Sea of Lies: An Espionage Thriller (13 page)

Nolan hadn’t been paying much attention to their surroundings, leaving the vigilance to Zeya and the driver while he focused on impressing Millie. He did notice how quiet Rangoon’s streets were, an observation that had eluded him previously on the madcap drives of the past thirty hours. It was a combination of a cultural adversity to noise, and many fewer vehicles.

At a long red light on Wai Zayan Dar Street, one of the main thoroughfares, he was struck by the contrasts. On the right, rich men and their many caddies and gofers hacked mercilessly to free golf balls from the rough. One caddie shaded the patron’s head with an umbrella. The second lugged the bag, while fetchers lurked on the edge of the fairway, anticipating the next slice or duck hook. To the left, peasants toiled up to their knees in muck to weed and harvest vegetables, using roughly the same chopping motions as the golfers. He was going to comment, but Millie had dozed off against his shoulder.

The driver made an unannounced U-turn up the ramp to an overpass. Nolan thought they were shaking off a pursuer and protectively draped himself over Millie, pinning her to the filthy seat. She wasn’t impressed. Nolan heard Zeya break into laughter. “Relax, this is way everyone drive to airport.”

Nolan was far from at ease. Leaving Rangoon could be hard if Teller wanted to stop him. The first airport road sign appeared fifteen minutes later, adding to the butterflies. They drove past a landfill. In the afternoon sunshine, there was so much glittering PET water bottle trash that the ground seemed heaped with menacing sapphire shards. Closer to the airport, they passed the Myanmar Hotel, a newish three-star box. Nolan figured that Burma’s oppressive Directorate of Defense Services Intelligence had staked out the lobby and was bugging and tapping every room, looking for regime critics . . . or him. The last mile, several deep foundations dug out of the dark red soil looked like they were ready to receive the MH370 bulldozed bodies. The sweat crescents under his armpits grew out of proportion to the healthy AC output in the SUV.

 They pulled up at international departures. Zeya and the driver wrestled Millie’s suitcases onto a cart. Zeya walked her through the security screen. Nolan watched as she passed through without mishap and headed to the Myanmar Air check-in counter. Their plan was that Zeya would see her to passport control, and return downstairs to look for him.

Nolan delayed another two minutes and put his small duffel and laptop bag through the X-ray machine. He was on his own to manage the twin tasks of first checking in as himself on the 7 p.m. Tiger Airways, and next on Myanmar Air’s 6:10 p.m. flight as Mr. Larson. Nolan’s fallback was Millie’s cell phone. Behind that he had Zeya’s number ready on redial, and those of Ryder and Hecker written on the back of Hecker’s card. On principle, he’d refused Martin’s phone number: if the situation was that desperate, the ambassador wouldn’t be able to help.

He took a deep breath as he reached the front of the line. Presenting his e-ticket printout and copy of the passport photo page, he explained, “My passport was stolen only yesterday, and the US embassy is closed Saturdays and Sundays. I changed my flight to return today instead of tomorrow, as my wife’s mother is ill. I hope you can help me.” He pressed his right knee against the check-in counter to keep it from involuntarily knocking.

The forty-year-old bejeweled counter attendant flashed a look of sympathy. “Oh, I’m so sorry you lost your passport. The exit counter is upstairs. I don’t know if they accept a photocopy. You can try. Do you want to carry your bag and check it at the gate? That way, you have your things if you don’t get on the plane.”

Nolan thanked the pretty lady, gathered his boarding pass and passport copy, and walked off toward the staircase leading to passport control. Twenty meters on, he circled back to the Myanmar Air check-in counters where he saw Millie, trailed by Zeya, walking away from the counter looking pleased. He avoided eye contact and queued up.

Hecker had correctly surmised that the airlines’ passenger reservation systems weren't tied into Burma’s new immigration network. Canada’s Derrick Larson had no problem checking in and receiving a boarding pass, despite never having entered Burma. However, Nolan wasn't prepared to hope that lightning would strike twice by putting Mr. Larson in front of a clerk working the counter upstairs. That exit would have to be performed by Robert Nolan. It was now 4:45 p.m., so there was plenty of time to navigate whatever obstacles remained. He was hoping to see Zeya. Perhaps he was around, keeping a low profile.

Upstairs, there weren’t many people in the exit lines labeled “Seamen” (
Huh?
), “Myanmar Passport Holders,” and “Foreigners,” so he angled to the right and handed over his passport copy and Tiger Air boarding pass. In a calm voice that disguised his racing heart and sweaty palms, he explained how lunch or dinner Saturday must have been when someone stole his passport, as it was gone Saturday night when he undressed for bed. The official pressed an unseen button, and within a minute a boss type sauntered over to confer. The heavyset supervisor had a brief discussion with the desk officer and escorted Nolan to a private office to the side.

Nolan half expected to find Teller sitting behind the desk, picking his teeth with the KA-BAR knife used on Kyaw. Mercifully, they were alone. The supervisor came to the point. “Mr. Nolan, without valid passport you cannot leave Myanmar. You have to go to US embassy on Monday and get temporary US travel document or new passport.”

“Yes, I originally had a booking back tomorrow night, but my wife’s mother is in the hospital in critical condition. I need to get back to Singapore tonight.”

“Oh, I see. A family emergency.” The supervisor leaned forward, the light gleaming off his bald forehead and pudgy hands pressed together as if in prayer.

Nolan nearly laughed aloud as he realized the bureaucrat wasn’t planning to arrest him. “Sir, is there any way I can pay a fine for this inconvenience?”

“Well, yes. There is on-the-spot fine. It is one hundred US dollars.”

Nolan thought about arguing, figuring Singapore fifty dollars was the market rate. On second thought, he had the last hundred in his wallet, and as the poor bastard who owned the Toyota pickup wasn’t going to need it, it might as well go to this corrupt toad.

“You wait here.” Mr. Toad pocketed the bill and walked out of the office, returning three minutes later with several colorful initialed stamps adorning Nolan’s passport photocopy. Nolan was a free man. He walked out of the office, a load of bricks lifting off his chest. Departures was now his domain, with an hour to kill before the doors shut on the earlier Myanmar Airways flight.

The mix of boutiques and trinket counters didn’t grab him, though to be fair, even free vintage champagne might not have induced him to stop. His pair of boarding passes indicated gates four (Tiger) and three (Myanmar). He hoped they were far apart. Upon clearing the second security check and X-ray station and making his way downstairs, he saw that there were only about thirty feet separating them. Damn. At gate three, Millie was reading vintage le Carré,
Smiley’s People
. He was more of an Elmore Leonard fan himself. He took a seat at the far end beyond gate four, one of the few passengers in the vicinity.

He hadn’t made much progress on
Out of Sight
when trouble appeared in the form of two brown-shirted officers and Mr. Toad. Nolan saw the three making a beeline, and knew that he was the destination.

“Come with me. You are being deported to Myanmar for lack of proper travel papers.” Mr. Toad and his two companions weren’t very imposing, but Nolan wasn’t in a position to fight or flee. He wondered at the peculiar choice of words—“deported
to
Myanmar”—but Mr. Toad’s intent was clear, semantics aside.

Deflated, all Nolan could muster was, “I have a copy of my passport, which you stamped and signed not thirty minutes ago. What’s the problem?”

Before the guards could restrain him, Nolan rose and stepped briskly toward Millie. She’d seen the commotion and was staring blankly. He mouthed a silent
no
and sped up so the brown shirts could catch up only once he passed her. No one saw him drop her phone into her lap an instant before the guards grabbed his arms. Natural bullies, they frog-marched him back to the supervisor’s office. Mr. Toad had raced ahead and was already seated at the desk, plucking at the keyboard, the guards standing outside the open door.

“You cannot depart Myanmar without proper passport. You must leave airport and stay in city.”

“What about the hundred-dollar fine? And my flight? My mother-in-law is dying.”

“Perhaps, but that not my problem. Here, I return to you one hundred-dollar bill I found on desk. You left behind.” Mr. Toad stood up, the cue for his underlings to step inside. Nolan pocketed the note.

One airport cop took the duffel, set it on the desk and unzipped it. Mr. Toad gave the insides a rummaging but found nothing of interest. Nolan’s laptop bag survived further cursory inspection. Derrick Larson’s boarding pass and passport were safe in his pocket for the time being, as no one bothered to search Nolan’s person.

“What is the PIN for your mobile phone?” Mr. Toad’s question sent an electric jolt down Nolan’s spine.

“What? My cell phone? My phone was stolen Saturday. I don’t have a cell phone any longer. Did someone turn it in to the police?”

“What is PIN for cell phone that you claim is stolen?”

Nolan felt dizzy. Teller was on to him. Who else would try to stop him from leaving the country and want access to his smartphone’s contents? Nolan had no intention of providing the mix of complex characters and swipes required to use his phone. “I want to speak with someone at the US embassy. Please contact the United States
chargé d’affaires
. I have the number,” he said, thinking he’d have Mr. Toad call Hecker instead.

“Not necessary. Person coming to airport to take you until US embassy open Monday. Here in one hour. You wait downstairs.”

Mr. Toad spoke rapidly in Burmese. One guard picked up Nolan’s duffel and computer bag; the other pulled his nightstick and once again took Nolan’s upper arm. The three of them walked down an internal staircase that took them to the arrivals hall. Whatever hope he had of Zeya coming to his rescue died there. His captors told him to stand at an empty counter across the hall from the visa on arrival kiosk and before the rows of immigration counters. Mr. Toad walked away without looking back and disappeared into a side office, doubtlessly to phone Teller or his men to confirm that Nolan was in custody. The two guards loitered nearby, paying him little attention.

What was it Nolan had that Teller wanted? By now Teller was aware that they’d been back out to Airstrip One, and possibly knew the DEA had samples from the site of the burned-out shed. Torturing Nolan would fill in some gaps, but killing him would make matters worse by bringing the press and US government into the equation.

After he escaped from Thailand, rumors first put Teller in South America before a decade in South Africa. Maybe Teller was going to take a leaf from his host countries’ security services playbooks and simply have Nolan disappear. If so, the embassy inquiries weren’t likely to produce more than a skeleton two decades later.

None of these speculations calmed his nerves. But what if the situation wasn’t that dramatic? Maybe it was simply a Nolan-for-Teller swap? The police and Ryder had hit Teller’s office and home simultaneously at four. Maybe they’d actually taken Teller into custody, and now his fallback was to snatch Nolan and make a straight-up trade? That might not be such a bad outcome . . . except for the part where that murdering lunatic went free.

One of the guards wandered off and didn’t return. Nolan stood and waited, the minutes clicking away until his captors handed him over to far worse people. Mr. Toad was still out of sight, and probably didn’t want to be around if Nolan kicked up a fuss when Teller’s gunmen came to collect him. The second guard worked diligently on his phone, texting like a
Guinness
Book of World Records
aspirant.

It was 5:45 p.m. Nolan had fifteen minutes to get on that Myanmar flight or it might be another fifteen years. He touched the brown shirt’s shoulder. “Hello. Hello. I have to piss.” The brown shirt gave him a bovine look. Nolan repeated his request, grabbing his crotch to emphasize the urgency. The guard flashed a grin reserved for crazy foreigners and went back to messaging. With nothing to lose, Nolan walked behind the vacant counter and thumped the wood a couple of times with his foot to attract the guard’s attention. In an instant, Nolan had his zipper down and was waiting to let fly. The guard shouted, “No, no!” and waved his arms. Nolan repeated his request as he zipped up: he had to urinate
now
.

The guard said, “OK,” and picked up the duffel and laptop, motioning for Nolan to follow. On the way, Zeya eased out of the visa on arrival line and angled toward them. Nolan could have shouted for joy when they stepped into the men’s room and found it unoccupied. Within seconds, Zeya’s blows to the stomach and temple dropped the guard, his head hitting the tiles with force.

“Change clothes now! They have cameras in toilets. We don’t have time.”

Nolan changed with his back against the door, ripping off his clothing and pulling on a loud shirt, shorts and a long-billed cap. Zeya dragged the unconscious guard into a stall, piled the duffel on top of him, locked the cubicle and climbed out. The DEA agent grabbed Nolan’s computer bag and said, “I send this to Singapore Monday. Do you have other passport and boarding pass?”

“Yes.”

“Follow me. We try for flight.” They headed back into the arrivals hall, where nothing had changed. Walking at a normal pace made Nolan want to scream. They passed the counter where he’d faked the whiz, walked another thirty feet and took a left through an unlocked door. The narrow, brightly lit cement block–walled corridor had a handful of Immigration Department doors lining either side. The longest sixty-foot walk of his life ended at another gray door with a push-release handle. Zeya led him out into the humid twilight, jet fuel–soaked air clinging to their skin. His guide turned right and started trotting alongside the building, Nolan dogging his steps.