Ransom Drop

by Mike Sullivan

  Imagine, a plump, overweight, Kamea Bee not having to sit in front of a microphone at a radio station each day. Think of her being praised for her writing and research skills—the way management at the BBC praised the way I handled myself during the interview, and the way I put together, on short notice, the article on the bombings in Vientiane. When they made the offer for full-time employment in London as a research associate, I was flattered. I accepted. It was hard to turn them down. You don’t get the brass ring tossed your way in life too often so you much reach for it while it’s there in front of you. That’s the way I feel. And I hope that you will feel the same way during the coming years and see that my decision to leave Laos so soon, without saying good bye, was best for both of us.

  Oh, I will miss you, Maran. We had some very good times together, strolling along the Mekong under a full moon with romance in the air, sharing candlelight dinners in fancy restaurants and intimate romance back home later in your apartment. I will miss that part of my life that I shared with you. But at the same time I am also a realist.

  From the time I agreed to move in with you, this little school girl suspicion was clearly in the back of my mind that it wasn’t enough. That so much of your life is controlled by your job and so much of your ideology concerning the Hmong in this country are just totally wrong. They do struggle, they do have very little on which to live, they are persecuted by the local communist government—I won’t go any further here because I know the way you feel about them. However, Human Rights liberals, such as myself—yes, I can admit it now—certainly do not approve of the way they are treated.

  How would anyone showing a spark of humanity not be concerned about the way they live. But I’m also practical. I look at things in a realistic way. You are, far and wide, one of the most dedicated, hard-working and loyal military officers I have ever met. When it comes to doing the job, you have very few equals. On the other hand, it wasn’t long before I realized that with your demanding schedule and my work as a broadcaster that there wasn’t time left for both of us. You going your way and me going mine, I soon became quite bored with all of it. Yes, I will admit now, that the job at the radio station had become, over the years, tedious and boring. At the back of my mind I had so often envisioned a fresh start, doing something I really enjoyed, something that would see my own career take off, and I think now, optimistically, that the new job with the BBC will provide this opportunity.

  Please, don’t hate me, my dearest. A part of me will always love you. But the very tiny part left over for both of us when our lives were going separate ways just wasn’t enough. Our irregular hours, the absence of holidays, the quiet times we should have had together sharing life together while expressing our love in the most intimate ways was never going to become a reality. I knew that long ago. And at first I was willing to accept it. But over time, I actually came to resent it, and longed for more of your time, and a closer, more intimate relationship. But this was never going to happen. Please be happy for me, Maran. Your memory will always be there close to my heart, and I will never forget you.

  Love always, in a most unusual way,

  Kamea Bee

  Tint felt his stomach knot as the realization of his loss began to sink in. He went and had a whiskey and then another.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Seabury rented a small room on the edge of town near the airport and slept a few hours. He was about to catch the early flight back to Bangkok the next morning when Colonel Maran Tint stopped him near the door to the boarding area just as he was about to enter the tunnel going down to the plane.

  Tint’s face looked swollen, bruised and distorted. A wire splint covered his nose where Seabury had punched him.

  “You’re not out of the country yet,” Tint said. “I could detain you, throw you in a dungeon for a hundred years for assaulting a military police officer, make your life miserable.”

  “But you won’t,” Seabury said, keeping his voice calm, and his eyes leveled on the cop. “It’ll cause a tsunami and you won’t want to be anywhere close when it hits land.”

  “So dramatic.”

  “And full of knowledge,” he said, grinning, “and secrets too.”

  Seabury tapped a finger to his head and added, “But then you should know all about secrets. Your life is full of them.”

  Seabury checked his watch. The last of the passengers filed through the doorway. He turned back to Tint. “Correct me if I’m wrong,” he said. “But here’s what I think happened. A call went through last night or early this morning to your Commanding Officer. Howard Hatcher was asking for a favor and your CO agreed to status quo to let the pot simmer. I’m leaving the country. I won’t be back again, so your CO tells you to call the dogs off. How am I doing so far?”

  A hard, bitter light glinted inside Tint’s eyes and his bony face was cool and sullen.

  “Don’t come back,” he said. “I don’t want to see you up here—ever again.”

  “But I was planning a Sunday picnic.”

  Tint bristled under the attempted humor.

  “Don’t worry. I wasn’t planning on it anytime soon.”

  He turned around, walked down the corridor and boarded the plane. Seabury was back in Bangkok by nine o’clock, in his office by ten-thirty. Mae Mongkul, happy, worried, relieved to see him back safely, had deleted twenty-five messages from his answering machine. All except one. The one from Robert Hong.

  “He’s downstairs now waiting to see you.”

  “Why doesn’t he just come up?” Seabury said.

  “He doesn’t sound very happy,” the secretary said.

  “Like what?” Seabury said.

  “I don’t know…sort of down…depressed. Maybe a little lonely.”

  Seabury left the office and went downstairs. Robert Hong sat in the lobby on a sofa across from the security desk. Seabury waved to the guard. The guard waved back, and then Seabury sat down on the sofa next to Hong.

  “I enrolled her in therapy this morning,” he said as soon as Seabury sat down. “She’s been crying a lot since we left Laos—which was only yesterday but it seems like forever. Honestly, I don’t know what to do, I really don’t. She’s such a good kid and now her life’s turned completely upside down.”

  “It’ll take time,” Seabury said. “Months, years maybe. You don’t go through something that horrific without it changing your life forever. It was a violation, life threatening situation. I don’t know, I’m not a therapist, but I do know Victoria. I know how strong she is. She’s a fighter. In time she’ll heal, she’ll come out of it okay.”

  “I guess I needed to hear that from someone I respect…someone I trust. You got

  her back alive. I won’t forget this. I never will.”

  “Does that mean a free pass to Dreamworld, so I can ride the Ferris wheel?”

  Hong smiled a faint smile. “They don’t have a Ferris wheel at Dreamworld.”

  “Well, maybe the beach then,” Seabury said, still joking.

  “Give me a minute, I’ll change into shorts and sneakers.”

  “Today,” Hong said, sharing in the joke, “I’m ready.”

  “I have some news about the kidnapper,” Seabury said, changing topics.

  Robert Hong leaned in close to listen.

  “They had him in a holding cell up in Vientiane,” Seabury said. “But he had some problems with the other inmates so they transferred him to a single cell in the jail while they awaited a court order to transfer him back to Thailand to stand trial. It gets a little cloudy as to what happened next. But it seems that the prisoner Hyde Greer met with a very unfortunate accident while locked up in the cell. A day later after being transferred there, he ended up being hanged with a bed sheet strung up to one of the cell bars. No one knows a thing about how it happened.”

  It took a long time for Hong to respond. “Suicide?”

  “Could have been self-inflicted. But up there, you never know. He could have angered one of the cops. No one would kno
w if a murder had been committed. The cops have a way of keeping things quiet.”

  Hong shook his head, then he stopped abruptly and looked at Seabury. There was a trace of anger in his tired old eyes.

  “I know it sounds awful,” he said, “but he got what he deserved. Somehow now, in a strange way, I feel vindicated.”

  Seabury talked briefly to Robert Hong, and then after that there wasn’t much left to say. The door was always open for a visit to Hong’s home in Hua Hin.

  “Anytime,” Hong said. “Or if you just need to relax. If you need to get away for a weekend, call me. Okay?”

  Seabury nodded then watched Hong’s small thin body move out the front door back onto the sidewalk. Hong glanced back, smiled, waved, and then he was gone.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  A week later, the flight to Tokyo took six hours. The lay-over took forty-five minutes. The flight across the Pacific to San Francisco took another eleven hours. Seabury arrived drowsy and hung over from jet-lag on Saturday the day of the funeral. Somber-faced cops on black and white motorcycles drove in a procession down the street. Blue uniformed squads followed and a police marching band came behind them. All of them escorted Tory Kwan’s casket down Market Street in a display of sadness and solidarity. He stood on the sidewalk and watched them go by. The funeral cars came later.

  Someone pointed to a sleek black limo at the head of the group. Inside was Tory’s father, Ken Kwan. As Kwan’s head flashed by in the window, turning at just the right angle, Seabury glimpsed the cold, poker-faced profile of a slightly built man whose thoughts seemed preoccupied in a distant, private, faraway place.

  Seabury drove the rental out that afternoon to Olivet Memorial Park in the town of Colm, for the burial. Standing at the edge of the crowd, he watched as a portly, moon-faced preacher with red cheeks and gray, thinning hair read prayers from the Book of Psalms over the casket. Cop friends and friends of the family, mostly young women dressed in black, wept as the preacher’s deep, basso voice rolled out over the grounds like the toll of a distant bell.

  At the edge of the crowd and not expecting to find him there, Seabury searched for Bill Wheatley. As his eyes slipped among the group of mourners, he found Wheatley nowhere in sight. Too busy getting ready for your gig in Washington, Seabury thought, uttering empty words of protest.

  The preacher finished praying and the crowd turned away from the grave and walked back across the lawn. Car doors opened and banged shut. Vehicles drove off silently down a paved road toward the front gate. And it was over. The life of Tory Kwan was put to rest.

  The sun lowered behind a bank of dark clouds blowing in from the Pacific. The sky clouded over. A hint of rain swept through the wind as it started to blow. To Seabury, the day had started and ended like the flicker of a dying candle, as bleak and somber as the silence inside a tomb.

  Seabury caught a United Airlines flight back to Bangkok and slept for twelve hours straight. He got out of bed late in the afternoon after his long rest. Mae Mongkul had called his apartment and left a message inquiring about whether he was coming into the office the next day. He called back and reached her as she was about to leave for home at five o’clock.

  “Yes, Mother Hen,” he said jokingly to her. “I bet you’ll always be there to watch my back.” She giggled into the phone. They talked for a few minutes more and then hung up.

  In the kitchen, he popped open a bottle of beer and traipsed back into the living room and sat down in a chair, facing a window. His apartment, a large executive high-rise on the twentieth floor, overlooked the Chao Phraya River far below. Neighboring five star hotels stood nearby; black shimmering glass from the windows of large commercial buildings dotted the skyline across the river. In the approaching darkness, lights came on inside. Down below, ships and barges beat a steady stream up and down the river. At last, silence in the city.

  As he sat there, he thought about Tory Kwan in the stillness and darkness of the room. She was there once, alive and bright and energetic. She let him know that she had every intention of developing some sort of long-term relationship with him.

  When this is over Seabury, promise you’ll come to Vientiane to visit me. Now she was gone. In the pit of his stomach he felt a pang of guilt and sorrow. He closed his eyes and remembered her.

  Five minutes later, the insistent ringing of his phone pulled him back to reality.

  Mae Mongkul spoke quickly, apologetically over the line.

  “Sorry, Sam, but I just received a call from Lois Lockett. Yes, the shipping magnet’s daughter. She wants to see you.”

  “Where?”

  “Jakarta.”

  “Did she give any details?”

  “No, she said you’d know.”

  With a heartfelt sigh, Seabury nodded. Adventure had found him…again.

  About the Author:

  Mike lives in Bangkok, Thailand and devotes himself to a career as a full-time writer. He has created action-hero Sam Seabury, a tough, gritty merchant seaman who travels the world helping innocent victims exploited by crime or corruption. Like James Bond, his stage is the entire world, and he can’t say no to anyone in trouble. Mike has written three Sam Seabury novels and is at work on the fourth book in the series.

  Email Mike Sullivan at mikesllvn@gmail.com.

  Visit him online at: http://createfly.byethost7.com/mjpsullivan/

  and http://www.mjpsullivan.com

  Also by Mike Sullivan:

  Dead Girl Beach

  by Mike Sullivan

  eBook ISBN: 9781615729852

  Print ISBN: 9781615729852

  Mystery Suspense

  Novel of 42,539 words

  Book 1 of the Sam Seabury Series

  At least every five months the body of a young girl turns up dead in a remote tropical lagoon on Thailand’s Koh Phangan Island. The local village pipeline carry stories of the place being haunted. Ghosts soar through the trees. Dark spirits lurk below the water. Scary apparitions appear in the night. From then on, the place is called Dead Girl Beach. Municipal police, one nautical mile down the coast in the village of Had Rin, order signs to be posted in the area to prevent people from going there. Most people take the signs seriously and stayed away, all accept Greta Langer.

  She’s a monstrous Amazonian on a kill spree and a bevy of naive, unsuspecting bar hostesses working the bars on Sunrise Beach are her victims. The place has become her office and she’s always open for business.

  Also from Damnation Books:

  Cannibal Man

  by Dorothy Knight

  eBook ISBN: 9781615729753

  Print ISBN: 9781615729760

  Thriller Horror

  Novel of 78,012 words

  “A woman is raped every sixteen seconds in South Africa.” —South African Government Statistics 2012

  Four women have had their faces eaten off while being brutally raped. Detectives Timothy Sauer and George Hobbs from the Serious Crimes Unit, are assigned to the cases and have to deal with missing evidence, a corrupt state and bribery within the South African Police Services.

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