The Burma Effect (31 page)

The Burmese side did not call him or approach him, however, and he could not decide whether this was worrying or not. He was just a helper, a messenger, a small player, but this time, for once, he was on his own gig, a freelance gig. Not Kellner's. On the contrary. And this was now becoming most worrying, unbearably worrying. It had all, clearly, gone terribly wrong.

What had started out as a nice little sideline—a nice source of pocket money and, if he were honest, a nice source of pride that he, too, not just Kellner, could pull levers, run a scam, command respect— had now turned very sour indeed.

The Australians had at first been delighted with his little bits of information, his hints and allegations about Kellner's plan for a rip-off. Services rendered for cash that would, Cohen had thought, also prevent Kellner from getting himself killed up in Mongla. Doing a friend a little service, saving his ass, and getting paid for it by grateful parties on various sides; it didn't get much better than that. And if that meant that Kellner ended up with no money for his Suu Kyi thing, his even crazier thing for the lady, so much the better.

Or so it had seemed. Then Kellner disappeared and it had all started to unravel. Everyone suddenly on his case, questions from all sides, people passing through Bangkok at all hours of the day and night, Delaney dropping out of sight, the driver out of sight, hassles, worries, perturbations of all kinds. Uncool times, decidedly uncool. Now, stoned, paranoid and petrified Cohen went about his appointed rounds persuaded that soon, very soon, some heavy consequences would come crashing down around his aching, spinning head.

D
elaney had been followed many times before, both as a journalist and as a CSIS operative, and he knew the signs. The signs this time were glaringly obvious. It did not come as a surprise; Rawson himself warned that they would both very likely be followed by any number of players right up until they left Bangkok.

The morning Kate was to arrive, Delaney left the hotel early, told his waiting official driver he was taking a walk and that he would be back soon. He walked through the parking lot to the back automobile gate, away from the river, and saluted back at the white-uniformed gate attendant.

He walked up a curved side street heavily shaded by giant mango trees and put his head in at various small overpriced shops that sold brass dinnerware and chess sets and basketry to the wealthy who, like himself, occasionally deigned to walk somewhere rather than take an air-conditioned car.

This made it complicated for whoever had been assigned that morning to watch him. It would involve either a conspicuous walk behind him across the broad parking lot or a clumsy tail operation in a car, stopping and starting conspicuously as Delaney moved in and out of shopfronts.

They chose the car method and made a very poor job of it.Two solid-looking Asian men in suits, barely visible through the dark tint of the window glass on their white Land Cruiser. He'd seen the car on the first day he got back to Bangkok. Possibly plainclothes Thai police, Delaney thought. Possibly Burmese, but very difficult to know for sure. As he was already to travel with a Thai police or special services driver, he thought it more likely they were Burmese.

They parked up the street from where he window-shopped, not really making much attempt to conceal themselves anymore because they might lose him entirely if they allowed him too long a leash. Eventually, buying nothing, Delaney sauntered back through the hotel parking lot and into the back lobby. Through the plate glass he saw the Land Cruiser roll back through the gate and across a series of speed bumps to sit idling again near the back entrance.

Rawson was in the lobby, talking to some other Westerners in suits. He spotted Delaney and hurried over.

“I'm going out to the airport to get Kate,” Delaney said. “That white Land Cruiser out there is my tail today.”

Rawson went to the glass and looked out. “Saw it yesterday. Pretty big vehicle for close surveillance,” he said.

“Could be Thai, because they don't seem to care too much about whether we know they're there or not,” Delaney said.

“But you've got one of their drivers anyway,” Rawson said.

“Yeah. No matter who they are, I'm not keen on having them with me at the airport when I meet Kate.”

“This idea of bringing Kate out here is not good, Francis. You know that. I don't see why you don't just wrap up the loose ends here and head back to Montreal. We don't like the Kate idea at all.”

“Holiday, Jon. Some R&R after a tough assignment.”

Rawson looked worried.

“I'd much sooner see you out of here altogether,” he said. “Kate's going to make things even more complicated.”

“We won't need an escort where we're going, Jon. We would in fact very much prefer no escort at that stage.”

“Well, you'll have one anyway. My guys, the Thais for sure, maybe even the Burmese, depending on who owns the big four-wheel drive out there. No chance of a romantic getaway. That's exactly my point.”

“We'll see,” Delaney said.

He went back up to his room and called the airline to make sure Kate's flight was on time. He checked his email. Only one message of consequence, this from Harden at the Tribune. Delaney had still not called in and had not told the paper which hotel he was staying at. Email was the only way they could express their extreme displeasure. Harden, an ex–wire-service man, did this in very few words. Each message was getting shorter.

This one read: “Delaney, insist you call in ASAP. No excuses accepted. Regards, Harden.”

Delaney wrote back, wire-style: “Got yours. Apols but still in debriefs. Best to give you full situationer when clear. Phone may not be secure. Please stand by. Thanks and bests, FD.”

He normally avoided confrontations with editors, but in this case he was also still not sure how he wanted to play the Kellner story. If at all. And, if he were to file something, for whom and how much of the story to actually tell. He was not at all sure that the Tribune was the proper medium for the Kellner story or if they would run it anyway. He sensed another bad career move on the horizon.

Rawson was not in the lobby, but one of the CSIS or Canadian-embassy types still was. He looked about 30 years old; on a first overseas posting, probably, and determined not to mess up today's assignment. He came over when Delaney came out of the elevator carrying a sports bag and his laptop.

“You off?” he said. He sported trendy tiny rectangular glasses and precision sideburns. “I'm Ted Green. I'm based here.” He offered his hand. Delaney shook it.

“I'm going out to the airport,” he said.

“Your driver's outside,” Green said.

“And my tail.”

“Yes. White Land Cruiser. Two guys inside.” Green looked very pleased with himself.

“Thanks for that, Ted.”

Delaney wanted no company whatsoever at the airport—Thai, Burmese or Canadian. He told his driver to take him to the Regent at Siam Square, the Oriental's arch rival for the title of best hotel in the city. The driver looked surprised.

“No airport?” he said, lowering his sunglasses to look at Delaney over the back of the seat. “No. I'm going to the Regent.”

The driver pulled out and the Land Cruiser pulled out with them, making very little pretence now of not following. It stayed back five or six car lengths. Their little convoy moved out of the parking lot, down the curved side street at the back of the hotel and into the morass of Bangkok morning traffic.

When his driver pulled up at the Regent, Delaney got out quickly and said: “I'll be about an hour, maybe two. Meetings.” The driver still looked dubious. He pulled his silver Peugeot into the shade of the hotel's entrance archway. The Land Cruiser sat in the intense sunlight across the street.

Delaney went directly through the lobby, around the main ground floor restaurant, past some function rooms and out onto the back terrace. He hurried past sunbathers sipping morning cocktails at the pool, past the pool attendant and the gardeners and the lawn sprinklers to the employee parking lot hidden behind a high row of hedges far out at the back. A security man at a gated break in the hedge looked startled when Delaney asked to be let through.

“Staff parking here, sir,” he said. “Do you need a car, sir?”

“No, I want to go through this way. I'm getting the Sky Train.”

Bangkok's elevated light rail train had been installed a few years earlier and had failed to make much of a dent in the city's world-renowned traffic problem. But it was fast and efficient and cheap and it transported thousands of workers each day who would otherwise have driven to their jobs in the city at hotels, offices and construction sites.

“I think car is better for you, sir. Taxi is better. I will get you a taxi,” the security man said.

“No, thank you very much. I will go out this way and get the Sky Train.”

Delaney moved through the gate. He could see the security man was weighing up whether it was worth offending a hotel guest or best to let this eccentric Westerner get lost on local mass transit and lose his wallet to pickpockets. He opted for the latter.

“Please watch your belongings on the train, sir,” he said.

Delaney hurried through the parking lot and out onto a narrow back street. He turned left toward a main street and then hurried up the steep steps to the elevated station platform. There was a long queue for tickets so he simply walked straight on through the barrier area and onto a waiting train. The gate attendant did not even bother to ask the sole Westerner if he was carrying a ticket.

The train headed west to the National Stadium. Delaney got out there and moved quickly down to the street. Lines of Toyota taxis waited there and he climbed into one. “Airport,” he said.

Delaney had not actually waited in a crowd at an airport arrivals gate to greet anyone for a very long time. He allowed himself to enjoy this slightly domestic experience, along with all the families and drivers waiting with him. He found himself, like many in the midmorning crowd, craning his neck eagerly to see who was emerging next with laden baggage trolleys, to see who would be greeted with hugs and smiles and cries of delight.

Kate looked concerned as she came out, pushing a trolley with one small bag on it. Her hair was tied back and she wore a denim jacket, white T-shirt and a brown-and-white floral print skirt. An undercover Mountie, far undercover.

She scanned the heaving crowd, looking anxiously, as do all arriving passengers in a strange city, for the familiar face that would instantly humanize and soften the first moments. When she saw Delaney waving from far at the back, her broad smile locked onto his broad smile and the magnetic pull drew them swiftly together, parting the throng.

They kissed and embraced unself-consciously, like student lovers.

Delaney had reserved a room at the Amari airport hotel. It was just a short indoor walk away, no cab ride required, nothing to alarm or annoy them, nothing to delay their coming together.

As Kate showered, Delaney sat enjoying the upmarket order of their room, the absolute anonymity and comfort of a good business hotel. The intense quiet, the immaculate carpet and linen, the basket of fruit, the silver ice bucket, the booklets and menus and guides carefully laid out on tables and desk. The promise of peace and safety and ease.

Kate looked terrific in an oversized, over-luxurious white hotel bathrobe.

“Welcome to Asia,” Delaney said.

“I think this is going to be all right,” she said, towelling her hair with a huge white towel.

“No one in the world knows where we are,” he said.

“That is a lovely, lovely feeling,” she said. “How long can we stay here?” “As long as we like,” he said.

Kate draped her towel on a chair. The robe, too, she draped on the chair. Her skin glowed from the steaming hot water of the shower. Her face glowed. He couldn't take his eyes off her.

“Is this too much like a scene in a movie, Francis?” she said.

“This is the part I like the best,” he said.

“She stands naked. They fall hungrily into each other's arms, do not emerge from the hotel room for hours, days even. They survive on ferocious, passionate, perfect sex and occasional room service meals.”

“Exactly,” he said.

It was, in fact, almost exactly like that.They began to think about emerging from their room only late the next afternoon. They did not act quickly on the idea. Kate lay in the bed with her right ear to Delaney's chest and her left arm around his hips as he tried to read the Bangkok Post.

“Did you think they were going to kill you, Frank?”

He put the newspaper down.

“I thought I might end up dead. But I didn't think they would purposely kill me.”

“And your friend, Nathan Kellner?”

“They never told me what he died of and I didn't ask. He looked like he had taken a few beatings.”

“You saw his body?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“In a morgue in Rangoon.They took me there to show me.”

“Did it scare you?”

“Yes, it did.”

“Oh, Frank.”

“Everything's OK now. Everything's fine. A few loose ends to tie up, then we can have a little holiday and go back to Montreal.” “Should you be scared still?”

“No, not really. Careful, yes. Scared, probably no reason anymore.”

“Even after you write your story?”

“Even after that,” he said.

He had told her most of it and, like anyone, she could not fathom the craziness of it, the craziness of Kellner's obsession with Suu Kyi, the lengths to which he was apparently willing to go in order to indulge that obsession.

Kellner's other lady, his daylight woman, would have to try to fathom that obsession. Mai was one of the loose ends that still needed to be tied up. Delaney needed to go to her, to tell her the story, to try to help her understand what had happened to the man whose life she thought she was sharing.

Delaney had decided even before Kate arrived that she should come with him to see Mai—because he had no secrets from her anymore, except for his involvement with CSIS, and because the presence of another woman would help.

His mobile phone had rung occasionally as they hid out in their airport hotel room. Rawson had given the phone to Delaney when he arrived back in Bangkok. His own phone had been lost somewhere along the way to northern Thailand. It could only be Rawson calling, so he ignored the calls until he and Kate were ready again to join the real world.