“What things?”
Nash told him the items and then said, “I’ll also need access to a stovetop and an oven.”
“You need to cook some things?”
“Yeah.”
“But not food?” said Thura, with a sharp glance aimed at Nash.
“No, not food.”
Thura took him to two places where he got what he needed or close to it. And for ten dollars American, Nash got the use of a small, makeshift kitchen tacked onto a building on the outskirts of Bhamo for a few hours.
“You make no drugs here,” warned the owner. “For sure,” he added firmly.
“No drugs for sure,” replied Nash.
After the man left Thura said, “Why did you want stump remover?”
“Principally because it has potassium nitrate.”
They mixed the stump remover with white sugar. Nash put it in a plastic bottle and had Thura shake it vigorously.
Then Nash heated up a frying pan, put some water in it, and sprinkled in the mixture of sugar and potassium nitrate. He had Thura continuously stir the concoction with a spatula until it dissolved.
“The water will boil off,” said Nash. “And then we’ll have what we need.”
While Thura watched the pan, Nash grabbed some shoelaces they had bought and tied them together to make one long strand. He then put the lace in the pan and, with Nash holding on to one end of the lace, they took turns using a spatula to move the single lace around until the entire strand was equally coated with the slurry.
He instructed Thura to get a baking sheet from a cabinet, and then Nash placed the single lace on it in a sine configuration. He had Thura heat the oven to three hundred degrees, and they cooked the lace for twenty minutes until it had assumed a golden tinge. They then let it cool for five minutes, leaving the lace very stiff. Nash cut off four short strips from the lace and left the rest intact.
“Okay, part one is done,” said Nash. “Time for part two.”
At Nash’s request, Thura had looked for and found in a recycling bin an old battery pack for a cordless drill.
Nash unscrewed the housing and took out the cell pack.
“Batteries?” said Thura. “But these are no good.”
“I don’t need the batteries,” replied Nash. “I need theircasings.”
He removed the four tubes from the battery pack, pushed out the electronics, and was left with the four casings. He had previously cut four pieces of cardboard into circular shapes, and set one casing on each. Using a glue gun they had purchased, Nash affixed each casing to a separate piece of cardboard. He then poured the remaining slurry from the pan into each of the casings. He finished it off by sticking one short strip of shoelace into the casings, leaving about two inches of shoelace free of the slurry.
“It’ll harden and then we’re good to go.”
“I don’t understand any of this, but if you say good to go, okay.”
Nash pocketed the long lace and thought,I hope to God we’re good to go.
* * *
Late that night Thura came to their room and showed them the newspapers, which said a search was ongoing for the persons who had killed the KIA soldier. Thura told them that they had not yet identified Zeya.
“He carried no ID. But once they do find out who he is, they will find out we were friends and worked together. Then they will start looking for me.”
Nash said, “What will you do?”
“For me, it is time to leave Myanmar. To search for a new life.”