‘You can trust Run Run. I can’t vouch for Alak. I have never met him. But he’s a hero round here. Normally he spends his time carrying out raids behind the Burmese border but Run Run says he is willing to meet with us in the mountains to the north and see what can be done. He is taking a big risk—if he’s caught he will be handed straight over to the Burmese junta to be executed. Run Run says he wants to help you to find the volunteers.’

‘Run Run knows him personally?’

‘I think she knows him very personally. I think they were childhood sweethearts, they grew up together. There was talk of them marrying but her mother put a stop to that—he’s a Buddhist and she’s a Christian. But Alak will die fighting, that is a certainty, and Run Run will probably live out her life here in the camp; that too is a sad fact.’

‘How did she end up in here?’

‘She was on the run for most of her life because of her mother. Run Run was brought up fighting the Burmese. Her mother is a famous fighter. Her name’s Mo. She once commanded a platoon of fighting women who were feared all over Burma. They took out many armed Burmese units. Sometimes through direct combat, other times they were used as decoys. Either way, she was feared and revered. She was a force to be reckoned with. She and her children were on the run from the Burmese for many years but, to keep them safe, Mo went into hiding and has remained there. She can have nothing to do with her children if they’re to have a hope of staying alive. They would be prime targets for assassination by the Burmese. Run Run settled here and looks after abandoned kids, women without families, those who are disabled, rape victims, victims of sex trafficking…she is a great woman. Never says much, just gets on with it. She’s a tough cookie. She maintains strong links with the KNLA.’

‘Is that why she isn’t married, Riley—because of Alak?’

‘Partly, and maybe because when she was a teenager the Burmese sacked the village she was staying in, and they took her and six others as porters and comfort women. They were imprisoned in the camp for six months, made to carry forty-kilo loads all day and service the men at night. Most of them died. But Run Run managed to escape.’

‘How?’

‘One night she persuaded one of the guards to take her to an area at the edge of the camp. Whilst he was raping her she smashed his skull with a rock. They didn’t discover she was missing for twelve hours. By that time she had been found by the KNLA. The man who rescued her was Mongkut. He was a ferocious fighter. He was a good man. He didn’t deserve to die.’

‘Are we sure he was targeted?’

‘Yes.’ Riley stopped in his tracks and looked hard at Mann. ‘As were the five volunteers. Someone chose them for a reason, Mann.’

58

Mann wiped the sweat from his brow. They had been waiting for nearly an hour. Mann was out of sight in the back of Riley’s battered old Suzuki jeep, opposite the camp entrance watching the four policemen sitting on the logs, eating their dinner.

Riley switched the headlights off and they sat and waited. It could be a while; time arrangements were never an exact thing in refugee camps. Night descended so fast that only the mosquitoes saw it coming—they were out in force tonight. Mann could hear them as they did the rounds of the car, searching for warm blood. Mann was lucky—for some reason they never bit him. Riley was not so fortunate; he slapped his neck and squashed a fat one as it sat feasting. Then they saw Run Run. Riley switched the lights back on. She appeared at the camp entrance.

‘If she has any trouble getting out I will go over and try and help but I don’t want to unless I have to—sometimes it just makes it worse to interfere, especially when they’ve been drinking. They can turn nasty.’

Mann watched Run Run negotiating her way past the policemen. It was a curious thing to watch. They wanted to make sure she wasn’t carrying anything, they wanted to frisk her. The inspection would not be hurried; they had all night and nothing to do but talk about women and get drunk. Run Run knew the best strategy to survive. She used it now, laughing and flirting coyly with the eager-faced guards. As she walked away Mann watched them grin gormlessly at her dis appearing back as their eyes slipped down to watch the merest suggestion of a wiggle. Her body might be still playing the game but she had stopped smiling the instant she turned her back on them—job done. She was one of those women whose beauty was just a tool for her. It had not brought her happiness. She made her way across the road to Riley’s jeep. She walked, purposefully but unhurriedly, to the car.

Riley turned the engine on and gave the police a friendly wave, muttering ‘wankers’ under his breath. Mann kept out of sight. Run Run got into the front passenger seat.

‘Wait a few minutes. The women will help us,’ said Run Run. ‘We cannot be seen to go into the hills. They will make a diversion.’ On cue there was a rush of action and screaming and a plume of smoke began rising from the far end of the camp. The four policemen ran off in the direction of the new building. ‘Now we must turn around,’ she said. Riley did as he was told, spinning the car quietly round and heading away from the camp and further north into the hills. As they set off Mann saw Run Run reach inside her shawl and take out a small wrapped cloth bundle she had been hiding.

Either side of the unlit road was thick darkness. They drove for an hour and a half before turning onto one of the tracks that cut a narrow road up into the hills. Their headlights flashed vivid green over fleshy leaves and myriad small eyes peered back at them from the canopy of trees. Mann was starting to wonder how much more the old jeep was going to be able to take—this was definitely all-terrain country and the road was losing its battle to cut a clean path through the hillside. But as they climbed the trees got sparser and stars appeared overhead. Run Run tapped Riley’s shoulder. In the distance, between the black undergrowth on the far side of the slope, a torch was flashing. Riley dimmed the headlights to signal he had seen and they wound their way carefully off road and down to the edge of a wooded area.

A face lit by torchlight appeared at the driver’s window. The man was minus one eye—a scar sliced his face diagonally in half, so that one side no longer fitted the other. Another face peered in at the passenger side, an M36 rifle raised and pointed casually at Mann as it nestled in the crook of an arm that narrowed to a callused stump. The man wore a shortsleeved army shirt and on it was the badge of the KNLA: a white star on a blue background, topped by a red rising sun.

The man pointed his rifle butt towards a clearing further down and across the hillside. Riley inched the jeep slowly forward, over and down the edge of a cleared forest, where once a thriving village had stood but now nothing but the skeleton of a community remained. In front of the jeep, more men started to appear. Some were dressed in combat trousers and shirts, others wore dark T-shirts and cut-offs. They were all heavily armed.

Mann could see that these were hard, battle-torn men. Most were young, their sinewy forms moving slowly around the edge of the scene. Their faces were lit by the green cheroots they smoked, their eyes alert with tired wariness. These were men who were born to run and knew nothing but army life; they never got a day off and they never got a homecoming. They were men who looked as if they had lost their souls along the way and now had no idea what a life without struggle was like. They lived in an unreal world where the only hope was in believing that hope was enough. They took it in turns to stare suspiciously into the car. They eventually waved the car on. The jeep was being steered towards the left, down a sharp incline and then onto a level area. Once there, one of the fighters held up his hand for them to stop and get out of the car.