The Burma Legacy (32 page)

Harrison was taller than Sam had expected. Nearly six foot, despite the shrinkage that must have come with age. He still hadn’t noticed their approach.

‘We have a visitor, Perry,’ Squires announced.

Harrison spun round. His face bore little relation to the Teuton-eyed war hero Sam had seen smiling from the back cover of
A Jungle Path to Hell
. The deep lines and demented eyes belonged to a man crippled by the pain of the disease that was killing him – and by the torment inside his head.

‘Who’s this?’ The voice was husky, but officer class.

‘A spook, Perry,’ Squires announced. ‘From Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service.’

‘
What?
’ To Sam he looked like a schoolboy caught smoking. ‘How the heck did he get here?’

‘You left a trail, Mr Harrison.’

Perry looked at their visitor with bewilderment. His first thought was that Rip had brought him here. That his betrayal by the man he’d thought of as a friend had been complete. History repeating itself. Like the Burma Rifleman who’d given him away to the Japs. The enemy once more at his door.

For Sam the sight of Tetsuo Kamata’s bruised and battered body dangling from the tree was shocking. He found it hard to accept that the damage to this aged human being had been done by a man who’d spent most of his life preaching peace and goodwill. Keeping half an eye on Squires and his guerrillas, he looked for signs of life on the Jap’s face, but saw none. Eyes closed, head slumped forward, his almost hairless skin as pale as paper and his genitalia shrunk to the size of acorns, Kamata could well be dead already, for all he knew.

Sam felt an urge to grab Harrison and rub his nose in what he’d done. Instead he told himself to take things gently. Because even when
old
men went mad they could still be dangerous.

‘I think you’ve done enough, sir. Don’t you? Take him down, shall we?’ He found himself speaking as he would to a child subject to tantrums.

Harrison recoiled at the suggestion. He couldn’t let it happen. If the man was cut free before he’d been
brought low enough to beg for mercy, he would have won. And he, Perry, would have lost.

‘Rip!’ He spread his arms to shield his prisoner. ‘
Do
something.’

‘Take a look at who’s holding the gun, Perry,’ Squires murmured, making no effort to disguise his exasperation with the old man.

Only then did Harrison grasp what had happened. Panicking, he spread his legs and folded his arms in defiance.

‘Take Mr Kamata down, Jimmy,’ Sam ordered.

‘Over my dead body,’ Harrison growled.

Squires shook his head. ‘Do it yourself, Steve.’ He began to back away, smirking. ‘I’ll hold the gun for you, if you like.’

Sam had half a mind to shoot the bastard full of holes, together with his two lads, but seemed to recollect there were laws against that sort of thing. He threw another glance at Kamata. Still no sign of life from the man. He feared his chance to save him was slipping away.

One thing was clear. He couldn’t get Kamata down from that tree with four men determined to stop him. Persuasion was his only chance and for that he needed more time. But the longer they took to resolve things here, the greater the danger of the Myanmar police and army finding them – possibly with the help of his own driver. They were perilously unprotected here. Not even a lookout in place. He pointed to the ruined
zedi
.

‘Up there, Jimmy. Put one of your boys on watch before we
all
end up in the shit.’

Squires smirked condescendingly. ‘Good move. We’ll make a soldier of you yet.’ He sent one of his guerrillas scrambling up the pile of bricks.

Sam turned to Harrison. The man’s eyes were like tunnels. He saw fear there, but no readiness to concede.

‘Look, I know what you’ve been through, sir.’ Treading on eggshells. ‘I’ve spoken with your son.’

Harrison’s eyes widened with astonishment. If this were true, things were taking an extraordinary turn. ‘You’ve seen Khin Thein?’

‘No. Your son Charles.’

Harrison’s disappointment was acute. Charles was an irrelevance.

‘And I’ve talked with Robert Wetherby,’ Sam continued, desperately seeking a point of contact. ‘And with Melissa.’

‘Oh God …’ They were all conspiring against him. Every last person he’d thought of as a friend had turned. Suddenly he was engulfed by despair. There was no way they’d let him continue with his punishment of Kamata. No way now that he’d be able to reduce the monster to the level of self-hate he himself had been taken to fifty-seven years ago.

Sam detected a weakening of resolve on Harrison’s part. He watched the old man lower himself onto a large stone in front of the
zedi
, then bury his face in his hands as if trying to shut out the besieging demons.

‘They’re all very concerned about you, sir,’ he soothed, still keeping a wary eye on Squires.

Peregrine Harrison felt utterly drained. The adrenalin that had let him overcome the pain and weakness of his condition in the past hours had evaporated. He stared at this strong-jawed young man who’d gone to such trouble to find him and felt strangely humbled. He looked so confident. So capable. Like he himself had been in days long gone.

‘The Prime Minister himself …’ Sam continued.

Anger shot through Harrison’s veins.

‘Don’t talk to me about politicians!’ he exploded, suddenly reinvigorated.

‘Look, if any lasting harm comes to Mr Kamata …’

‘What? Is this some bleat about six thousand car workers looking for other jobs?’

‘Not just them. The implications for the economy … the UK’s relations with Japan.’

‘God Almighty! It irritates me beyond measure hearing politicians care so much
now
about a Japanese sadist, when they cared so little for his victims after the war.’

‘The war ended fifty-five years ago.’

‘Not for me it didn’t. Nor for my comrades. And remember, it wasn’t
six
thousand men who’s lives were wrecked by the likes of Tetsuo Kamata, but
sixty
thousand. You …
people
. You live in your little boxes in Whitehall. You have no
idea
…’

Harrison turned to face the purpling western sky, using its beauty to calm himself. The trouble was
nobody
had any idea, except those who’d been there. And even most of
them
had learned to forget and forgive. He knew that in essence he’d become a
dinosaur. A rogue creature whose time had finally come. The chance to fight the battle he’d longed for had been given to him too late.
They
were going to stop him winning it.

‘You know,’ he murmured, half to himself, half to the man beside him, ‘every time the sun goes down these days, I’m never sure I’ll see it rise again.’

Sam squatted beside him, still with half an eye on Squires. He was beginning to feel sorry for Harrison. ‘We’re going to get you home, sir.’

Harrison didn’t hear him. ‘The awful thing is … it hasn’t helped,’ he whispered, eyes watering with self-pity.

‘What hasn’t?’

‘What I’ve done to him.’ He wiped his eye sockets with the back of his hand. ‘I thought I would feel some kind of release. You know? Some escape from the hatred. But … there’s been nothing.’

‘Then for heaven’s sake let’s take him down. He’s suffered enough.’

‘Oh no! He hasn’t suffered enough at all. He’s nowhere near the mental condition I want to reduce him to.’

For a moment Sam saw Harrison as a child, given all his Christmas presents, who couldn’t understand why he was
still
unhappy.

‘What d’you want from all this, Perry?’

‘Peace. Respite from the voices in my head.’

The voices of insanity, Sam wondered, or the man’s conscience talking? ‘What do they say?’

Peregrine Harrison looked sideways at this man who’d hunted him down. It felt oddly like the arrival
of a confessor. And there were things he did want to unburden himself of, but others he couldn’t. Like the terrible full truth of why he was doing this. A truth far too dark to be revealed to
anyone
.

‘It’s the uncertainty, you see. That’s what’s … niggled away. Not being able to understand …’

‘Understand what?’

For a few moments Sam thought Harrison wasn’t going to answer. When he eventually turned his head and looked at him, the eyes belonged to a dead man.

‘I don’t understand how any man can do such things to another human being.’

After what he’d just done to the man in the tree.

‘But surely …’ Sam protested, gesturing vaguely at Kamata, ‘what you’ve done is the same thing.’

To Harrison it wasn’t the same at all. The injuries he’d inflicted that afternoon had been done with none of the cool detachment Kamata had shown back in ’43 but in a frenzy of rage and frustration. Done too with the purpose of creating a noise. A racket in his head to drown out the voices that had driven him to the brink of insanity so many times. Voices reminding him every second of every day that fifty-seven years ago in a Japanese encampment not far from here,
he’d told this monster what he’d wanted to know
.

Told this bastard where his unit of brave Chindits was heading. Put in jeopardy the lives of the men who’d become his brothers. Ever since that day, he’d buried this terrible truth deep inside his soul, where, instead of eventually disappearing as he’d hoped, it had burned on and on like molten lava.

He’d lied in his autobiography. Said that although
the torture had been so horrific he’d been ready to talk, a slide into unconsciousness had made it impossible. But the truth was he
had
talked. Easily. The beatings had been enough. No need for water torture. That most vivid part of his maltreatment had never happened. He’d made it up to conceal his own cowardice. His own treachery. That terrible weakness in his character which Tetsuo Kamata had so casually revealed.

Only one other person knew the truth. The man hanging by his hands a few feet away. It was why he’d dreamed of killing Kamata, so it could never be revealed. Then, a few days ago, it had dawned on him that the demise of the Jap would solve nothing.

‘Do you believe in anything, Mr …?’

‘Maxwell,’ said Sam. ‘Stephen Maxwell.’

‘You believe in God? Heaven and hell? An afterlife?’

‘I’m agnostic.’

Harrison nodded. ‘It’s easier that way. Because if you’re a believer, you can never win. You see … I thought that by killing this man I would rid him from my life forever. Then I realised he’d be there in the next life. Waiting for me to arrive. Waiting to point the finger again.’

‘No point in killing him, then,’ Sam said, seizing his chance.

Harrison let out a long sigh. ‘No.’

‘No point in carrying on with the beatings, either.’

Harrison didn’t respond this time, his eyes focused on the darkening horizon. His thoughts began drifting beyond it.

‘What did she say about me?’ he croaked.

‘Who?’

‘Melissa. The spaniel …’

‘Why d’you call her that?’

‘I don’t know. Always gave my girls the names of creatures. Mel was always so ridiculously pleased to see me – I think that was it. What did she say?’

‘She wanted to be with you when you died.’

‘Of course. For her book.’

‘You knew she planned to write one?’

‘She never actually said it. But she was the type, so I just guessed. Is she here? I left a clue for her, but I wasn’t sure she would have the courage to come.’

‘She’s in Yangon. You could see her tomorrow.’

Harrison shook his head. ‘I don’t think I’d like that.’

‘You never felt anything for her?’

‘Not really. The trouble was I never found her physically attractive.’

‘And the others? Did you love any of them?’ It was irrelevant to the matter in hand, but he wanted to know and wanted to keep the old man talking.

‘Oh yes. Most of them at some time or another.’

‘And when you ended the relationships, you never felt guilty?’

‘Never. I felt nothing. No remorse, no guilt.’

Harrison turned his gaze towards Tetsuo Kamata. The questioning had led him to the nub of his concerns about who he was and what he’d become.

‘What I have never understood is why that man expressed no emotion while I was being beaten. Why he felt nothing. And yet … my women must have
asked themselves the same about me when I told them I didn’t desire them any more.’ He turned to Sam, hoping for some look or word of comfort, but knowing he didn’t deserve it. ‘So does that make me the same as
him
? Because I too could be cruel without feeling the least bit uncomfortable about it?’

Harrison’s eyes filled with tears. He’d been forced to look deep into his own soul in the last few days and hated what he’d seen.

From the body in the tree there came a groan. Kamata’s chin lifted from his chest. Sam felt a huge sense of relief at this confirmation of life.

‘It’s over now, Mr Harrison. All over. Let’s take him down.’

Harrison lowered his eyes. ‘Yes.’

Sam stood up. ‘Okay, Jimmy. We’re ready now. Take him down.’

Squires glanced at Harrison for confirmation, then told the second of his bodyguards to untie the rope, while he himself grasped the body round the middle to support the weight.

It took a minute before the old man was lowered, flinching from the fresh pain of being moved. Squires backed away when he’d laid him on the ground, his face twisting with disgust.

‘Bastard’s just shit himself,’ he hissed, ripping up some grass and wiping the front of his clothes.

Sam realised Kamata’s arms were so numb he couldn’t move them. Checking Squires was keeping a safe distance, he laid down the rifle and rubbed at the scrawny flesh to make the circulation restart.

‘You’ll be okay now, Mr Kamata,’ he said,
speaking softly. ‘I work for British security. We’ll get you out of here as soon as we can.’

Kamata didn’t reply. His features were scrunched up like a bag. He looked broken by what he’d gone through. With such loss of face, if they gave him a knife he would probably kill himself, Sam guessed. And maybe it’d be a kindness.

Night was drawing in fast. And night was dangerous. He was increasingly concerned about Tun Kyaw, anxious to wrap things up here and get the two old men down to the car – if it was still there. But first he had to work out what to do with Jimmy Squires and his bandits.