Free The Burma Legacy by Geoffrey Archer

Google quickly found him a site for Bordhill. There were photos of a rambling eighteenth-century manor house, a potted history, a brief personality page on Peregrine Harrison and outlines of the Buddhist-centred courses held there. It all looked appealing enough, with fresh-faced twenty-and-thirty-somethings extolling the virtues of meditation.
    Then he clicked onto the Telegraph archive and fed in Kamata’s name. Half a dozen stories came up about the car factory deal. He browsed them quickly and copied them to a file on the hard-drive. Then he searched for sites run for former PoWs. Plenty of stuff about regimental histories and torture methods, but no reference to Harrison or Kamata.
    Finally he checked his email. There was one from Beth.
    Sorry to walk out on you without a goodbye on Jan 1. Just seemed to make sense at the time .
    They’re putting me through the grinder here in Sydney but I’ll survive .
    Thanks for being so nice on NYE. And for the generous suggestion of how to best use that historic millennium moment! Don’t think I wasn’t tempted. Ah well. Another time, another place …
    Be nice to stay in touch .
    Beth
    Sam smiled, savouring the bitter-sweetness of the missed opportunity. He hit the reply key and typed.
    Told you you’d regret it …
    Steve
    As soon as he disconnected, the phone rang.
    ‘Hope I didn’t wake you.’
    Sam recognised his controller’s voice.
    ‘No chance. Been up for hours.’
    ‘Brain still ahead of us?’
    ‘Always is, Duncan. Always is.’
    Waddell cleared his throat.
    ‘Tetsuo Kamata’s in town.’
    ‘Didn’t mention this yesterday.’
    ‘Didn’t know. It’s a private visit. They’re signing the Memorandum of Understanding today, for the transfer of the factory. Complete bloody surprise to us. The two companies had kept it to themselves.’
    ‘I thought the sale was months away.’
    ‘It is. But the MoU sets out the terms. Gives the Japs the right to look at the books. Make sure they’re not buying more of a pig in a poke than they think they are.’
    ‘We’re providing protection?’
    ‘As discreetly as possible. He doesn’t know about it. The company’s giving a press conference at noon at Brown’s Hotel. First time Kamata’s been seen in the flesh in this country. The media’ll go mad. And I think you ought to be there. Get a feel for the man.’
    ‘Fine, but I’ll need a press card.’
    ‘That’ll be ready at eleven-thirty. I’ll have someone meet you with it.’
    They fixed a time and place, then Waddell rang off.
    Sam stared out of the window, unhappy with the way the Harrison affair was developing a momentum of its own. He wanted it to die so he could get back to doing something about Jimmy Squires.
    He remembered the call he was going to make. Checking his address book on the computer, he found the number and dialled it.
    The desk where it rang was deep inside the Ministry of Defence.
    Sam took the tube to Piccadilly, then dropped into Waterstone’s. He browsed the travel shelves for a guide to country hotels, buying the one with the greatest number of sites in East Anglia. Then he sat in the café and read it over a double espresso. To his dismay the area within twenty miles of Bordhill seemed to be a culinary desert. In the end he plumped for a coaching inn half-an-hour’s drive away, near the cathedral city of Ely. It promised an inglenook in the bar, a bedroom with a whirlpool bath, and a menu ‘drawing its inspiration from thefour corners of the world’. He phoned from his mobile and found to his relief they had a room free.
    It was twenty past eleven. His appointment with Waddell’s messenger was outside Green Park tube. A five-minute walk.
    Stopping at a stationers to buy a small notebook, he reached Brown’s Hotel at ten minutes to twelve. A board in the reception area directed him to a suite on the first floor where a burly security guard checked his newly minted press card. The suite was already crowded, with half a dozen