Tanner On Ice

Chapter 14

There was a different clerk behind the desk of the Char Win. The fellow last night had had a mustache, albeit an unimpressive one. This one was clean-shaven, and better fed.

That improved the odds. I’d been trying to think of a way to get past him, but all the likely strategies – taking a room, hiring a girl as camouflage – would cost money. And I didn’t have a single kyat between me and starvation.

A handful of gravel against Katya’s window might have worked, but her window was two flights above ground level, and there wasn’t a whole lot of gravel around, anyway. Besides, she had a front room, and I figured I’d attract more attention standing on the pavement chucking stones at a window than I would just walking right past the clerk as if I owned the place.

Which is what I did.

It worked, too. It would have been trickier if the clerk had seen me before. And it would have been dicier still if I hadn’t had shoes.

“Evan!” She flung the door open. “Come in. I didn’t know if I would ever see you again.”

For my part, I hadn’t known if she would remember my name. What a nice surprise for both of us.

“I woke up,” she said, “and you were gone. I do not even remember when you left.”

“You were sleeping.”

“This is embarrassing, but I must ask you. Did we-?”

“We didn’t.”

“I don’t know if I am glad or sorry. I wanted it to happen, but if I do not remember it, then perhaps it is better that it did not happen. It is a puzzle.”

“Like the tree,” I said.

“What tree?”

“Berkeley’s tree,” I said. “The one that didn’t fall in the forest. Don’t worry if that doesn’t make sense. I just got out of jail and I’m a little confused.”

“Jail! What happened?”

“That’s not going to make much sense, either,” I said. “But I’ll tell you.”

“I didn’t really think they were going to hang me,” I said. “If they wanted me dead, all they had to do was put a bullet in the back of my head and toss me into an unmarked grave. I figured they were going to deport me and just wanted to wait until they decided what kind of spin to put on it.”

“But they let you escape.”

“Well, someone did,” I said. “Either the guard was acting on instructions or somebody bribed him to leave the door unlocked and desert his post. Or there’s a slim chance he actually forgot, and he was around the corner squatting over a hole in the floor while I made my getaway. To tell you the truth, I don’t much care which it was. I was in jail and now I’m out, and out is better.”

“Where did you get the shoes?”

I looked at my feet, newly shod in a pair of stout brown wingtips. “I got them at a pagoda,” I told her, “but don’t ask me which one. At the entrance there was a whole row of them, and people taking shoes off and putting shoes on, and I picked out a likely pair and walked off with them. Walked off in them, I should say.”

“Do they fit?”

“Not terribly well. Even with the socks that came with them, they’re going to raise blisters before long. But I didn’t have money to buy shoes, and I couldn’t walk around barefoot.”

“So you stole some tourist’s shoes,” she said, and giggled. “Imagine the look on his face!”

“It’ll cost him the price of a pair of shoes,” I said, “and he’ll dine out on the story. These were ready for new heels, anyway.”

“Oh, I am not worried about the man,” she said. “But I am worried about you, Evan. What are you going to do now?”

“I’m going to get out of Burma.”

“And you came here.” Her eyes lit up. “You are going to take me with you!”

“Uh,” I said.

“Say yes, Evan! Please?”

“I don’t even know how I’m going to get out,” I said. “I don’t have any papers and they’ll be looking for me at the airport. I’ll have to go across the border into Thailand or Laos. It’ll be dangerous, and it won’t be comfortable.”

“I don’t care about danger. And I am already uncomfortable. Evan, take me with you.”

I’d expected the request. Truth to tell, I had been counting on it.

“Well, all right,” I said. “I’ll give it a try. If you can accept the dangers and the hardships-”

“I welcome them!”

“And if you can do something for me first.”

The sun was setting by the time she got back. The door burst open and she came in, her face flushed. “That was exciting,” she said. “Vanya, I have not had such excitement in ages!”

“Did you have good luck?”

She opened her handbag, drew out first the foil-wrapped brick, then the oilskin packet I’d removed from the man I’d found in my bed.

“I was very good,” she said, pleased with herself. “I thought my clothes might be too shabby, but the dress was Western, and that helped. And my grandmother was an actress in Hanoi. Maybe I inherited some of her talent.”

She told me all about it. She’d gone to the Strand, and she was able to see that there was no key in the pigeonhole for 514, so it was probably occupied. She took a chair in the lobby, and watched as a well-dressed man picked up his key at the desk and headed for the elevators.

Smiling, she fell into step beside him, chatting like an old friend. Wasn’t it a hot day? But an exciting city all the same, no?

In the elevator, he pushed 4 and she pushed 5. As the car rose, he said, “You’re not getting off at the fourth floor, are you.” She agreed that she wasn’t. “Then I don’t suppose you’re coming to my room.” Alas, she said, she was not. “That’s probably just as well,” he said, “because I was wondering how I could possibly explain you to my wife. Still, I have to say I’m disappointed.”

He got off at 4. She ascended to 5 and found Room 514. If no one was there she would have to find a chambermaid and talk her into opening the door with her passkey, and she didn’t know how hard that might be. A bribe might work, but it might not.

She knocked, and a man opened the door. He was in shirtsleeves, his tie loosened. Please, she said, could she come in? There was a man following her, and she was afraid he was going to kill her.

He let her in and she sagged with relief. The man was her husband, she explained. Two days ago in Mandalay she had finally got up the courage to leave him. And now he was here in Rangoon! She had ducked into the Strand when she realized he was following her, and she didn’t know if she’d shaken him, and she was afraid to look. Could he possibly check the lobby and see if her swinish husband was there? She described the mythical husband – tall, fat, balding, with a scar on one cheek, even told how he was dressed. Could he be an angel and see if he was downstairs, or even lurking on the street outside? And could she wait in his room while he looked?

When he hesitated, she said, “But you do not know me. I could be a thief! Please, take with you anything that is valuable. Do not worry that you will hurt my feelings! And please, take this with you.” And she twisted the ring off her finger and insisted that he take it in pawn.

Once he was out the door, she swung into action. With the chain belt securing the door against a sudden return, she stripped his bed and felt along the top seam at the end of the mattress until she found where I’d cut it open, my knife making a foot-long slash running alongside the seam. She reached in and felt around and drew out the brick wrapped in foil and the smaller parcel done up in oilskin.

They went in her purse, and no harm if he asked for a look through her bag when he returned, as they were nothing he’d ever seen before. But of course he did no such thing. There was plenty of time to get the bed back as it was, plenty of time to catch her breath before he returned to tell her the coast was clear; there was no sign of her future ex-husband, not in the lobby, not in the wood-paneled bar, not in the street outside. And, speaking of that bar, it was the best place in town for a cool drink, and did she have a minute to spare?

“So I let him buy me a drink,” she said. “That was all right, wasn’t it, Evan?”

“It was only gracious of you.”

“That is what I thought. It was very elegant. There was a piano, with a Chinese man playing Cole Porter songs. He bought me a large gin and tonic and asked me to join him for dinner.”

“You must have been tempted.”

“No,” she said. “It could have been a pleasant evening, with good food and plenty to drink. And he was an attractive man, Evan. He was English.”

“With black hair,” I said, as a sinking feeling came over me. “Except at the temples, where it had turned as white as snow.”

“Why do you say that, Evan?”

“It’s true, isn’t it?”

“Not at all,” she said. “His hair was blond like mine, only a little darker. Receding in front, and thin on top.”

“Oh.”

“What made you think-”

“Never mind,” I said. “Anyway, you found him attractive.”

“Moderately so. I could have spent a pleasant evening with him. But when I woke up I would still be in Burma.”

“You’ll still be in Burma tomorrow no matter what,” I said. “And for quite a few mornings after that.”

“But you will take me with you, my little Vanya?”

“I’ll try.”

“And these will help us, this treasure from inside the mattress? What is inside these?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m afraid I can guess what’s in the brick. I don’t know about the other.”

“Aren’t you going to open them?”

I opened the brick first, and I can’t say I was surprised by what I found. It was indeed a brick, white in color, with the slightest yellowish tint to it. I scratched it with my fingernail, raising a bit of white powder. I put a few grains on my tongue.

“Bitter,” I said. “Must be Lariam.”

“You are joking.”

“I’m afraid so,” I said. “Although I may be closer to the truth than you would think. I have to assume this is heroin, but I have no idea how pure it is. Somebody may have stepped on it.”

“Stepped on it?”

“With or without shoes,” I said. “Stepping on it means cutting it. They process a lot of opium into heroin in the Golden Triangle, part of which is in northeast Burma. And they don’t cut it there because it’s simpler to ship it in pure form. But they’re not shipping it through Rangoon, so who knows what the source of this particular brick is, or how close to pure it is?”

“What does that have to do with Lariam?”

“If they cut it,” I said, “they might have used milk sugar. That’s a popular staple in the drug trade. I wonder what effect it has on a junkie who happens to be lactose-intolerant?” I shrugged. “Probably the least of his problems. The point is, they also commonly add some quinine, which is a component of Lariam. In fact, for all I know, this brick could be all milk sugar and quinine, because why waste good heroin just to frame me for drug trafficking?”

“So you don’t think it’s heroin after all?”

“No,” I said. “I think it must be. And it wouldn’t have cost anybody anything. It was probably confiscated in the first place, and they expected to get it back when they arrested me. That’s why they were so upset when they searched the room and came up empty. They weren’t getting their heroin back, and someone up above was going to want to know what happened to it.”

“You hid it well.”

“I didn’t have much time,” I said, “and I couldn’t flush it down the toilet, and I didn’t know what would happen if I threw it out the window. If nothing else, it would mean I’d never see it again. I was going to stick it under the mattress, but I figured they’d look there, and in fact they did. They stripped the bed and lifted the mattress. But they didn’t look in the mattress. I had my Swiss Army knife, and I used it, and it worked.” I frowned. “I wish I still had it. I wish I’d stuck it in the mattress, too, and I could have tucked in my cash and passport while I was at it. But there just wasn’t time. As a matter of fact, there wasn’t even time to think of it.”

“What are you going to do with the heroin?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Before we’re done, I’ll probably want to use it. For now it’s an asset, and we don’t have too many of those.”

“And this?” She pointed at the oilskin packet I’d taken off the dead man. “Another asset?”

“Could be,” I said. “Let’s see.”

The parcel was mostly wrapping. Bubble wrap under the oilskin, and cotton wool under that. And, huddled together within the cotton wool, three perfect carvings.

“Ivory,” Katya said.

They were indeed ivory, the rich cream color slightly yellowed with age. They stood just under four inches tall, each depicting an Oriental gentleman of a certain age. One held a bird on the back of his hand, one leaned on a cane, one had his hands clasped and his head bowed. Each was exquisitely detailed and impeccably executed.

“Good luck,” Katya said.

“Cheers,” I agreed absently. “What’s the significance of these, do you suppose?”

“But I am just telling you, Evan! This one is good luck, this one is long life, and the last is good health.”

“They’re good-luck charms?”

“Oh, how do you say it?” She switched to Russian. “They are not charms, like an amulet or a lucky ring. It is more that they are the personification of the three aspects of good fortune. It is a Chinese custom to have such carvings in one’s home, perhaps in a shrine devoted to one’s ancestors.” She picked up Long Life and turned him over in her hands. “But this is not Chinese.”

“How can you tell?”

“The facial features. The dress. See? He is wearing a longyi. No Chinese man would dress this way.”

“Maybe it’s a Chinese woman.”

“With a long flowing beard?”

“Maybe a Chinese drag queen,” I suggested. “A bad Chinese drag queen.”

“Evan-”

“Just a joke,” I said, and picked up Good Health for a closer look. “I see what you mean. Burmese, not Chinese.”

“But showing the Chinese influence. And very old, I think.”

“Valuable?”

“I would think so. There is a man I know, he has a stall at the large indoor market. Every few months I sell him a ruby.”

“Where do you get the rubies?”

“I did not tell you about the rubies? It seems to me we drank the ayet piu and I told you the story of my life.”

“Not all of it. You got as far as India, and the deputy governor-general of Goa.”

“The former deputy governor-general. I never told you of my marriage? I married an Indian gem trader based in Jaipur. He made frequent trips to Burma, and he always wanted me to go with him. Are you sure I didn’t tell you this?”

“I would remember.”

“I was always unwilling to go with him, because he was smuggling stones, and I was afraid he would get caught. And finally I said yes, and we stole into Burma illegally, and one day he gave me a packet of rubies to hold because he feared his partners would betray him and rob him. And then he disappeared, and days later I heard his body had been found floating in the Irriwaddy. His throat was cut.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“I had no papers, I had no money, I had no way to get out of Burma. I went to the Indian consulate and waited for hours to see an awful little man, and he listened and nodded and made notes, and I never heard from him again. When I went back he would not even see me. I went to other consulates and they laughed at me. Evan, I am a citizen of nowhere in the world! I have lived in so many countries but belong to none of them. I have no passport. How could I have a passport? I have no nationality. I feel myself more Russian than anything else, but my family fled Russia seventy years ago. They picked the wrong side and they left.”

“You know,” I said, “this is going to sound farfetched, but there’s a decent chance of a Romanov restoration in Russia. The country’s very unstable, and there seems to be a groundswell of monarchist sentiment.”

“You think it is truly possible?”

“I think anything’s possible,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I’m associated with people who are working hard to make it happen. Our candidate for tsar is a grand duke with first-rate credentials, and I think his popular support base is growing nicely. Oh, I wouldn’t rush out and put my money in tsarist bonds, not just yet. But I think we’ve got a chance.”

“And if your grand duke becomes the tsar? Then will I be able to get a Russian passport?”

“You could probably get more than that,” I said. “You’re probably in line for a title. Your grandfather was a count or something, wasn’t he?”

“My great-grandfather,” she said. “My grandfather was a general in the Kuomintang.”

“The point is you’re descended from the Russian nobility. You can’t expect a restoration of lands and privileges, but you might wind up with a title.”

“A title,” she said. “I would be happy with a passport and a plane ticket. Any sort of passport, and a ticket to any place but Burma. I can’t stay here much longer, Evan. I am down to my last ruby.”

“The ring?”

She nodded, and rubbed the tip of her forefinger against the dark red stone. “I had a little packet of them,” she said. “I know nothing about rubies. I was afraid a dealer would try to cheat me. And I knew the stones would be more valuable outside of Burma. In Amsterdam, say, or London or Paris. But even in India they would bring a higher price than here. That is why Nizam was able to make money buying rubies here and smuggling them back to Jaipur.”

“So you didn’t want to sell them all.”

“And get worthless kyat for them? No, of course not. I found a dealer who seemed to be honest, or at least more honest than the rest of them. And I sold him a stone and used the money to live on, and when it was gone I went back and sold him another stone. I thought the rubies would last forever, but nothing lasts forever. I have rent to pay and I have to feed myself, and I spend far too much money on bad whiskey. But I have nothing else, Evan, and so I buy ayet piu and drink it.”

“Isn’t there any kind of work you can do?”

“I tried giving English lessons. But so many Burmese speak English, especially the older people who remember when the British were here. And my English is not so good, anyway. There is no other work for me.” She fingered the ring. “The last ruby. I have money enough for a few more weeks, maybe a month. And then I sell the ring, and in a few months that money is gone. It is no good, Evan. I must get out of Burma.”

“It’s good the Englishman in Room 514 didn’t run off with your ring.”

“It is funny. I thought he might. And I almost hoped he would, because that would mean I would not have to sell it.” She held out her hand so I could look at the stone. “It was not in the packet,” she said. “Those were all unset stones. This was a gift, Nizam gave it to me. It is all I have left from my marriage.”

“Maybe you won’t have to sell it,” I said. “Speaking of selling, what do you suppose these are worth?”

“The carvings? I don’t know. They are Burmese, which makes them much rarer than the Chinese. And they are old, and very finely done. A few hundred each, certainly.”

“Dollars?”

“Of course. Perhaps much more than that. They could be valuable rarities, museum pieces, even. But you cannot take them out of Burma because they are antiques.”

“And you couldn’t bring them into the U.S.”

“Because they are old?”

“Because they are ivory. The importation of ivory is prohibited in order to discourage poachers from killing elephants.”

“But this elephant was killed hundreds of years ago.”

“The law doesn’t distinguish between old and new ivory.”

“And does it work? Does it stop the slaughter of elephants?”

“Maybe it slows it down a little. Anyway, we can’t take these guys out of Burma or into the United States. Maybe the best thing to do is sell them here. Except-”

“Yes?”

“Well, the man who got killed didn’t just stick these in his pocket. He had them taped to the small of his back. He went to a lot of trouble to safeguard them.”

“Yes. I think perhaps they are stolen.”

“I was thinking the same thing.”

“From an important collection,” she said. “Perhaps from the National Museum.”

“So they might be extremely valuable.”

“Yes.”

“And completely unsalable. We can’t take them out of Burma or into the U.S., and we can’t sell them here. In fact, if they’re important pieces and they’ve been stolen recently, it’s probably dangerous to have them in our possession.”

“That is possible,” she agreed.

“Well, I’m really glad I took them off the corpse,” I said, “and even happier that I sent you chasing after them. When they’re done hanging us for the kilo of heroin, they can string us up all over again for stealing national relics.” I shook my head. “I never should have sent you to the Strand, Katya.”

“But it was an adventure,” she said. “And a gentleman bought me a drink, and I listened to a Chinese man play Cole Porter. He played well, Evan. The music did not sound Chinese at all.”

“That’s remarkable.”

She put her hand on mine. “And I did what you asked me to do. So now it is your turn, my Vanya. Take me out of this country.”

“Heroin, ivory, and thou,” I said. “Three things I can’t take out of Burma.”

“But you will.”

“I’ve been thinking,” I said, “and there might be a way. Do you have any money at all?”

“Just kyat, and not very much. A few thousand.”

“Let me have a couple hundred.”

“All right.”

“And have a look across the street every once in a while, in case I can’t slip past the clerk when I come back.”

“All right.”

“And hide those things, the dope and the carvings.”

“Where?”

Where indeed? “Lock the door,” I said, “and if the cops come, throw them out the window.”

“All right.”

“The statue and the carvings, I mean. Not the cops.”

“I knew what you meant, Evan. This carving is Good Luck. Touch him before you go.”

“And his buddies are Good Health and Long Life? I’ll tell you what,” I said. “I’ll touch them all.”