The Burma Effect by Michael E. Rose Page B

back.”
    Mai hugged her knees on the reclining platform. Her sarong fell away slightly. Delaney cursed himself for the frisson her slender thighs elicited. He thought suddenly of Kate, remembered the last time they had had sex. A languorous Thailand evening was working its magic with his senses. He wondered how intense that might be for someone like Kellner, in a deeper, drug-induced trance that he never, apparently, quite allowed to end.
    â€œDo you think he might be dead, Frank?” Mai asked.
    Delaney thought about it for a while before answering, before deciding how much of an answer he wanted to give to this sad young woman sitting before him.
    â€œIt’s too early for us to talk like that,” Delaney said finally.
    â€œYou are a good man,” Mai said. “Nathan liked you.”
    â€œWe didn’t see each other much,” Delaney said.
    â€œHe liked you. He liked Montreal and he liked you.”
    Delaney didn’t push her too hard on the first meeting. He knew, from all his years as an interviewer, to circle the subject slowly in a case like this, to allow Mai to remember things at random and then to slowly ask for clarification, amplification, explanation. He knew that too many questions, too early in a case like this, would be counterproductive.
    He had already decided that there was no way Mai was hiding anything from him. He knew there was no reason for her to do that and he knew, he sensed, that she was telling him as much as she possibly could. They talked for a long while.
    â€œWho would be angry with Nathan, do you think?” Delaney asked eventually. “Were people complaining about his stories lately?” Mai looked up at Delaney.
    â€œYou know there are stories he wrote that made people angry,” she said.
    â€œNo, I really don’t anymore,” Delaney said. “What was he working on?”
    â€œHe would only tell me after, most times,” she said. “He liked to show me his stories when they came back from London by fax. Mostly gun stories, big weapon stories. Tanks. In lots of countries.”
    â€œWhat lately? Before he went away.” Delaney was avoiding the word disappeared .
    â€œNot so much lately. Less than before. He was working from here more lately. Less travel. Lots of phoning. Lots of time in there.” Mai pointed at Nathan’s study.
    â€œWho was angry at him, Mai?” Delaney asked again.
    She sat quietly, stroking one of her cats. Delaney began to wonder if she was indeed hiding something now or whether she was just trying to remember.
    â€œThere were some Australians who were mad once,” she said. “Two or three Australians. But a long while ago now. Months ago.”
    â€œAustralians.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhat were they angry about?”
    â€œOne of Nathan’s articles. He wrote about Australian rich men, you know, businessmen. What they were doing in Burma. He had other people in the story saying they should not be in there, that it is a bad place and that they shouldn’t work with the generals. Something like that.”
    â€œWhat sort of work were they doing over there?” Delaney asked.
    He knew that the answer, for Burma and for northern Thailand near the Burma border, could be any number of lucrative things. Timber, tobacco, construction of roads, casinos, the gem trade, the people trade, the drug trade—it was wide open if you knew the right general. But a very tricky part of the world to do business.
    â€œBuilding, I think,” Mai said. “Maybe a road. Hard to remember now.”
    â€œHave you got the article?” Delaney asked.
    â€œProbably in there,” she said, pointing again at Nathan’s study.
    â€œI’ll look in there soon,” Delaney said. “Will that be OK?”
    â€œNathan would say OK, I think,” she said.
    â€œGood. What did the Australians do?” he asked.
    â€œMany telephone calls. Nathan said they were