I've neglected story-writing for a while

Yangon, Myanmar, 8 AM

The nondescript woman made her way through the eerily empty marketplace stalls and bazaars of Yangon, clutching a folded piece of paper in her hand. From time to time she looked behind to see if she was being followed by people in the shadows.

 She surreptitiously punched a memorized sequence of numbers into the cell phone as she walked. 

“Nei here,” she said quietly.

“Internet has been shut down. The government is still forbidding UN food shipments to pass through,” the mysterious voice on the other end of the line said hurriedly. “Tens of thousands of people are starving or already dead. We believe that the Swedish government may be sympathetic to our cause, but we need to get the information to them.”

“I have a hard drive with me. It contains a lot of amateur video footage,” he said. “I need you to get outside of the country, where there is Internet access, so that we can have them publicized. Also a list of names of government officials who may be willing to be bribed.”
 

“This is where you can help us," the man continued. "No one is allowed to leave the country now without permission, or at least without drawing suspicion. But you are a flight stewardess who routinely travels to many places anyway and hence will not raise alarms with anyone. You also have easy access to officials and diplomatic channels abroad.”

She slammed the cellphone back in her pocket - such a "Western convenience" would arouse the suspicion of authorities.

She was still numb. Only days before, when she was in a plane en route to Europe, the cyclone had come and killed every single member of her extended family except for her nephew and one distant cousin. Few people even in Myanmar itself knew the extent of the calamity - the regime scrupulously shut out all outside information as always - but she had managed to watch a CNN telecast when she was in Europe and knew that the death toll was anywhere between 60,000 to 100,000 dead.

She was known only by her surname, Nei. A flight stewardess for Myanmar Airlines, she was 23 years old. She had always been fascinated by airplanes, and the only thing that separated her social status from the inhabitants of the dirt-poor village in which she was born – and enabled her to win a high-paying flight stewardess job – was the fact that she had learned some English as a child from playing word board games, which she loved, which had been left to her family by a missionary.

Today, however, she was a player in a different game altogether. Her handler, An, had asked her to help out in a scheme. The Myanmar military regime had been consistently one of the world’s most oppressive for the past decades, but now was a chance to turn the tables. After the devastating cyclone, Western nations were furious that their aid was not being permitted to reach millions of starving people who needed it. The chance to persuade Western governments to subvert the regime with clandestine action and overthrow under the guise of “humanitarian reasons” was too good to pass up.

An knew where he was getting at. She had said yes immediately when approached with the plan. Despite her Khmer name, Nei was Vietnamese, and thus had special reason to hate the Burmese government.

Five days later

The blue and gold-trimmed livery Myanmar Airways Antonov An-72 airliner was on fuel overload today for the flight to Amsterdam.

Nei went through the safety demonstration procedures by heart, a knot of dread in the pit of her stomach.

Two days ago, she had packed all of her meager belongings with the expectation that she might not ever return to her homeland again. Tucked away in her flight stewardess’ travel bag right now were two videotapes of compromising government material and lists of names of officials and secret agents. She had managed to avoid inspection when bringing them aboard. The mission was to take them through Amsterdam and into a connecting flight into Stockholm, where she would hand them over to a diplomatic courier.

Nei knew the risk she was undertaking. The official penalty for treason was cremation while still alive.

The heavy Russian aircraft began lumbering slowly on the taxiway.

"Good evening passengers, we are closing the doors now and getting ready to taxi," said the friendly voice of the pilot. "Please remain in your seats until the seat-belt sign is turned off." The doors closed with a hiss and the tires squealed momentarily.

Nei strapped herself into the flight attendant seat, shut her eyes closed, heart pounding, and curled her hands tightly into a ball. She would not feel safe until the plane had left the runway.

End of Part 1