The Burma Effect (10 page)

“He went out to play badminton that day,” she said. “He came home and we smoked some Thai stick and he drank his vodka. We went onto the bed.”

Delaney always marvelled at the sexual frankness of young Thai women.

“After we had our bath he got ready to go out. He said he had to say something at the press club.” “Say something?” Delaney said.

“Like a speech maybe,” she said. “He got ready to go out, like anytime, and then he went out. And he has not come back.”

Mai hugged her knees on the reclining platform. Her sarong fell away slightly. Delaney cursed himself for the
frisson
her slender thighs elicited. He thought suddenly of Kate, remembered the last time they had had sex. A languorous Thailand evening was working its magic with his senses. He wondered how intense that might be for someone like Kellner, in a deeper, drug-induced trance that he never, apparently, quite allowed to end.

“Do you think he might be dead, Frank?” Mai asked.

Delaney thought about it for a while before answering, before deciding how much of an answer he wanted to give to this sad young woman sitting before him.

“It's too early for us to talk like that,” Delaney said finally.

“You are a good man,” Mai said. “Nathan liked you.”

“We didn't see each other much,” Delaney said.

“He liked you. He liked Montreal and he liked you.”

Delaney didn't push her too hard on the first meeting. He knew, from all his years as an interviewer, to circle the subject slowly in a case like this, to allow Mai to remember things at random and then to slowly ask for clarification, amplification, explanation. He knew that too many questions, too early in a case like this, would be counterproductive.

He had already decided that there was no way Mai was hiding anything from him. He knew there was no reason for her to do that and he knew, he sensed, that she was telling him as much as she possibly could. They talked for a long while.

“Who would be angry with Nathan, do you think?” Delaney asked eventually. “Were people complaining about his stories lately?” Mai looked up at Delaney.

“You know there are stories he wrote that made people angry,” she said.

“No, I really don't anymore,” Delaney said. “What was he working on?”

“He would only tell me after, most times,” she said. “He liked to show me his stories when they came back from London by fax. Mostly gun stories, big weapon stories. Tanks. In lots of countries.”

“What lately? Before he went away.” Delaney was avoiding the word
disappeared
.

“Not so much lately. Less than before. He was working from here more lately. Less travel. Lots of phoning. Lots of time in there.” Mai pointed at Nathan's study.

“Who was angry at him, Mai?” Delaney asked again.

She sat quietly, stroking one of her cats. Delaney began to wonder if she was indeed hiding something now or whether she was just trying to remember.

“There were some Australians who were mad once,” she said. “Two or three Australians. But a long while ago now. Months ago.”

“Australians.”

“Yes.”

“What were they angry about?”

“One of Nathan's articles. He wrote about Australian rich men, you know, businessmen. What they were doing in Burma. He had other people in the story saying they should not be in there, that it is a bad place and that they shouldn't work with the generals. Something like that.”

“What sort of work were they doing over there?” Delaney asked.

He knew that the answer, for Burma and for northern Thailand near the Burma border, could be any number of lucrative things. Timber, tobacco, construction of roads, casinos, the gem trade, the people trade, the drug trade—it was wide open if you knew the right general. But a very tricky part of the world to do business.

“Building, I think,” Mai said. “Maybe a road. Hard to remember now.”

“Have you got the article?” Delaney asked.

“Probably in there,” she said, pointing again at Nathan's study.

“I'll look in there soon,” Delaney said. “Will that be OK?”

“Nathan would say OK, I think,” she said.

“Good. What did the Australians do?” he asked.

“Many telephone calls. Nathan said they were yelling on the phone. Not happy.” “Did they come here?”

“No. I think Nathan met them, maybe. But this was a long time ago now. Months now.”

Delaney wasn't sure it would be so unusual, or even potentially dangerous, for a journalist to have upset a few foreign businessmen trying to make a fast buck in Thailand and Burma. Despite the world condemnation of the Burmese military regime, businessmen from Australia, Europe, all over, were quietly going in to make deals and to make big money. It was not so unusual.The regime was utterly corrupt and utterly ruthless and needed a lot of money just to keep the lid on things, especially with the democracy movement simmering away and its leader Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest in Rangoon again. Making a couple of businessmen angry was one thing; making the generals angry would be quite another.

“People have been coming to see you since Nathan went away,” Delaney said.

“How can you know that?” Mai said.

“I'm a reporter,” Delaney said, smiling.

Mai smiled too. “That's what Nathan always said when I asked him how he knew things.” “Who has been coming?”

“Mordecai. Other
farangs
from the press club. Their wives and girls. My family.”

“Mordecai Cohen? From Montreal?” Delaney said.

“Yes. Nathan's good friend. He has been trying to help me. He comes, with his girl. He brings me smoke. Other guys visit from the press club sometimes. It's like that.”

“Who else?” Delaney remembered the email in London from Rawson saying two Asian men had been at the apartment.

“A Canadian embassy man. Thai police.”

“Who else?

“Two men. Last week. Thai. In suits. They said they were police too but they had no uniforms. They were wearing suits. Nice Western suits.”

“Thai? You sure?”

“Yes. But northern-sounding, I think.”

“Did you ask them for ID?” Mai looked at Delaney as if at a child.

“That is not how it works here, Frank.”

“What did they ask?”

“They asked what Nathan was working on, just like you. Just like everyone asks now when they come. I told them I couldn't remember. That is what Nathan would have told me to say.”

“Did they ask about Burma? Or about the Australian story Nathan wrote?”

“Not about Australia. About Burma, yes.”

“What did they ask?”

“They asked if Nathan had been in Burma, if he was going to go to Burma.”

“You sure these guys were not Burmese?”

“I would know this, Frank,” Mai said quietly. “But they asked about Burma. They asked if Nathan was going to be writing about the democracy people there. Aung San Suu Kyi's people. The lady.”

Everyone in the region simply referred to Suu Kyi as “the lady.” The daughter of General Aung San, the independence hero, now herself a hero whose party won elections in 1990. In and out of house arrest for years and even while detained, staging famous rallies every Sunday afternoon from over the fence at her rambling rundown house in Rangoon.

“Was he writing about Suu Kyi?” Delaney asked.

“I don't think so. He wrote about guns and business. Not people so much,” she said.

“People who buy and sell guns need to find people to carry them and shoot them, Mai,” Delaney said.

“I don't think Nathan wrote about that part so much,” she said.

Delaney could see it was time to have a good look through Kellner's papers.

“Nathan liked the lady,” Mai said. “He has pictures of her in his working room.”

“Pictures of Aung San Suu Kyi?”

“Yes. On his board.”

“But he wasn't writing about her.”

“I don't think so,” Mai said. “But he liked her. He said she was very special, very beautiful. Important. Sometimes I felt a little jealous.” Mai looked embarrassed, and then smiled. “Like a foolish girl, maybe.”

“Can I look in Nathan's study now?” Delaney asked.

“OK. But I have to go out soon. To my classes. I am going to be a teacher. Did you know that, Frank?” she said.

“No. That's terrific,” he said.

“I study only part-time. Nathan helps me. It is very slow.” “That's terrific.”

“My brother has been taking me to my classes since Nathan went away. He is probably waiting outside now.”

“Why wouldn't he come in?” Delaney asked.

Mai again gave him a patient look.

“Because that is not how it works here, Frank,” she said.

“How would he know I was here?”

“The watchman watches,” she said. “And you have a driver, like always, probably.”

“Yes.”

“So my brother waits outside.” She stood up, scattering cats.

“I will go out to tell him I'm coming. Then you can look in Nathan's room.” “Let me meet your brother,” Delaney said. Mai looked uncomfortable.

“Frank, my brother doesn't like Western guys.”

“I see.”

“He doesn't think Thai girls should should go to bed with farangs and live in their houses.” “I see. So he didn't like Nathan either?” She hesitated, but only for a moment. “No,” she said.

“What about the rest of your family?”

“For my mother, it's OK. She is happy Nathan is nice to me and helps me to be a teacher. My father is dead. My other brothers, not so happy.”

“This brother outside, what does he do?”

“He works in a hotel.”

“Let me meet him.”

“OK, Frank.”

Mai got a bag and some books and got ready to go. She found Delaney a spare key.

“You stay here, OK? Don't stay in a hotel. Nathan would have invited you too,” she said.

“I'm OK. I'm at the Royal. I'm OK, really,” Delaney said.

“Stay here. It's lonely here without Nathan. Sleep with me in my bed. Nathan wouldn't mind. You can hold me. Nathan wouldn't mind. Just holding.”

Delaney, despite all his travels in Asia, was still always taken aback by such frank suggestions.

“I don't think so, Mai,” Delaney said. He felt, however, an intense jolt of sexual energy.

“You have a girl?” Mai asked.

“Sort of,” he said.

“Would she mind? Just holding?”

“I'm not sure.” He really was not sure.

“OK, Frank. But you stay anyway. In the other bedroom. Very nice in there too. Maybe I come in to hold you in the morning.”

They went outside into the early Thai evening. It was still very hot. The watchman and Mai's brother were sitting together on the watchman's wooden bed frame, smoking cigarettes. They both stood up when Mai and Delaney approached. The brother offered no wai. Ben was reading a newspaper in his car across the street. He folded the paper and got out when he saw Delaney, but waited where he was.

Mai said something in Thai to her brother and the watchman. Her brother looked sullen. He turned as if to go. Mai touched his arm and he stopped.

“Frank, this is my brother, Thaksin. He speaks only a very little bit of English.” She said something else to her brother in Thai.

Thaksin stood for a moment and then took Frank's hand. Thaksin's small hand was rough and hard in Frank's. A hand that had done much manual work.

“I'm a friend of Nathan's,” Frank said. “I'm helping your sister find out where he is.” Mai translated this.

“OK,” Thaksin said finally, not smiling. Mai said something else in Thai. The watchman spoke in Thai as well. Ben started to walk over, apparently thinking something was wrong.

“Everything OK, Frank?” Ben said.

“Yeah,” Delaney said.

Mai spoke to Ben in Thai. Ben looked at Frank, and then spoke to Thaksin in Thai. There was a burst of Thai among the group of four locals, and a series of looks over at Frank. Finally, Thaksin said, looking at Frank: “OK. OK.”

Thaksin touched Mai's arm and gestured toward a very beat-up Mazda parked near Ben's car.

“I go now, Frank,” Mai said. “You stay in the apartment.” She came away from the group and said to him much more quietly. “You stay tonight too.”

“I think I will go to the hotel now instead,” Delaney said, loud enough for all to hear, not at all sure he would be understood. Staying in the apartment now, and especially overnight, would clearly not be a good idea. “We will look at papers tomorrow. Ben, let's get going.” “Sure Frank,” Ben said.