get one thing straight. It’s like I said – all this that’s going on here is Harrison’s idea. He asked for muscle, so I provided it. That’s all. But I didn’t know he was terminally ill. Nor that he’d lost his marbles. So this is not exactly what I was expecting. Okay? I was just trying to give a good friend a helping hand.’
‘Such a good friend that you’re now running out on him.’
Squires looked pained, as if unjustly accused. ‘Only because he’s lost it.’ Then the ruthlessness returned. ‘Anyway, he’ll be dead in a few weeks.’
‘Just keep moving.’ Sam disliked the man more intensely than ever.
A few seconds later they reached a clearing. Something dreadful was happening on the far side of it, but Sam’s eyes were locked on the two bandit-like figures squatting on the ground a few paces away, drinking from beer bottles.
‘Fuckers,’ Squires hissed. ‘Turn your back for five minutes …’
The men looked very young. They had brown faces with wary Chinese eyes and hair that was long, black and straight. Assault rifles were slung across their backs, which they swung onto their laps as soon as they saw Sam.
‘Tell them,’ he hissed, his forefinger slipping through the trigger guard. ‘It would give me real pleasure to blow your guts out.’
Squires muttered something in the men’s language and they laid the guns on the ground, their faces expressionless. One of them had a cowboy hat jammed on his head. Both had spare magazines stuffed into webbing belts. Sam guessed they were Wa fighters from the tribal militia Yang Lai used to guard his drug empire.
‘Tell them to chuck their guns and spare rounds over there.’ Sam pointed to the open ground to their right. ‘Then to stand up with their hands on their heads.’
Squires spoke to them again. Reluctantly the men did as they were bid. Only then did Sam lift his gaze to take in the scene at the far side of the clearing.
‘Jesus!’
Silhouetted against the glow of the sunset was the ruin of a small Buddhist temple. To one side of the half-collapsed zedi was a banyan tree. Hanging by a rope from its branches was the naked body of an elderly man, his hands bound above his head and his feet just inches from the ground. His shins and ribs were red and black from the beatings he’d been given.
Sam jabbed the gun into Squires’ back again. ‘Move! And your boys.’ He pushed them closer to the tree.
Peregrine Harrison, dressed in a sweat-stained bush shirt and khaki shorts, stood staring up at his victim, looking for some sign that his one-time torturer had at last been broken. He’d heard nothing of what was happening on the other side of the clearing, his mind locked in a private nightmare.
His legs were akimbo and he was resting on the log he’d been using as a club. Adrenalin had kept him on his feet long after his condition would normally have permitted. But now the very act of breathing was causing him pain. It was Kamata’s silence that was fazing him. Apart from initial protests when they’d seized him at the memorial, he’d not spoken once. Yelped with pain when Rip’s men had hoisted him up to the branch, shed tears as the bruises had spread up his legs and torso, but hadn’t spoken. His refusal to answer Harrison’s anguished questions had been a potent weapon.
Harrison was taller than Sam had expected. Nearly six foot, despite the shrinkage that must have come with age. He still hadn’t noticed their approach.
‘We have a visitor, Perry,’ Squires announced.<
br />
Harrison spun round. His face bore little relation to the Teuton-eyed war hero Sam had seen smiling from the back cover of A Jungle Path to Hell. The deep lines and demented eyes belonged to a man crippled by the pain of the disease that was killing him – and by the torment inside his head.
‘Who’s this?’ The voice was husky, but officer class.
‘A spook, Perry,’ Squires announced. ‘From Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service.’
‘What?’ To Sam he looked like a schoolboy caught smoking. ‘How the heck did he get here?’
‘You left a trail, Mr Harrison.’
Perry looked at their visitor with bewilderment. His first thought was that Rip had brought him here. That his betrayal by the man he’d thought of as a friend had been complete. History repeating itself. Like the Burma Rifleman who’d given him away to the Japs. The enemy once more at his door.
For Sam the sight of Tetsuo Kamata’s bruised and battered body dangling from the tree was shocking. He found it hard to accept that the damage to this aged human being had been done by a man who’d spent most of his life preaching peace and goodwill. Keeping half an eye on Squires and his guerrillas, he looked for signs of life on the Jap’s face, but saw none. Eyes closed, head slumped forward, his almost hairless skin as pale as paper and his genitalia shrunk to the size of acorns, Kamata could well be dead already, for all he knew.
Sam felt an urge to grab Harrison and rub his nose in what he’d done. Instead he told himself to take things gently. Because even when old men went mad they could still be dangerous.
‘I think you’ve done enough, sir. Don’t you? Take him down, shall we?’ He found himself speaking as he would to a child subject to tantrums.
Harrison recoiled at the suggestion. He couldn’t let it happen. If the man was cut free before he’d been brought low enough to beg for mercy, he would have won. And he, Perry, would have lost.
‘Rip!’ He spread his arms to shield his prisoner. ‘Do something.’
‘Take a look at who’s holding the gun, Perry,’ Squires murmured, making no effort to disguise his exasperation with the old man.
Only then did Harrison grasp what had happened. Panicking, he spread his legs and folded his arms in defiance.
‘Take Mr Kamata down, Jimmy,’ Sam ordered.
‘Over my dead body,’ Harrison growled.
Squires shook his head. ‘Do it yourself, Steve.’ He began to back away, smirking. ‘I’ll hold the gun for you, if you like.’
Sam had half a mind to shoot the bastard full of holes, together with his two lads, but seemed to recollect there were laws against that sort of thing. He threw another glance at Kamata. Still no sign of life from the man. He feared his chance to save him was slipping away.
One thing was clear. He couldn’t get Kamata down from that tree with four men determined to stop him. Persuasion was his only chance and for that he needed more time. But the longer they took to resolve things here, the greater the danger of the Myanmar police and army finding them – possibly with the help of his own driver. They were perilously unprotected here. Not even a lookout in place. He pointed to the ruined zedi.
‘Up there, Jimmy. Put one of your boys on watch before we all end up in the shit.’
Squires smirked condescendingly. ‘Good move. We’ll make a soldier of you yet.’ He sent one of his guerrillas scrambling up the pile of bricks.
Sam turned to Harrison. The man’s eyes were like tunnels. He saw fear there, but no readiness to concede.
‘Look, I know what you’ve been through, sir.’ Treading on eggshells. ‘I’ve spoken with your son.’
Harrison’s eyes widened with astonishment. If this were true, things were taking an extraordinary turn. ‘You’ve seen Khin Thein?’
‘No. Your son Charles.’
Harrison’s disappointment was acute. Charles was an irrelevance.
‘And I’ve talked with Robert Wetherby,’ Sam continued, desperately seeking a point of contact. ‘And with Melissa.’
‘Oh God …’ They were all conspiring against him. Every last person he’d thought of as a friend had turned. Suddenly he was engulfed by despair. There was no way they’d let him continue with his punishment of Kamata. No way now that he’d be able to reduce the monster to the level of self-hate he himself had been taken to fifty-seven years ago.
Sam detected a weakening of resolve on Harrison’s part. He watched the old man lower himself onto a large stone in front of the zedi, then bury his face in his hands as if trying to shut out the besieging demons.
‘They’re all very concerned about you, sir,’ he soothed, still keeping a wary eye on Squires.
Peregrine Harrison felt utterly drained. The adrenalin that had let him overcome the pain and weakness of his condition in the past hours had evaporated. He stared at this strong-jawed young man who’d gone to such trouble to find him and felt strangely humbled. He looked so confident. So capable. Like he himself had been in days long gone.
‘The Prime Minister himself …’ Sam continued.
Anger shot through Harrison’s veins.
‘Don’t talk to me about politicians!’ he exploded, suddenly reinvigorated.
‘Look, if any lasting harm comes to Mr Kamata …’
‘What? Is this some bleat about six thousand car workers looking for other jobs?’
‘Not just them. The implications for the economy … the UK’s relations with Japan.’
‘God Almighty! It irritates me beyond measure hearing politicians care so much now about a Japanese sadist, when they cared so little for his victims after the war.’
‘The war ended fifty-five years ago.’
‘Not for me it didn’t. Nor for my comrades. And remember, it wasn’t six thousand men who’s lives were wrecked by the likes of Tetsuo Kamata, but sixty thousand. You … people. You live in your little boxes in Whitehall. You have no idea …’
Harrison turned to face the purpling western sky, using its beauty to calm himself. The trouble was nobody had any idea, except those who’d been there. And even most of them had learned to forget and forgive. He knew that in essence he’d become a dinosaur. A rogue creature whose time had finally come. The chance to fight the battle he’d longed for had been given to him too late. They were going to stop him winning it.
‘You know,’ he murmured, half to himself, half to the man beside him, ‘every time the sun goes down these days, I’m never sure I’ll see it rise again.’
Sam squatted beside him, still with half an eye on Squires. He was beginning to feel sorry for Harrison. ‘We’re going to get you home, sir.’
Harrison didn’t hear him. ‘The awful thing is … it hasn’t helped,’ he whispered, eyes watering with self-pity.
‘What hasn’t?’
‘What I’ve done to him.’ He wiped his eye sockets with the back of his hand. ‘I thought I would feel some kind of release. You know? Some escape from the hatred. But … there’s been nothing.’
‘Then for heaven’s sake let’s take him down. He’s suffered enough.’
‘Oh no! He hasn’t suffered enough at all. He’s nowhere near the mental condition I want to reduce him to.’
For a moment Sam saw Harrison as a child, given all his Christmas presents, who couldn’t understand why he was still unhappy.
‘What d’you want from all this, Perry?’
‘Peace. Respite from the voices in my head.’
The voices of insanity, Sam wondered, or the man’s conscience talking? ‘What do they say?’
Peregrine Harrison looked sideways at this man who’d hunted him down. It felt oddly like the arrival of a confessor. And there were things he did want to unburden himself of, but others he couldn’t. Like the terrible full truth of why he was doing this. A truth far too dark to be revealed to anyone.
‘It’s the uncertainty, you see. That’s what’s … niggled away. Not being able to understand …’
‘Understand what?’
For a few mom
ents Sam thought Harrison wasn’t going to answer. When he eventually turned his head and looked at him, the eyes belonged to a dead man.
‘I don’t understand how any man can do such things to another human being.’
After what he’d just done to the man in the tree.
‘But surely …’ Sam protested, gesturing vaguely at Kamata, ‘what you’ve done is the same thing.’
To Harrison it wasn’t the same at all. The injuries he’d inflicted that afternoon had been done with none of the cool detachment Kamata had shown back in ’43 but in a frenzy of rage and frustration. Done too with the purpose of creating a noise. A racket in his head to drown out the voices that had driven him to the brink of insanity so many times. Voices reminding him every second of every day that fifty-seven years ago in a Japanese encampment not far from here, he’d told this monster what he’d wanted to know.
Told this bastard where his unit of brave Chindits was heading. Put in jeopardy the lives of the men who’d become his brothers. Ever since that day, he’d buried this terrible truth deep inside his soul, where, instead of eventually disappearing as he’d hoped, it had burned on and on like molten lava.
He’d lied in his autobiography. Said that although the torture had been so horrific he’d been ready to talk, a slide into unconsciousness had made it impossible. But the truth was he had talked. Easily. The beatings had been enough. No need for water torture. That most vivid part of his maltreatment had never happened. He’d made it up to conceal his own cowardice. His own treachery. That terrible weakness in his character which Tetsuo Kamata had so casually revealed.
Only one other person knew the truth. The man hanging by his hands a few feet away. It was why he’d dreamed of killing Kamata, so it could never be revealed. Then, a few days ago, it had dawned on him that the demise of the Jap would solve nothing.
‘Do you believe in anything, Mr …?’
‘Maxwell,’ said Sam. ‘Stephen Maxwell.’
‘You believe in God? Heaven and hell? An afterlife?’
‘I’m agnostic.’
Harrison nodded. ‘It’s easier that way. Because if you’re a believer, you can never win. You see … I thought that by killing this man I would rid him from my life forever. Then I realised he’d be there in the next life. Waiting for me to arrive. Waiting to point the finger again.’
The Burma Legacy Page 25
