Grandad, Thereэ's head on the beach

recognition.

'I thought they'd sent everyone to the immigration holding center,' I told Aung. 'What's Shwe doing here?'

'He came to collect his family,' said Aung. 'He's going back to Myanmar tomorrow.'

'How did he get out?'

Aung smiled.

'It isn't a prison,' he said. 'There are no locks. We sent him money, and he hiked to the bus stop and came back south.'

'But what about…?'

'The trial?' His eyes sparkled. 'Jimm, it's your country, so I'm sure you understand the system better than we do. Court procedures take time. Especially bringing a conviction against policemen. The witnesses would have to be there in the center for another four months before the case against the MP and his brother made it to court. One reason the center isn't secure is that they'd prefer it if we left. With no witnesses, the perpetrators can't be charged. And, honestly, what Burmese is going to sit in a holding cell for four months? Not earning. No money going back to his family. To the world community, it looks like the witnesses aren't reliable. The Thais can say they did all they could to bring a conviction, but those damned Maungs . ..'

I wasn't really surprised.

'You're right. No point.'

'Oh, there was a point, Jimm.' He sipped his tea and looked around the room. 'The point is that from a group of seventeen, sixteen survived. Shwe will have stories to tell his grandchildren. The others will have another life to do better with.'

'Did they all go back to Burma?' I asked.

'The survivors?'

'Yeah.'

Aung smiled for the first time.

'Look around you,' he said. 'You don't recognize them?'

'You're kidding me.'

I did look around. Of course I didn't recognize anyone other than Shwe. It had been dark that night and I was exhausted. I hadn't had time to study faces. And the Burmese? Well, they do kind of look alike.

'They're all here?' I asked.

'Every one of them. They all left the holding center and came back here to collect up this failed part of their lives and move on to the next misery.'

Arny leaned into my ear and voiced a thought that already nestled in my mind.

'You'd think they'd be happier to see you,' he said.

We stayed there for an hour. There were nods. Shwe practiced some English on me. But, largely, it was Burmese in conversation with Burmese. If we didn't leave soon, Arny and I were in danger of vanishing completely. But when I made a point of studying my watch and telling Aung we had to go, I noticed one or two stares in my direction. That was as excited as anyone got.

As Arny and I walked back to the Mighty X parked on the main street, it occurred to me that nobody had said thank you. There had been no leis, no cheek kisses, no gushy promises of eternal friendship. No Thai wais or name-card exchanges. Not even a greetings card with sixteen signatures. But as we climbed into the truck, I noticed that the party had broken up behind us. The guests were skulking their ways home in the shadows. Some would have to walk for an hour. And that's when I understood their gift to me. They had come. The first thought in every one of their minds was to get the hell out of this nutty country, but they'd stayed. They'd attended this non-party to pay respect to me. They didn't express their gratitude in words because it must be hard to show gratitude for something everyone else takes for granted. Freedom. Human rights. But they'd come…for me. Arny drove home and wisely made no comment about me bawling my eyes out beside him. He had a little bit of a sniffle going too.

It's common at the Lovely Resort and Restaurant to have parties to celebrate good fortune. In the past year we'd had exactly…one party to celebrate the engagement of Arny and Gaew. That was it. But our second party was something special. With everyone rushing off either for police interviews or to avoid police interviews, Sissi conducting live conference calls to Korea from a Bangkok studio, and Mair down in Pak Nam painting the walls of her forthcoming Burmese school, we'd had to wait five days before we could have a party to celebrate our victory on the high seas.

Because we were fundamentally broke, we couldn't afford to provide free booze for everyone. That, ironically, would have liquidated us. So we announced it was to be a traditional Aussie BYO party. The 'bring your own' was one of the few impressive cultural norms I'd picked up during my stay in Aus. You announce you're having a party, open your front door, and guests arrive with all the drink you need. That's the theory. I was doubtful it would work in Maprao. Thais expected to be catered for at parties. But because this was to be a cultural theme night, they dipped into their stills and their bottle cellars and turned up with a vast array of dangerous liquor. Luckily, I still had my stash of Chilean red. I was starting to wonder whether the stock I'd brought with me from Chiang Mai would ever run out.

Fortunately, the effects of the lady Viagra had worn off, so I wasn't likely to find any men in our district attractive. Certainly not engaged-Ed, who had left his new fiancee at home. There were plenty of other single men to choose from, were taste not an issue. The whole village was there, and it felt splendid for our little resort to have a blast of atmosphere. I decided we should have BYO nights more often. The monsoon was set at 'off' that night, so we could light garbage bonfires on the sand without filling up the cabins with smoke. The back stream was all but dry. The tide was low. There were even stars in the sky.

The Noys weren't there. The New York Times reporter had tried to rush the story through. There was never much hope of getting it into the actual newspaper, but we'd hoped for a subsidiary magazine piece. In the meantime the finished article with photographs did make it onto their Web site. Spotted early by Tweeters in Thailand, the story was already big on various radio stations, and Noy had repeated her statement to half a dozen newspapers. There was a quote from the duchess, saying that she bore no ill-will toward the poor student and would be happy to meet up with her-'to renew their friendship.' Channel Five was arranging that reunion on-air. A spokesman from Georgetown University was quoted as saying that they would be delighted to examine the medical records of the student who was too ill to pass her exams. More good news was that the Noys and the father were back in their house and were minor celebrities in their suburb. All the current attention made them safe. Only time would tell how deep the venom ran through the veins of the nobles. But that wasn't really good enough. As a sort of back-up, Sissi and I sent an anonymous e-mail from a U.S. account to the father of the duchess under the heading, Blackmail. It went on to say, We have photographs of your daughter at a drug party in D.C. Accept this version of the truth or we release them to the press and tell the real story of what happened in the States. We didn't have any evidence that the daughter attended a drug party, but given her lifestyle, it was fair to assume that she had. The fact that Sissi had hacked into the father's private e-mail account should have been enough to let him know we weren't just talk.

We were a couple of hours into the party. Everyone had brought seafood, so there was plenty to eat. Neither Bigman Beung nor Captain Kow had arrived, and my darling Lieutenant Chompu would be turning up late as he was coming directly from Phuket, where he'd been undergoing cosmetic surgery on his nose. The surgeon decided, as it was broken anyway, now would be a good time to set it to order. Evidently, misshapen noses were only fashionable in those who took the male role in gay relationships. If anything, Chompu would be going for the Audrey Hepburn look.

But the rest of Maprao had turned out in full. There were still news and radio reporters mingling and getting quotes from people who'd slept through the entire slaver night. Last count, there was one computer in Maprao. PI Meng was there, as well as a bunch of other people I'd never seen in my life. And the spotty guy from the Internet shop. And Ari, the monkey handler, who we had to keep away from Mair's cabin. The dogs were there-four-legged vultures, doing the 'I don't get fed by my owners' routine and stuffing their faces with barbecued seafood.

I was chaperoning Mair, keeping her away from the booze. One sniff and she was the Marchioness de Sade. The cheapest date on the planet. I knew I couldn't keep an eye on her the whole night. She'd sneak a shot of whiskey and be doing her Coyote Ugly on the bamboo table. So I wanted to get her alone and sober before all that happened.