Return to Mandalay

by Rosanna Ley

  ‘Thanks,’ he said gruffly and turned away.

  His second thought was to cancel his passage, to travel back to Maymyo, go to the village and find her, have it out with her: why in God’s name hadn’t she come to meet him as they’d always planned? Wouldn’t she want to see that he was still alive, if nothing else? His next thought was rather different. Clearly, she didn’t want to. She no longer cared. The war could change people. He knew that better than most. And Maya? She wanted him to return to Britain. She had lost her love.

  A sense of rejection and a burning anger, frustration, really, at the amount of time he had wasted here in Mandalay trying to find her when she was living tucked away just out of sight, took Lawrence on to the steamer and out of Burma on the ticket he had bought.

  It was only on the long journey back to England staring into the depths of the endless churning ocean, that he had more time to reflect. Not turning up in Mandalay, not seeking him out to see that he was well and had survived the war, was completely out of character for the woman he loved. Even if her circumstances had changed, or her love had died, she would still have come to tell him. He remembered the chinthe, still in his pack. No. There was only one reason why she hadn’t come, and that was because she hadn’t trusted herself to come. He knew he was right. She had been trying to make it easy for him, he realised, thinking of what she had once said to him about promises. She had decided to let him go.

  ‘You have a daughter.’ The voice spoke again. Rosie.

  ‘You’re my daughter,’ he whispered. Why couldn’t she understand?

  ‘Another daughter.’ Her voice was more urgent now. ‘Maya had your child. Many years ago. Her name is Cho Suu Kyi.’

  Another child? Another daughter? Maya?

  And a vision came to him of that same time just after the war when he’d left Rangoon and returned to Dorset. It hadn’t happened, had it? But it could have. It was a vision of Maya, his baby daughter in her arms. And Maya was waving goodbye.

  You have a daughter. Another daughter. These were the words that stayed with him, imprinted on his mind. He thought that now, he might remember those words forever.

  CHAPTER 51

  The following morning Klaus had arranged a rendezvous in a small backstreet café whose proprietor he knew and trusted and where they would have complete privacy. There were things they must discuss, Klaus had told them. It seemed that he had decided they didn’t pose a threat to his investigation and that he could trust them. He needed their help too. He had asked Ramon to keep the crate in the factory for now, as it seemed the safest place, and they had repackaged and resealed it so that no one would suspect it had been tampered with. Within the next few days, he promised, everything would be resolved. He also guaranteed that the watch on the factory premises would continue.

  Ramon had reluctantly agreed. As he said to Eva on the way back to her hotel, what else could they do? They had uncovered no more rubies, but they had to allow Klaus and his investigative team to follow the crate to its destination. And Eva knew only too well where that was. The Bristol Antiques Emporium. Her own company. It didn’t bear thinking about.

  ‘But how come Khan Li isn’t still having the factory watched?’ Eva asked Klaus after they’d ordered coffee from the female proprietor. It seemed unlikely that Li would let two of his precious rubies just sit in Ramon’s warehouse without standing some sort of guard over them.

  ‘I think I can explain that one.’ Ramon leaned forwards. They were sitting at a round table on rickety chairs. In fact, the whole place was rickety and looked as if it could be blown down by the nearest ogre. But the floor was swept and the place seemed clean. ‘According to my warehouse manager, nearly all the crates went out the day before yesterday. But that one was left behind. There was a small drama.’ He smiled across at Eva. ‘When Eva spotted one of the crates on the truck, and this provided an unintentional distraction. My manager decided that rather than tell Khan Li what had happened, he would keep quiet and simply send the final crate on later.’

  Wai Yan wouldn’t want to risk upsetting Li, Eva surmised. He wouldn’t want to risk him carrying out that threat to tell his wife what he’d been up to. An indiscretion, Ramon had said. Eva wouldn’t put it past Khan Li to have set a honey trap for the unsuspecting warehouse manager. And more fool him for walking into it.

  ‘Following that distraction, it must have been easy to lose count of the crates being loaded into the truck,’ Ramon continued. ‘To assume they were all safely out and on their way and to cease the observation of the factory.’

  ‘That must be it.’ Klaus nodded.

  He and Ramon seemed to have reached what Eva could only suppose was an uneasy truce. At least, to have accepted that they were both on the same side.

  They paused in their conversation for a moment as the proprietor brought out three cups of milky coffee.

  ‘For how long have you been watching my factory?’ Ramon’s eyes glittered, but his voice did not betray any emotion. Eva knew how hard it was for him to hear that his good name had been used in this way.

  ‘For some weeks,’ Klaus admitted. ‘Our team has been watching their every move.’ He shook his head. ‘But I confess I did not expect the next move to be made by you, Eva.’ He turned to her.

  Eva shivered. She had been quite vulnerable there. It was a good thing that Klaus had turned out to be a friend and not an enemy.

  ‘And you have still not explained to me how it is that you are involved,’ he added.

  Eva shrugged. ‘It’s a family affair.’

  Klaus murmured something softly in German.

  ‘What was that?’ Eva asked.

  ‘I said, perhaps not so much a family affair, as an affair of the heart.’ He glanced knowingly at Ramon.

  Eva flushed. But perhaps it was best that he thought that, for now.

  ‘And you have suspected the Lis for some time?’ Ramon asked, tactfully changing the subject. He took a sip of his coffee.

  ‘Yes, we have. I am sure you know that Burmese rubies have been smuggled out illegally from your country for many years.’

  ‘Of course.’ Ramon nodded.

  ‘At one time, ninety per cent of the entire trade was carried out illegally without regulation, now only fifteen per cent, I believe.’

  ‘I did not know the figures were so high,’ Ramon murmured. He glanced across at Eva. She too was somewhat taken aback.

  ‘And naturally, the most precious and rare examples are much sought after in the German market.’ Klaus pulled his coffee cup closer and eyed its milky depths with some suspicion.

  ‘Are the ones in the tiger’s eyes precious rubies?’ Eva asked. They had certainly looked like it. Their colour was rich and full, almost blue-red, and they had a heat and a depth about them that reminded her of the rubies in the chinthe.

  ‘I think they are Mogok rubies, yes,’ Klaus said.

  ‘How much are they worth?’

  Eva wasn’t fooled by the casual way in which Ramon put this question. The stones, after all, were still on his premises.

  Klaus considered. ‘It is hard to say without examining them more closely. But they are less than three carat, I am sure. Maybe thirty thousand US dollars each on the open market.’

  Eva was stunned. She’d known they were lovely, but … She looked across at Ramon. He too seemed surprised, though less so. ‘How do you know so much about rubies?’ she asked Klaus.

  ‘I have always had an interest in gemstones,’ he said modestly. ‘But for this case I have done much research. And …’ He spread his hands. ‘The more research I do, the more my interest, it grows.’

  Eva nodded. ‘And you can tell they are from Mogok just from the colour?’ Mogok, Ramon had told her on the way back to her hotel in the car yesterday, was the city where most of the mining for Burmese rubies took place. They called it the Valley of Rubies. It was two hundred kilometres north of Mandalay, foreigners were rarely allowed in and the first rubies had been discovered there in the Sto
ne Age. They had become more or less a royal monopoly, he had explained. All the best stones went to the crown, hence the Burmese chinthes with the famous Mogok ruby eyes that had been given to Suu Kyi back in 1885.

  ‘From the colour, yes.’ Klaus’s expression grew dreamy. Not only did he know his subject, but he really loved his rubies, thought Eva. ‘But also from the lustre and the tone. The best rubies even change colour according to the time of day, the weather, the location. They are very hybrid, very complex. And if the stone is natural there may be an inclusion, a blade of a crystal, a delicate shimmer of light. We call this the silk. It is, you might say, nature’s own fingerprint.’

  ‘But why would your client object to receiving such a magnificent stone?’ Ramon asked. ‘I’m surprised he wants to put a stop to it at all.’

  Eva could see what he meant. And all the time there was a market, there would be illegal exportation.

  ‘This way there is no regulation and also no export tax to be paid by the seller.’ Klaus took a sip of his coffee. ‘We do not know the provenance of the stones, maybe they have been stolen and are worth much less, of course. More importantly for us, not all the rubies have proved to be of the same quality. My client has been, he thinks, taken for a ride, as the English might say.’

  Ah. Khan Li must have got greedy and seriously underestimated his client, Eva thought. But of course there could be no come back if the stones had been illegally exported in the first place. She drank some of her own milky coffee, which she had grown used to during her trip. In fact she found it quite comforting with all this talk about jewels and thieves.

  ‘But this is a crime against my country.’ Ramon sat up straighter. He frowned. ‘It is us who should be pursuing them. Not you.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Klaus picked up a teaspoon and stirred his coffee thoughtfully. ‘And I told you we were working together. Though we must tread carefully in that regard.’

  Ramon nodded. Eva guessed they were referring once again to corrupt officials. Myanmar had lived for so long under the yoke of a repressive military regime, the kind of regime where corruption and greed could flourish. The people wanted ‘The Lady’ Aung San Suu Chi and her democracy party to come into power and introduce changes and reform. But Eva suspected that true democracy would be a long time coming.

  The proprietor of the little café brought over a small plate of shortbread biscuits and left them on the table with a nod and a smile. She had placed a curtain over the door to discourage customers; in effect it was a secret meeting.

  ‘My team will be taking care of the men at the other end, in Germany.’ Klaus helped himself to a biscuit. ‘You may be sure of that. But we did not want them simply to be replaced by new contacts. We needed to track down the source.’

  ‘And not only in Germany.’ Eva sighed. She had been through this in her head over and over since she’d first seen the crate addressed to the Emporium. She thought back to that moment. At first she couldn’t accept it, despite the overwhelming evidence. Then she’d concluded that her own company was involved in something she despised: the buying and marketing of fake antiques, of forgeries. But it hadn’t made sense, even then. Here she was in Myanmar meeting their contacts, examining Asian artefacts, authenticating goods on their behalf. Why bother if those contacts were corrupt? If those artefacts were forgeries? And besides, she knew what the Emporium sold. Genuine antiques; anything that wasn’t authentic was weeded out at an early stage and sold off to a second-hand furniture dealer. They had ethics, they had integrity. Or so she’d always assumed. So what was going on?

  She’d known something wasn’t right, if only from what had happened since she’d been out here. The edginess of her two contacts, the back-tracking from Myint Maw, his attitude when she had questioned the provenance. But this … Finding the rubies had changed the picture entirely. This was big, this was something completely beyond her experience. Because the Emporium was involved in illegally importing rubies from Myanmar. And they were about to be found out.

  ‘At least two of the crates were being sent to my own company in the UK,’ she told Klaus. ‘I can still hardly believe it, but …’ She didn’t need to say more.

  Klaus nodded. ‘We have contacts in the UK too,’ he said. ‘I am sorry, Eva, but I must confess that when we first met …’ He sighed. ‘I had been informed that you were in Yangon. We knew that you worked for the British company that was under investigation. But we did not know in what capacity.’

  She stared at him. ‘You mean you engineered our meeting?’

  He spread his hands. ‘I had no choice. But I liked you immediately. I was sure you were not involved, you can be certain of that. I even tried to warn you, if you remember.’

  About Khan Li and Ramon, that was certainly true. ‘And when you saw me going into the warehouse last night?’

  He nodded. ‘I assumed I had been mistaken at that point. I assumed you were involved after all and that my judgement, it was unsound. You were looking very guilty.’

  Eva remembered the surreptitious knocking on the warehouse door. How she had slipped inside. The fact that they hadn’t even put on the lights …

  ‘I thought you an excellent actress,’ Klaus said. ‘Until I saw what the two of you were doing. As you pointed out, why would you be breaking into your own property? I knew then that you two were innocent, that you had stumbled on the truth.’

  ‘But what should I do now?’ Eva asked. She could hardly go back to Bristol and pretend that everything was fine when her boss was about to get arrested for gem smuggling. She didn’t even want to contact Jacqui by email. But she was still working for her, she had promised to keep in contact and in two days’ time she was going to Bagan to examine more pieces that were for sale. She would have to do something.

  Klaus frowned. ‘Do you know who is responsible?’

  ‘Not really.’ She shook her head. Then she remembered how resistant Leon had been to her examining the packaging of that shipment. Jacqui had never really confirmed that, had she? She remembered Jacqui’s questions and how she’d repeatedly told her to take care. She remembered the row between Jacqui and Leon too, before she left for Myanmar. Was it possible that Leon hadn’t wanted her to come here at all? That he realised she might find out what was going on? ‘But I have an idea,’ she said. She told him what she knew.

  ‘I will take it from there,’ said Klaus. ‘Do not worry. By the time you return …’

  He didn’t have to finish the sentence. By the time she returned, she would be looking for another job. Whether Jacqui Dryden had known what was going on or not, the Bristol Antiques Emporium would be finished. ‘I’ll have to resign,’ she said.

  ‘But not until you return to the UK, please, Eva,’ said Klaus. ‘We do not want to risk alerting them, not at this stage.’

  ‘Very well.’

  Ramon put his hand on hers, sending a signal of silent sympathy. ‘And what happens next?’ he asked. ‘To Khan Li, I mean?’

  ‘I do not want to frighten him off too soon,’ Klaus said. ‘I have been trying to get close to the man.’

  Eva shuddered. ‘Why?’

  Klaus spread a napkin on the table and pulled a pen from his shirt pocket. He made a drawing.

  ‘A spider’s web?’ said Eva.

  ‘Indeed.’ Klaus drew the spider right at the centre. ‘The more you can find out about him, the more easily you can capture him and his entire world. So you tantalise him. With a fly perhaps.’ He drew a fly on the outside of the web. ‘And out he comes to investigate. Out of his safety zone, you see? And then …’

  ‘You move in for the kill?’ suggested Ramon.

  ‘Exactly.’ Klaus screwed up the napkin and tossed it to one side. ‘I posed as a buyer. I had to prove I had the necessary finances, I had to give evidence of my credentials, they were very thorough.’

  ‘Yes, they would be.’ Eva recalled her own rather pathetic attempt to do a similar thing.

  ‘And how close did you get?’ Eva could
see where Ramon’s thoughts were heading.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘For example …’ Ramon was unable to keep the excitement from his voice. ‘Did Khan Li ever invite you to his house?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Eva and Ramon exchanged a swift, conspiratorial glance. A rich buyer. How could Khan Li not want to show it off to him? But Klaus wouldn’t help them, would he?

  Ramon leaned forwards. ‘Have you seen the chinthe?’ he whispered.

  ‘The …? Ah.’ Klaus tapped his nose. ‘Yes, I know the piece you mean. It is a beautiful item. Very old, very rare stones. Pigeon-blood rubies as they are known, not after the blood of the bird, but the colour of the whites of their eyes. That piece is a master, an absolute master. And of course …’

  Eva could see his mind working out the link, the resemblance to what they had found in the crate.

  ‘Yes, they showed it to me.’ Klaus finished his coffee and pushed his cup aside. ‘That kind of man will always want to display what he owns to the rest of the world, I think.’

  ‘I agree.’ Ramon fell silent.

  ‘It is only a pity,’ Klaus said, ‘that it is not part of a pair.’

  Eva and Ramon exchanged another complicit glance.

  ‘But of course it is not for sale,’ said Klaus. ‘It is far too fine. The price … We are talking a great deal of money here. It is part of your national heritage that piece, I think?’

  ‘Did you wonder where they had obtained it from?’ Eva asked, shooting a glance at Ramon. He shrugged and nodded.

  ‘Yes, I did,’ Klaus admitted. He looked from one to the other of them. ‘But I did not want him to become suspicious of my motives. And so I did not ask.’

  ‘It’s part of the long story I mentioned last night,’ Eva told him. ‘It’s the reason I got involved in the first place.’