“And they say I placed the bomb?”
He shook his head. “A local man placed the bomb. He was set upon by citizens on the scene and torn apart.”
“That must have slowed down the investigation.”
“They gave his name,” he said, “and it is a Shan name, but no one knows him. And then, several days later, there was this story, telling how you were the terrorist mastermind behind the outrage.”
“And I was dead?”
“You broke down under questioning, you admitted everything, and you were tried and convicted and sentenced to death by hanging.”
“And they hanged me on the spot?”
“No. They waited until the following morning.”
“Decent of them,” I said.
“And they published your picture,” he said, “but I do not think it looks very much like you.”
“They probably got it off my passport,” I said, “and they never look like the person.”
“This does not look like you at all,” he said.
“Remember,” I said. “I had hair then. I didn’t shave it off until it was time to put on red robes.”
“Still,” he said. “It says American terrorist Evan Tanner, but it does not look like you in any respect.”
“Let’s see,” I said.
He handed me the paper. I looked, and a face looked back at me.
“Stone the crows,” I said.
Chapter 22
“His name was Stuart,” I said. “If he told me his last name I’ve forgotten it, and it seems to me he didn’t. We started out on a first-name basis. I guess that’s natural enough for two people who are sharing a cell.”
“You met this man in prison?”
“It wasn’t exactly a prison. It was a cell, all right, a cage of steel bars, and there was a guard and he had a gun. But it was more of an out-of-the-way holding cell than part of an official prison. They parked me there while they were figuring out what to do with me.”
“And this Stuart was there as well?”
I nodded. “The guard left the door unlocked and went for a walk. I didn’t know if he was following orders or if someone had bribed him, but one way or another I was being offered the opportunity to escape.”
“And you took it?”
“In a hot second. Stuart was afraid it was a trap. But we were already in jail. Why bother to trap us at that stage of the game? He couldn’t make up his mind whether to stay or to go, and I didn’t hang around waiting for him to decide. I just got out of there.”
“Perhaps he was a terrorist.”
“He wasn’t.”
“But if he was, and if he did organize the explosion at Shwe Dagon, and they captured him again, they could have made a mistake with the name. He was one of two men who escaped from this cell, yes? So there is a mix-up, and they call him by the wrong name.”
I shook my head. “He was no terrorist,” I said. “He was just this sweet Australian kid who came over on a holiday to drink beer and look at the pagodas. Do you know how he wound up in jail? He ate durian.”
“But it is not against the law to eat durian.”
“In his hotel room.”
“Oh,” he said. “That is another story.”
“Still,” I said, “it is not a hanging offense.”
“Of course not.”
“They would have hanged me,” I said in wonder. “I never took it seriously. I thought it was going to be a nuisance, getting thrown out of the country, being kept from completing my mission, whatever it was. But they were just locking me up until they figured out just how to get the most mileage out of me for propaganda purposes. Then it would have been a long drop and a short rope.”
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.”