The Star Ruby Contract, page 5
The War Office looked much the same, a huge barrackslike structure, but it had been painted recently. White. The misting rain had stopped, and the long building dazzled the eyes where shafts of sunlight hit it. Vapor was rising from the trimmed emerald sward of the lawns around it, and droplets fell from the three-tiered, ten-foot-high barbed wire fence that separated the guardhouse from the grounds.
After I had stood waiting for ten minutes, with my immaculate white suit wilting and my brains frying, the duty officer barked an order, and the big gates were swung open. Flanked by two soldiers, I walked through the gateway and down the whispering gravel walk toward the entrance rotunda.
When we reached the rotunda, the soldiers flanking me came to quivering attention and saluted, and my escort was taken over by two Naval officers in white battle jackets and long white shorts. One of them asked to see my passport, in perfect English, and flipped through it briefly. Handing it back, he said, “Come with us, please.”
I followed them down several echoing halls, past cubicles where other military personnel were at work, and they ushered me into a large waiting room with bare walls, also recently painted white. The room was sparsely furnished, rattan and teak furniture, and the long center table held ashtrays made of mortar-shell cartridges and a collection of ancient magazines. Just like my dentist at home, I thought, and felt immeasurably cheered.
“If you will wait here, please,” murmured the officer who had examined my passport, and I thanked him and sat down. The two arched windows had no screens on them, and I could see a pleasant courtyard outside. An unkempt garden taken over by tropical growths. Green tendrils were trying to get inside the room through the open windows, and I reflected that before long they would make it. The tropical fragrances from the garden fought unsuccessfully against the raw carbolic odors of the scrubbed hall.
I had been in the room before. That time, as Managing Director of Amphibian Airways, I had been waiting to see U Thakin Nu, then Prime Minister. A very handsome little man with hairs growing out of the mole on his chin. Now, in the office off to the left, a tougher man was at work. General Ne Win, the Burmese dictator who had overthrown Thakin Nu’s government and was unfriendly to the West because of what he claimed were repeated efforts by the U.S. to undermine his government.
Ne Win had finally visited Washington, and this fact had been blazoned in banner headlines by our news services. What they had not emphasized, in their deft censorship, was that the Burmese strongman had also visited Peking earlier. He was honestly trying to be neutral.
As I waited, with the drowsy, midmorning somnolence broken by bird chitterings from the garden and the chatter of electric typewriters along the corridors, I glanced at the closed door on my right. That was a fateful door; it led to a conference room that had been a Burmese shrine. In that room, in 1948, the entire upper echelon of the fledgling Burmese Government had been assassinated.
It was there that the fabled Burmese patriot, Aung San, his cabinet ministers, and his top administrative officials had been chopped down by machine-gun fire. With Aung San had died most of The Thirty Brave Comrades who had attended the Imperial Japanese War College with him and later led Burma to freedom from the British.
I was staring at the door when a neat little man came out of the left office and said, “Captain Mallory?”
“Yes.”
“The general will see you now.” I got up and followed him through the doorway on the left. The secretary remained outside, closing the door.
General Ne Win was standing behind a big desk covered with papers, and he nodded but did not offer to shake hands. The walls of his office were monastic white, without decoration except for a huge map of Burma behind him.
“Please sit down,” he said.
He was tall for a Burmese, and was wearing pink trousers and a short-sleeved jacket without any decorations. Only the red tabs on his open collar. Ne Win had a big head and brow, and his skin was the color of mahogany. He looked tough and self-contained. For several seconds we looked each other over. I was seated in one of the uncomfortable circular teakwood chairs, and he was still standing.
He glanced briefly at the bandages on my face and neck and said that he did not know who threw the grenade into my suite but that he would find out and punish the offender.
“Thank you,” I said, and his slaty eyes flickered.
“Captain Mallory,” he said dryly, “it is against the law to throw a hand grenade at anyone, in Burma. If you had been killed, it would have meant only a cancellation of our contract. You are a man who courts danger. But if the culprit got away with it, he might get bold enough to throw one at me.”
“Thanks, anyway,” I said, and he nodded impatiently, collecting his thoughts.
And went on, with Sandhurst crispness. “You may have heard that I do not get on well with your government. That is because I distrust their policies with regard to Asia, and profoundly suspect U.S. motives. I may be in error. What is your opinion on the matter?”
“I have no opinion, General,” I said evenly. “I do not operate on a policy level, and you must have known that when you requested my services.”
The answer pleased him, because I got a wintry smile. When he began talking again, his voice was flat, and he had tuned me out again. He was lecturing.
“I have been obliged, for obvious reasons, to keep all your so-called ‘aid’ and ‘technical assistance’ programs out of my country. I have barred U.S. educational programs on the valid ground that they are nothing but subterfuges for spy activities. Even in regard to American tourists, which Burma would normally welcome, we maintain a rigid visa control because, for reasons I cannot fathom, your CIA seems obliged to make agents out of kindergarten teachers on their sabbaticals …”
There was nothing to say, so that was what I said.
“Why, then,” asked the Burmese dictator, “did I request your services as Managing Director of our Civil Aviation? You were here before, and looted the treasury of a new-born country thoroughly, so the choice might seem odd.”
He paused, staring out the window into the pleasant, overgrown garden.
“Although I was not in power when you were here before, I noticed that you did your job as quietly and efficiently as you could, and were careful not to offend our national sensibilities. You did not lose a single plane or pilot from enemy action, and served us well until we ran out of currencies which interested you …”
“Luck, General,” I said.
“Understood. But given the luck, you used it.” Ne Win turned toward the huge wall map of the Government of The Union of Burma behind him and rapped at it sharply with a leather baton.
“Up here, Captain, is the reason you are back in Burma!”
His voice had become agitated; he was seized with a coughing spasm. He bent over the desk and jerked its center drawer open with his left hand; groped and found some tablets and gulped them down dry. Then he straightened, mouth working, and rapped the map again.
“Seventeen years ago, when the Kuomintang was falling apart, a renegade Chinese Nationalist Division under General Pao moved out of Tengchung. Here, into our Shan States. And it is not agreeable for me to admit it, but a large portion of this hostile force is still within our borders. I cannot bomb them out. My military pilots have no combat experience, and even if they had, the Chinese force has very strong antiaircraft protection.
“Until a short time ago this group was air-supplied from Formosa; its degenerate existence depended on support by U.S. Intelligence. All through the years we were fighting our own civil war, longer than in Vietnam, we kept trying to eradicate this marauding force. Your ambassadors kept telling us it did not exist. Until one day I confronted one of these ambassadors with two captured American pilots and four intelligence officers, forced down in the Shan States.
“And do you know what this ambassador told me? That the men were undoubtedly operating as independent soldiers of fortune. All the way from Formosa, military instructions seized with them. So I asked that particular fool of an ambassador not to insult our sense any longer, and the next day requested that he be recalled.”
General Ne Win paused. I asked if I could smoke, and he said certainly, so I lighted up a cheroot. He surveyed me with vast inappreciation and turned back to the map.
“Lately, Captain Mallory,” he continued, “this cancer within our borders had dwindled to half division strength. But, with help from somewhere, they keep their light planes flying. You will understand what that means, having been in the aviation business. They have become bandits, nothing more. This patched-up fleet of theirs is trafficking openly in opium. In addition to disrupting our communications in the Shan States, they fly raw gum opium to border towns in Thailand, and it goes straight to Bangkok. Also, they are flying low-level supply missions to the Vietcong.”
The Burmese dictator flipped his baton away angrily. It bounced against the far wall and fell to the floor.
“What is it you want me to do?” I asked.
General Win leaned forward on doubled fists across the desk. “I want these Chinese out of Burma,” he said heavily. “I don’t want them harassed or surrounded or dealt with. I want them out.”
“I understand,” I said, getting up. “Your Excellency has been generous in the contract with me, but I have a further request.”
“Yes?”
“Direct access to you, personally, at any hour. Not to an associate or a trusted aide, but to you, personally.”
“Agreed.” He nodded and straightened behind the desk.
“Then, sir,” I said, “if you have no further instructions, I’ll get to work.”
“Good, good!” He was shuffling papers on his desk.
“Your permission to leave, General?” I asked.
“Yes, of course,” he said idly. “Before you go, however, I must repeat … a certain apprehension of my own intelligence officers. Why did you bring mademoiselle Solange LeBlanc with you?”
“For sexual congress, sir. Mine. And she will, perhaps, be useful in other ways.”
The Burmese dictator nodded again, with a faint half-smile. Half amusement, half distaste. “You do tend to keep it in the family, don’t you, Captain?”
Before I could answer, he sat down and fitted on a pair of dark-rimmed reading glasses. I didn’t see him press any button but the obsequious secretary came into the big office as suddenly as if he had been leaning against the door.
“Good day, Captain,” said the General, and I walked out. My escort of Naval officers was waiting in the hall, and they flanked me back to the entrance of the War Office building. There the two rankers took me back to the guardhouse, now through blinding sunlight. As I approached the sandbagged guardhouse and was let out through the high gates the sentries snapped to attention again, and my cab driver came sliding off his front fender.
The sun was blistering my pate, and I was reflecting that the Burmese dictator’s intelligence services did pretty well. At least on amatory details.
Chapter 8
I had left the hotel an oddity, one of the few Americans to be allowed a work permit in Burma for several years, but when I walked back in it, I was a celebrity. Who had just had a private conference with General Ne Win. The tall Sikh durwan at the lobby entrance came to attention so sharply his beard quivered, and as I crossed the marble floor the desk clerks, the concierge, and the bellmen straightened involuntarily.
At the mail desk I accepted two cables and was turning toward the stairs when I nearly bowled Mr. Djinguez over. The little Armenian in the frock coat bowed even while he was off-balance, and came erect smartly.
“No difficulty?” he inquired.
“None, thank you,” I said.
“I am so glad. You will require?”
I ripped open one of the cables with a forefinger. “Nothing I can think of, Mr. Djinguez. Ice cubes, perhaps, if we have none.”
“I will check immediately,” he said, and spun around on pointed, glistening shoes, snapping his fingers like castanets. Going up the winding staircase, I saw that the cable was from my mother, which was interesting because she had been dead for years. Shoving it into the pocket of my sharkskin jacket, I opened the other one. It was in the clear, from Jardine-Matheson’s in Hong Kong, and stated that the aircraft parts I had requested them to transship would arrive at Mingaladon Aerodrome that afternoon on the Cathay-Pacific flight. That customs duty on all items had been given a special waiver by the Burmese Government.
The big suite was empty when I pushed through the silken curtains. I shucked off my suit and showered. Then, wearing only a blue cotton lungyi, I went in to the bar of the big sitting room and filled a glass with ice and ginger beer. Looked into Solange’s bedroom, but she was not there.
Returning to my own bedroom, I got the cable from mother out of my jacket and decoded it at the rosewood desk, keying out of the Rangoon telephone book. The message said that Frank Meyers, of Hong Kong, had fired a rocket to three top levels in the agency claiming that I not only wouldn’t listen to his ideas but had attacked him brutally.
Thumbing patiently through the telephone book, I encoded an answer which said that “as per contractual agreement” no station agents were to approach me for any reason without my request; that this particular station agent was a cretin; that I had seen the man in charge and was proceeding, but that I would remove myself from Burma immediately if they sent a recall order. Otherwise, my love to mother.
Drafting this blast took twenty minutes, and when I had printed it carefully, I read it over and decided it sounded pompous as hell. That fact being established, I walked back into the sitting room and shouted, “Bearer!”
“Here, master!” William came in from the pantry on bare feet.
“Will you take this cablegram down, please. It goes direct.”
He took the slip of rough yellow paper and was leaving when I realized that it must be nearly noon and that I was hungry. “Tiffin soon?” I asked, and the bearer nodded.
“Whenever master likes.”
“Fine.” I was a little irritated. “How about a twelve-pepper curry, as soon as you hand the cablegram in?” He nodded again. “Where’s the mem-sahib?”
“There, sir.” He pointed a brown finger out over the terrace, and vanished through the blowing curtains. There? I thought. Christ, that includes the Gulf of Martaban and the entire Andaman Sea.
Still, it was at least a compass point. I walked out on the terrace, looked across at the docks, and down at the small park across the street from the hotel. Solange was there. Not only there, but the center of action. Dressed in a silver sari that rippled around her limbs like water, she was haring around the park tugging at a string which arced up to a curveting, butterfly-shaped kite. The kite had iridescent wings of turquoise and green, and every time Solange stopped or turned, a host of laughing brown Burmese children ran into her.
Once she went sprawling on the grass and was almost blotted from sight by howling children. Poor butterfly came to earth in swooping banks, and landed without damage to his splendid oil-silk wings. Pretty fair glide angle, I thought from the fourth-floor terrace; I’d like to see a jet do that with power off. …
Turning inside the suite, I found that William had the table ready and the curry was just arriving. I asked the bearer to step down to the park and ask the mem-sahib to come up, if she could find a break in her kite-flying. He smiled, the first time he had done it since we arrived, and went through the foyer to the hall. The two waiters began lifting lids from silver serving dishes, and the spicy aromas of the curry were wonderful.
I was halfway through my first plate, crumbling toasted rose petals over rice and chutney, when Solange came slipping in and went hurrying back to her bedroom. In a few minutes she came out in her tailored suit, wearing hose and high-heeled pumps, and one of the waiters seated her.
While her plate was being served, she glanced across at me anxiously. “I am a very bad secretary. But I was waiting for you to get back, and I saw the children down there in the park, but I only meant to be gone a minute …”
“No matter,” I said. “There was only a cable to do, and I had to handle that myself. William took it down for me.”
The two waiters were piling her plate high with the spiced curry, and Solange sat stiffly, like a rebuked child, staring at the hands folded in her lap.
“Will you eat, for God’s sake?” I asked. “The food’s getting cold. If you had been here, waiting every minute, all you could have done was walk downstairs with the cable.”
My voice must have been strident, because the lashes on her dark eyes flickered. Across me, across the strip of cloudless blue sky beyond the terrace, and she smiled slowly.
“I’m so glad,” she said, shaking out the heavy damask serviette. “The work wasn’t anything, but you did miss me.”
“Rooster’s ass,” I replied, forking up more of the stinging-hot curry, which would have me blowing smoke rings before dawn. But what the hell, if a man’s gut can’t take a joke, it should make him throw up immediately. The head does all the work, anyway.
So I shoveled it in, and across from me Solange went to work like a shipwrecked wrestler offered unlimited provender. Half an hour later we had tiny cups of Turkish coffee just below the boiling point and several dollops of Bisquit cognac. The waiters came back in, beamed to see such carnage done on the huge lunch, and bore the dishes away chattering.
I had two of the coffees, like sludge from a Volkswagen, and a placidity of the cognac. Across from me Solange groaned and fell back in her chair, both arms dangling. Among other things, she was quite a mimic. She had unbuttoned the suit jacket, but showed no sign of her Lucullan feast.
“We’ll sleep now?” she asked, stretching, and I laughed. Because that is exactly what I wanted to do now, if we can allow a euphemism. Sleep with Solange, in the early afternoon.
“No, ma’am,” I said. “I’m going to the airport, to receive some airfreight and supervise some modifications on our planes, and I may be there all night.”
