Plausible Deniability: The explosive Lex Harper novella

by Stephen Leather

  Narong shrugged. ‘We were trained by the Americans and - like you British - they speak no language but their own and expect everyone else to learn theirs.’

  Harper inclined his head in acknowledgment of that. Narong’s men, all tattooed and unshaven, had an arrogance about them that Harper found disquieting and as soon as he met them he had misgivings about using them because they appeared to be operating right on the edge. They were undisciplined by special forces’ standards and seemed to be motivated mainly by greed and sex. The Americans had provided them with a slush fund, routed via their own authorities, to cover expenses - mainly bribes - but by the time Harper linked up with them, they already seemed to have spent most of it on alcohol and prostitutes. However, they knew the terrain they would be crossing and had had dealings with the drug lords he needed to meet, so he swallowed his reservations.

  Although he was reliant on the Thais to navigate through the jungle of Myanmar to the RV with the drug lords, Harper had planned the route on the Thai side of the border himself.

  They first drove north to Chiang Rai in two Toyota Landcruisers and overnighted at a colonial era hotel close to the river. He booked his own room for a month, cash in advance, and then told the manager ‘I’ll be keeping very irregular hours and I do not want to be disturbed at any time, for any reason, by chambermaids or anybody else during my stay. I hope we’re clear on that, because the consequences for anyone who goes against those instructions will be very severe.’ He slid a hundred dollar bill across the reception desk. ‘Just to cover any extra trouble you have to go to,’ he said.

  The manager pocketed the tip with practised ease, while maintaining a neutral expression. ‘As you wish sir, have a pleasant stay.’

  While the Thais went looking for local girls from whom they could buy sex for the price of a meal, Harper began stashing the rest of his equipment in the room, including his gold chain and bug-out bag, and his burner phone. The phone would be of no use to him in the deep jungle and mountainous terrain of Myanmar - there would not be a mobile phone mast in a hundred miles - and he did not trust the Thai soldiers enough to dangle the temptation of a gold chain in front of them. He had transferred the bearer bonds in a sealed, air- and water-tight folder inside his backpack.

  The next morning, he set a couple of traps to detect if anyone had been in his room while he was away. Normally he would have put a couple of cornflakes or a cracker under the carpet. If they had been crushed when he checked them later, it would show there had been an intruder. However the hotel was crawling with cockroaches and he suspected that anything edible left there would have been eaten long before he got back. Instead he fixed a hair across the wardrobe door, and smeared a trace of Vaseline on the handles of the room and bathroom doors. If anyone touched them, even wearing gloves, there would be a mark.

  Before setting out, he taped the folder containing the bearer bonds to his chest, under his shirt. A body search would reveal it in seconds but it was safer than carrying the bonds in the backpack. Then he locked his room and hid the key behind a ventilation grille high up in the wall at the far end of the corridor.

  Harper and his crew then drove another 60 kilometres north to Mae Sai, a dusty, rugged, Wild West frontier town at the northernmost point of Thailand. It was deep inside the Golden Triangle, the one million square kilometre area spanning the confluence of the Mekong and Ruak rivers and the borders of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar. At one time it was the source of 70 per cent of the world’s supply of heroin, and though the governments of the three countries had now supposedly cracked down on the heroin trade, the Golden Triangle was still awash with the drug. Corrupt Thai, Laotian and Burmese generals were heavily involved in the trade, with the Burmese military controlling their share through an apparently legitimate corporation - Myanmar Gas and Petrochemicals. The company had virtually no oil or gas or any other visible assets, yet strangely enough, every year hundreds of millions of dollars were laundered through its multiple bank accounts in the no-questions-asked state of Singapore.

  Mae Sai faced the Burmese town of Tachileik across the Mae Sai River. It was one of only three official crossing points between Thailand and Myanmar and in this remote and lawless region it was the principal route by which smuggled goods of all sorts crossed the frontier. People traffickers brought in cheap or even slave labour from Myanmar for unscrupulous Thai factory owners; corrupt gem dealers smuggled “blood” rubies, sapphires, jade and ivory; and illegal logging companies shipped thousands of tons of teak, mahogany and other hardwoods through Mae Sai. However, by far the biggest trade was in the opium and heroin base that was processed, cut and repackaged in Thailand before being shipped on to the First World countries in Europe and the USA, where the appetite for the drug was never sated. Corrupt Burmese and Thai generals either ran the trade themselves or exacted a heavy price to look the other way while the goods crossed their territories.

  Harper and his escort left their Landcruisers in a farm on the outskirts of town, and he paid the farmer the equivalent of six month’s income to watch over the vehicles for them. Where they were going there were no roads that even a 4x4 could navigate, just a network of smugglers’ paths and tracks that could only be negotiated by horse, mule or on foot. Although the officials on both sides of the border were notoriously corrupt and a bribe of a few dollars would probably have been enough to see them waved across the frontier, Harper preferred not to advertise their presence and instead he and his Thai escort crossed the Mae Sai river a couple of miles upstream of the town, using a inflatable boat that they deflated and sank after reaching Myanmar.

  All of the men were armed with M16s. The Vietnam War had ended more than forty years before, but the American weapons of choice then, used by US troops and their South Vietnamese allies, had been the M16. Stolen or abandoned by the million during the course of the war and especially in the chaos of the US withdrawal, they could still be bought for a few dollars almost anywhere in South-East Asia and they were also better suited to the typically slight frames of Thai soldiers, than the much heavier AK47s and AK74s - the Kalashnikovs that were also widely available throughout the region.

  They travelled through the foothills of the mountains, with the Thais leading the way, following tracks they had evidently used many times before. However, partly from habit and partly from his instinct for self-preservation, Harper also kept a close eye on the route they were following, noting compass bearings and identifying distinguishing landmarks he could use to navigate if he became separated from his escort. He never let his backpack out of his sight and whenever they paused to rest, he used it as a pillow.

  They were now deep in a territory where the Burmese warlords and their allies in the military controlled everything. Once dense rainforest, the area was now scarred by logging, most of it illegal, that had stripped virtually a vast area of its tree cover, leaving only clumps of fern, bamboo and jungle thorn. Harper and the Thais lay up through part of the day, watching as teams of soldiers wearing the uniforms of the Burmese army, felled yet more giant teaks and other hardwood trees.

  ‘How do they get the logs out?’ Harper asked Narong.

  ‘They’re taken into Thailand through Mae Sai. Documentation is produced that shows they are legally felled trees from Thai forests, and then they’re sold to the Japanese to make into chopsticks.’

  ‘Chopsticks?’ Harper said. ‘You’re kidding aren’t you? Some of the world’s most precious hardwoods and they’re making them into something that’s used once and then thrown away? And meanwhile back here-’ he gestured towards the erosion scars on the hillsides, ‘-the lack of tree cover lets the monsoon rains rip away the topsoil and flood the lowlands. Still, as long as the generals are making a few bucks …’ He shrugged. ‘Forget it. It’s none of my business. I’m just bumping my gums.’

  As they moved deeper into Myanmar, they reached areas where the native rainforest was largely intact - for the moment at least. The jungle and the rugged terrain they were now crossin
g was traversed by a network of narrow tracks, barely wide enough for a man to pass. At intervals, alerted by the alarm cries of birds and animals in the jungle canopy above them, or the noise made by approaching men, Harper and his escort went to ground, while human “mule trains” - lines of peasants all stooped under the weight of the heavy packs they were carrying - made their way through the jungle, carrying raw opium down from the fields and hillsides where it was grown to the crude jungle “refineries” where it would be processed into heroin base.

  There were also occasional patrols of Burmese soldiers, but although they were operating on their own terrain, they were ill-disciplined, poorly equipped and seemingly poorly schooled in jungle craft, for the noise they made and the smell of their tobacco smoke announced their presence long before they appeared, making it easy for Harper and the Thais to evade them.

  Three days after crossing the border, they came to a broad valley right in the middle of the Golden Triangle, with small side-valleys running into the hills, matching the satellite imagery Harper had been shown by Button. There was a small hut on the upper slopes of the valley, where he and his Thai escort were to stay while he completed the negotiations with the local warlords. There was tinned food and bottled water, a case of the local Mekong whiskey, a generator for light and even two whores with dead eyes, sallow skin and track marks on their arms, who were soon being kept busy by the Thais. The diesel fuel for the generator and all the other supplies had been carried into the valley by the same human pack mules that took the raw opium away.

  The next morning, Harper was introduced to the local warlords: four Burmese men, all with elaborate tattoos in traditional designs which they believed gave them mystical powers and could even protect them from knives and bullets. Each warlord also had his own retinue of ragged but heavily armed followers. They gave him the full guided tour, showing him the fruits of that year’s poppy harvest, stored in five large bamboo barns spaced at intervals of a kilometre along the floor of the valley and hidden from aerial surveillance by tall forest trees that, unlike many other parts of this blighted region, had been left standing.

  The barns were built on stilts for ventilation, with the peasants who picked the harvest living in the cramped space beneath the raised floors. Long ago, in more tranquil times, the barns had been used only to store the rice crop, and Burma, as it was then called, was a net exporter of rice to other countries. Now Myanmar imported most of the rice its often malnourished people ate, and the barns were used only to store the opium crop. The first three were already filled to the rafters with poppy husks - the poppies couldn’t be converted into heroin until after the husks had ripened and the petals had dropped - and while Harper was there, peasants were trekking to and from the remaining barns, labouring to bring in the rest of the harvest.

  At the end of the tour, Harper sat down with the warlords. His task was straightforward: to satisfy himself that they would hold up their end of the bargain and then hand over the $10 million deposit and discuss the means and timetable for arranging the destruction of the opium crop in return for a much larger US payment. The discussions were interminable, with long pauses each time the Thais translated his words and the warlords’ replies. They appeared amicable enough, offering him tea and the clove-scented cigarettes they smoked but Harper had begun to feel a growing sense of unease. He could not put his finger on any specific reason for it but he had long since learned to trust his instincts and was already looking for a way to extricate himself and the Thais without triggering a full-scale gun-battle with the warlords’ gangs.

  His attention was focussed on the warlords in front of him, while the Thai special forces guys stood behind him to watch his back. The warlords were showing mounting impatience as Harper tried to establish how the destruction of the crop and the payments to them could be co-ordinated. It could only be done in phases, since neither side was willing to take the other side’s compliance with the terms of their agreement on trust and eventually they reached an impasse. The senior warlord kept demanding that Harper pay them up front ‘as a sign of your good faith’, but he remained insistent that the bonds would only be handed over once all was in readiness for the destruction of the crop.

  In the ensuing silence, he saw the main warlord give an almost imperceptible nod to Narong, who was standing directly behind Harper. At once he heard the click of a safety catch and felt the barrel of an M-16 assault rifle pressing against the back of his neck. From the corner of his eye, he saw that the other Thais had also brought their weapons to bear, not on the warlords, but on Harper. Surrounded and hugely outnumbered, he knew he was powerless to help himself.

  While the others kept him covered, two of the Thais and the warlords’ men then went through his backpack and equipment, ripping out the lining and cutting everything to shreds. Finding nothing, they then body-searched him and discovered the folder containing the bonds. The warlords broke into broad grins, passing them round and peering at the words and images engraved on them. Harper had a faint hope that they might fall out over the division of the spoils, since ten bearer bonds would not divide equally into four, but that disappeared as the main warlord handed one to each of the others three and one to Narong, and then pocketed the other six himself. Whatever their private thoughts might have been, none of the others showed even a flicker of protest at the unequal distribution.

  At a word from the main warlord, the Thai soldiers had stripped Harper and removed his boots. It was a trick they used against Westerners because their soft feet meant that they couldn’t run away without their boots. The warlords’ plan was now obvious to him: they and their Thai allies had never had any serious intention of striking a deal to swap their crop for the bearer bonds; they were going to pocket the ten million dollars and as much extra money as they could persuade the Americans to part with and then go ahead and sell the opium crop anyway.

  They began demanding that Harper tell them where the rest of the money was for the purchase of the heroin crop. When he denied any knowledge of it, they began to beat him. Narong and Decha repeatedly lashed his back and the soles of his feet with rattan canes, pausing only to ask him again and again. ‘Where have you hidden the other bonds?’

  ‘They’re still at the American Embassy in Bangkok,’ he said. ‘You don’t think I’d walk into a bear-trap naked do you? The $10 million was just a down payment and it’s all I was entrusted with. If you want any more American money, you’ll have to set me free and agree to the destruction of the harvest. No agreement, no money.’

  They kept him there for two days and nights, depriving him of sleep, holding him in stress positions, beating and torturing him repeatedly, but Harper had not only gone through Resistance To Interrogation training in his days in the Paras, he was also a far more single-minded, stubborn and determined individual than any of his captors had ever met and they could not break him down.

  By then the Thais appeared to have given up hope of getting any more money from the Americans. It was clear to Harper that Narong just wanted to kill him, before returning to Thailand with some cover story of being ambushed and losing Harper in a firefight, but the main warlord had other ideas. ‘If we can’t have the rest of the bonds,’ he said to Harper, in broken English, ‘we can still sell our opium crop and we can also send you back to your Western masters with a message.’ He gestured to one of his men, pressing his thumb against his first two fingers and the next moment Harper was pinned to the dirt floor of the hut. A cord was jerked tight round his arm, and he watched in helpless, absolute terror as Decha approached with a filthy syringe, found a vein in Harper’s arm and injected him with heroin. As the cord was untied, he felt the rush and fell back, eyes unseeing, lost in the drug. He’d heard heroin users describe the feeling as being ‘better than sex, better than anything,’ now, feeling it for himself for the first time, he could understand why they would make those comparisons.

  Time ceased to have any meaning for him. Every time he came back to his senses after that,
still lying on the dirt floor of the hut, sometimes in daylight, sometimes at night, one of the warlords’ men injected him again. Narong, Decha and the other Thais had disappeared, presumably returning to Bangkok. Harper lost all track of how many days - or was it weeks - he had been held there, existing only in a heroin haze, each day identical to the one before. He was dimly aware of glimpses of the steady procession of peasants trudging to and from the storage barns with huge sacks of opium poppyheads on their backs, but each time his captors saw that he was awake and aware of his surroundings, they pinned him down and gave him another fix of heroin. He no longer struggled or tried to resist, but let the heroin silence the tremors and the cravings that now ruled his body, drowning every other thought but the next fix.

  One day apparently no different from the others, the main warlord and his men took Harper out of the hut where they’d been holding him and marched him back down the valley towards the Thai border. They had to support him much of the time, because he was so weak he could barely walk.

  They stopped at the ridge overlooking the Mae Sai river. ‘Okay, big man,’ the warlord said to him. ‘You go back to Thailand and then give Uncle Sam a message from us. Tell him we rule South-east Asia now. If he sends any more round-eyes here, it will be like Vietnam all over again - we’ll kill them all.’

  His men pushed a bag of heroin and a hypodermic into Harper’s hands and then disappeared back into the jungle. By then he had such bad withdrawal symptoms that he shot up before they were even out of sight.