Restless Soul (18 page)

Only one vehicle was in this section of the alley, and Annja crept toward it. An older model Jeep, it was parked directly behind the antiques shop, and its tires were caked thick with mud. The top was off the Jeep, and rain pattered against the worn seats.

Annja put her ear to the back door, which was painted the same red as the front and peeling in equal amounts. She heard voices, but they were muffled by the wood and the rain, and she didn’t understand the language, though it clearly had an Asian sound. Music was playing to complicate matters, from something that had poor speakers. It was fuzzy-sounding and crackled with static.

She tested the knob. It wasn’t locked.

Annja almost didn’t go inside. The police should deal with these people—if they were involved in the smuggling. And they most definitely were involved somehow, she knew; the Jeep was evidence of that. It was no doubt one that had been in the mountains when she, Luartaro and Zakkarat had emerged from the treasure cavern. But the police might have already been here and found nothing concrete, or they might already have arrested people. However, it was equally possible that they might not have checked out this lead yet.

Annja slowly opened the door, the hinges creaking, but not loud enough to be heard over the static-laced music. She had to go inside; her curiosity had won out, coupled with a desire to see the puzzle through. She glided through the door and hugged the shadows thrown by a tall shelf. The light was in the forward part of the room, near the door to the shop. It spilled from a wrought-iron pole lamp that probably was an antique; a fluted bowl covered with a dusty film shielded the bulb, and the bowl part of it was definitely an antique. It threw a pale yellow light over a man who was scratching at something on a desk, maybe writing in a ledger. Another man, one in his sixties judging by the gray-speckled hair, stooped shoulders and overly thin frame, hovered over him. Between the men and Annja was a high countertop that had two crates and packing material on it. They looked similar to the ones that had been in the cavern, but crates were crates. She started toward the counter to get a better look, her mind touching the sword…just in case there was trouble.

And there would be trouble. Except for a few days spent in the cabin, this vacation had been nothing but trouble.

Annja didn’t see a weapon on either man, but then she was only getting back views. The radio was on a shelf above the desk; the music stopped playing and was replaced by a commentary she couldn’t understand. She held her breath and edged forward, listening for the third man, the larger shape she’d earlier seen walk in front of the door and blot out the light. She picked up a rustling sound from somewhere in the shop; the third man was still out there.

Scattered in the packing mix were brass figurines the size of lemons—small Buddhas, gazelles, apes and pigs, some with other metals inlaid in them and all of them looking old.

Annja took another step, preparing to hunker down behind the countertop. One more step, and then pain consumed her as something heavy crashed down on her head. Darkness reached up and swallowed her.

Annja knew she was dreaming, but she couldn’t wake up—didn’t want to, as this was thoroughly pleasant. She was floating, or at least treading so lightly on her feet that she couldn’t feel what she was certain was marshy ground under her. However, she could feel—or imagined that she could—the soft brush of fern leaves across the backs of her hands hanging at her sides and the breeze that played across her face, cooling her.

It was warm in her dream, the sun high overhead and cutting through a gap in the tall jungle canopy. Summer, maybe, she speculated, and near noon. She wanted it to be summer and so guessed that it was—it was her dream and she could make it whatever season she wanted. But it wasn’t too hot. She’d sweated enough the past few days.

Beads of water on the big acacia leaves hinted that it had rained recently. Annja hadn’t been caught in it, though, as she was thoroughly dry; she’d had enough of rain recently in real life that it didn’t need to intrude on her dream. She didn’t hear anything, but thought that she should.

Then sounds intruded, all of them pleasant, the chirp of the small green tree frogs that had sprung up on the trunks, the musical chitter of a little monkey, the cry of a bird circling overhead and the gentle hush of the leaves nudging one another in the breeze.

Paradise.

And she was floating in it.

Primitive and beautiful, as she imagined the land must have been to the ancient Hoabinhiam people.

The hunter-gatherers were near the mountains, and so she added those craggy peaks to the vista, towering up and artfully sculpted by her mind, covered with thick jungle growth and not yet bearing the scars of trails and ruts from Jeeps, and not yet rubbed clean of cave paintings by tourists needing to touch the past.

Annja would have pronounced the scene “amazing,” but she had no voice in the dream. Only the creatures and the wind and the leaves made sound, and she considered that just as well. She’d talked so much lately—to Officer Johnson, to the people at the consulate and, before that, to Luartaro. Should he be here, in her dream? She could make Luartaro give back the jewels he’d taken from the treasure cavern. Couldn’t she do whatever she wanted, as she was making this up as she floated along?

In answer to her thoughts Luartaro appeared a short distance in front of her. He was clean-shaven and in pressed clothes that hung perfectly on his rugged frame. Zakkarat stepped out from behind him, ruining her romantic thoughts.

Zakkarat’s clothes were slick with mud and blood and a knife protruded from the center of his chest. Bullet holes riddled his torso, the design an arrow that pointed to a sign that had materialized: Bird Show.

Annja blinked and tried to dismiss Zakkarat, as she dismissed her sword when it was no longer needed. Zakkarat looked at her with empty eyes and reached out, thick gold rings on each of his fingers.

Go away, she ordered the walking corpse but no sound came out.

Zakkarat melted into the ferns. Luartaro followed, the colors of him smearing like an ice-cream cone dropped on hot pavement. The monkey howled mournfully, and Annja looked up to see it hop from the tree above her and race toward the mountains.

“Free me,” the monkey called to her. “Free me. Free me. Free me.”

Annja glided after it, curious where the dream would take her. She passed beneath a spreading tree covered in bright pink and white blooms. It looked like a dogwood, out of place in the jungle. There were willows, too, like the massive old trees she remembered from her youth in New Orleans, some with vines growing so profusely on them they looked like giant green mushrooms.

Farther in pursuit of the monkey, which seemed to have slowed to accommodate her lazy pace, she heard wind chimes. Clinky-clanky and almost tinny, not as pleasantly musical as the glass chimes that used to hang in the orphanage’s yard. The sound grew louder and she looked up.

Not wind chimes…dog tags, hanging from a dead branch and dripping blood. She floated out from underneath them and hurried after the monkey.

The mountains were easy to climb in her wraith-like state, and the vines that seemed to grab at her feet passed harmlessly through her. The scents were more intense as she rose, the flowers the strongest. They were mostly native Thai flowers: bunnak, phikun, lotus and chumhet-yai, some of which were edible and had medicinal purposes. But there were out-of-place blooms, too: tulips, daffodils and crocuses.

Annja loved the smell of flowers, and she was certain she picked up a trace of bougainvillea. The bright magenta and purple flowers were native to South America, and she remembered that they grew profusely outside Luartaro’s office window in Argentina.

The plant was discovered in the mid-1700s, Luartaro had told her, by a French botanist accompanying an explorer named Louis Antoine de Bougainville. She saw the beautiful thorny vine between a gap in the trees and she glided toward it, hovering and inhaling the fragrance. The bougainvillea’s thorns were normally tipped by a black, waxy material. But these were coated with dried blood.

Annja shuddered and looked closer. Bougainvillea thrived in moist soil. There’d been a few pink-flowered ones across the street from the orphanage in New Orleans. She’d also seen some in the gardens of the
wat
the cabdriver had taken her past in Chiang Mai. The flowers were all over the world now—in warm climes. The plant in her dream was especially vibrant…and disturbing.

She thought she saw something in the leaves. Peering closer still, a face stared back at her. It had been almost indistinguishable at first from the foliage. A young man’s face, smooth and unlined but covered with stripes of green and black paint that made the whites of his eyes stand out starkly. The mouth was set in a determined scowl. There were other faces, too, all painted, and all with sweat beads on their foreheads.

The monkey called to her, and she turned to see it hanging by its feet and holding something so she could see. A skull? No, just part of one. The monkey’s fingers traced designs on it, and dark symbols appeared as it filled with a black substance. The monkey pointed at the symbol for Papa Ghede.

It was her skull bowl, and it cracked into pieces when the monkey dropped it and scrambled farther up the mountain.

Annja followed it.

She crested a rise and teetered at the edge of a gaping maw yawning up from the ground. Light flickered from inside, revealing mounds of treasure. Luartaro and Zakkarat were there, stuffing their pockets. It was almost comical how their pockets bulged with coins and jewelry, their cheeks, too, just like chipmunks that had stuffed walnuts away for later.

Put it back, Annja tried to tell them, but with no voice.

Luartaro understood. His expression haunted and sad, he opened his pockets and spilled the contents on the stone floor. He grew thinner as the coins continued to spew, Zakkarat kneeling and scooping them up. Thinner and thinner until he was little more than a skeleton.

“Free me, Annja,” he implored as he melted into the stone, the broken skull bowl marking the place where he had stood.

“Free me,” Zakkarat said. A heartbeat later, he was gone, too.

She tried to wish them back; it was her dream and she could paint it the colors she wanted. But they didn’t return. And moments later the treasure vanished, too, leaving her alone at the top of the mountain, staring down at the green of the Thailand jungle. Thunder boomed, but there were no clouds. It boomed again and again, and she thought that maybe the sound was a drum beating. It came from down below, on the other side of the river that had magically appeared.

Annja went toward the sound, feeling the trees pass through her and sensing her heart beating in time with the thunderous drum. She stepped in time with it, walking over the water and following the bird-show sign. The breeze had stopped, taking the coolness with it.

She started to sweat.

My dream, she thought, make the heat go away.

But the opposite happened. The heat became more intense, the sun beating down in time with the drum, the leaves withering in what had become Sahara-like temperatures. The drum thrummed louder and Annja threw her diaphanous hands over her ears and tried to hum to blot it out, a tune she’d remembered Luartaro humming.

Leaves drifted to the ground around and through her, and branches curled and darkened in the oppressive heat. She felt the rings of sweat grow on her chest and under her arms and she smelled the smoke in the air—all the perfume from the bougainvillea gone. The wisps of smoke writhed like snakes and trailed away, beckoning.

She followed, still stepping in time with the drum.

The forest died and the trunks became blackened slashes that crumbled and then reformed into squat stone buildings. The smoke-snakes thickened and formed streets that radiated out from the center of a village like the spokes of a wheel. In the middle of the ring a fire burned; it was the source of the oppressive heat.

The drum quieted, to be replaced by the crackling and pops of the wood.

There was a figure in the middle of the blaze, burning and crying, and forever finding a place in history as a martyr.

Annja had dreamed of Joan and the fire before.

This had turned into a nightmare.

Bring back the bougainvillea and the gold coins and the little monkey that threw the remnants of the skull bowl, she thought.

The fire raged higher, the embers spitting away and sparkling like shards of silver, all flying through the crowd that had instantly appeared and streaked toward Annja.

The heat hurt her, it was that severe, and the shards that pelted her stung horribly.

Her face hurt the most, her right cheek swollen and aching. Why did it hurt so much? Her wrists, too, something squeezing them. Her shoulders…something digging into them.

The shards?

Embers from the fire?

Pieces of Joan?

Fingernails?

The village vanished and in place of burning Joan was a man with an expression twisted in anger.

“Wake up, Annja Creed,” he said.

Annja was happy to be free of the nightmare, but aghast at the reality that had replaced it. She was in the back room of the antiques shop, trussed up in an uncomfortable straight-backed chair, her wrists and ankles tied with an electrical cord that dug painfully into her skin.

The air was heavy with the residue of cigarette smoke and the papery scents of packing material. A blackened window was open a few inches and the odors of the garbage in the alley came in with the rain.

The older man with stooped shoulders was at the desk, the younger man hovering over him this time. They had her fanny pack and were studying her passport, which was how they knew her name. The business cards she’d had in her fanny pack were crumpled on the floor at their feet. Her backpack sat nearby.

“She is the one,” the younger man insisted, stabbing a finger at the passport and then pointing at Annja. “I tell you, Kim. This Annja Creed from New York City is the one who killed Dak and Soon in the mountains.”

The man leaning over her, Kim, struck her hard on the cheek with his fist. “Annja Creed of New York City. She is a long way from the United States of America, and a long way from our mountains. Why is she here in our shop?” The question was asked with so much force that his spittle peppered her face. “Why is she here, so far from the cave she had no business being in? And she has no business being here!” He dug his fingers into her shoulders, the pain competing with the ache in her cheek.

“She had our card, Uncle. See?” He pointed to the cards on the floor. “She had all of them.”

“What are you, Annja Creed?” Kim’s eyes were hot black coals burning into hers. “Are you a thief? Did you come here to steal from thieves, Annja Creed from New York City?” His command of English was excellent, but it was thick with an Asian accent and she had to struggle to understand some of his words. He grabbed at her arm and felt her muscles. “Are you security? Were you hired to recover some relic that had found its way into my shop?”

A piece of information she’d just gained. The man Kim was the owner of this antiques store, maybe of all the stores she’d had cards for.

“You are not police, Annja Creed. The police were here an hour ago and left us alone. What…are…you?”

When she didn’t answer, he struck her face again and again. She tasted blood in her mouth and felt it spill over her lower lip. He’d loosened at least one of her teeth. Her tongue felt thick and swollen.

“What are you?” This time he hit her in the stomach.

“An archaeologist,” she managed. “I am an archaeologist.” She’d give him that much.

He made a rumbling sound and took a step back. Behind him, the men at the desk picked through her wallet and looked at her broken camera. She’d kept it rather than toss it, putting the memory card back in, thinking the camera shell would protect the card.

“I am an archaeologist,” she insisted. “I was in the caves looking for the teak coffins.” It was the truth, and her voice was steady in telling it. “On vacation, I went to the caves to see the coffins. That I found your…treasure…was an accident.”

“Pfah! You expect us to believe that?” He balled both of his hands and swung at the air with so much strength she felt a breeze in front of her face. “What are you, Annja Creed? A special agent of some government?”

“The business cards were Dak’s, Uncle. I recognize his handwriting. She must have taken the cards from Dak after she killed him.”

Kim hit her in the stomach again. “I want to know just what you have learned about our…business, Annja Creed. I want—”

“She is trained, Uncle,” the younger man cut in. “I saw her dance like Bruce Lee. She had a sword and—”

A cell phone buzzed, and Kim turned away from Annja and walked into the shop. He spoke quickly in Vietnamese, and then switched to English as if he was now talking to someone else.

“The police were here, Sandman, but I convinced them nothing was wrong. I am merely an antiques dealer who struggles to pay his rent. They came in the front and looked through the shop. They did not see the Jeep and the crates in it.” He paused, obviously listening to the individual on the other end of the call. “I have a spy here,” he continued. “One that I am making less pretty by the moment. One who discovered our operation.”

Annja had to strain to hear him over the quiet discussion of the two other men. They were futilely trying to get her camera to work so they could call up the pictures she’d taken. A large fly buzzed around the older man’s head.

“A woman, this spy. My nephew Nang says she was at the cave and killed Soon and Dak with a sword. Pfah! Nang said there were two other men with her, one dead. I will find out where the last one is, and then I will kill her. No loose ends, Sandman. I will take care of her, my old friend, and I will see you soon. Tell my father I will bring him that case of Singha lager he asked for, and—”

Annja didn’t need to see her reflection to know that her face was bruising and swelling. Her legs throbbed and her feet were numb, the cord around her ankles tied too tight. She thrust the noises of the shop—Kim’s conversation…he was on his second call now, and the snarls of the two men cursing over her broken digital camera—all to the back of her mind. Out on the street a car honked repeatedly, and she ignored that, too.

Instead, she closed her eyes and concentrated on her sword.

She reached out and felt the pommel form against her numb hands that were still tied behind her back.

She opened her eyes to see the men using a tool on her camera with some measure of success by their happy reactions. The sword held awkwardly behind her, she shifted her grip and turned it so the blade was against the cord and the pommel rested on the floor. She started cutting and almost immediately felt the circulation in her hands improve. The cords might have been strong, but they were like warm butter to the ancient blade. The cords fell to the floor, the men not hearing the slight sound because they were so preoccupied with an image they’d managed to call up on the viewer of the camera.

Annja brought the sword around in front of her, her sore shoulders practically screaming in protest at being moved. Then she cut the cord holding her ankles to the chair.

“Nang—” the older man warned the other. “She is—”

“Free!” Nang shouted. He tugged open the top drawer and reached inside it as Annja stood. She fought a wave of dizziness that threatened to spill her to the floor.

Her legs felt like lead, asleep, and her feet still were numb and clumsy, but she forced them forward, turning the blade as she went and striking the flat of it against the older man’s side. He fell with the second blow, the wind knocked out of him.

Nang drew an old pistol out of the drawer, and with a shaky hand waved it at her. “Kim! She is free! Kim!” He fired, the shot going wild and ricocheting off the counter behind her. A second shot also missed.

Annja held the sword in one hand. The other shot out and grabbed the gun barrel, yanking it out of Nang’s hand and hurling it toward the back door.

“Down!” she yelled.

He dropped to his knees.

“Down!”

He flopped to his stomach and laced his fingers behind his head like a thug in a police movie might. She would have knocked him unconscious, but she heard heavy footfalls and the squeak of old hinges. Kim had come back, his fleshy face contorted with rage.

“What are you?” he demanded.

She took a step toward him, both hands tight on the pommel, sword up perpendicular to the floor. The fly that had been pestering the old man had switched targets to Annja now. It landed on her arm and she wriggled to chase it away.

“What are you? A demon?” He retreated into the shop, and she rushed after him. “Where did the sword come from?”

In the light that filtered in through the smudged front windows and seeped in from the back room, she made out tall elaborate urns; statues of long-legged birds with wings tucked close to their sides; old swords on a rack with dingy, tasseled guards; and graceful ladies in painted gowns that pooled around their bases. The shelves were narrow and filled with ceramic figurines that looked delicate and valuable, and old.

She spotted Kim ducking behind a shelf filled with terra-cotta pieces that could have come from a dig.

The rest of the details were lost in the shadows and in her hurry to catch the man.