Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

AMY TAN
Zilpha leaned toward him. “Do you want to watch it again?”
Harry shook his head. He was emotionally exhausted. He took
the tape from the camcorder and gently wrapped it in the white cloth,
then slipped it into his shirt pocket. Walter and Heinrich never men­
tioned a Christmas surprise in the jungle. But what did Walter re­
member? He was probably brain-damaged from that brick that hit his
head. And Heinrich was perpetually soused, that Teutonic drunkard.
“Are you still going to Rangoon?”
“Yes, of course...No...I don’t know.”
“You think they’re still in the jungle?”
Harry’s mind was racing. The witnesses had said they were in
Rangoon. But on the tape, they were stuck because the bridge had
collapsed. The tribe wasn’t able to lead them around Bagan, Man­
dalay, Rangoon....The next minute the truth sprang forward. The
lousy bastards had set him up! All those tour sites and witnesses,
rubbish. What a bloody blinkered fool he had been. And then he re­
membered that his reports had kept the focus on his friends. Belinda
said that the story was splashed all over the news in the United
States. That had been part of his plan—in fact, he rationalized, that
was the main one. So now what? Was Marlena still in the jungle?
Anything could have happened in the days since the tape ended.
Belinda and Zilpha remained silent, waiting patiently for Harry to
announce his decision. Even before meeting him, the two had dis­
cussed the possibility that the TV Myanmar search was a sham, and
that Harry had been their sucker. He was like many people who
were desperate, needing to hang on to any kind of hope. Several net­
works besides GNN suspected a public relations ruse, but they had
decided not to raise doubt yet about the possibility of concocted eye­
witnesses, since there was nothing solid to counter either Harry’s be­
lief or popular opinion.
He turned to the women. “I have to get back to the lake, to that
damn resort. They’re somewhere near there, that’s clear.”
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