by Kyle Mills
When he looked behind him, he could see the obvious disturbance in the crowd as the Thai cops chased after them on foot. He and Darby ducked around a corner and stopped for a moment, giving Beamon a chance to bend forward at the waist and try not to throw up.
“Are you having a good time?” Darby said in an exasperated tone with only a hint of breathlessness.
Beamon looked up at her, confused for a moment, but then the slight smile that he was wearing registered in his mind. “Sorry,” he struggled to get out as be wiped the sweat from his stinging eyes. “My life’s … been kind of complicated lately. There’s a simplicity to this situation that’s sort of appealing.”
He peeked around the corner and saw that the single large disturbance in the crowd had broken into five smaller disturbances as the Thais spread out and tried to pick up their trail. When he turned back to Darby, she had a thoughtful expression on her face that seemed as out of place as his smile.
“I kind of know what you mean,” she said, then grabbed him by the front of his shirt and surprised him by pretty much pulling his full weight off the wall he was leaning against and dragging him into a run.
“That’s it,” Darby said as they came around a comer and ran toward a large white building. When they ducked under its discolored awning, though, they found the doors boarded up. Another victim of Asia’s economic collapse.
“No!” Darby yelled, and pounded on the cracked plywood.
“We’re okay, Darby. Plan B. Gotta keep moving,” Beamon gasped, wondering exactly what plan B was as he ran up the street, confident that Darby would be able to catch up without much effort. He’d barely made it fifty feet when the black Mercedes came skidding around the comer.
“Darby! Here!” he yelled, turning down a narrow side road.
She caught him a moment later and they sprinted along it, only to find that it dead-ended into the back of a dilapidated apartment building after a couple of hundred yards. Sparks flew from under the Mercedes as it turned up the road and barreled toward them.
“Up here!” Darby yelled, sprinting straight at the door-less building behind them. She jumped at the last minute and seemed to run up the wall for about five feet and then grabbed the bottom of a rusted pipe running along the wall. One hard pull on the pipe and she had her fingers clamped onto the bottom grate of a fire escape.
“Come on!” she shouted, dangling effortlessly from one arm as she watched the Mercedes coming at them with four Thai cops not far behind.
Beamon looked up at her and shook his head. “You’ve got to be fucking kid—”
A loud crack was followed by the better portion of the fire escape separating from the wall and crashing down to the street along with its one occupant Beamon ran over to her and pulled her out from under a support beam just as the Mercedes skidded to a halt behind them.
Miraculously, Darby was able to stand under her own power and appeared to be completely unhurt. Beamon looked around him as the American emerged from the sunroof again and the Thai cops aimed a variety of automatic pistols in their direction. Nowhere left to run.
“Now you have problems,” Beamon said to Darby as she shook her head violently, still trying to clear what was left of the effects of her fall.
“An interesting chase, Mr. Beamon,” the man sticking out of the sunroof said. “Pointless, but interesting.”
Beamon’s mind was desperately trying to work through his options, but it seemed that there were none. He was almost completely exhausted, unarmed, and in a country where he knew one person, and that person had fucked him.
Darby’s eyes were completely clear now and she obviously understood the seriousness of their situation. “Sorry, kid,” Beamon said to her. “I think you might have made it without me.”
She shook her head as the Thais slowly moved in on them. “Where would I have gone?” There was a deep sadness in her voice that for some reason made Beamon think of Carrie and Emory. He’d immersed himself in this case, wanting to escape making the hard decisions about his life, and it seemed he’d succeeded beautifully. It suddenly struck him that he would never see them again.
Beamon didn’t notice the subcompact car turning up the narrow street until its driver started honking the tinny little horn. The sound prompted everyone involved to turn and watch the minuscule Honda coast to a stop behind the Mercedes.
“You’ll have to accept my apologies, Mark,” Somporn Taskin said as he stepped from the car. “I was unavoidably detained. Are you ready to go?”
The scene suddenly turned from terrifying to comical. The four armed Thais had, once again, become uniformly docile and speechless at the sight of the unarmed man. The American hanging from the sunroof of the Mercedes didn’t seem to know what to do as Beamon pulled Darby past him and toward Taskin’s car.
“What the fuck is going on here?” he yelled as Darby ducked into the backseat of the Honda and Beamon opened the passenger door.
“What the fuck is wrong with you? Stop them!”
The Thais ignored him as they bolstered their guns and began hurrying back down the street. Beamon could see that the man recognized the balance of power had shifted but couldn’t figure out why.
Taskin paused in the open door of his car, looking up at the American over its roof. “Sir, your chances of surviving your stay in my country are diminishing very quickly.” As always, Taskin’s tone was utterly polite. This time, though, there was a subtle undertone that seemed to indicate that he was becoming irritated, and that anyone who irritated him ended up cut into tiny pieces next to the pieces of what used to be their families.
The American’s expression suggested that he’d heard the same undertone as Beamon and had surmised that Taskin was absolutely capable of carrying out his threat if he should decide to bother.
forty
Roland Peck pressed his back against the wall as David Hallorin grabbed hold of a heavy iron floor lamp and swung it into a bookcase like it weighed nothing. Sparks rained from the shelf’s built-in lighting system, reflecting off the shattering glass and giving Hallorin a brief, supernatural glow.
“You’ve done nothing for me, Roland!”
“But I…” Peck started, finding it almost impossible to speak through his fear-constricted throat. The panic had struck suddenly and he knew he was losing control of it.
“Nothing!” Hallorin screamed again. “Why, Roland? Why would you do this to me? I’ve treated you like a son. Was that not good enough? Is that why you decided to spit in my face? Mark Beamon, the girl, the file. They don’t mean anything to you, do they? It’s not your life on the line.”
The words cut through him. Like a son. Hallorin had never spoken them out loud. Peck often fantasized that he was Hallorin’s son, like he was the son of the greatest man alive. But now it was all coming down around him. This was his fault. His fault. He didn’t deserve the things that David Hallorin had given him.
“I… I… spoke with Beamon, David. I spoke with him, offered him everything—”
“You didn’t offer him everything! And what you did offer him wasn’t enough. Was it?”
“He’s not rational, David! I offered … I offered …” Peck hung his head and stared blankly at the floor. The rage had drained from Hallorin’s eyes and the disappointment that remained tore into Peck. “No. It wasn’t enough.”
He heard Hallorin stop pacing but was afraid to look up.
“Beamon and the girl can never come back from Thailand, Roland. If they disappear in Asia, there won’t ever be any questions—people will assume that they were just casualties of the violence over there. You have a rare thing here, Roland. Life doesn’t usually give second chances. Use it”
“They won’t ever come back, David. We have people over there; they’ll never make it back.”
Peck tried to convince himself that was the truth, but he couldn’t overcome his sense of dread. The situation had degenerated into a ludicrous mess. Mark Beamon’s lifelong friends and acquaintances had been willing
—almost anxious—to abandon him to his current situation. But in Thailand, a place Beamon had never before been, he had been befriended by a man whom Peck had never heard of but who seemed to hold an almost unshakable position of authority there. Through Hallorin, Peck controlled almost unlimited money, but was finding it impossible to hire anyone willing to move against Somporn Taskin.
Peck closed his eyes tightly when Hallorin put his powerful hand on top of his head and gently pushed it back.
“Look at me, Roland.”
Peck’s face tightened.
“Look at me.”
He opened his eyes to find Hallorin’s face only a few inches from his.
“I’ve got nothing, Roland. Nothing.”
“But you’ve moved up so far,” Peck said anxiously. “So far. You’re running second now behind Taylor….”
“A distant second.” Hallorin turned and walked back across the office. “In one week the people will vote. History doesn’t remember who came in second.”
Peck had known this would happen. The polls had moved exactly as he’d predicted. Based on the press’s perfect coverage of the explosion, the disproportionate number of undecideds had resolved their inner conflicts in Hallorin’s favor and had been joined by a small but significant group of Taylor’s supporters. It had brought Hallorin to within two points of the lead.
But then the unavoidable backlash had begun. The Democratic candidate’s numbers, initially unchanged by Hallorin’s heroics, suddenly plummeted as liberals, fearful of a mandated President David Hallorin, ran to Robert Taylor—the lesser of the evils. When the dust settled, David Hallorin was left seven points behind.
As he watched Hallorin move slowly across the room. Peck decided that he couldn’t tell him about the problem that Somporn Taskin posed. The file was on the verge of being retrieved and that would be enough. Right now, only that mattered. Mark Beamon and the even less significant Darby Moore could be dealt with later.
“No one would have done what I did, Roland,” Hallorin said, falling into his chair. “They would have run from the fire. The country—the people—need someone with courage to lead them. You have to make them understand that, Roland. You’re the only person who can.”
Peck dared to look directly into Hallorin’s gray eyes and tried to control the trembling in his stomach. He could still see the pictures: Hallorin shouting orders, disappearing into the smoke, carrying out the little girl. Peck had already let fade the memory of the planning that went into it—setting up the mechanics and timing of the explosion, making sure there would be no chance of injury to Hallorin, the hours that the two of them had spent practicing his reaction. Now he saw the same heroic man as the rest of the world saw. And that man had chosen him as a son.
forty-one
“How that’s an improvement.” Beamon took an exaggerated sniff of the air. “And you smell better, too.”
Darby Moore, still damp from a recent shower, was wearing a blue golf shirt with “Phuket Country Club” tastefully embroidered on it and a pair of pleated khaki shorts. Unfortunately, the black rubber sandals that seemed only slightly less a part of her than her skin were still strapped to her feet. Despite his exhaustive efforts, she had refused the pair of fabulously expensive golf shoes he’d had his eye on for her. He’d bought two pairs in her size anyway, on Reynolds, Trent, and Layman—or more likely, David Hallorin. The moral here was never give a company credit card to the person you’re setting up.
“What are we doing here, Mark?” she said, fidgeting with the waistband of her new shorts. “They know we’re here. We could probably make it to Cambodia or—”
Beamon looked up from the rented set of clubs he had been picking through and frowned dramatically. “Cambodia? Cambodia? Cambodia has no golf courses.”
Her nervousness seemed to tick up a notch. She still didn’t trust him, despite his repeated attempts to put her at ease. He’d been completely unsuccessful in getting her to open up about what had happened to her and why—information that was becoming increasingly critical to their survival.
“Look, Mark. I appreciate what you did for me, but I really need to get out of here. I’ve got to keep moving.”
Beamon hefted the hot pink golf bag containing a set of ladies clubs and handed it to her. “Yeah, you’ve done so well thus far.”
He instantly regretted his words as the pain registered on Darby’s face. Two of her friends were dead and she was undoubtedly blaming herself. “I’m sorry, Darby. I didn’t mean it that way.”
He slung his own bag over his shoulder and started for the first tee with her reluctantly following. “Look around us,” he said as they walked.
She did as he instructed, letting her eyes wander to the armed men following behind them and the ones that had already taken up strategic positions near the dense line of trees that bordered the fairway.
“There are two more in the parking lot and another few in the clubhouse.” He waved around them at the empty course. “Have you noticed that there’s no one else around? The course is closed to the public as long as we’re playing.”
Beamon stopped and looked out over the first hole, spotting two more men standing near the green. Whatever Somporn Taskin’s debt to Tom Sherman was, he obviously took it seriously.
“I don’t know. Darby. Looks like we have one of the most powerful, and more importantly, sadistically violent men in the country extremely interested in our well-being. Back home… Well, I don’t know. Until I figure out what’s going on, we’re staying put.”
Beamon pulled his driver and three-wood from the bag and began swinging them around, trying to appear more relaxed than he was. Hopefully, he’d been successful in making it look like “come within half an inch of getting your head blown off ten thousand miles from home” had been written in the “things to do” section of his day planner.
“But how long will it last?” Darby said. “How long can your one friend protect us?”
She was nothing like he’d imagined. He guessed it was the van, the lack of a job, the itinerant lifestyle—he’d expected a twenty-first-century version of a hippie. In retrospect, it had been a stupid assumption—just the mind’s tendency to file things and people into familiar categories. Hippies didn’t spend their time testing their physical and mental limits in places where every decision could be the difference between life and death.
“How long? If I’m right about who’s after you—and now me—I figure we’ll be dead inside of three days,” Beamon said, continuing to swing the clubs.
“What? Three days! We’ve got to get out of here!”
Beamon shoved a tee into the soft ground and tried to balance a ball on it. “To where? To sneak around the jungles of Southeast Asia waiting for another group like those Thai cops to catch up with us? That doesn’t sound very attractive.”
Darby clearly wanted to make a break for the jungle, but looked around her again at the guards and instead started chewing her thumbnail relentlessly. She was calculating something. Most likely, her chances on her own versus her chances with an out-of-work, soon to be incarcerated or dead, former FBI agent. Neither option probably looked all that rosy.
“What am I to you, Mark?”
Beamon was having trouble getting the ball to stay on the tee due to a slight tremor in his hand. A leftover either from the physical exertion of his unplanned sprint through the town of Krabi, or the psychological baggage of his near-death experience. He wasn’t sure.
“Two hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars is what you are to me,” he said, finally getting the ball into a stable perch. The quiet chatter from the Thai guards behind them faded to silence as he lined his driver up behind the ball and swung. The ball left the tee with a satisfying hiss and soared toward the sun that was slowly dipping into the sea ahead of them. Then it curved hard and disappeared into the dense jungle that the course had been cut from.
“Should have hit a few at the range,” he said, bending over and snatching his tee from the p
ockmarked grass beneath him. “You do play golf, don’t you, Darby?”
“Sometimes. On rest days.”
“The ladies tees are up there.”
“I’ll hit from here.”
Beamon shrugged as casually as he could. If he was right and the missing FBI file existed, then it almost certainly had something to do with Hallorin’s bid for the presidency. There was only a week left to the election and he was fucking around on a golf course in the middle of nowhere. What was the alternative, though? Clearly intimidation wasn’t going to work on the girl. He had to make her trust him.
Darby put her ball on a tee, straightened up, and leaned against her club. “What do you mean when you say two hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars?”
“I mean that I have been hired by an anonymous client to find and deliver you. I got paid one hundred and fifty thousand to take the job and I get the rest when I deliver.”
“That’s a lot of money. Would you buy a house and a sports car?”
Beamon crinkled up his eyebrows at the strangeness of the question. “You have to vacuum houses, and let’s face it, I’m not the sports car type.” He decided that his need for expensive lawyers to keep him out of jail probably was better left unsaid at this point—it made him look desperate and probably wouldn’t instill a lot of confidence in the girl. “Look, Darby, I’m not prepared to sell my soul for eighty-five grand—it’s worth probably double that. No surprises, okay?”
Darby lined up her club and slammed the ball with the force of all the anger, sadness, and frustration that had built up in her over the last few weeks. Her swing was flawless and the ball landed in the middle of the fairway some two hundred and fifty yards away.
“That wasn’t luck, was it?” Beamon said as he picked up his bag. She shook her head and followed him up the fairway.
