CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER
THEY LEFT TEMPLE AT THE hotel to keep watch, and Nash and Thura drove off in the Jeep.
Nash said, “I’m going to need some more things, Thura.”
“What things?”
Nash told him the items and then said, “I’ll also need access to a stovetop and an oven.”
“You need to cook some things?”
“Yeah.”
“But not food?” said Thura, with a sharp glance aimed at Nash.
“No, not food.”
Thura took him to two places where he got what he needed or close to it. And for ten dollars American, Nash got the use of a small, makeshift kitchen tacked onto a building on the outskirts of Bhamo for a few hours.
“You make no drugs here,” warned the owner. “For sure,” he added firmly.
“No drugs for sure,” replied Nash.
After the man left Thura said, “Why did you want stump remover?”
“Principally because it has potassium nitrate.”
They mixed the stump remover with white sugar. Nash put it in a plastic bottle and had Thura shake it vigorously.
Then Nash heated up a frying pan, put some water in it, and sprinkled in the mixture of sugar and potassium nitrate. He had Thura continuously stir the concoction with a spatula until it dissolved.
“The water will boil off,” said Nash. “And then we’ll have what we need.”
While Thura watched the pan, Nash grabbed some shoelaces they had bought and tied them together to make one long strand.
He then put the lace in the pan and, with Nash holding on to one end of the lace, they took turns using a spatula to move the single lace around until the entire strand was equally coated with the slurry.
He instructed Thura to get a baking sheet from a cabinet, and then Nash placed the single lace on it in a sine configuration.
He had Thura heat the oven to three hundred degrees, and they cooked the lace for twenty minutes until it had assumed a golden tinge.
They then let it cool for five minutes, leaving the lace very stiff.
Nash cut off four short strips from the lace and left the rest intact.
“Okay, part one is done,” said Nash. “Time for part two.”
At Nash’s request, Thura had looked for and found in a recycling bin an old battery pack for a cordless drill.
Nash unscrewed the housing and took out the cell pack.
“Batteries?” said Thura. “But these are no good.”
“I don’t need the batteries,” replied Nash. “I need their casings.”
He removed the four tubes from the battery pack, pushed out the electronics, and was left with the four casings.
He had previously cut four pieces of cardboard into circular shapes, and set one casing on each.
Using a glue gun they had purchased, Nash affixed each casing to a separate piece of cardboard.
He then poured the remaining slurry from the pan into each of the casings.
He finished it off by sticking one short strip of shoelace into the casings, leaving about two inches of shoelace free of the slurry.
“It’ll harden and then we’re good to go.”
“I don’t understand any of this, but if you say good to go, okay.”
Nash pocketed the long lace and thought, I hope to God we’re good to go.
* * *
Late that night Thura came to their room and showed them the newspapers, which said a search was ongoing for the persons who had killed the KIA soldier. Thura told them that they had not yet identified Zeya.
“He carried no ID. But once they do find out who he is, they will find out we were friends and worked together. Then they will start looking for me.”
Nash said, “What will you do?”
“For me, it is time to leave Myanmar. To search for a new life.”
“Where will you go?” asked Temple.
“I know Amrita wanted you to take her to America. I do not want to go to America. They do not like people like me, I’ve heard.
I’m not white and I take jobs from Americans.
No, I will go somewhere else. India, maybe South America.
I will fit in better there. Much better.
I can work and have a little house and grow old without bullets flying around. ”
“How will you get there?” asked Temple.
“I will find a way.”
“Look, you help get us out of Myanmar and I’ll pay your way to wherever you want to go,” said Temple.
Thura looked at him closely. “Is this bullshit or the truth?”
“I mean it, Thura.”
“Okay, I will hold you to that.”
And they had left it at that.
They took turns surveilling the Friendship Hotel, where the four people were staying. The only time anyone had ever left was when the young woman went to a pharmacy. Thura was coming on duty and Nash off, but Nash followed her while Thura settled in to keep eyes on the hotel.
Wearing his hooded cloak, Nash went into the pharmacy and bought some mosquito repellant and gum. The woman was getting a prescription filled. Nash drew close enough to overhear the pharmacist confirm in English that the prescription was for digoxin.
Nash didn’t know the term, but he searched for it on his phone.
Another name for digitalis. Probably for the elderly woman, who must have a heart problem of some kind.
While pretending to look over some headache medications Nash studied the woman’s reflection in a mirror set up on one wall. She was in her late twenties or early thirties, he estimated, tall, wiry, fit, and focused.
After she departed he took his time leaving, paying for the gum and repellent. He knew where the woman was going back to, and if she was suspicious of his presence in the pharmacy, his not following her back would hopefully alleviate that concern.
When he returned to the hotel Thura told him that no one else from the party had left the hotel. Nash filled him in on the digitalis, and Thura said, “My mother took that before she died. Big heart problems.” He tapped his thick chest. “I might have them, too, who knows?”
“Surely you’ve been checked for it,” said Nash.
“Of course! I go to doctor every week to make sure I am good to go,” said Thura with heavy sarcasm.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Not to worry. I hear your health care is not too good, either. What is it you Americans do with all your money anyway?”
“It mostly goes into the pockets of a few, and the rest get the scraps.”
Thura’s expression screwed up in confusion. “Then why not change it, so the few don’t get so much?”
“Ever heard of the term lobbyists?”
Thura shook his head.
“Well, I wish I hadn’t, either.” Nash paused. “You’re taking a risk helping us. You don’t even know what we’re here for.”
“Life is always risky, at least for people like me. And I know you are interested in the prison and the four people in that hotel. Do I need to know more?”
“With the money my boss will pay you, how will you get out of here?”
“How will you get out of here?”
Nash eyed him and a possibility that had already occurred to him solidified in his mind. “Maybe we can go together.”
“Okay, but you have to think ahead, my friend, to all the bad that can happen and say to yourself, ‘What can I do if the shit goes down?’ I don’t mean when it goes down. I mean before it blows up in your face.”
“I agree with you.”
Thura laughed. “I will tell my children that. You agree with me.”
“Wait, you have children?”
“No, man, but maybe someday. If I live long enough to find a good woman.”
Nash wondered if Amrita might have been a good woman for Thura.
Thura’s eyes narrowed. “Good women are hard to come by, for men like me.”
“That’s something else you can tell your children that I agree with you on.”
Nash left him there, drove the Jeep to a gas station, and filled its tank and then half filled a five-gallon metal canister that he’d had Thura procure. He then drove back to where they were staying. He woke up his boss and explained his plan to him.
Temple said, “It sounds crazy as hell. In fact, crazy enough to work.”
“Let’s hope so, because there ain’t no Plan B.”