Saving Fish From Drowning (46 page)

busted some twenty-two years prior, and was charged with a misdemeanor, fined, and given probation. On GNN, he was shown standing against a wall of bamboo, wearing his standard-issue safari hat, shorts, and wraparound shades. In this context, he looked like a drug runner proudly displaying his wares. This news item abutted another segment, cobbled together by a resourceful GNN producer, on Burma’s Golden Triangle and its colorful history as “the heroin capital of the world.” While the piece did not explicitly say that Moff had any ties to the heroin growers, the juxtaposition implied one.

I saw it all on Heinrich’s television. He had hooked it up to a satellite dish newly purchased on the black market, which replaced the one that had disappeared recently. I must confess, I found it
un peu
amusant
that my friends were subject to bad reporting and unflattering photos, just as I had been when the newspapers reported my mysterious death.

The worst of the news hounds, in my opinion, was Philip Gutman of Free to Speak International. That megalomaniac contacted GNN

and dangled bait in front of them, and they bit. With a flapping, 3 2 8

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fleshy mouth, he vociferously denied the rumors. “Not true, not true, none of the missing are spies.” He then cleverly praised those who did serve as peacemaking watchdogs, particularly in countries, such as Burma, with atrocious human rights records, and he was proud that a member of Free to Speak was among the missing. He added in dramatic fashion that “this person has now joined the tens of thousands of people now missing in Burma,” and he hoped his friend would not wind up like the rest of them—with an “unspeakable fate.” Naturally, this led to a flurry of guesses as to who this activist was, and the curious and concerned were not simply the international viewers of GNN, my friends’ families, and the U.S. government, but the military regime of Myanmar as well. Who was this troublemaker, they wanted to know. And on whose watch had this person slipped in? The punishment for spies in Myanmar was similar to that for people who were caught smuggling drugs: death.

Wendy may have been an immature nitwit, but that did not mean she deserved to have her head lopped off simply because her former housemate seized any opportunity to promote his cause. I don’t take issue with people who work to improve human rights, not at all. It’s admirable and essential. But Gutman’s entire proviso was geared to garner headlines. He favored the news-catching denunciations, demonstrations, and demands. He never negotiated quietly behind the scenes like some other activists. Gutman would sit on stories of abuse until it was most advantageous for getting the biggest headlines, usually around the time he had scheduled a fund-raising campaign. Alas, in every community that proposes to do good, there are always a few who do good mostly for themselves.

By the evening news hour, GNN knew they had on their lucky

hands the news sensation of the week in the United States—one that beat out the pre–Super Bowl hoopla, the sex scandal involving a congressman and his biggest campaign contributor, the movie star who had been arrested for pedophilia. The scoop was the heart-rending, 3 2 9

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suspenseful story of missing Americans, innocent and beautiful, successful and well respected, rich and envied, outspoken and outrageous, and with just enough hints of impropriety to tantalize. GNN

put up a call-in poll asking viewers to vote: Were the tourists at fault for their disappearance, entirely, somewhat, or not at all? A comforting eighty-seven percent believed the tourists were innocent victims.

What should America’s response be: do nothing, offer a reward, send in the troops? A shocking seventy-three percent voted to invade Burma, and a fair number of posts on the GNN message board said,

“Nuke ’em.” The U.S. government vehemently denied that it had any intention of doing either. GNN gave the green light to increase coverage and airtime.

The GNN bureau chief in Bangkok coordinated with headquarters in New York on interviews. At the Bangkok airport, reporters from GNN and other media outlets swarmed the tourists arriving from Mandalay and Rangoon. Had they been frightened? Did they leave early? Would they ever go back?

The people from New York and Rio de Janeiro gave wearied and disgusted looks, as they pushed past the newshounds. But a few travelers were easily stopped, because they were from cities like Indianapolis, Indiana, or Manchester, England, where it was considered rude not to acknowledge someone who asked you a question. Those from Los Angeles also willingly stepped before the camera, since that was their civil right. “It was so hard to spend time in a country,”

a woman from Studio City commented, “where eleven people wind up dead.” She was reminded that no one was confirmed deceased, so she added, “Well, it still gets to you.”

“Were you scared?” a reporter shouted to a couple emerging from a set of doors.

“This one was,” said a sunburned man, in a flat tone, and he jerked his thumb toward the woman behind him. “She went hysterical.” The woman gave him a smile of annoyance. She turned to the 3 3 0

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reporter and said, her stony smile still affixed, “To be honest, I was more concerned we’d get stuck if they shut down the airports.” Her response—plus that gritted smile meant for her husband—was replayed each hour, making it seem to millions of people that she was a coldhearted bitch.

In Mayville, the citizens held a candlelight vigil and bake sale for Wyatt’s family. They raised funds for Mrs. Fletcher, and the deputy sheriff she was dating, to go to Burma to search for her only son. The lesson plan in elementary schools across the country now included a geography lesson on where Burma was located in the world, and that lesson was broadcast nationally as well, since another poll had revealed than ninety-six percent of Americans had no idea where either Myanmar or Burma was. In San Francisco, Mary Ellen Brookhyser Feingold Fong was in touch with the mayor and “the three Georges”—one of them a political bigwig with connections to the State Department, another a filmmaker, and the third a billionaire humanitarian with a private jet. The staff of
The Fido Files
selected the very best of their shows to rerun, including a popular segment on training search-andrescue dogs using scent detection and trailing, coupled with simple techniques ordinary pet owners could use to teach their own couch-potato dogs—boxer, beagle, or bichon frise, it didn’t matter what breed—to sniff out a child playing hide-and-seek. Even before the end of that broadcast day, plans had been made to fly to Burma via private jet the following people: Mary Ellen Brookhyser Feingold Fong; Mrs. Dorothea Fletcher and her deputy boyfriend, Gustav Larsen; and Saskia Hawley of Golden Gate Search-and-Rescue Dogs, a former gal pal of Harry’s.

On the plane, Saskia Hawley reflected on the past she had once shared with Harry Bailley. She still felt a fondness for him. What did he feel for her? Like all his former lovers, she was petite, thin, and, as Harry had once put it, “emotionally demanding.” “Cute” was also how Harry described her, a term she despised since it connoted 3 3 1

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someone less than equal. “Don’t call me cute,” she repeatedly demanded. “But you are, darling,” Harry would answer. “What could be wrong with that?”

As Saskia now recalled, Harry did have his endearing qualities. He was loyal, for one thing, just like a dog. With other women, he looked, but he didn’t touch, and in that sense, he had never betrayed her, not like the last guy, the dickhead. When she was in trouble or distress of any kind, Harry came to her aid, no matter the hour. And there was the bedtime factor. He was plain fun between the sheets. In retrospect, he was a lot more desirable and cohabitable than the other lovers who had come and gone since she and Harry called it quits six years back. The term they actually used was “cooling period.” They never stated it as final. Could she ever take up with him again? No, no, no, no, she protested a bit too much.

Saskia had chosen to bring two dogs with arguably the highest-caliber noses in the business. There was Lush, a loose-tongued, smiley-mouthed, black-and-white border collie bitch. She had earned her stripes as a FEMA Urban Search and Rescue dog, beginning with the Oklahoma City bombing. Lush was also experienced as a cadaver dog, but Saskia did not reveal that to the other passengers on the plane. She wanted to convey that she was just as optimistic as they were. Officially, this was still a rescue, not yet a recovery.

But Saskia was a realist; experience had forced that down her throat. And if the tourists were dead, God forbid, the scent might be apparent to a dog even years after the fact, especially if the decaying materials had leached into tree roots. Saskia’s team had been involved in two murder cases in which the corpse was dug up, one next to a pine, the other next to a gingko. As with all of Lush’s finds, the dog had circled and sniffed, then gone back to the source with the strongest scent and done a decisive sit as signal that she had found the object that would lead to her reward, a game of fetch with a gummy tennis ball. The first time Lush alerted Saskia to a tree, the 3 3 2

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other search team members guffawed. Saskia then told them to dig next to the tree, at the spot most hidden from view of those approaching. Sure enough, they unearthed the bones, and after Saskia explained why dogs pick up the scent on the trunk, the other searchers exclaimed, “Good Lord! A blood-sucking, carnivorous tree.” But there was a troubling fact about cadaver dogs in Burma.

The dogs would be in a constant frenzy, for an excessive number of bodies would have been secretly put in the ground. Lush was in danger of working her nose raw.

The other canine member of Saskia’s team was Topper, a black Lab, who was a wilderness-rescue dog. Being a Labrador, he was also a big galoot who loved to do water work. There might be a need for that, too, to judge from what the consular officials said of the disappearance. Saskia wondered how deep the lake was, and just as important, how cold, and thus how well refrigerated the bodies might be. That would help in staving off decomposition and aid the dogs in searching for a smaller target rather than a dispersed one.

So these four people and two dogs flew to Bangkok. There they would find out whether they would be allowed entry by the military government of Myanmar. Would they be granted expedited visas—

or any visas at all? To help them in this regard, one of Mary Ellen’s Georges, the political bigwig, had exerted his influence in the State Department. It was hoped she and her entourage could pass as ordinary tourists, albeit rich ones with their own private plane, and thus be issued the last-minute visas. Whether they got them would depend on whether the Myanmar regime was unaware of their connection with those who were missing. And that was possible, staffers felt, since GNN was not broadcast in Myanmar—or more correctly, was not
allowed
to be broadcast. The broadcast ban extended to all foreign programs. The approved news was reported on the two government-run channels, and the stories on both had to first pass muster with the Information Ministry. One of the old generals set 3 3 3

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the guidelines for all the news that was fit to report, and the Press Scrutiny Board ensured that these were followed to the letter. Among the prohibitions: no bad weather forecasts, or news of economic downturns, or depictions of dead civilians. None of that was good for morale. And if Aung San Suu Kyi was mentioned at all, the words

“evil tool of foreign interests” had better appear next to the name.

Words like “democracy,” “education,” and “corruption” triggered close scrutiny. So a story about eleven missing and possibly dead tourists was not likely to see headlines in the regime-controlled newspapers, television programs, or radio broadcasts.

Don’t be mistaken. This did not mean the Information Ministry and their Office of Strategic Studies in the Defense Ministry had no inkling who the relatives of the missing were. The generals, the directors, and their subordinates had already reviewed tapes of GNN’s stories of the missing. The ministry was in charge of finding such stories—anything that reported on the country, whether in a good or a bad light. They tuned to the Voice of America and BBC Radio, which had escaped their control and which many bad-intentioned people listened to surreptitiously. They also had a satellite dish that pulled international reception from abroad. And their Press Scrutiny Board gleaned every television program from unfriendly and powerful countries for any mention of Myanmar. Often it was the nephew or niece of some highly placed official who had the cushy job of watching
The Simpsons
, sitcoms like
Sex and the City
, and the reality program
Darwin’s Fittest
, which many of them enjoyed as well.

The more rigorous review of news broadcasts went to those with critical minds. Names of the guilty were thus collected and placed on appropriate lists for banned entry, expulsion, and if appropriate, future “enlightenment.”

The busiest news year had been when the Dead General’s daughter won the Nobel Peace Prize. What a lot of negative stories that had caused. A constant bombardment! A disaster! Those Swedes 3 3 4

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were always handing out peace prizes just to foment trouble. In private thought, the ministers in charge of propaganda and patriotism recalled that they had not handled the “situation” in the best possible way. They had closed ranks and swiftly stopped any displays of support for The Lady. And that only added to the world’s dislike of them. It was now very important how they dealt with this latest challenge.

The Office of Strategic Studies was particularly perturbed and wanted answers fast. The country’s “Visit Myanmar” campaign, launched several years earlier, had never soared to the heights that had been predicted, and was now in utter shambles. Hotel cancellations were flooding the lines, and the already dismal twenty-five-tothirty-percent occupancy rate plummeted. The airlines reported that planes were empty flying into Mandalay and Yangon, but were bulging on the way out. As if that was not enough to bear, leaders from ASEAN—Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and especially Japan—had