Missing In Rangoon

“It’s the rule. He’s not officially your client. It would be good if you didn’t refer to him as your client inside the courtroom.”

The system seemed to be not that different from a Thai court, Calvino thought. Forget about burden of proof, rules of evidence, questioning the Crown’s case, as those approaches were beside the point. Only guilty people were brought to a courtroom. They were there to have their guilt confirmed. Wai Wan waited in the warden’s room, having no idea how his fortune had suddenly turned for the better. Soon he’d be delivered to the courtroom and would discover whether his good fortune would continue, bringing him freedom, or his guilt would be rubber-stamped.

“It’s better you talk to Wai Wan’s lawyer. He can fill you in on the details.”

Ohn Myint’s job wasn’t to defend or explain the system but to translate for Calvino at the hearing. He would say what he wanted to say, and she’d convey the part of it that she thought was appropriate. The prosecutor would say what he would say, and she’d translate that for Calvino in full. And Wai Wan would testify and she’d translate that too. The judge would say little. He would take notes as she translated what Calvino said. The fact that Calvino was to be allowed in the courtroom was already a victory. It was highly unusual and had been difficult to arrange, though she didn’t feel it was necessary to explain this background to Calvino.

“This isn’t going to work,” Calvino said.

“It’s up to you. We are here. Arrangements have been made. What is there to lose?”

“I don’t think Mya Kyaw Thein’s going to show.”

“Mr. Calvino, she would do anything for her brother. You shouldn’t worry. Let her find you.”

“She’s pretty good at finding me when she wants,” said Calvino.

Relax, he told himself. She’d materialize out of thin air just as she’d done at the 50th Street Bar. Only this appearance would be different. She’d be in the audience this time, for her brother’s performance.

He felt a tap on his shoulder, turned around and saw a strange woman looking down at him.

“You don’t recognize me? That is the way it should be.”

She took his briefcase from the table and walked away. He turned and started to get up. Ohn Myint pulled on his arm, and he sat back down. He watched as she walked several tables away and sat the briefcase down in front of the middle-aged lawyer chewing betel nut.

ELEVEN

The Trial of Pigeons

MYA KYAW THEIN had entered in lockstep with the betel nut vendors who went from table to table—three old ladies under an umbrella. She looked and dressed like she was part of their group. An older woman in the middle of the group carried a large tray of yellow tofu cut into slices. The other two carried plastic stools to set up shop under an old gnarled tree that looked as if it might have been a seedling when the courthouse first opened. The tree and the courtyard had seen generations of defendant witnesses, families and friends of the defendants, touts and brokers, senior lawyers, junior lawyers and Crown prosecutors, all out under the morning sun, sitting around tables waiting for their case to be called.

The Black Cat had slipped into the courtyard dressed like a family member of someone with a court appearance. One of those sad people, dressed in worn clothes and feet caked with dust, who only saw her loved one on court appearance days. She was unrecognizable from the star who had won over the audience at the 50th Street Bar. She had transformed herself into just another faceless peasant. To MI agents milling around the grounds, she would have been invisible.

Wasting no time, she took a stool beside her brother’s lawyer, setting Calvino’s briefcase down beside his stool. She found Calvino’s eye and gestured for him to join her and the lawyer.

Ohn Myint said, “You’re being summoned.”

“You’re coming too?”

“Yes, I need to talk to the lawyer.”

As soon as Calvino sat at the table, Mya Kyaw Thein wasted no time introducing him as her brother’s American lawyer. A plump Burmese man with large, round jowls that collapsed like airbags as he leaned over his tea, he listened to Calvino, eyeing him closely. She spoke in English so that Calvino could hear himself described as a New York lawyer who’d flown in to assist in the case. Then she switched into Burmese to talk about the briefcase. Calvino was lost as soon as she spoke in Burmese.

“What’s she saying to him?” he asked Ohn Myint.

“She’s saying you’re from

New York.”

“She said that in English.”

“She’s saying how famous you are in New York.”

“I’m from Bangkok,” he said, “and I’m not famous in New York.”

“Too much detail confuses people,” she said as Mya Kyaw Thein continued in Burmese to tell the lawyer how Calvino was a celebrity New York lawyer who took only high-profile cases, and that he should understand how lucky he was to have Calvino with him in the courtroom. Once the judge understood that a senior New York lawyer had come to defend a simple Burmese man, he would see that the country really had changed, and the American embassy would send an ambassador from Washington soon afterwards. And there was the matter of cash. It was in the briefcase.

“She’s telling him that the American government is watching the outcome of the trial with interest.”