He looked at her, and she nodded. He planted his finger on an area close to the river. "This is where the actual hotel will be. The rest is landscaping, gardens, terraces, two swimming pools, several fountains. It'll be nice."
"What about the park?"
"What park?"
She leaned down and pointed to a spot. "Right back here. Washington Square Park, just beyond this open area."
"Well, that borders on the parking lot—that open area." He touched a spot on the paper. Amalise was silent, and he glanced at her. "But the park won't be touched," he assured her. "We'll plant a hedge or some trees or something between the park and our lot."
Robert reappeared. Bingham sensed tension in the air as Amalise straightened and stood there while Robert took a chair on the other side of the table, facing Bingham.
Bingham looked at Robert. "How're you coming on the levee problem with the sewage and water board?"
"I'm working on that."
"Well get moving. Can we do something for them down in that area?" On the survey he placed his finger near the point where Elysian Fields and Esplanade met near the river. "Maybe donate a small strip at that end to the city for a walkway or park or something?"
Robert nodded. "There's something like that going in the Quarter, on the levee behind Jackson Square. Mayor Moon's for that one. It's in the planning stage." He grinned. "Maybe we could put a statue of the mayor, or his wife, on our spot."
Bingham nodded. He watched as Amalise walked back to her chair without saying anything. Robert went on about regulations and permits, and Bingham tuned out. Really, this transaction couldn't close soon enough, he thought.
In her office later on, Amalise frowned as she sorted through stacks of documents, looking for the draft of the syndicate's loan agreement. Despite her resolutions, despite every effort, she couldn't get the family on Kerlerec out of her mind. She made a mental note to replace the groceries she'd destroyed in their kitchen. And she thought of the child Luke. So small and timid. Malnourished, she supposed. What would happen to him if Caroline and Ellis decided not to adopt him? Or if the adoption wasn't approved? Either way, he'd be sent back into that institution.
Luke could have been any child she'd seen on the news two years ago at the end of the Vietnam War. He could have come from Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos. He could have been one of the children flown out of Saigon during Operation Babylift, just ahead of the Viet Cong invasion of the city. She frowned and tightened her lips, remembering one of the Babylift flights that had crashed on takeoff. The images came rushing back, the horror of that day, the pandemonium.
Thoughts of those shadow children had stuck with her the past few years. Was that why she couldn't let go of the family on Kerlerec Street? Was Luke a living reminder of the helplessness she'd felt, that everyone had felt watching the nightly news back then? She turned her head to the window and stared at nothing for a moment, then roused herself.
She found the loan agreement and pulled it from the pile. Pushing the rest of the documents aside, she opened this one to the first page. She told herself, as she began to read, as she had many times before, that she must focus now, that there was nothing one person could do to change things so far away. Wars, famine, orphans—that was the way of life on the other side of the globe. The only things that ever seemed to change were the names, the faces, and the geography.
Holding the agreement with both hands, she shook it, as if to focus her attention. This agreement. This agreement! Would it change anything for the better? Frustrated, she thumped the page and set it down on the desk before her. Abba! Why had she been given a second chance to make her life worthwhile, only to be stuck with this odious transaction? The question opened again that infinite void inside, the same emptiness she'd felt when she'd realized that Jude and Rebecca were in love.
Looking at the deal books on the shelf facing her desk, she knew these weren't the kind of things that could fill the empty sphere. As indicated by their elegant binders, those books, and what they represented, were important to everyone involved at the time they were negotiated and signed. But in the overall scheme of things, they were merely transient in nature. Their importance would diminish as time passed and the agreements grew outdated and, then, inevitably, were replaced or filed away, never to be seen again.
It occurred to her then that an infinite void cannot be filled with finite things.
Chapter Twelve
Phnom Penh, Cambodia 1975
Four o'clock. The child stumbled, and Samantha stopped to pick him up, hiking him so that his weight rested on her arm and he could lean against her shoulder, as you would carry an infant. He was light, but still she found it difficult to run with him as they moved against the tide of refugees stirring up the dust, shouting, sweating, many weeping. Desperation swept over her, focusing her thoughts like a beam of light from one of those plastic toy ray-guns. She had to find transportation to the airstrip. A car, a Vespa, or even a bicycle taxi. At this pace they'd never make it to the plane in time. The child buried his face in the curve of her neck and made a soft keening sound. She tightened her grip on him, patted his back.
"It's all right. Don't be afraid." She whispered the words into his ear and the keening turned to a whimper. She didn't pray much, but she found herself mumbling out loud, "Help us. Please God. If not for me, help the child."
Pushing, scrambling, Sam stepped to one side as the crowd parted for an automobile moving steadily forward, its horn blaring. An oxcart overflowing with passengers trailed in the car's wake, the driver whipping the poor animal forward before the crowd could close up again. The cart lurched from side to side, and a woman in the middle of the cart waved a white shirt like a flag.
Sam pressed on, fighting the surge. Grim faces stared out at her from the oxcart as she pushed past. Theirs were villagers' eyes, eyes accustomed to the expanse of rice fields and blue sky, to the sight of lush green banana trees rustling in the breeze. These were country eyes now opened wide to take in tall buildings they never imagined to exist and the mass of humanity around them. As the oxcart moved slowly forward, the occupants' heads whipped from side to side following the explosions of sound and smells and movement, sometimes gazing back through the blazing sunlight and dust in the direction from which they'd come as though unwilling to let that go.
A bicycle taxi following the oxcart jolted its way through the swarming mass toward Sam and the boy. She could see fury on the faces of the two passengers behind the bicycle man as they hunkered down behind him. One, a hefty man, leaned forward and shouted something she couldn't hear over the noise of the crowds, poking at the driver's back as if somehow that would move them on at a faster pace. A woman huddled beside him, clinging to his shirt and swatting wildly at people grabbing at the cycle.
The cycler spat something back at the passenger and waved one arm in the air. Closer now, Sam could hear him. "Get out if you don't like! Get out. Get out! Get out! There are others who will pay."
Fear and hope twisted inside and without thinking, Sam hefted the boy onto her other hip and began moving toward the cart, raising one arm high, shouting to the bicycle man, "Eastside airstrip! Take us to the airstrip!"
The bicycle man turned. Frowning, he glared at Sam, and she saw it in his eyes. Ach! White woman, American woman. Don't I have trouble enough?
Still she shoved her way toward the cart, ignoring the current passengers, seeing only a way to the plane if she could just reach the cyclist. The boy moaned and clung to her neck. The bicycle, hemmed in by the crowd, rolled to a standstill. The man in the cart pounded his fists on the cycler's back shouting for him to drive on. "Move! Now!"
The cycler swatted back, glancing over his shoulder at the attacker, and Sam, drawing closer, shouted again, catching his eye. The cyclist gave Sam a speculative look and his eyes dropped for an instant on the child before he turned away, hunching over the bi
cycle bars, prepared to force his way through the wall of frantic refugees blocking the road.
At that moment, with a loud curse, the hefty man in the cart half stood, leaned forward, and whacked the bicycle man's head from behind with the palm of his hand. The cyclist's foot sprung from the pedal, slammed to the ground, and straddling the bike, he whirled, his purple face contorted with humiliation and fury.
Sam glanced at her watch—only fifty minutes to reach the airstrip. There'd be no escape after that once the Khmer Rouge entered the city, she knew. To be left behind was death. She'd read the intelligence reports: Entire villages had been razed by the Khmer Rouge in the past few weeks, burned to the ground without mercy. Mass murder, torture, rape. Survivors force-marched to labor camps where they now toiled for Ankah, Father of the New, the Reborn, the Red State. No food, no medicine or time to sleep. She'd read of babies swung on pikes, of families torn apart, children just out of diapers pressed into work in the rice fields, young boys turned to slaves in a mindless army.
The reports hadn't yet been made public. No one was certain how much was true, but the possibility drove her forward at this moment with a vengeance.
"Fifty dollars, U.S.," she called, waving her arm at the cycler. "Fifty dollars for a ride." She had almost reached him now. Terror eviscerated any concern for the man and woman sitting behind him. "Fifty dollars for a ride."
She saw it in the man's eyes. Fifty U.S. dollars would feed his family for a year, maybe two or three, with enough left over to purchase a new cycle. It was an unimaginable sum. "Sixty," he countered, almost breathing the words, eyes riveted to hers.
The man behind him, flushed and sweating, suddenly realizing his predicament, stood, swearing and rocking the cart. The woman held onto the sides of the cart and began screaming. Sam avoided their eyes, ignoring her guilt.
"Let me see the money first," the cycler said, holding out his hand palm up, stone-faced.
Sam locked eyes with the man while digging into her purse for the envelope she'd found on her desk at the embassy. How long ago that seemed, years since Oliver had walked through the door and said they must leave. Her fingers located the envelope, and she pulled out six of the ten-dollar bills. She was careful to hide the remaining money that might be needed later on, to spur him forward if things got rough. Now she fanned the sixty dollars just out of reach of the man who could save their lives.
She saw the hunger in his eyes. He would do it.
Nodding, the cycler planted both feet flat on the ground, stood, and twisted around, shouting at his passengers, waving them off. "Get out of my cart! Out!"
Gasping, Sam held the child and watched as the woman froze, not comprehending. The man swung his fist, but the cycler raised his arm, shielding himself from the blow and the passenger, hitting muscles like stone, stumbled back, tumbling from the cart. Riveted, horrified, Sam watched bright blood streaming from the man's forehead as he lay prone on the road beside the cart wheels.
"Help!" the woman screamed, scrambling down. She looked straight at Sam, and Sam, suffused with shame but driven by desperation, looked away. "Help me!" the woman yelled again, pushing her way to the man, stiffening her arms before her as she fell, kneeling over the body. Sam glanced down at them over her shoulder.
"Help him. He'll be crushed!" Bending over the man, the woman shielded him.
The child trembled in Samantha's arms.
"Mem!" The cycler shoved Sam, reaching for the money.
Sam's head snapped up and, holding the boy with one arm, she curled her fingers around the money, fisting it, shaking her head. "When you get us there," she said, forcing herself not to look at the couple on the ground, pointing east.
The boy whimpered.
"Get in then," the cycler said, jerking his head toward the now-empty cart. Averting her eyes from the evicted passengers, the man prone on the ground, bleeding, his wife, huddled over him, Sam lifted the boy into the cart and climbed in behind him.
The cart jerked forward and swayed as the cyclist forced his way through the crowd. Sam turned back once to see the man slowly rising to his feet, supported by the woman. Wide-eyed she swiveled, face forward again behind the cyclist who was forging ahead to the other side of the street where an alley cut through the buildings. Forgive me. She would make herself forget this moment, block it from her memory. But despite the din of the crowd, behind her she could still hear the woman's shrill screams, and she knew those cries would stay with her forever.
The alley when they entered it was dark and a few degrees cooler. She let herself relax and took a deep breath. She knew where they were now. The alley would cut across the main thoroughfares, away from the crowds. The boy settled against her, quiet but still clinging to her neck. As the frenzy receded behind them, Sam leaned forward and gave the cyclist directions to the airstrip.
The airstrip was located at the edge of town, dangerous because the perimeters of the city were already under attack. She could hear the sound of gunfire again, closer now. Instantly the cart slowed and stopped. Over his shoulder, the cyclist studied her with a grim look. His eyes traveled down to her fist, still clutching the money, and seconds passed as she held her breath. Finally, he nodded.
As he began peddling again, Sam fell back against the seat with a strangled sob and hugged the child. The boy trembled and she patted his back gently, soothing him, as she glanced again at her watch. A chill ran through her as she realized that only half an hour now stood between escape and certain death.
At the end of the alley the bicycle turned onto a smaller, less-crowded street. Moving against traffic, they turned again and again, winding their way through a warren of alleyways and narrow streets, each one in a poorer area of town than the last.
"How much longer?" she called to the driver.
He shrugged. "Depends." Then quickly: "Sixty dollars no matter what happens, Mem. Whatever time. Sixty dollars."
"Yes," she said. No matter what happened, he'd be paid. He'd simply take it if she refused. She looked at her watch: twenty minutes to five. "Hurry, please hurry!" she cried.
The child pressed closer, silent now.
Chapter Thirteen
New Orleans—1977
Ashley Elizabeth walked into Amalise's office and dropped a stack of mail into the wooden in-box on the corner of her desk. Amalise looked up and smiled.
"Today's mail," Ashley Elizabeth said. "And Raymond was looking for you earlier." Her eyes strayed to the pile of agreements on Amalise's desk, and she frowned, glancing at her watch. "Should I book help from the typing pool tonight?"
"Yes, four or five hours, I think. And thanks." Amalise swiveled, picked up the phone, and dialed Raymond's extension as Ashley Elizabeth left the office. He answered right away. Had she completed the due diligence they'd discussed on Murdoch and his company?
"Yes. All the corporate records check out. Cayman counsel's working with us on the subsidiary and the letter of credit. Nothing outside of that on Murdoch himself, though. And there was nothing on either company or Murdoch in our library. No litigation, no mention anywhere."
Raymond was silent for a moment. "Doug's going to want something. Let's check him out in newspaper archives, that sort of thing."
"In the public library?"
He hesitated. "Yeah," he finally said. "But don't spend too much time on it. Doug's probably not going to bill the time if we've got nothing to show."
She grimaced. "All right," she said. She'd go to the library this afternoon. Looking at the agreement she'd been working on, she said, "I'll have my comments on the latest draft of the loan agreement to you soon, and then I'll take a walk over there."
The day was sunny, though crisp and cool, and Amalise enjoyed the walk to the main branch of the library on Loyola Avenue. She'd finished marking her comments on the agreement, and Ashley Elizabeth had dropped them off to R
aymond. Once he'd reviewed the changes, her secretary had promised to get them to the typing pool for revision overnight. She couldn't do the work herself, Ashley Elizabeth had said, or she'd be late for tennis. But unlike at the start of their relationship two years ago when Amalise was a new associate, Ashley Elizabeth had smiled this time when she'd made the excuse.
The librarian helped her find the newspaper microfiche tapes she needed. She pulled two years of reels for the Sunday Times-Picayune and New York Times. Sitting in a dark cubbyhole in the corner of the library where the viewers were kept, she leaned forward and began the grueling work of feeding the tape into the lighted machine, scrolling through each thin plastic reel, scanning page after page of the newspapers for any reference to Bingham Murdoch or his company, Lone Ranger.
Nothing came up on Bingham Murdoch. And the company name, Lone Ranger, Inc., turned out to be a troublesome distraction—a false lead in the news because of the cowboy connection. That fact alone nearly doubled the time it took to do the search.
An hour passed this way. Then two. She yawned, stretched, and rubbed her eyes. Her eyesight had begun to blur. Winding through a new reel of the New York Times twenty minutes later, her eyes stopped on a paragraph halfway down the page, on a reference to the company name. She bent closer, blinking to focus her eyes in the dim light.
The date was 1971, she saw, and then she leaned back, disappointed. The story was well known and irrelevant to her assignment. Still, it was amusing in a dark way. Raymond would like this one. A lone pirate had hijacked Northwest Orient Flight 305 out of Portland, Oregon, on Thanksgiving Eve six years ago and was never seen again. D. B. Cooper, reporters had mistakenly named him, but the name had stuck.
She smiled and decided to copy the story for Raymond. He was a fan of the Cooper caper. A quote from one of the lead detectives on the case containing a reference to Lone Ranger had caught the article in her search net. "The guy was a real lone ranger," the detective had said, referring to the hijacker.
Chasing the Wind Page 9
