The detective story is woven around two old men who met in Burma in
World War II, a Japanese soldier who led the capture and torture of a
British soldier. Fifty years later the Japanese man has become the head
of a rich corporation while the British has become the leader of a
Buddhist commune. The Japanese man in efforts to make amends with
countries they might have wronged during the war is leading the
construction of auto factories both in Burma (now called Myanmar) and
England. But the British man has authored a book in which he vowed to
take his pound of flesh from the Japanese man. And on learning about the
planned take-over and rehabilitation of the British factory, writes to
The Times
newspaper voicing his hatred. The letter was not published, but the
Secret Service got sufficiently worried, particularly as the man
disappeared shortly after. Detective Sam’s mission now is to find him
and stop him before he commits a terrible blunder that would affect
British economy.
Linked
to this is another subplot about an Australian beauty out to track an
ex-secret service man who’s gone bad and now was involved in drug
dealing in the South East. Failing to catch him when Sam went to assist
her, it was not without surprise that the old men run into each other
again in Burma. It turned out the drug runner also knew the British old
man and the old man had recruited him to help him kidnap the Japanese
old man. Things work out somehow in the end. The British old man’s
grouse was really that the Japanese man knew he’d been a coward and had
given out information following some beatings. It was his guilt for this
that had him hating the Japanese thereafter, not that the man really
committed atrocities against him like he claimed in his book. Both old
men however got killed by the drug runner, who in turn is captured
eventually.
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