He was unsurprised when Mr. Naing showed up at his cell door, accompanied by two guards. "Court appearance today, Victor," the Burmese lawyer said. "I've moved the judge to hear your habeas petition ahead of schedule."
Inning nodded, stood, and began to walk to his cell door. His eyes searched Naing's face for any clue that rescue might be imminent, but the lawyer's face was set in concrete.
Seeing one of the guards holding up a pair of handcuffs, Victor turned about and placed his hands behind his back. The guard cuffed the right wrist and then the left. He tightened the cuffs, causing them to make a slight clicking sound, but no more than was required for security's sake. Inning's circulation was, in any case, not impinged upon.
Once outside the cell block, Victor glanced at the permanent gallows standing near the southwest sections of the wall, past the women's quarter. Even though he thought it very unlikely he would end up standing on the structure, the sight still sent a chill up his spine.
Approaching the blue-painted, Chinese-made van, Inning was struck by the word "POLICE," lettered in white across the vehicle's side. How odd, it is, he thought, that fifty years after the English pulled out of here, the word for those who enforce law and order is still in the English language.
The van was actually half van and half truck, having a four seat cab up front and a truck bed behind. One of the guards opened the door for Mr. Naing and Victor, while the other put a hand atop Victor's head to guide him away from hitting it on the door frame.
They're being amazingly polite, Victor thought. Almost as if they expected me to become a free man, even an important free man, soon. Again he looked at his attorney's face and again he was met with a cold mask.
Whatever little hope Victor might have had then evaporated when the door closed and he could see that it had no interior latches. A quick glance to the other side of the van confirmed that Mr. Naing was as trapped as he was.
Oh, well, thought Victor, even if I have to go back it will still be nice to get away from the stink of the prison for a while. I never before knew that some stenches were so bad olfactory fatigue wouldn't set in.
The van's engine started with a cough. Waving at the guard on the gatehouse at the southern end of the prison, the driver put it in gear and began moving forward. By the time they reached the gate, it was open. The van pulled through and turned right.
Timer's friends called him . . . "Tim." Major Konstantin called him "Sergeant Musin." Timer Musin was a Tatar. Part Tatar, anyway; somewhere in his ancestry were people with eyes not dissimilar to the Burmese. Somewhere in his ancestry were men who had ridden horseback with the Golden Horde.
But me? Nooo. I get to ride this miserable excuse of an upengined moped.
On the plus side, Tim wasn't much taller than the Burmese norm, though his shoulders were considerably wider. His eyes, rather than having the epicanthic fold, were round and green. This didn't matter as his sunglasses covered them. What did matter is that, as a former sniper, Musin had eyesight much better, at 20/8, than the human norm.
Though normally blond, Sergeant Musin's hair had been dyed black the night before. It wasn't the right texture to blend with the locals, though, and so he would cover that, too, with a helmet, before taking off on his-to be charitable-motorcycle.
Musin was perched atop his bike sipping one of the vile local soft drinks when the gate to his north opened. From one hundred meters away, Victor may as well have been sitting at a distance of a mere forty. He was easily recognizable to Tim as being his boss of many years.
Musin pushed a button on his cell phone to dial Konstantin's number, thus initiating an overall conference call among the members of the two co-joined teams. While the call was going through, he put the helmet on his head. By the time he finished that, his earpiece was saying, "Konstantin here, Sergeant Musin."
"I have them, Comrade Major. They've turned off to the west, toward the river. I am following."
CHAPTER TWELVE
Those who ‘abjure' violence can only do so
because others are committing violence on their behalf
-George Orwell, Notes on Nationalism
D-113, Insein Road, Yangon
Tim made his last cell phone report as the half van carrying Victor entered the five way intersection where Insein Road joined with and became Pyay Road. With that report, he turned his motorcycle to the left, following University Avenue past the University itself to Inya Lake, a large, tree-fringed watery park within the city, largely surrounded by the mansions of the wealthy. At the intersection of University and Inya Road, he again turned left until the next right turn. This led into the park.
One of the requirements of the mission was that the helicopter that would pick them up needed open space to either land or, at least, come to a very low hover. Open space that was not normally filled with vehicular traffic was generally hard to come by in the center of this city of six million. The lake, at least, was open. It was also shallow enough to wade into for a pickup, should that become necessary.
The helicopters had already taken off from the southern tip of Mae Hong Son Province, Thailand; so much Tim knew. At this point one should be loitering over the river to the east, midway between Yangon and Onhne. Another one, the backup, was about thirty kilometers further out. The third, unknown to Musin, was back in Mae Hong Son with two flight simulators in the back. Both of the active choppers carried auxiliary fuel tanks to give them nearly six hundred miles of one way range. Given that the round trip from Mae Hong Son to Yangon and back was only about forty percent of that, that allowed for a lot of loiter time.
Which is really good, though Sergeant Musin, as he parked his motorcycle by one of the public parking spots edging the park that surrounded the lake, since traffic was especially bad today and we're a fucking hour behind schedule. Also good that the cops weren't in enough of a hurry to take some other route to the courthouse.
Tim unstraddled the bike, unfixing from the rear seat the small red satchel he carried. This contained a radio for contacting the helicopters, his submachine gun and a half dozen smoke grenades, two red and the rest white. The satchel also held two cartons of cigarettes and a bottle of vodka. These were slightly less important to Tim than his mission baggage.
He walked to the northeast, along a very narrow causeway to where an oval island seemed almost to float on the lake. Four mansions on the mainland and on two other nearby peninsulas framed the oval island. Sergeant Musin took a quick glace left and right and saw two more red satchels, just like his. Also good; Kravchenko and Litvinov are on station. And now, if traffic and the police will just cooperate . . .
D-113, Green Elephant Restaurant, Yangon
Terry Welch and Major Konstantin sipped tea on the sidewalk fronting the restaurant. Both were a little nervous at the hour's delay, Konstantin chain smoking while Welch drummed his fingers on the table.
Slightly to the north, nearly next door, in fact, Rattus and Little Joe made a show of inspecting the wares in Augustine's Antiques. Augustine's wares ran heavily to bronze- and silverware, wooden and stone statuary, furniture both local and colonial, and porcelain. The stuff was sometimes carefully displayed, while some wares were stacked to the ceiling. For all either of the two men knew, it was even as antique as claimed.