Restless Soul (19 page)

Faint sounds indicated Kim was making another call. “Get here now!” he whispered to someone. Then he snapped the phone closed and turned down another aisle.

Annja stalked him, brushing by a lamp styled after an old Tiffany. The shop apparently carried an assortment from different places and time periods. How much of it was authentic? And how many pieces were forgeries and knockoffs…if any? The antiquities she’d seen in the cavern had certainly been real.

She didn’t hear him anymore, but she saw his shoes at the base of a unit of shelves. He’d taken them off to be quiet. A smart, vile man. He’d moved quietly behind her before to clock her on the head without warning. She studied the statues against the wall, looking for one that might be breathing; it would be a good place to hide.

Nothing. They looked stiff like department-store mannequins, though much more intricate and valuable. Annja breathed shallowly and stepped slowly, careful not to let her clothes rustle or catch against the unfinished wood of the shelves.

Where are you? she thought. He’d called her a demon, but he was that—a man who trafficked in treasures and who had a highly illegal operation in place. She’d heard him on the phone telling whoever was on the other end that he would kill her. A demon in man’s clothing. How extensive was the smuggling? Annja needed to take him alive; she had too many questions that demanded answers.

Annja reached the end of the aisle, which was near the front of the shop. Holding her breath, she looked around the shelf. Still nothing. A glance at the front windows showed that the grime she’d thought was on the outside was actually on the inside, as if it had been smeared with something to make it difficult to see much…or at least to see any of the pretty details. The door had three dead-bolt locks on it and a wire that ran up one side. There was a motion sensor and a security camera that looked pretty high-tech in comparison to the building and its furnishings.

Maybe the entirety of the store was a front. Maybe the place was always closed to the run-of-the-mill customer. Annja retraced her steps, heading to the back of the shop. He’d probably doubled back to the other room. Or else he—

It was the faintest of sounds, and had she not been paying especially close attention, she wouldn’t have noticed. Wood squeaked, like weight was shifting on it. Her head snapped up just as a figure jumped off the top shelf. She leaped away as his blade whistled in the musty air and sliced off a hank of her hair.

He followed her, kicking as he went, landing a solid blow to her arm as she ducked beneath his sword, then kicking out with his other foot as she spun away between terra-cotta warrior statues. She couldn’t identify the style of martial arts he employed. It looked like karate, but it had elements of
qwan ki do
, which consisted mostly of jumping and scissor techniques with the hands and feet. The manner in which he used his sword also hinted at
qwan ki do,
which she’d studied briefly in New York a summer ago.

He came at her as she darted out from between the statues and dropped beneath his next kick. He held the sword in his right hand and performed a praying-mantis move, then followed it with rapid lightning thrusts with the heel of his left hand. The quick moves were intended to overwhelm her and smacked of karate or
kenpo.

He shifted from one foot to the next, always kicking or punching or slashing and keeping her off balance. He knocked over a shelf of melon-size monkey carvings, and Annja cringed. She’d not been fighting back, only defending, on three counts. She wanted to study his technique and look for an opening; she didn’t want to damage anything in the shop—the objects might be irreplaceable—and she didn’t want to kill him.

She wouldn’t kill him; she was adamant about that.

He shifted into an animal fighting style, leopard kung fu. Annja knew an old Chinese man who taught it in Central Park on Wednesday mornings. Like the other methods her attacker employed, leopard kung fu emphasized speed and angular attacks. He wasn’t trying to rely on strength, which his frame hinted he had plenty of, but rather on his quickness and trying to outsmart her.

“Why block when you can kick?” the old Chinese man had posed to Annja and his other students. “Why defend when you can attack?”

Her opponent focused on elbow jabs now, catching her on the shoulder as she brought her sword up, then focusing on a series of low kicks that though she avoided them drove her back into a counter covered with brass bells of various sizes. Many of them tipped, filling the air with a brief musical cacophony that managed to distract Kim.

Annja raised herself and rolled over the top of the counter, deftly avoiding a teetering brass urn and the next series of off-tempo sword swings that shattered the glass top and set the remaining bells clanking.

She made a move to slip around the corner, but instead vaulted it, planting her left hand on the intact edge of the countertop and bringing the sword up with her right. Her opponent was mixing martial-arts styles, so she did, too, landing a knee to his chin and at the same time hooking her leg around his sword arm, avoiding his blade and setting him off balance. She’d studied him just long enough to pick up a few flaws in his otherwise adept practice.

“Don’t…want…to…ruin…anything,” she told him through clenched teeth.

“Priceless antiques, all of these things,” he returned as he took a step back and wiped blood off his lip with the back of his free hand.

Not all of them, she observed. Some didn’t look all that old. Still, the lighting wasn’t good enough for her to make an appraiser’s judgment.

“Worth a fortune, all of them, New York City spy.” His breath wasn’t labored, evidence of what good shape he was in.

As she maneuvered around him and the closest high shelf, he drove at her again, using a series of lightning-fast low kicks, two of which connected with her shin. He had no way of knowing she’d been shot in that leg and that it was still sore.

Annja cried out, and he grinned, thinking it was his kicks that had hurt her.

“All of these things more valuable than you, New York City spy.” He held the sword up high, the tip of the blade touching a dangling light fixture and disturbing a spiderweb that clung to it. He brought it down hard, the veins bulging along the sides of his neck, reminding Annja of the ropy roots of an acacia tree just beneath the soil.

She hooked her blade up at the last minute, the edges of the two weapons meeting with a shrill, scraping sound. In the back of her mind she saw the shards of silver arcing away from the fire that burned Joan of Arc, and she worried that the sword would again shatter and be forced to find a new wielder to make it whole.

But her sword withstood the blow, and instead Kim’s snapped. He howled angrily.

“A fortune!” He tossed the broken blade behind him and clenched his fists, veins standing out on the backs of his hands, knuckles white. “A
katana
from the Muromachi period. Nearly seven hundred years old, that sword you ruined!”

“I believe you’re the one who ruined it,” she countered, turning her blade so the flat of it would strike him when he presented an opening. “My sword isn’t quite that old. But it’s getting there.”

She performed a foot drop, fan kick and spinning kick, striking him soundly across the center of his chest with the sword as she danced around him and the edge of a tall, narrow case of antique hairpins and brooches.

Kim retaliated with an eagle claw and an overleap kick, still not tiring. A part of Annja reveled in the fight, the exertion blotting out the pain in her cheek from where he’d punched her repeatedly and the ache in her ankles and wrists from being tied so tight with the cord. Her breathing was deep and even, and she was aware of everything around her—the closeness of the antiques, which she tried so hard to avoid; Kim, who feinted and punched as she weaved through the shelves and matched him maneuver for maneuver; and the men in the back room, one of whom was moaning and stirring.

Annja would have to finish this soon before the odds worsened. She’d left the nephew’s gun in that room.

“So you know who I am and where I am from. Give me the same luxury. Who are you?” It was a simple enough question, and Annja enjoyed banter during a fight, particularly one well matched like this.

“Kim Pham.”

“Where are you from, Kim Pham?”

He smiled, showing off-colored teeth. Another smoker from the stains, though probably not a heavy one given his agility and stamina. “Bac Ninh Province.”

Annja had no idea where that was. “In Northern Thailand?”

He shook his head as he took the praying-mantis stance. “Vietnam. Why is this so important? Why does a dead woman want to know about me? A soon to be very dead woman.”

The last comment tipped her off. She glanced to the back of the shop, where Kim’s nephew leaned against the door frame, one hand cradling the side of his head, the other holding the gun he’d retrieved.

Annja dipped down and reversed her grip on the sword, pommel facing out as she rammed it with all her strength into Kim’s stomach. He was a big man, but it wasn’t fat she connected with. The muscles were thick, and she’d hit him just hard enough to rattle him a little. Fortunately, she was close enough to him that his nephew was afraid to shoot.

She drove the pommel against him again and again, recalling how he’d pummeled her with his fists minutes ago when she’d been tied in the chair. The air rushed from his lungs and he doubled forward, hands clawing at the air and then finding her shoulders. He suddenly gripped her throat in a choke hold and slammed the back of her head against the shelf behind her. Something toppled off and crashed on the floor.

“Bitch!” Kim cursed. “That was Ming! Look what you did!”

Annja jabbed him again with the pommel, this time under his arm, using all the strength she could summon. He gasped and relaxed his grip. She dropped beneath his arms, came up at him from the other side and kicked him in the groin.

“My fault? That’s two antiques you’ve claimed I broke. You’re a thief
and
a liar!” Annja struck him once more with the flat of the blade, crouching when he doubled over again and using him for cover against his nephew. “I’ve been trying not to break anything.”

When he cursed at her this time, it was in Vietnamese.

“And it’s not polite to talk in a language I can’t understand.” Feeling a little better, and her feet no longer tingling, Annja had gotten her moxie back.

She lured him toward the front of the shop, farther from the nephew with the gun. As much as Annja didn’t want to be shot, she worried that the young man, who had proven to have a lousy aim, might shoot his uncle. She needed Kim alive to answer her questions.

They continued to parry each other’s blows, but Annja was gaining on him and he was finally tiring. Sweat grew under his arms and appeared on his forehead, and his eyes narrowed with hate. That was good; hate made people careless. Kim knocked over only two more pieces before she had him at the front door. Red-faced, he sputtered at her in Vietnamese and looked like a pile-driving machine aiming his fists at her and striking the door instead.

He cracked it down the middle, like a karate practitioner splitting a block of wood, and set off an alarm. It was her turn to curse.

The police didn’t need to find her at this shop; she was supposed to be at their office answering questions. Now she’d have a lot more to answer…if they spotted her here. She wasn’t guilty of anything, but she’d knocked out an old man and entered a closed store. If nothing else, the police would detain her. Maybe they would even charge her with something.

A new sense of urgency took over, and she dismissed the sword, wanting both hands free. Kim’s eyes grew wide when he saw the blade disappear, then they closed in unconsciousness as she delivered an uppercut to his jaw, cracking it and sending him backward against an old piece of pottery that split in two.

“All right,” Annja pronounced. “That was my fault.” She glanced at the price tag and whistled. “But I’m not paying for what I broke.” She grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him down an aisle toward the back of the shop, stopping and peeking around the end to see the nephew still in the door frame, holding the gun with both hands now in an effort to steady himself.

“I’d drop the gun,” she called to him. “Unless you want to end up like your uncle Kim.”

He dropped the gun.

“And I’d back up a bit.” He complied.

Annja wanted to put some distance between him and the gun.

“Nang, right? I heard Kim call you Nang.”

He nodded.

“Be a good fellow, Nang, and put your hands behind your head.”

He got to his knees for good measure.

She tugged Kim behind the back counter and picked up the gun, emptying the bullets and tossing them in an urn that had been serving as someone’s spittoon. She’d intended to question Kim, but he was soundly out.

“Nang, I’ve got a few questions, and it would be in your best interest to answer them. You understand English fine, yes?”

Another nod.

Annja pointed at the chair she’d been tied to.

“Sit and make yourself uncomfortable.”

The phone on the desk was an old rotary model that was practically an antique. She used it to call the consulate, where she talked to Rose Walters. She told Annja that Pete was out of the building. After providing the antiques shop’s address and giving a quick recap of her activities, leaving out the sword fight, she hung up and turned her attention to her prisoner.

“How old are you, Nang?”

He replied, “Twenty-two,” after she repeated the question with a trace of venom in her voice.

He looked a little older than that. She would have put him at thirty. Maybe smuggling was a hard life. “Old enough that you should know not to get mixed up in something like this. Old enough not to wave a gun around unless you really know how to use it.”

“I can use a gun,” he retorted.

“Oh, you can pull the trigger. You just can’t aim.” Or maybe he just didn’t want to kill anyone. Maybe he could find redemption.

She put her palm against his chest, the little use of force serving as well as if she’d set a heavy anvil on him. He didn’t budge, and the sweat beads multiplied on his face. She could hear his ragged breath, and the snores of the old man she’d propped up against the wall; she hoped she hadn’t hurt him too badly. She didn’t hear sirens, and she thought she would have by now, from the alarm she’d tripped in the other room.

“The police aren’t coming, are they?” she asked.

Nang shook his head.

“Who is?”

He shrugged and she pushed harder against him.

“Men who work for my uncle,” he said. “The alarm summons them.”

“How many?”

Another shrug. He shook nervously. “I…I do not know. I just know that if trouble comes, the men come. They should be here soon.”

She removed her hand and stepped back. He looked at his lap, not wanting to meet her angry gaze. Kim was still unconscious, and she had no way to tell how long he would be out.

“Nang, I want to be gone before those men you mentioned arrive. Understand?”

A quick nod. He still avoided looking at her face.

“So you’re going to talk quickly. Then I’ll be away and you can go about your business.” She paused. “I don’t want to hurt you. But if I have to—”

“What do you want to know?”

“Who is behind all of this?”

His shrug was more exaggerated this time.

Annja growled from deep in her throat and stepped to the desk, sticking her passport and wallet back in her fanny pack and strapping it on. She picked the crumpled business cards off the floor and flattened them as best as she could, then stuffed them back in her pocket. She took her camera, too, which they seemed to have repaired or at least jury-rigged to view the pictures.

“Try again,” she said. “Who is behind this?”

Nang set his chin against his chest and mumbled something.

“Pardon…I couldn’t hear you.”

“Lanh Vuong.”

The name didn’t mean anything to her.

“Is that the Sandman? I heard your uncle talk to someone named the Sandman.”

“No.”

“So who is Lanh Vuong?”

He let out a great sigh, sounding like sand blowing in the dry wind. “An old and powerful man,” he began. “An important one where I come from.”

“Tell me more.”

He hesitated a bit too long, and she closed her fist.

“Where is Lanh Vuong?”

“Hue.”

She didn’t need to pull the card out of her pocket. She remembered that one of the business cards was for an antiques store in Hue, Vietnam.

“Vietnam?” Annja wanted to be sure.

“Hue, Vietnam.”

The desk had maps stacked on the corner. She pushed against his chest again and turned her back on him, searching through the maps and finding one produced by
National Geographic
in 1967 that showed Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and part of Burma.

“You’re Vietnamese, right, Nang?” Annja looked over her shoulder to see him nod. “Then I’ve got a new idea.” Grabbing a selection of maps, and the only set of keys she saw on the desk, she slung her backpack over her shoulders, returned to Nang and tugged him up by his collar.

He looked noticeably paler, and his face was even sweatier.

“You’re coming with me,” she said.

He started shaking, and she let out a disappointed sigh. She’d thought a smuggler should have a little more backbone. “To…Hue? Going…to…Hue?”

It was her turn to nod. She nudged him out the back door and toward the muddy Jeep, just as a silver Hilux Vigo pulled into the far side of the alley. A four-door pickup, it was pristine enough to have just been driven off the showroom floor. Its windows were tinted, but Annja could make out three shapes inside.

“Lovely. I’ll bet those are the men who work for your uncle.” She shoved him into the Jeep’s passenger side, jumped behind the wheel, sitting on the maps she’d grabbed, and prayed one of the keys fit in the ignition. Annja didn’t want another fight right now.

She fumbled with the keys as two of the men leaped out of the Hilux, the driver staying behind the wheel. One man headed to the shop’s back door, the other came barreling at the Jeep, pulling a gun out of his waistband.

The second key worked, and the Jeep’s engine roared, tires spinning and throwing clumps of dirt at the man.

“The seat belt,” Annja shouted. “Put it on! Now!”

Nang groped for the belt as Annja slammed her foot on the gas pedal and shot down the alley, right front fender catching a garbage can and sending it and its smelly contents flying.

“Duck!”

Nang hunched down as much as the belt allowed. The windshield shattered as bullets struck it. The shooter was using a silencer.

At the end of the alley she jerked the wheel hard right and swerved to avoid a parked car. Traffic wasn’t heavy in this part of the city, and she took advantage of a near-empty street as she raced south. A few more turns, a cut through an alley, the silver truck gaining on her, and she found herself going west on Si Donchai Road, where a steady stream of cars headed in both directions and exhaust filled the air and settled heavily on her tongue.

She slammed her hand against the steering wheel in frustration as she weaved around a late-model Honda Civic and found herself smack behind a tour bus. She heard tires squeal behind her, and a glance in the rearview mirror showed the pickup bullying the Civic onto the sidewalk.

“They will kill us!” Nang’s knuckles were white on the dashboard.

“I will do my best to not let that happen.” Annja spun the wheel to the right, cutting across the opposite lane of traffic and nearly being sideswiped by a minivan. More tires squealed, including the Jeep’s. Cars started honking, and in the distance she heard a siren.

“The police!” Nang looked relieved and frightened at the same time.

Annja was confident she could talk herself out of trouble; she’d done it many times before. But having an unwilling passenger could be considered kidnapping. Then there was the issue of car theft, breaking and entering at the shop, beating up the old man—it would take a while to talk herself out of this.

The truck swerved right behind her. Only two shapes were visible inside, one leaning out the passenger window—the man who’d shot at them in the alley. Everything was happening too fast for Annja to get a good look at him, but his yellow shirt and his shaved head stood out. He fired at them again, the bullet striking the rear of the Jeep.

Her heart pounded; she realized he was aiming at the jerricans in the back. He could blow them up with a well-placed shot.

“Hold on!” she shouted.

Annja hadn’t needed to tell Nang that. He’d dug his fingernails into the dashboard and was gritting his teeth. His eyes were needle slits and he took in great gulps of the exhaust-filled air. One hand on the steering wheel, she flailed about with the other, finding her seat belt and pulling it across her lap, shimmying by a Land Rover and past a Camry, praying all the while that the gunmen didn’t shoot an innocent driver. She clicked the belt and felt only a little safer.

Sirens wailed louder and she reached a stretch where traffic was thinner. She floored the gas pedal and the Jeep surged faster, and then was bumped from behind. A glance in the mirror showed the grille of the pickup. It conveniently had no license plate.

“They will kill us! They will—”

“Shut up,” Annja warned. She didn’t need Nang’s distraction.

The truck veered to the left, coming alongside the Jeep. Annja kept one hand on the wheel and extended the other, calling for her sword and finding it difficult to grip the pommel with the blade meeting resistance from the wind and the speed.

Nang screamed and Annja swiped down with the blade, aiming for the gun in the man’s hand and instead connecting with his arm. It had the same effect—the gun clattered away on the pavement, disappearing beneath a black BMW. The truck smashed into the Jeep’s side, and Annja had to compensate to keep from being pushed off the road.

“Bridge!” Nang warned.

Annja divided her attention between the road, the threatening pickup, oncoming traffic and now the bridge, which narrowed the road to a single lane. Below, the water sparkled like sapphire glass spun between the dirt-brown banks.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” she coaxed the Jeep as she pressed the gas pedal as far down as it would go and inched past the truck. At least the passenger was inside the truck now, holding his injured arm. The driver was another matter; she spotted a gun in his hand. But he had to jump in behind her in the face of now-one-lane traffic.

“We will die!” Nang cried.

“Everyone dies,” Annja said. “But I won’t let us die today.”

The Jeep rode up on the sidewalk as she jockeyed for a better position to see the truck behind her. The passenger was on a cell phone; she couldn’t make out more than that because of the tinting to the windows. The driver had his arm out the window, gun against the door.

More sirens wailed, and she picked out three distinct sounds. At least three police cars were coming. Before they reached the end of the bridge a fourth was added to it. Car horns blared as she took an off-ramp at full speed, tilting the Jeep up on its right wheels and nearly tossing Nang from his seat, despite the seat belt. She raced past a motorcycle that spun out in her wake and watched in horror as the silver truck headed straight for the motorcycle.

“God, please don’t,” she prayed, her stomach rising into her throat. The biker’s death would be on her hands.

A maintenance worker on the side of the road pumped his fist and shouted at her as she continued to look in her rearview mirror.

The truck driver veered to the right to avoid the motorcyclist. His tires screamed in protest and the truck briefly rose up on its right tires like a stunt car before rolling on its side, sparks from the metal scraping against the pavement shooting up like fireworks.

Annja jabbed the gas pedal again and switched lanes, driving straight west again and leaving Chiang Mai and the increasing number of sirens behind.