‘Thank you.’ He smiled at her. ‘Thank you for helping us.’ She did not answer him, but Mann saw a flicker of a smile cross her face as she bowed her head and acknowledged his words.

‘What’s Gee along for?’ Louis asked.

‘Gee is tagging along till we get to his village,’ answered Mann. ‘He is going to provide us with porters from his village and organise supplies for us along the way. He is making a substantial contribution.’ Everyone’s eyes went down to the canvas bags by Gee’s feet.

‘There’s no money to be made out of this, Gee,’ Louis said. ‘Are you sure you want to come?’

Gee spoke up. ‘I am coming along to get safe passage to my village. They need me. Anyway, no money to be made, but money will be lost if you do not find these five young people. The world will start with its sanctions and we will have a hard job shifting goods.’

‘Huh! I can smell bullshit a mile off, Gee,’ said Louis. ‘All you’d do then is make even more money on the black market. What’s your real reason for coming on this mission?’

The van fell silent. Run Run curled her legs beneath her and rested her head against the window. In the darkness Gee hid his face beneath his cap.

Mann watched his profile as he eventually spoke.

‘It is time for me. Now, I feel in my heart, I owe my village. I owe my people. I am old now. It is time I paid back. It is time I thought about my death and made payments for my afterlife.’

‘Huh,’ Louis scoffed. ‘That bit sounds right. So, ultimately the goal is selfish—you’ve become scared of dying and you’re trying to secure yourself a comfy ride into the next life?’

‘Yes. Yes. I admit it.’ He lifted his head and glared at Louis. ‘But also I feel it is time for me to go home.’ He spoke softly and with conviction. ‘And I want to go home to a country where I am allowed to live in peace. Politics is our only way for that. We must make the world care about us. We will not do that by killing the people who come to help us. Even if it only appears to be our fault, it will be enough to damage. I am sick of having no home.’

‘What’s the news from your village? Have they seen the five?’ asked Riley.

Gee nodded his head, solemnly. ‘I have been told that five weeks ago, a band of wild-looking Shwit came through the village. They shot elephants, destroyed crops. They took some of the women for porters. They killed a hundred people in the village—many women and children. The way they describe these Shwit, they are animals—wild dogs, savages. There were twenty of them. They had the five young foreigners with them.’ There was silence in the van as Gee continued, his head bowed; he looked suddenly much older than his sixty years.

‘I grew up with fear in a farming village, growing rice in the paddy fields. Each year, before the harvest could be picked, the Burmese army came. They came for porters, for food. They promised payment that never came. One year they took my father and when he became sick they left him to die, without water or food. Thay-ne, they call the porters—it means ghosts; they become the walking dead. Their bodies litter our forests, still carrying the sacks that killed them, they melt into one. I was taken as a boy to fight in the Shan State Army, as it was then, under the Opium King. We learnt how to fight. I grew up to believe that we had a chance. We had the arms then, we had the backing of the Opium King. We had the money to buy weapons, but when the King deserted us and we lost our last battle at Shooting Dog Hill, we no longer had a homeland to defend so I left the army and travelled through Thailand and into Europe. After some years I became the businessman you see today. But I know these men—the Shwit. I have seen what they do to the villagers. They rape and torture for nothing—and why? The villagers have nothing to give them. They are devils who eat the flesh of others.’

Mann looked across at Riley and at Sue. Sue blinked back.

‘It’s a rumour,’ Riley said dismissively. ‘Some animist tribes do it in Vietnam. But not here. People say it to scare the children. It’s “the Bogeyman will get you” stuff. Somehow the rumour has grown in the jungle.’

There was an uncomfortable silence from the back seat. Run Run was asleep or she was resting. Either way she had curled into a ball, unwilling to substantiate or deny the rumour; it was clear she didn’t want to partici pate in the discussion.

‘It’s no rumour,’ Louis said, and Sue muttered her agreement. ‘When we are out in the villages we hear a lot about it, firsthand accounts. It has to be believed.’

‘Believe it!’ Gee lifted his eyes beneath the rim of his cap as he looked at each in turn. ‘I, myself, have tasted human flesh.’

All eyes turned towards him in the gloom of the van. Even Riley kept quiet. They all looked at him expectantly. ‘Sometimes it is not enough to kill the bad man. They kill your family—you want more. You want to make them suffer like your family did. There are some men, some army captains, who capture enemy and eat them, cut their flesh while they live. One time our captain caught a man—another captain—a Burmese. He was responsible for the death of many villagers. Many of the men in our unit had family who were killed by him. He was a fat man. Our captain tied the man against a tree and he cut off his…’ Gee leant forward slightly and cupped his chest. ‘…Here. He cut off this…this, breast. He chopped it and mixed it with rice wine, with soy sauce, ginger. He placed it in bowl and gave it to us. We all must eat and share. I did not eat much. I was frightened to get a taste for it. The men were happy to see the Burmese captain suffer. It was good to eat from the man—to watch him in so much fear, so much pain. It was good. You understand?’ No one answered.

Strangely, a part of Mann did understand. Not that he ever wanted to eat another human being but did want to enact the most terrible revenge he could for his father’s death. He still burned inside with the pain of unrequited revenge. He wanted his day in front of the devil that he had put many faces to. He not only wanted revenge on the person that carried out his father’s death, but also on the man who ordered it. That man had condemned Mann to a life of endless searching, a life that would always be freezeframed in that terrible second in which he was made to watch his father’s execution. In those final few seconds as he waited for the axe to come down on his father’s head, Mann had known that he would never be the same again. Outside he grew strong and fit and he studied weapons and martial arts but inside he remained a broken youth, always searching for resolution, for justice.

Mann looked back at Run Run. She was no longer sleeping—he guessed that she had never been—but was sitting up, her hands clenched in her lap. Mann could see that in the dark her eyes were wet. He knew that Run Run had seen more dreadful things than any man in that car.

64

Thomas stared at the ground. Jake had watched him drag his feet all day. He had said nothing. Jake knew that there was nothing to be said. He cried constantly. They had all watched Silke being raped so many times that she had stopped screaming hours before her long night was over. All night Thomas hadn’t taken his eyes from her. Jake knew what it was. He had to suffer with her. He could not let her die alone. Saw’s men had been animals. They had painted Thomas with his sister’s blood. Now Thomas was no longer part of the living. He was nearer to Silke than he was to them. Jake saw him stumble time and time again and Saw’s men came behind him and dragged him to his feet and hit him and punched him but he didn’t flinch or make a sound this time. He was walking in a nightmare.