Then the arms lifted her feet off the ground and turned her. Something caught against the backs of her knees and she started to fall backward. She landed on her butt but the blanket cushioned her fall. Before she could try to stand, someone picked up her feet, tucked them inside, pushed down her head, and closed some sort of lid.
The sounds outside were muffled. Riley hated small, tight spaces, and she fought to get her rising panic under control. The smelly wool was suffocating her, and finally she pulled the cover off her head. Slow your breathing, she told herself. Still she couldn’t see anything in the darkness. She felt around, walls and floors of rough-hewn wood. A domed lid. Trying to push up on the lid that held her inside was no good. It wouldn’t budge. She tried pounding on the wood sides, but she couldn’t pull her fist back far enough to make much noise. She was about to start screaming when outside she heard hammering feet and hard breathing.
She froze. A man’s voice was shouting in Thai. A woman was whimpering, then she spoke very fast. Riley heard the man’s voice move from one side of the box to the other, then she heard nothing.
Chatuchak Park
Bangkok, Thailand
November 17, 2012
Benny Salim could not believe his luck. The woman had somehow vanished right in front of him, so he was leaning against a tree in the park smoking a cigarette, thinking about how he was going to pick up the trail again, when the geezer walked out of the market gate into Chatuchak Park not twenty meters away. Benny would not have recognized the old man if he had not been wearing that stupid hat that looked like an army-green tent covered with medals. There were not many men wearing those around Bangkok these days.
He had underestimated the old man earlier. He would not do so again. The old man was walking at a brisk pace across the grass, headed for the underground train station. Benny ground out the butt of his cigarette and fell in behind him. He closed the gap between them with his longer strides and when they were still about one hundred meters from the entrance to the MRT, he grabbed him by the shoulder and spun the old man around.
“Jesus!” the old man said, clutching his chest. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”
Benny looked into the distance over the top of the old man’s head. The scars on the old guy’s face made him uncomfortable. “You know why I’m here.”
“Yeah, but I can’t help you, Benny. Go back home to Borneo or wherever you’re from.” Peewee pointed to the slender leather satchel Benny had slung over his shoulder. “And take that pipe with you. Besides”—he smiled with the good half of his face, lifted his hands palms upward, and shook his head—“I don’t have it anymore.”
“You gave it to her, didn’t you? That’s what Belmonte said you were going to do.”
“How the hell would he know what I intended to do?”
“You don’t think he was watching your every move while you were working at the mine? Tracking every site you visited on the computer? You’re an old fool. I used the girl to find you, Peewee.”
“Well, shit.”
“I found her once and I’ll find her again. All this would be so much easier, though, if you would just tell me where she is.”
Peewee hung his head and didn’t say anything. His lips were moving over his teeth. Then he looked up. “Or what?”
Benny touched the strap of the leather bag. “You know what’s in here. Don’t think our past history’s gonna make any difference to me.”
“Benny, I’m ninety-three years old. You really think I’m afraid of dying? I’ve had a long time to get used to the idea.”
“And what about the girl? You brought her into this. What’s she to you? What’s she going to do with Enterprise property?”
“Maybe you’d understand better if you knew exactly what it is you’re looking for. I know how they work. They only told you enough to recognize it. You’re supposed to track it down and retrieve it. Can’t you just forget about this one? Let her go.”
“No can do. You know that.”
Peewee looked away, rubbed his hand over his chin, and squinted his good eye toward a line of trees across the park. Benny wondered what the old man was really seeing. Probably some memory from years back, something about how he was connected to the girl.
“Okay, look,” Peewee said. “I’ll get it back from her. I’ll meet you somewhere and bring it to you.”
Benny laughed out loud. “No, you are not getting out of my sight. We’ll go find her together. You get what I came for, and I’ll leave the girl out of it. But you, Peewee, Belmonte’s going to want to talk to you.” And, Benny thought, you will learn soon enough what Belmonte really told me to do with you.
Then the old man shrugged again and pulled his belt even higher. “Okay, then. Let’s do it.” He looked at his watch. “We’re running out of time. I’m supposed to meet her at Wat Arun at five o’clock. A boat will be faster than the traffic in this town.”
Benny grabbed the old man by the arm and steered him down the path toward the park exit. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.
When they got to the street, Benny flagged down a tuk-tuk, shoved the old man in first, and then climbed in after him. He held on to Peewee’s upper arm in case he got some idea about jumping out. Then he told the driver to take them to the Bang Pho pier.
Chatuchak Weekend Market
Bangkok, Thailand
November 17, 2012
Riley wasn’t aware she’d been holding her breath until she began to feel dizzy. After a quick exhale, she drew in a long breath. She was trembling.
She strained to hear something beyond her own breathing, but there was nothing. No footsteps, no voices. The air smelled of old wood and dust. Her neck ached from the cramped position she was in, but her backpack was wedged under her, and there was nothing to support her head. She put one hand on the lid above her to help her shift her body, and to her surprise it was the lid that moved instead of her body. When she’d tried earlier, the lid wouldn’t budge, but now it lifted a crack and light flooded into the box.
She peeked out and blinked at the brightness. As her eyes adjusted, she saw row after row of wood and ceramic Buddha heads. Beyond that were some cabinets and furniture. She didn’t see any people, so she raised the lid higher, until she was able to get her other hand up on the side of the box. She stood. Around her trunk were several others, all with leather straps holding the lids onto them. She was standing inside the largest trunk of all.
Outside the shop, people walked up and down the aisle. Some of them glanced in at her, but their eyes moved on. No one was paying any attention to her. She stepped out of the trunk and lowered the lid back down. She stepped to the back and swept aside the curtain. It opened directly onto the dark passageway behind the shops. There was no one there.
When she dropped the curtain and started for the door, an elegantly dressed woman turned into the shop carrying a white Styrofoam cup. “Hello,” she said and ducked her head in a small bow. “May I help you?”
Riley looked around the small space again. There was no one there but her. “Is this your shop?”
The woman smiled. “Yes. Is there something special you’re looking for?”
“Were you in here just now?”
“No, I just went out for a cup of coffee.”
“Did you see . . . ?”
“Are you all right? My neighbor across the way came to find me at the restaurant. He said a strange man had run into my shop.”
“And this man, did he have tattoos on his arms here?” Riley pointed to her forearms.
“He didn’t say. All he said was that he had light brown hair and a beard.”
Riley opened her mouth to say something else, but she stopped with her mouth hanging open. No, she thought, not possible. No way.
She tried to smile at the shop owner. “Thank you,” she said, and she spun around and started walking. At first, she wasn’t even aware of what direction she was going. She didn’t see the stalls or the merchandise or the people. Some
sort of autopilot kicked on and was navigating her body through the crowds for her. Her mind was going back over what it had felt like when those arms closed around her and her pulse had skyrocketed. She’d thought it had been fear—fear that her pursuer had caught her. Had it been something else?
There was only one way she could think of to start finding answers and that was to go find Peewee.
Riley came to an intersection and saw that the perimeter Main Road was only a few aisles away. She turned and started toward the bright light.
When she’d first arrived in Phuket, she had downloaded the Lonely Planet’s guide to Thailand on her iPhone and she used it now to locate the Temple of the Reclining Buddha. There were so many different temples in Bangkok, it was difficult to keep them straight. The one she was looking for, she discovered, was called Wat Pho. It was down along the Chao Phraya River, and she decided the safest and probably the fastest way to get there would be via the SkyTrain to Surasak and then a ferry to Tha Tien. She’d heard about Bangkok traffic.
After the air-conditioning inside the elevated train, the heat felt good when Riley descended the stairs from the platform and started for the river. She’d missed both breakfast and lunch and the food carts along the street were making her stomach growl. The old man had said to meet in three hours, so she had time to kill. She stopped at a cart with a smoking grill and pointed to the pork satay skewers, then raised two fingers. The man behind the grill placed the skewers in a square of waxy paper and handed it to her. She paid him and thanked him and hurried over to the water’s edge, where several people were gathered outside what she assumed was the ticket booth. When she got to the window, she said, “Wat Pho?” and the young woman punched holes in a ticket and handed it to her.
Riley found an open space on the concrete bench and settled herself to eat a quick meal and wait for the ferry. She slid the still-warm chunks of meat off the sticks with her teeth and chewed thoughtfully.
Back at the market, she had simply reacted when this Peewee guy had told her to run. She wasn’t sure why she had just taken him at his word, except for the fact that the man he wanted her to run from had obviously been following her.
Why hadn’t she seen him earlier as she walked around the market? She had been keeping her eyes open for a tail. The only logical conclusion was that he was very good at following someone and remaining undetected, meaning he was a pro. But what did that mean? Was he police, military, a private contractor? And what was his interest in her?
She pulled the half bottle of water out of the side pocket of her backpack and washed down the rest of the food. The people around her started getting up and moving toward a man who now stood at the entrance to the dock. He held them back as the boat approached. A boy jumped off the ferry as it neared the dock, and he blew a loud whistle when he got the spring line on the bollard. The dock man lifted his arm and let the crowd surge forward. Riley followed, wondering how they were all going to fit when only two passengers got off the already-crowded ferry.
Riley couldn’t stand to be on a boat and not be able to watch the water, so she squirmed her way through the hard-packed humanity until she got one hand on the wooden rail at the edge of the boat. She was facing the side of the river where she had boarded so she was able to watch the techniques of the captain and crew each time they docked at a new ferry station.
The river was busy. She saw all sorts of boats both tied along the river’s edge and charging up and down, churning the garbage-filled water into a mass of confused wakes. She loved the colorful long-tail boats with the big automotive engines on a pivot. Out the back of the engine was a twelve- to sixteen-foot shaft with the prop way out on the end. That was how they got their long-tail name. A tiller-like rod jutted out of the forward end so that the driver could press down on the rod and lift the prop out of the water, alleviating the need for a transmission. The sheer of the long wooden boats rose forward into these high curving bows, and often they were draped with what looked like garlands of flowers. Riley wondered how the drivers squatting in the stern could see anything directly ahead of them.
There was such a stark contrast between the stilt houses at the river’s edge, built of dark bits of wood and flotsam, and the glittering high-rise towers. It looked as though class in this city could be determined by elevation.
After several stops along the western bank, the ferry turned to cross the river. They would be docking on the opposite shore now. By bending her knees to see under the coach roof and peering over the heads of the other passengers, she saw a cluster of spires on the opposite riverbank. She consulted the map on her phone, and decided it must be Wat Arun, otherwise known as the Temple of Dawn. The prang towers were encrusted with bits of broken porcelain and they were supposed to glitter when reflecting the first morning light.
The boat emptied half the passengers at that stop, and Riley was relieved that, at last, she no longer had people pressing against her. She was able to walk across to the opposite side of the boat to check out the scenery on that riverbank for a while. The boat was crossing back to the other shoreline, dodging around the front of a tug with a string of four barges and loads of colorful laundry flapping in the breeze, when Riley saw a long-tail boat approach them headed upriver. The boat was really moving and the prop was throwing a rooster tail of water several feet into the air. That was the first reason she took note of the boat, but as they grew closer, she focused on the two men sitting amidships.
Riley wouldn’t have recognized Peewee if he’d been alone. Without that medal-covered garrison cap on his head, he looked like a generic little old white man with long wisps of hair blowing back in the wind. His hands were below the level of the gunwale, and Riley suspected he was clutching the cap on his lap. But the guy from the market was there, too. Him she would recognize anywhere, with or without the blue work shirt. His flat face and mustache, the full head of salt-and-pepper hair pulled back into a knot that looked like a lady’s bun, the ink on the forearms. And he was still carrying the tooled leather satchel.
Standing at the rail a few feet from her was a German family with two strapping sons in their late teens. She stepped to her right to place the tourists between herself and the passing boat. Through them she could see the topknot man was standing with one hand clutching a support post that held up the long narrow roof over the boat. He didn’t have a gun and as far as she could tell, he wasn’t threatening Peewee. In fact, as the boat passed about fifty feet abeam of the ferry, she saw the topknot guy was talking on a cell phone. It looked like the old man was just enjoying the ride.
She walked back to the stern and watched as the long-tail boat pulled up to the dock at Wat Arun. Peewee was first off the boat, and he turned to wait for the other man. What sort of game was he playing?
Benguet Gold Mine
Baguio, Philippines
November 17, 2012
Elijah was halfway across the yard to the limo when he stopped and turned. Belmonte was still standing in the doorway of the office.
“Jaime, while I’m here, I am going to visit the lab and talk to Wolf. I’d like to take a look at the work he’s been doing. If you’re right and Benny finds the old man, we could be up and operating again within the week.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll call down and have him come up to meet you right now.”
Belmonte turned and spoke to his secretary inside the office.
“Tell him I’ll meet him halfway,” Elijah said. “Meanwhile, book me on the next flight from here to Manila.” He took off down the gravel path toward the lab, pleased that he would be able to see Esmerelda’s smile even sooner than he had anticipated.
He had almost arrived at the prefab building when the back door swung open and Wolfgang, dressed in his usual white lab coat, stepped outside. Elijah had hired the chemist six years ago and brought both Wolf and his wife, Ulrika, to the Philippines. Today Wolf was very good at his job only because Elijah had spent so much time in the Philippines teaching him. The German crossed the ga
p between them and extended his hand.
“Elijah. Come inside.” He turned and extended his arm toward the door to the lab.
Once inside the lab, Elijah walked over to the mass spectrometer and rested his hands on the table next to the instrument. “I expected to hear from you, Wolf.”
“You mean about that sample?”
Elijah turned and faced the German. He examined him for several long seconds before he answered. “Of course. Are you stalling for some reason?” He no longer trusted Wolfgang. Ever since his wife had taken her own life a little over a year ago, the man had changed.
“No, not at all. My findings aren’t conclusive. I wanted to pin it down to the exact mine.”
“And what have you found?”
“It’s been more than two weeks, and I can’t even determine the country, much less the mine.”
Elijah’s face broke into a broad smile. “Excellent! If you can’t, no one can.”
“I don’t know what you did differently this time, but if you can replicate that, we can pass off gold mined anywhere in the world. No one will be able to fingerprint it.”
Elijah patted Wolf’s forearm and crossed to the door. The big man would be pleased. “I’ll report your findings to Brightstone,” he said as he pushed the door open.
He was halfway out when he turned to face the German. “On the phone last week, you said you had something you wanted to ask me.”
Wolfgang dropped his head like a dog being scolded by his master.
“Wasn’t it something about your wife?” Elijah could see the man’s chin quivering. It was little wonder Ulrika had needed the attentions of a real man. And Wolfgang had made it so easy, since he liked to watch.
“I have something to show you,” the German said.
Elijah stepped back inside and eyed his friend. He wondered what sort of secrets Wolf was keeping from him.
Dragon's Triangle (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 2) Page 7
