Sidney Sheldon's Chasing Tomorrow (Tracy Whitney)

by Sidney Sheldon

  “I don’t need the money,” he told Gunther Hartog. “If I work, it will be for the love of it or not at all. Think of me as an artist.”

  “Oh, but I do, dear boy. I do.”

  “I need to be inspired.”

  Singapore had been fun, but sorely lacking in inspiration. Jeff had dined on oysters at Luke’s on Club Street and indulged in some rocket-fueled cocktails served by gorgeous waitresses at the Tippling Club on Dempsey Hill. But overall the city reminded him of nothing so much as an Asian Geneva: clean, pleasant and, after a few days, really quite crushingly dull.

  Thomas Bowers was ready to board that train.

  Let the battle begin.

  GENERAL ALAN MCPHEE’S VOICE carried through the intimate dining car like a stage actor booming out a soliloquy.

  “Of course Iraq’s a beautiful country. Bringing freedom to those folks is probably the thing I’m most proud of in my life. But I don’t know if I’ll ever go back. A lot of painful memories there . . .”

  It was the second night aboard the Orient Express and the general was holding court, just as he had done the first night. Jeff Stevens, aka Thomas Bowers, observed the way the people around the man listened with rapt attention. The women, particularly, seemed impressed by him. There were four at his table tonight, along with two men. Two older Japanese ladies, sitting with their husbands, were part of a large group of Japanese tourists who had boarded the train at Woodlands Station in Singapore. They were joined by an elegant Frenchwoman, traveling alone, and an American goddess with waist-length red hair, a knockout figure and amber eyes, who rejoiced in the name of Tiffany Joy. Thomas Bowers had made Ms. Joy’s acquaintance the previous night. A few discreet inquiries had confirmed his suspicions that she was the general’s mistress, traveling as his secretary in an adjoining cabin.

  “Amazing, isn’t it, Mr. Bowers, to be sharing our journey with a true hero.”

  “Absolutely.”

  Jeff smiled at Mrs. Marjorie Graham, an English widow in her sixties traveling with her sister. The management of the E&O, and in particular Helmut Krantz, the train’s hilariously uptight German chief steward, encouraged guests to “mingle” at mealtimes and share tables. Last night Jeff had endured his overcooked duck à l’orange in the company of a profoundly tedious Swedish couple from Malmö. Tonight he had the Miss Marple sisters. Complete with tweed skirts, twinsets and pearls, Marjorie Graham and her sister, Audrey, both looked as if they’d walked directly right off the pages of an Agatha Christie novel.

  “One hears about celebrities on these trips,” Marjorie Graham went on. “I half expected some ghastly pop star. But General McPhee, well, that’s quite a different matter.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” said Jeff. “Believe me, no one’s more excited than me to have the general on board.”

  “Being an American, you mean?”

  “Sure.” He nodded absently. Tiffany Joy had gotten up from the table, presumably to use the restroom in the next car down. As she passed, she smiled at Jeff, who smiled back, touching her lightly on the arm and exchanging some pleasantry or other. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the general watching them, and observed the jealous souring of his expression.

  At the end of the meal, another depressingly average offering—putting a German in charge of hospitality was bad enough, but Jeff strongly suspected that they’d hired one of Helmut’s countrymen as head chef as well, which was unforgivable—Jeff headed toward the piano bar. As he passed the general’s table, a sharp jolt from the train propelled him into the lovely Miss Joy once again.

  “I’m terribly sorry.” He grinned, looking anything but. “These narrow-gauge tracks are hellish, aren’t they?”

  “Oh, they’re awful.” The redhead giggled. “I was rattling around like a coin in a jar last night in my bunk. You should see my bruises.”

  “I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours,” Jeff quipped.

  “I don’t believe we’ve met.” General McPhee looked at Jeff with all the warmth of a nuclear winter.

  “I don’t believe we have. Thomas Bowers.” Jeff extended a hand.

  “Mr. Bowers is an expert in antiques,” said Tiffany.

  “Antiquities,” Jeff corrected. “And I wouldn’t say an expert, exactly. I’m a dealer.”

  “Is that so?” The general’s expression shifted. “Well, Mr. Bowers, we should have a drink later. I have something in my cabin that I think may interest you greatly.”

  Jeff allowed his eyes to linger on Tiffany Joy’s quite spectacular bosom. “I’m sure you do, General.”

  “It’s not for sale,” the general snapped. “Not that you could afford it even if it were. It’s priceless.”

  “Oh, I believe you, sir.” Jeff’s eyes were still fixed on Tiffany’s, and hers on him.

  Thomas Bowers really was disconcertingly good-looking. Tiffany knew she shouldn’t flirt. It upset Alan. Married or not, General Alan McPhee was a wonderful man, noble and brave and lionhearted. It was his strength and integrity that had attracted Tiffany to him in the first place. Well, that and the power, if she was honest. But she couldn’t let him down, just because a handsome stranger paid her some attention. She blushed, ashamed of herself.

  “I’ll take you up on that drink tomorrow, General, if that’s all right,” Thomas Bowers was saying brightly. “Unfortunately I have some work I need to catch up on tonight. Sorry to have intruded, Miss Joy.”

  He nodded gallantly and took his leave.

  Tiffany Joy’s blush deepened. “Mr. Bowers.”

  Well, Jeff thought, grinning all the way back to his cabin. That should put a fox in the henhouse. Step one completed.

  JEFF’S CABIN WAS CHARMING but minuscule. Tracy had once pulled off a spectacular jewel theft aboard the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express traveling from London to Venice and had compared her room to “the inside of a candy box.”

  This was similar, a riot of red velvet and brocade with a single armchair, tiny table and foldout bunk bed that Jeff suspected had been shipped in especially from Guantánamo Bay, so torturous was it to attempt to sleep on. The decor was certainly nostalgic, and had a certain Art Deco glamour to it. But Jeff’s enthusiasm for the romance of the Pullman car was fading almost as fast as his appetite. Roll on, Bangkok.

  Having attempted to shower in a stall so cramped Houdini would have thought twice before entering it, Jeff lay on his bunk rereading Gunther’s encrypted file on General Alan McPhee.

  In 2007, the general was in command of U.S. forces in the holy city of Nippur, about 160 kilometers southeast of Baghdad between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Since 2003, Coalition forces had been charged with preventing looting at archaeological sites like Nippur, a treasure trove of pre-Sargonic, Akkadian and old Babylonian artifacts. A statue of King Entemena, a Mesopotamian monarch from around 2400 BC, similar to the one looted from the National Museum of Iraq in 2003 and of equivalent value, was discovered in a tomb in Nippur by a French ground unit. It went missing from a “secure” Coalition safe house six weeks later, days before it was due to be transferred to the Louvre. Extensive local searches produced no result, although a wealth of circumstantial evidence pointed to a local man, a petty thief named Aahil Hafeez. Hafeez was arrested, but before he could be tried, he was abducted and hanged by an angry mob. He always protested his innocence. The statue was never seen again.

  Reliable sources now suggest that General McPhee himself commissioned the theft. The much-decorated general has in fact for years been running a profitable sideline in looted treasures and war spoils, although nothing quite as spectacular as this. Having paid off his local accomplices, the general wisely waited some years before searching for a suitable buyer for the Entemena statue. He has agreed to sell it for two million U.S. dollars to a Thai drug lord by the name of Chao-tak Chao. Chao is an exceptionally corrupt and ruthless individual, responsible for coun
tless abductions, murders and incidents of torture. Illiterate and uneducated, he is nevertheless a collector of statuary in all its forms.

  The general is traveling by boat and train to avoid the more intrusive customs searches prevalent throughout Asian airports. He is also clearly protected to a large degree by his status, both in the United States and abroad, as a military hero, much decorated for his valor and admired for his charitable endeavors.

  Jeff thought, Everybody loves this guy. Almost as much as he loves himself. But he’s a fraud. Worse than that, he’s a killer.

  Jeff closed his eyes and tried to imagine the terror of the young Iraqi man as he was dragged to some makeshift gallows by his own people. Strung up like an animal and choked to death for a crime of which he knew nothing. General McPhee could have stepped in and saved him. He didn’t need a scapegoat. The crime could have remained unsolved, like so many others in the chaotic aftermath of the war. But in order to cover his own tracks twice over, that powerful, guilty man had allowed the powerless, innocent man to die a horrific death.

  And that was when Jeff changed his mind.

  Stealing the statue’s not enough.

  This bastard deserves a taste of his own medicine.

  IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG for Thomas Bowers to engineer his next meeting with Miss Tiffany Joy.

  He’d observed that the general always went to breakfast before his “secretary,” and alone. Once he’d gone, Miss Joy would slip back into her own cabin, making sure it looked as if both berths had been slept in; there she showered and dressed, then joined her boss after a suitable interval. It was the easiest thing in the world to bump into her as she emerged into the corridor.

  “Miss Joy. You look lovely this morning, as ever. How are the bruises?”

  “Mr. Bowers!”

  Tiffany blushed despite herself. She wished she didn’t enjoy these encounters with the antiques dealer, or whatever he was, quite as much as she did. But Thomas Bowers was so young, and handsome, and Alan, bless him, was so old. Quite the antiquity himself, come to think of it!

  “Is something funny? You know you’re frighteningly pretty when you smile.”

  “And you’re a terrible flirt.”

  “I’m crushed. Here was I thinking I was rather a good one.”

  Tiffany laughed. “I mean it. Alan . . . General McPhee . . . he wasn’t too pleased last night. He said you bumped into me on purpose.”

  “He was quite right.” Jeff moved closer. The train corridor was so narrow, his nose and Tiffany’s were almost touching. “Not that I see what business it is of his. Isn’t there a Mrs. McPhee somewhere? Keeping the home fires burning and all that.”

  “Well . . . yes,” Tiffany admitted. “I’m just not sure she keeps the general’s fires burning, though. Not anymore.”

  “What about your fires, Miss Joy?” Jeff’s hands slid around her waist, then down over her deliciously pert bottom.

  “Oh, Mr. Bowers!”

  “Thomas.”

  “Thomas. I want to but I . . . we can’t. He’s my boss.”

  “You know what they say about all work and no play . . .”

  The boring Swedish couple emerged from their cabin. Reluctantly Jeff released the general’s secretary—“under” secretary—and let them pass.

  “Your boss was boasting last night about having something priceless in his cabin,” he said nonchalantly, once they were alone again. “He wasn’t only talking about you, was he?”

  “No. But I can’t talk about it,” Tiffany said primly.

  “Why not?” Lunging forward, Jeff kissed her suddenly and passionately on the mouth.

  “Thomas!”

  “He obviously wanted me to know. Come on, I won’t tell. What’s he got stashed in there? The world’s biggest bottle of Viagra?”

  “Don’t be mean.”

  “A toupee spun from threads of pure platinum?”

  “Stop it!” Tiffany giggled. “If you must know, it’s some sort of statue. Between you and me, it’s quite hideous. It was a gift from a grateful Iraqi gentleman, after the liberation. Apparently it’s very old and very rare.”

  “Just like Alan’s erection,” Jeff couldn’t resist saying. “Look. It’s the boat tour of the River Kwai this afternoon.”

  “I know.” Tiffany sighed. “The general’s an expert on World War Two history. I’ve been hearing all about it since Singapore. He really is an incredibly learned and eminent—”

  “Get out of it. Say you’re not feeling well.”

  “But he knows I’m—”

  “Fake something. Come on, Miss Joy. Live a little! I’ll make sure your boss and I are on different boats. Then I’ll duck out early and come and take a look at the general’s priceless treasure.”

  “I assume you’re referring to the statue, Mr. Bowers?” Tiffany threw back her hair coquettishly.

  “I’ll show you what I’m referring to this afternoon, Miss Joy. Enjoy your breakfast.”

  IT WAS A HUNDRED degrees and a hundred percent humidity at the River Kwai. Dressed in khaki slacks and a linen shirt, and carrying a small rucksack, General Alan McPhee was sweating like a pig.

  “You must be used to these sort of conditions, General. What’s your secret?”

  General McPhee scowled. He disliked Thomas Bowers. The man was too handsome by half, too smooth, too full of himself. Bowers looked immaculate as ever today in a white shirt and shorts, and if he was feeling the heat he didn’t show it. Bastard.

  “No secret, Mr. Bowers. Just perseverance.”

  “Very admirable. I notice your secretary isn’t with us. Military history not her thing?”

  “Miss Joy isn’t feeling very well. I believe she’s resting in her cabin.”

  The E&O passengers were divided into two groups and herded toward separate rafts. The Asians were directed toward the vessel with a Japanese-speaking guide, and the Europeans to one with an Australian ex-serviceman providing the commentary.

  Jeff made his way toward the Japanese raft. He was immediately accosted by the train’s chief steward, a look of panic on his face.

  “No, no, Mr. Bowers. For a tour in English, you must join the other line.”

  “Thanks, Helmut. But I prefer this one.”

  Jeff pushed forward.

  “Please, Mr. Bowers, it is most important. We ask all our European visitors to board the other raft.”

  “I’m sure you do.” Jeff smiled. “But I’m taking this one.”

  Noticing the minidrama being played out behind him, General McPhee came over.

  “What’s the matter, Bowers?”

  Jeff whispered in the general’s ear. “I heard they give very different versions of the tour on the Japs’ boat. Apparently they tell them about how brave and noble their soldiers were, and how their mistreatment of the Allied prisoners of war was exaggerated. I’m curious to hear it.”

  “That’s outrageous! Who told you that?”

  “A little bird.” Jeff shrugged. “The narration’s in Japanese but Minami here’s agreed to translate for me.” He nodded toward a Japanese woman a few feet ahead of them in line.

  “I’m taking this raft too,” the general announced loudly.

  “Sir! I must protest.” The poor chief steward looked as if he might spontaneously combust. “Really, ve have a system . . .”

  “I’ll bet you do.” The general followed Jeff onto the raft, leaving the little man helpless on the quayside.

  THE GENERAL’S TEMPER WORSENED as they made their way down the river. Bowers was right. The crap they were feeding the Japanese tourists bore no resemblance to the truth. He was damn well going to complain to the management and in the strongest terms! He tried to concentrate on everything his Japanese translator was saying. But the woman was so short and spoke so softly, it was impossible to hear her at times over the noise o
f the engine. Between straining his ears, stooping uncomfortably and attempting to swat away mosquitoes the size of small bats, it was a thoroughly unpleasant trip. The humidity was also horrendous, like breathing hot soup. Removing his backpack and loosening the buttons on his shirt, the general was relieved to see that Bowers had been forced to do the same.

  BACK ON THE TRAIN, General McPhee headed straight to his cabin. As soon as he’d peeled off his wet clothes, he intended to dictate a strongly worded letter of complaint to the relevant authorities. He was stopped in the corridor, however, by a borderline-hysterical Helmut.

  “I’m terribly sorry, General. I really have no idea how this happened. But I’m afraid you can’t return to your cabin.”

  “What do you mean I can’t return to my cabin? I can do as I damn well please.”

  “It appears there has been a robbery.” The German looked as if he might faint. “Both your cabin and Miss Joy’s were targeted. The young lady appears to have been chloroformed. The police are on their way.”

  THE BREAK-INS AT GENERAL McPhee’s cabin and that of his pretty young secretary were the talk of the train for the remainder of the journey. After a six-hour delay, the Malay police allowed them to continue across the border to Thailand. Other than a few inconsequential items of jewelry and some of the general’s personal effects, nothing appeared to have been taken.

  Tiffany accosted Jeff angrily on the outdoor viewing platform later that night.

  “What the hell happened, Thomas? Where were you?”

  “I’m sorry. I got stuck on the same raft as your boss. I couldn’t get away.”

  “Well, someone got away. Whoever they were, they were obviously after that stupid statue.”

  “I imagine so. You poor thing. You must have been terrified.” Jeff wrapped an arm around her shoulder. Despite herself, Tiffany leaned into him.

  “Actually I didn’t know a thing about it. The police think whoever it was must have gassed me through the keyhole. All I remember was waking up and the room looked like a bomb had hit it. Anyway, they didn’t find what they were looking for.”