Burridge Unbound by Alan Cumyn Page A

itself, clamp my fingers around her neck as she falls towards me.
    “How’s this for better?” I ask. “I’m getting better, right?”
    “Write to your wife,” she says when I’ve let her go.

5
TINTO DECLARES MARTIAL LAW
    23 August 1998
Islander
staff
    Former Interior Minister Tinto Delapango, cousin of deceased President General Linga Minitzh, has seized power and declared martial law. In a brief statement Tinto also announced that Vice-President Barios was no longer in the country and that key elements of the armed forces have sworn allegiance to his rule. “Stability is now at hand and all are required to give their full co-operation as I bring the situation under control.”
    Tinto’s statement comes among increasing rumours that the armed forces is split, with President General Minitzh’s elite Third Battalion backing Armed Forces Chief Mende Kul, while the vice-president’s naval units are said to favour the flamboyant Tinto.
    Opposition leader Suli Nylioko stated that if either Tinto or Kul seize power “there will be a bloodbath to make Minitzh look like a saint.”
    “We have had enough dictatorship. We have had enough killing and looting and government corruption. How can the rest of the world have faith in us if we do this again to ourselves?”
    Under the terms of Tinto’s martial law, which according to the statement comes into effect immediately, police and armed forces personnel have the right to shoot looters or suspicious figures on sight, to detain suspects without trial or access to a magistrate for up to 48 weeks, and to search homes and businesses without warrants or notice. A curfew is also in effect from 6 p.m. to 8 a.m. in the capital. Anyone breaking the curfew could be shot on sight.
    Tinto was not on hand to deliver his proclamation but rather announced it through simultaneous fax transmission to national news offices.
    The photograph of Tinto shows up narrow and blurred on screen, a wiry man with a downturned mouth, his eyes hidden behind dark shades.
WELANTO ABLAZE
    23 August 1998
Hulinga Kaliotu
    For the third straight day fires raged through the shantytown of Welanto. Volunteer firemen were again turned away by gangs armed with bottles, sticks, and
toragu
blades. In all
76
people have been killed and some 600 injured in Welanto in the crisis since the assassination of President General Linga Minitzh.
    According to eyewitness reports, packs of police again entered homes and raped mothers and daughters. Several bodies could be seen lying in the backstreets. Rain last night dampened many of the fires but did not put them out. Street gangs reset the fires this morning, and so far police have done nothing to stop them.
    Local residents have started calling the police “Tinto’s cocks” and confronting them with homemade weapons. One man, who could not be identified, said he had fought a policeman off his wife’s back by hitting him across the shoulders with a bamboo pole.
    “He drew his pistol out. I don’t know why he didn’t shoot me.”
    So far the announcement of Tinto’s martial law has done nothing to stop the rioting in Welanto. “We need the army,” one local resident said. “We need someone to stop the killing.”
    CNN has no coverage – it’s economic chaos in Russia and falling markets worldwide, and a special segment on the coming anniversary of the death of Diana. I flip open my e-mail.
    Dear Bill Burridge,
    I am writing to you now to thank you. I was in interrogation for three hours when word arrived that I was to be let go. I pressed them – let go because of my innocence? Noanswer. But my lawyer Mr. I.K. Singh told me that there was high-level foreign intervention, and for that I thank you.
    Three hours with the Punjab police is plenty enough. I know that you know what pleasantries they engage in, so there is no need to reiterate them here. That Sikhs can do this to other Sikhs sorrows my heart immeasurably. But I must remind myself they are not true