Add confusion to the anguish on her face. She hugs the pillow again. “You’re… letting me go?”
I try on some answers but finally go with, “Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I remember something you told me that first night in the village, after I’d found Pensri looting her own site. You said, ‘I was trying to do something good.’ I know what that’s like, trying to do right and having it turn to shit.” I squeeze her knee. “You see, there’s something I didn’t tell them. Something important.”
She snuffles, wipes her nose. “What?”
“I didn’t tell them the Nam Ton wares are fake.”
Her eyes grab onto mine. They’re bloodshot but wary. “You say that why?”
“A bunch of little things. Coulson must’ve brought hundreds, maybe even thousands of pieces into the U.S. up until a couple weeks ago. They had to come from somewhere. Pensri tried to convince me there was nothing left to steal, but the area she said she’d excavated hadn’t been touched for years. Then there’s the tests I had done at the Getty. They said ‘inconclusive’ on the TL analysis, which is real convenient. The dig I saw behind the village? Before that dude brained me, I noticed a bunch of Nam Ton wares next to the hole. They were clean. Since I didn’t see a way for Pensri to clean them at the site, they didn’t come out of the ground. And did you look at the cups the tea girls gave us? Same kind of work, same colors, almost brand new.”
Savannah doesn’t say anything, just hugs her pillow tighter and stares at the TV remote’s corpse.
I say, “You already knew.”
Long, long pause. “Uh-huh.”
“For how long?”
Long, deep, shuddering breath. “Since they ran out of real ones. Four or five years ago.”
I wasn’t sure until she said that. It was a theory, but only a theory. “I guess they should add fraud to that indictment. What happened?”
“What Pensri told you? It was almost right, it just took longer. By then the villagers couldn’t give up the income. Pensri decided that saving the village was more important than scientific integrity. She’d already figured out how the original wares were made. They used the same clay, the same glazes. She even rebuilt one of the original kilns. It’s almost like experimental archaeology.” She frowns. “If roughly the same people make the same product the same way with the same materials, are they fakes?”
The last place I want to go is philosophy. “Why does she bury them?”
“It screws up the TL curves. She seasons them for about a year underground. They return the same confused signatures as the older wares. They do beautiful work, don’t they?”
“Yeah.” That’s the hell of it—the pots are lovely, and (almost) completely authentic, and the money goes for a good cause. It’s pretty hard to get mad about being conned.
“You really didn’t tell ICE?”
“I really didn’t. I take it Jim and Lorena don’t know?”
She shakes her head. “Lorena was faking the provenances, but she thought the wares were being looted.”
“She has a history of that.”
Savannah nods sadly, sighs, then climbs off the bed to pace to the sliding glass door.
I watch her stand there hugging herself as she looks out at the rain. It’s all I can do to keep from hugging her myself. “So that leaves you. If you go home, ICE or the DEA will get it out of you eventually. Everybody thinks the wares are eight hundred years old. If you spill the secret, they’ll decide the pots are trash. The pots won’t have changed, only the way the owners think about them. The villagers would lose their income. What’s the point?”
“Thank you.” She says it so softly that I almost don’t hear it. Big breath. “Now what happens?”
She wears goose bumps well. It’s easy to get lost counting them. I look at the dark flatscreen TV so my big brain has a chance to think. “You were telling me it’s cheap to live here if you stay out of Bangkok. So live here.”
Savannah peers over her shoulder at me, rubbing her biceps like she’s cold. “Really?”
“Why not? You know the language. You like it here. You haven’t broken the law in Thailand as far as I know. The way things are between the U.S. and the government here, I doubt they’d extradite you.” I shrug. “Unless you have a better idea.”
“Hmm.” She turns back to the view. “I could find a little guest house someplace. The money from my Chinese friend should start coming in two or three months. It won’t be much, but…” She turns to me, her face serious. “Would you tell them where I am?”
“You talked about heading for Phuket.”
“Perfect. I hate that place.” She looks at her folded hands. “Sorry I called you all those terrible names.”
No she isn’t, but we can pretend.
After watching me thoughtfully for a long while, Savannah slides onto my lap and threads her arms around my neck. “Come with me. We’ll have fun. There’s a lot to see here, and I’d love to show it to you. Maybe I’ll teach you a little Thai. And we can play all we want.”
Sitting here naked, with a very warm, naked woman perched on my lap caressing me, makes all this sound good. Really good. But maybe I’m finally immune to Savannah’s reality-distortion field, or I’m just tired of humidity, but my big brain won’t turn off. “You’re forgetting the part about how we don’t trust each other and we’ve been lying to each other since we met.”
She waves that away. “That’s business. But this—” she points to me, then herself “—is us. We know each other now. We know what we’re getting. We don’t have to get married and have a flock of kids and do the ‘forever’ thing. We stay together as long as it’s fun. When it’s not fun anymore, you go home and I go… wherever.” She kisses me. “Is there anything at home that you really need to get back to?”
I was doing okay until she asked that question. The truth is, there isn’t. Slinging coffee, being poor, riding the Big Blue Bus before sunrise, sleeping on a broke-ass sofabed.
Living in the best climate in the world with Chloe, the nicest person in the world.
Being in a place I know and understand. Where I belong.
On the other hand, I can go anywhere I want now. As long as Talbot keeps his promise, I go to one court hearing, I get back my passport, buy my PO a so-long drink, and I’m free.
Every woman I’ve been close to who wasn’t a blood relative has been more-or-less unreliable. I’m drawn to them. They’re fun, they’re exciting, they’re a challenge. I get hurt in the end, but that’s part of the experience, too. Maybe that’s what I deserve.
Savannah’s just the latest. Okay, maybe she’s on the more-unreliable end of the scale—she did try to get me to do a big drug deal for her, and she was going to let Pensri’s people kill me. That’s like a warning, right?
But she’s pretty and smart and uninhibited and a ton of fun. I don’t trust her, but at least I now know why. She’ll eventually hurt me. But until then…
Is there anything at home that you really need to get back to?
Savannah snuggles closer. So warm, so soft. “Come on. Say yes.”
Chapter 57
NOVEMBER
I watch two of the most important women in my life sipping tea across the street from my blond-wood table on the sidewalk outside Rosprasert Muslim Food in Chiang Rai. They sit on tall metal stools at a no-name place across Isaraparb Road from me and a couple doors down. We’re all in the shadow cast by the big Darulaman Mosque on my side of the street, an imposing stone building with a jade-green central dome and minarets topped with roofs that look like the hats the local farmers wear.
I’m not hiding, just giving them their space.
Savannah sits facing me, her elbows on the metal tabletop between them, cradling a teacup. I know she can see me; she winked at me when she sat down. She’s been absorbed with her drinking companion ever since.
We’ve been shuttling around northern and central Thailand since July, stay
ing in hostels or little guest houses for a couple weeks at a time, then moving on. We covered a lot of territory, but moving so often is hard. We’ve been here in Chiang Rai in far northern Thailand for nearly a month. It’s a good central place: five hours by bus from Chiang Mai to the south, ninety minutes or so from Tachileik on the northern border with Myanmar. We’re going to Tachileik tomorrow to renew the Thai tourist visa in my brand-new passport. My passport, not Hoskins’.
My hearing in federal court in San Francisco happened on September 14th. It lasted less than twenty minutes. I stood; the USA’s staff lawyer read the motion to amend my supervision order; the judge said “So ordered”; and we were done.
Len, my PO, handed me my (then expired) passport when we met the next day for drinks at Rocco’s in Westwood Village. He rasped, “Guess I can drop that employment audit I started on you.” When we shook goodbye on the sidewalk, he said, “Don’t fuck up. You end up on my desk again, I will personally twist your head off. Understood?”
I got the first $72,077 of my agency pay on July 30th. That’s for my work until June 17th, when the project switched to ICE and DEA sponsorship. The other $18,800 dropped at the end of September. Most of it went to paying off an elderly student loan and one of Janine’s old credit card debts.
The rest is helping keep Savannah and me away from the real world.
I shovel down some more very nice chicken khao soi—I’ve gotten pretty good with chopsticks over the past few months—and chase it with a swig of Coke. It’s a soup featuring both crisp and boiled egg noodles, meat chunks, ground pepper, and a coconut milk-based curry that I’ve come to like. At only fifty baht (less than a buck and a half), it’s easy on the wallet, too.
Savannah pours herself another cup of tea. Back in August, she chopped off nearly all her hair and let it grow back in its natural medium brown. It’s now a long pixie cut that looks good on her. Today she’s wearing her ankle-length, sky-blue cotton dress with big white buttons from her throat to her hem. I miss her designer dresses and heels, but there’s not much call for them here.
Since September, I haven’t had to report to anybody or get permission to live. I can go where I like, when I like, and do what I like. The people in my life—Chloe, my Starbucks boss, Mom—don’t have to deal with random drop-ins and interrogations. It’s been years since I’ve been this free. I didn’t realize how much I’ve missed it until now.
Freedom means making decisions again, good and bad. Which is deciding to stay with Savannah? Not sure yet. I’ve seen a lot of things and I’ve learned a lot. Savannah’s fun to be with. It’s like she left her inner deb back in San Francisco and she can finally let loose. And we are, after all, two of a kind.
But she still calls me “Rick,” even though she knows it bugs me. “I like Rick,” she tells me. “He’s the guy I ran away with.” I still watch my back around her, too. I haven’t forgotten Myanmar yet.
Everybody else has, it seems. The “Nam Ton Scandal” is already becoming background noise. They’re at seventeen indictments and twelve arrests, including Bandineau, Lorena, and over half a dozen collectors, including the client. If this goes the way the Ban Chiang case did, the first trials won’t happen for years. Talbot told me I may need to testify “someday.” If everybody flips on everybody else, maybe nobody’ll go to trial. So it goes.
Savannah laughs. I can’t hear it over the traffic, but I can see it, hear it in my head. Her drinking buddy may be laughing, too. Then they stand and shake hands briskly. I’ve been wondering what they had to talk about for almost an hour. At least they didn’t scratch each other’s eyes out.
Allyson turns and marches in my direction. To talk some sense into me?
I wasn’t surprised when she found us. I was surprised when she said she wanted to speak with Savannah. That’s why we’re here today.
Unlike every other woman in eyeshot (perhaps in the whole city), Allyson is, as usual, dressed to make an impression: a crimson sleeveless lace shell over a knee-length black pencil skirt and heels. Everybody stops to watch her pass. The three workmen-looking guys at the other outside table nearly dislocate their necks when she parades up to me. “Mr. Friedrich?”
I stand and shake her offered hand. “Ms. DeWitt.”
She scans me up and down. She sees board shorts and a half-unbuttoned camp shirt. I haven’t had a haircut in two months. I still shave, though. Usually. “You’re enjoying your… interlude here?”
“I am. Thanks for asking.”
Allyson glances inside the café—half a dozen tables, wall- and ceiling-mounted fans trying to move the damp air around, a steam table by the missing outside wall, the mobile ratcatching unit (cat) slinking through the chair legs—allows herself one nose-crinkle, then turns back to me. “When will you return home?”
“Staying thousands of miles away from the train wreck sounds pretty attractive.”
“You’re aware of the results of your election, then.”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
Allyson suppresses a little smile. “I’ve spoken with some of the new people. The last time I met so many potential clients with so much money and so much to hide, I was in Russia.”
“Funny you should say that.”
“My point is, I believe the agency is about to enjoy a huge windfall. I need all our associates available and ready to work. I’m also recruiting new associates.” She tosses a wave over her shoulder. “Such as Ms. Kendicott.”
“What?”
Her eyes are pleased by my surprise. “We need more staffing in Asia. She has a perfect skillset for the sort of business we expect to be coming our way. Your reports were quite enlightening.”
If Savannah is a perfect fit for the agency, am I overqualified or underqualified? What kind of business is Allyson trying to get? “I’m taking some time off.”
“I know.” Allyson’s face becomes serious. “Mind that you don’t take too much. I’m inclined to make your temporary promotion permanent. If I do, I’ll need you to be available for assignment very soon.”
Great. The promotion’s nice—€500 extra a day adds up fast—but I’m not sure it’ll pay for enough disinfectant to sanitize myself after rolling in the swamp with this new bunch of whack jobs. “How long is ‘very soon’?”
“Certainly not later than the end of December.”
Another six weeks. “Do I really have to go back? Last I checked, there’s an airport in Bangkok.”
Allyson’s lips compress for a few seconds, then recover. “I’m aware of that. I doubt you’d be effective here given your limited Asian language skills. The cost to send you to a project in Europe or Latin America would be time- and cost-prohibitive. I imagine you could relocate to Europe, though I doubt any of the desirable nations would welcome someone with your… history.” She gives me a second once-over. “Central or Eastern Europe, perhaps. Their standards are significantly lower.”
“Gee, thanks.” I guess the Thai I’ve learned—mostly words for food or body parts, or euphemisms for bribery—doesn’t count for much. “I’ll think it over.”
“Very good. When you tire of your… idyll here and settle someplace, please inform Olivia. I’m certain I can provide you with as much work as you wish now that you can travel without restriction. I may be able to… broaden your horizons, shall we say? I believe you have skills we haven’t yet tapped.” She extends her hand again. “Good day, Mr. Friedrich.”
I watch her stride toward the main street. So does everybody else around me. When I turn away, I find Savannah heading for me. The working guys’ necks get another workout as she sways up to me, wraps an arm around my waist, then kisses me. “Did she tell you the good news?”
“Yeah. What’s your employee number?”
“Three-eighteen.” She gives me a squeeze. “Maybe we can work together. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
Absolutely not. Doing the I-don’t-trust-my-partner thing once was enough.
I glance back
at the main road in time to see Allyson slip into the back of a black Audi A6. Would she stick me with Savannah on a project just to teach me a lesson? What exactly would that lesson be?
When I switch back to Savannah, she gives me a Cheshire Cat smile.
About the Author
Lance Charnes has been an Air Force intelligence officer, information technology manager, computer-game artist, set designer, Jeopardy! contestant, and is now an emergency management specialist. He’s had training in architectural rendering, terrorist incident response and maritime archaeology, but not all at the same time. Lance’s Facebook author page features spies, archaeology and art crime.
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Allyson DeWitt is the president of The DeWitt Agency. Its headquarters is a brass plate outside a discreet Luxembourgeois lawyer’s office door. Its corporate treasury is in Vanuatu. Its directors are strangely untraceable. Its only other full-time employee is Olivia, who’s able to arrange for the damnedest things when an Agency associate needs help.
Matt Friedrich is the Agency’s newest employee. He has a certain useful set of skills that he learned while working in a crooked L.A. art gallery, and other knowledge that he gained while hanging out in federal prison with Wall Street types who had bad lawyers. He’s out on supervised release and working for $10 an hour at Starbucks to pay off over half a million in debts and restitution.
Chasing Clay (The DeWitt Agency Files Book 3) Page 36
