Rogue Angel - Restless Soul Part 16

"It's big on tourism. Wasn't really that way when I was a kid, though. More a recent thing. Lots of ecotourism. It's an interesting place, lots of ethnic groups, including a few American families in my district who work for some tourism company. There are some Shan."

Like Zakkarat, she thought sadly.

"And some hill tribe villages are close enough to hit with a tossed stone-the Karen, Lahu, Lisu, Hmong, Lawa. The tourists love them, and the villagers coax the tourists out to see their crafts and watch the dances."

She followed the lead police car as it turned off onto a wider road.

"If we were going to Chiang Mai as tourists, we would be taking Route 1095 by way of Pai. It's less than three hundred kilometers. We're taking 108 by way of Mae Sariang. They're doing that for your benefit, Miss Creed. It's not near as scenic, but it's an easier drive."

"How long will it take?"

"To get to Chiang Mai? About five or six hours. Split the difference and call it five and a half." He tapped the clipboard again. "Now, about those questions I wanted to ask." He reached up and turned on the dome light and tilted it so it lit up his paper. "Let's start with how one woman was able to overpower three smugglers?"

"I think there were five. No, six, counting the one in the back." And that wasn't counting the men she'd dealt with the day before.

"Would've put him all comfortable in the back of one of the police cars if he wasn't so filthy and b.l.o.o.d.y," Johnson murmured. "And if you hadn't managed to truss him up so well. Now...six men, you said. That's quite remarkable for one female television archaeologist." He paused. "We get your program in my district, but it's dubbed. Your voice is a lot prettier than the woman who speaks in your place here. I saw the episodes you did on ancient Egyptian mummies being found in Australia and that goat-sucker creature in Mexico."

Annja gripped the steering wheel tighter. She'd already handed over the pistol she'd taken from one of the men. She hadn't shot any of them with it, and ballistics would show that. Still, she didn't want to have to give too many details about what had happened over the past two days.

"So, six men, with just one pistol, and no shots fired from it that we could see. Tell me how you did that." The skepticism was thick in his voice.

He was finally asking her pertinent questions. Annja took a deep breath and started to recount pretty much everything, including finding Zakkarat's body. She left out the sword, of course, and she didn't mention that she'd killed one of the smugglers. That would come out later, and she'd deal with it then. No doubt the fact that she'd killed other thugs in the Thins village would also surface. She'd dealt with such issues in the past, always scrutinized and never formally charged. But the grisly little details about the deaths yesterday and today didn't need to go into Johnson's notes right now.

His questions ended an hour later, leaving her four-and-a-half hours to herself. Annja chewed on the inside of her cheek, the slight pain keeping her awake. She ran the events and discoveries over and over in her mind, trying to put the pieces of the puzzle into place and meeting with little success.

21.

They came into Chiang Mai from the south in the middle of the night, and that's where Annja stopped following the police car and took her own route.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Johnson was surprised and fl.u.s.tered.

"Taking a precaution," she answered as she stepped on the gas. "Covering my bases. Just in case." Just in case the questioning turned ugly when they discovered the slain smugglers. She wasn't guilty of any wrongdoing...but this wasn't her country and from experience she knew it was better to play it safe.

She took a left onto Charoen Prathet Road and sped up. On her right was the Mae Nam Ping, a wide dark strip of river that sparkled with the reflection of streetlights. She turned on Tha Phae Road and wove around a double-parked truck that was unloading boxes at a nightclub. She leaned forward and looked at the street signs, finding Tud-mai Road and swerving onto it, and ignoring the protests of Johnson, who tried to grab the wheel.

She slapped at his hand and squealed onto a side street, heading east now. The police car that had been following her turned on its lights and siren.

"Please let me have gotten these directions right. Please, please, please," she mumbled.

"Where are we-"

"Going?" She picked up speed as she turned onto Wichayanond Road. "To number 387," she said, spotting the series of buildings she was looking for and honking madly, driving through as the gates were opened. The trailing police car stopped on the street and turned off its siren.

The second phone call Annja had made in the lodge office was to the U.S. Consulate General in Chiang Mai. They'd provided a little advice-come to them as soon as possible-and they gave good directions. They said glowing things about Thai police, but cautioned that coming to the consulate first would be the best tactic.

She knew that this was the only United States consular presence outside of Bangkok. It had originally been a traditional consulate, but was upgraded to a consulate general more than two decades ago.

"Just in case," she repeated, turning off the engine, reaching for her bag and sliding out.

Johnson smiled and gave her a tip of his hat. "Well played, Miss Creed."

The consulate was the base for Department of State employees, some members of the U.S. Air Force, DEA officers and Peace Corps officials.

Pete Schwartz, aid to the consular chief, met her at the front door. Annja gestured that Johnson was welcome to join her.

They turned her captive over to the police officer on the street and promised to also give them the crates later.

The entry smelled wonderful, of oiled, polished wood and flowers that filled a ma.s.sive crystal vase.

Consulate officials-and, with her permission, Johnson-occupied her for an hour, scanning the map from the truck glove box and the marks Annja had made on it. She sat in a padded straight-backed chair, declining the more comfortable-looking couch on which she suspected she would quickly nod off. Schwartz and the others rattled off one question after the next and took copious notes as she once more related everything that had happened in the past few days and described some of the treasures. Three men from the consulate hovered during the interview, one recording the proceedings.

"We have pictures-mug shots, in the American vernacular-and we'd really like you to come into the department and go through them," Johnson said.

She got him to back off on that count until sometime later-when she could have a representative from the consulate with her.

"Hopefully, we'll have those men in custody by then," Johnson said. "The ones you said you tied up in the mountains."

"You've sent someone up there, right?" Annja had been concerned about the ones she'd left in the cavern. "You told me on the ride over here that-"

"They are on their way...were on their way around the time we left your lodge, following the directions you provided. Slower going in the mountains at night, but I'm sure they made it some time ago if the directions are true."

Finished with their questions-at least for the moment-Annja requested some time alone. She had a lot of things to do. They let her use a secretary's desk in a small reception area on the first floor. The desk was polished oak, pitted in places and with rounded corners from being b.u.mped through the years. The chair was much newer, an ergonomic chrome-and-leather design that Annja settled comfortably into.

I could sleep in this chair, she thought. And she would fall asleep if she didn't concentrate on the task at hand. How long had it been since she'd gotten a little rest? She resisted the urge to look at a clock. Her broken wrist.w.a.tch was in a trash can back at the lodge. She waited for a promised laptop and focused on the items on the desk. A coffee mug was stuffed with mechanical pencils, pens and fine-line markers. A black plastic-framed photograph showed a young man and a woman sitting on a bench-the secretary and her significant other, perhaps. A flat-panel monitor wasn't hooked to anything-Pete had mentioned the computer being out for repair. A resin figurine of a pug dog with a shiny black nose gazed happily at her. Annja leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes.

Just for a minute, she told herself. I'll just close them for a minute and maybe this headache will go away. Her temples throbbed, and her legs ached, but the pain wasn't so bad that it prevented her from drifting off. She was roused by the harsh click of shoes against the tile floor.

"Miss Creed?" Peter Schwartz said.

She sat up straight.

"Here's a computer you can use. We're wireless here. The battery should have enough charge, but if you have any problems, just give me a holler and I'll find the plug and an extension cord. I'll be in my office." Pete pointed to the open door behind her.

"Thanks, Pete. I'll make a copy of everything for you. Provided there's something salvageable to make a copy of." She knew they'd access the computer when she was done, anyway, and retrieve whatever she sent and received. She didn't care; she wasn't doing anything illegal or questionable. She had no secrets surrounding this. They were probably watching her, too. A place like this would have cameras scattered throughout. And she could probably spot the cameras...if she cared.

"I'm interested in seeing pictures of this treasure you talked about." He gave her a tired smile. "I suppose lots of people will be interested in that. Coffee? I've put a pot on."

"Coffee? Definitely." She nudged the only empty cup she spotted toward him. Annja opened up the laptop, a Toshiba with a good-size screen. Well used, the letters J, F, T J, F, T and and H H were worn off. She was a touch typist and didn't need them. were worn off. She was a touch typist and didn't need them.

"You needn't worry about all of this, Miss Creed. From what we can tell, you were the hero. Probably wouldn't have had a problem going straight to the police department. But you were wise to take our advice and stop here first."

"Just in case," she said.

Pete grabbed the cup and walked away as the floor overhead creaked; people were walking around. Music filtered down the stairwell, a jazzy instrumental piece. After a moment she recognized Maynard Ferguson's jazz-infused version of "Summertime." She gingerly took her digital camera out of her pocket. Definitely ruined. Too much water, too much jostling around, and the bullet it had stopped had finished it for good.

She released a shallow breath, opened the catch and carefully extracted the memory card. "Please be good," she said. She held it up to the light. It didn't look damaged. "Here goes." The card fit snugly in the appropriate laptop slot. Nothing happened for a moment, and she slumped forward and rested her chin in her hand. Then the screen blinked and a square appeared, asking if she wanted to download all the images, and if she wanted to delete them from the source when she was finished.

Yes to the first question, she clicked. No to the second.

The screen filled with postage-stamp-size images of her Thailand trip. The first were of the sky-blue bus she and Luartaro took to the lodge, then outside shots of their cabin and one of him picking at a local dish that room service had brought. She needed to call him-as soon as she sent some images of the skull bowl to the archaeology world. The next pictures were of the cave Zakkarat had taken them to, some dim because the lighting was so low and the shadows so deep. But several pictures of the teak coffins turned out remarkably well, showing the intricacies of the carving. Later pictures showed the ancient remains and the intact pots. Finally came the pictures of the treasure. Because the lighting was much brighter in that cavern, all of the shots looked good, though a few had hot spots where the flash bounced off the shiny gold.

"Summertime" ended and a new track began- "Conquistador," a hard-driving, slightly shrieking piece that Ferguson had cowritten. Annja had a few of his CDs at her apartment in New York and was particularly fond of "Conquistador." She had to concentrate on the pictures to keep herself from humming along.

"Buddha, Buddha, Buddha, crate, jewelry, Luartaro, skull bowl," she said. She'd taken seven shots of the bowl from various angles, and these she enlarged and saved to a separate folder she created and dubbed "macabre bowl." She intended to take more pictures of the skull-bowl shards when she acquired a new camera. But these pictures were more than adequate for what she needed to do right now.

Annja logged on to one of her favorite archaeology newsgroups. Several of the members had helped her ferret out information on this topic or that relic through the past few years. She suspected someone on her list would help with the skull bowl, too. But how soon that help would come was a proverbial c.r.a.pshoot.

Minutes, maybe, if someone was online this very moment. Hours, or even a few days, if they were busily engaged in their own interests. She attached the photographs, along with a brief description of where they were found. Annja did not mention the golden treasure that had been found with it, but just before she hit Send, she added the dog tags-but not the names of the soldiers-and mentioned all the dried blood.

"Macabre bowl, indeed," she said.

"Here's that coffee."

She'd been so intent on typing that she hadn't heard Pete approach.

"No cream, sorry. None in my office. I usually take it black. But I have a few of these fake-cream packets." He sat the mug to her side and scattered the packets near it. "Rose keeps sweetener in one of her drawers. Is that some of the treasure? A little misshapen, isn't it?" He looked over her shoulder at the image of the skull bowl that took up most of the screen. "Ivory?"

"It was with the treasure," she said. "But I don't think it's really part of it. Everything else was gold or bejeweled, or carved from jade or coral or ivory. This is part of a human skull."

He wrinkled his nose and pointed back at his office. "You better make a couple of copies of all of that."

"Just in case," Annja repeated, slugging down the coffee and pushing the cup forward for a refill. "Do you have anything handy to eat?" Her stomach rumbled so loudly she suspected Pete heard it.

"I could poke through the kitchen. I'm sure I could find cream there, too. Or I have a box of Twinkies in my desk."

"Twinkies would do nicely." Annja salivated at the thought of sugar and empty calories. "And another cup or two or three of coffee."

22.

It's not Vietnamese or Laotian, Benjamin Vaughan wrote. Or Thai, Chinese, Nipponese, Burmese. It's not Asian at all.

Vaughan was a junior college history teacher from Baton Rouge who frequented the archaeology blogs and chat lists on the weekends and in the summer months, calling himself a "lurker," but often contributing useful tidbits. He'd helped Annja in the past, but she hadn't heard from him personally in more than a year. He must have been on the internet cruising through the chat lists when she'd sent the images and description of the skull bowl.

Lucky for her, she thought. She remembered Vaughan's past information being reliable, though rambling.

It's American, he continued in his private post to her. That container you found is American, most likely. At least, I'm pretty sure it is-American by way of Africa. From New Orleans, to be precise. But don't quote me on that until I can take a hands-on look.

Surprised and intrigued, Annja read on, leaning close to the screen as if she might absorb the words better by a nearer proximity.

I saw something like your device-your container-two winter breaks ago in a museum in Florida, down by Orlando. They had a collection of shrunken heads, too, but the curators were going to put the heads in storage because a group of locals were picketing and had gotten the newspaper involved. They were up in arms about human remains being on public display. The Field Museum hid away its shrunken heads about the same time. Anyway, I found out that several months later the head curator in Florida packed up the heads and sent them to the Ripley's Believe It or Not museum that had just opened in New York City, down by Times Square, where they're a major attraction to this day. The museum claims to have one of the largest collections of shrunken heads in America. The heads are the last thing you see when you leave the building. One of the folks at the museum said it was so visitors would have a lasting impression of the place. I was at the Ripley's museum, too, and saw them. That was just a few months ago when I was attending a conference in Manhattan for spring break. I don't otherwise have an interest in shrunken heads. Couldn't tell you how shrunken heads were made. Don't especially want to know. I couldn't care less about shrunken heads actually.

"You're rambling, Benjamin." Annja yawned and sipped at her coffee. It was a strong brew, but she wished it was even stronger and had a little more of an acrid bite to it. She really needed help staying awake.

Anyway, I was at the Florida museum two winter breaks past because of their Voodoo display, not because of the shrunken heads-which it was silly of the locals to protest against in the first place. You know that Voodoo is a special interest of mine. I have a cousin-a second cousin, actually-on my mother's side of the family who considers herself a mambo, a Voodoo priestess. That's not why I'm interested in Voodoo, though. I'm just interested.

He capitalized voodoo, voodoo, giving it respect. Many of the literary sources she'd read through the years capitalized it, too-just like Baptist, Catholic and Lutheran were capitalized. giving it respect. Many of the literary sources she'd read through the years capitalized it, too-just like Baptist, Catholic and Lutheran were capitalized.

Annja skimmed through the next few paragraphs, marveling at how fast Vaughan must be able to type and post. Then she got through his ramblings and to the real attention-grabbing material.

Your container looks just like the one that the Florida museum displayed. The spitting image of it, in fact. I remember because it left one of those lasting impressions on me. I found it particularly grisly that they'd lumped it in with the Voodoo display. The skull's not exactly Voodoo. Not true Voodoo, in any event.

Grisly was the term Annja had used when she'd come upon the skull bowl, as there was something unsettling about the thing. She'd been raised in an orphanage in New Orleans, where voodoo was both a tourist concern and a religion. She'd learned quite a bit about voodoo and hoodoo, and had some friends who'd thoroughly embraced them. was the term Annja had used when she'd come upon the skull bowl, as there was something unsettling about the thing. She'd been raised in an orphanage in New Orleans, where voodoo was both a tourist concern and a religion. She'd learned quite a bit about voodoo and hoodoo, and had some friends who'd thoroughly embraced them.

Voodoo meant "G.o.d Creator" or "Great Spirit," and could trace its roots back perhaps ten thousand years on the African continent. Those who really knew about it considered the sensationalized tales of human sacrifices and devil worship laughable and the stuff of bad movies. Pract.i.tioners believed voodoo was life affirming and spiritual, and she recalled reading that there were millions who practice it around the world today, though most notably in Africa, South America, Central America, the Caribbean islands and parts of the United States. Undeniably ancient, it had been labeled the "Cult of Ancestors," and was tied closely to animistic spirits. She remembered Zakkarat mentioning that some of Northern Thailand's hill tribes were animistic.