My face was flushed, my heart pounding. I had this vivid image of Stuart, baffled, protesting, being half led and half dragged to the scaffold. They’d taken his cigarettes away. Did they give him a last smoke before they put the rope around his neck and the hood over his face? Did they even use a hood?
The poor son of a bitch.
I was burning up with rage, chilled with an icy fury. “They planted the bomb themselves,” I said. I was standing on top of the table, not sure how I got there, livid, impassioned. “They damaged the pagoda themselves! They did it, the oppressors who call themselves SLORC. They duped some poor innocent into placing the bomb and saw that he was killed on the spot before anybody could ask him any embarrassing questions. Children died in that explosion! Shrines and Buddha images were damaged! And by the same fiends who stand square in the way of Shan independence!”
I don’t remember everything I said. I don’t really know what got into me, aside from the better part of a quart of shwe le maw. But I was utterly caught up in what I was saying, entirely provoked by the outrage of Shwe Dagon and the unwarranted execution of my durian-eating chum.
“To think we have made peace with this government!” I cried. “To think we allow them to maintain a roadblock and an armed garrison minutes from here, on land that is the historic heritage of the Shan people! Are we men? Or are we vassals of SLORC, minions of the government in Rangoon, a cabal of devils and degenerates who oppress their own people even as they stifle the flames of the Shan spirit?”
It’s funny what happens when you get into something like that. I guess it’s the same with preachers when the message takes them over. They’re in the grip of the spirit, and so was I. I hadn’t planned on saying any of this – I hadn’t actually planned on saying anything at all – but I was going on and on, with a dramatic cadence to my speech. I found myself pausing at the end of each rhythmic burst, and the leader filled in each pause by translating what I’d just said. And damned if they weren’t all hanging on every word.
“Evan, are you all right?”
“I guess I got carried away,” I said. We were back in our room, and I could barely remember leaving the table. My head was throbbing, and my whole body felt as though I’d been thoroughly and systematically worked over by a crew of bully boys from SLORC. “All caught up in the sound of my own words,” I told Katya.
“How do you feel?”
“Not so good. I’ve got a killer headache and I can’t catch my breath. I don’t know what got into me.”
“I think you should get undressed,” she said. “I think you should get under the blankets.”
“Maybe that’s not a bad idea,” I admitted, peeling off my clothes. “I’m hot and cold all at once. Just the body mirroring the emotions, I guess. Burning with rage over what those bastards did to that poor Australian kid, and chilled at the idea that it could have happened to me.”
“You were very effective, Evan. They were all moved by what you had to say.”
“Maybe it gained a little in the translation,” I said.
“You stirred their passions, Evan.”
“Well, that’s what passions are for,” I said. “To get stirred now and then. They’ll be calm by morning.”
“In the morning,” she said, “they will attack.”
“How’s that? They’ll attack what?”
“But he told you,” she said. “You do not remember?”
“I got a little vague there at the end, Katya. I was ranting away, and the next thing I knew I was back here in the room with you. I may have had a little too much of that orange stuff.”
“No, I think-”
“Tell me about this attack,” I said. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“We are all to arise at daybreak, Evan. And overrun the government checkpoint, and then attack the encampment.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, Evan. You do not remember? You suggested it.”
“I did?”
“You said they must do it or they would not be real men, or true Shan.”
“I said that?” It had a familiar ring to it, now that she mentioned it. “And they bought it?”
“Some of them did not want to wait until morning. Ku Min sent a shipment of new weapons with the money from the heroin, and they are anxious to try them out. They would have gone tonight, but the head man insisted they wait for daylight.”
“The voice of reason,” I said. “Jesus, Katya, I must have been out of my mind. And they must have been twice as crazy to listen to me.”
“Tell me how you feel, Evan.”
“Lousy,” I said. “My headache’s worse and my muscles are sore. And I’m hot and cold all at once, and I swear my bones ache. It must be the shwe le maw. I think the damn stuff’s toxic.”
“No, Evan. In fact I brought a bottle to the room. You should have some more.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No,” she said. “I am not. It will help you, Vanya. And there is some quinine and aspirin that they gave me for you. I wish we had the herbal tea they gave us at the monastery, but we will get along without it. Vanya, my darling, it is not the food or drink or even the excitement that makes you hot and cold and gives you a pain in your muscles and bones. Don’t you see?”
I did, but I let her say it.
“Vanushka, you have malaria.”
Chapter 23
We were rolling by sunup. I was in the lead car, the same beat-up Toyota that had brought us from Taunggyi. This time, though, I was dressed in fatigues, as were the driver and the two men in the backseat.
Two jeeps rolled out behind us, and a pair of canvas-topped troop carriers followed in their wake.
We rode past the Shan checkpoint and pulled up a mile or so from the government roadblock. Half a dozen men dismounted from one of the troop carriers and disappeared into the brush on either side of the road. The commander – his name, I’d finally learned, was Ne Win – passed out cheroots, and checked his watch as the men lit up and smoked.
Waiting, Ne Win asked me how I felt. I was much better, I told him. I’d been in a bad way the night before, I added, and I hadn’t even recognized the symptoms as malaria.
“Ah,” he said. “You have never had it before?”
“No.”
“Well,” he said, “you will have it again.”
He checked his watch from time to time, and after twenty minutes or so he gave an order and our Toyota headed on down the road, with the other vehicles staying put for the time being. It took us only a couple of minutes to reach the government checkpoint. As before, young men in uniforms trained guns on us, and the same officious martinet strutted over and demanded to see the driver’s papers.
I had a blanket over my lap, and under it I held the machine pistol Ne Win had issued me. It was Czech-made, and I wondered what hands it had passed through before it got all the way to an outpost of Shan insurgents. What kind of tale would it tell if it could talk?
I wondered if our advance party was in position and ready. I wondered how long we’d last if they’d been delayed.
And then I lifted the Skoda a little, aiming across the body of the driver and through the open window at his side. And then, just as the little captain was making some sort of bureaucratic fuss over the driver’s papers, I triggered a burst into his chest.
And all hell broke loose.
Our sharpshooters had managed to get themselves into position, and my gunfire was their signal to open up on the troops who had their guns trained on the Toyota. We took them completely by surprise, and all the shooting was done by our side. Then our men were emerging from the brush at the side of the road, cheering, flushed with success. They piled up the bullet-ridden corpses of the government troop while Ne Win pointed his pistol in the air and fired three spaced shots, a signal to the rest of our forces. By the time they reached us, the jeeps and the troop carriers, the roadblock was dismantled and the weapons and ammunition of the dead enemy soldiers stowed in the trunk of the Toyota.