Rogue Angel - Restless Soul Part 22

Annja felt sick to her stomach, and cheated of answers. She'd driven through three countries to confront him and to demand answers about the skull bowl and the smuggling operation. She'd dragged a frightened henchman with her-who might at this very moment be calling in thugs.

Lanh Vuong's death had robbed her of any feeling of completion.

"No. No. No. No." She sat there for several minutes, then pushed herself up and looked around for a phone, still cupping her hand over her nose.

Annja got a good look at the furniture. Beautiful antiques, every piece, many hinting at a French origin, and most of it well maintained. The carpet was threadbare in places, however, partially covered up by an expensive-looking Turkish rug that dominated the center of the living room. The apartment was small-the living room, kitchen, single bedroom and a bath all compact. There was another room, this with a stackable washer-dryer and a desk. The message light on the telephone blinked red.

Annja sat at the desk, the smells of laundry soap helping to cut the odor of the old man's corpse. She remembered the phone number of the consulate in Chiang Mai and once again called it. Lanh Vuong would not mind if she added to his phone bill. She wanted to call the lodge, too, and see if someone there would get Luartaro for her. But it was late, too late for an indulgence like that.

After being transferred from person to sleepy person, Annja was connected to Pete Schwartz.

"I'm surprised you're still working," she said. "Oh, it's because of me, isn't it? Sorry. Really, I am sorry." She quickly related the story of her mad dash to Vietnam, leaving out her borrowing of Nang. "I wasn't sure who to call about all of this."

She had no contacts in Hue or Hanoi, and no computer to connect to her network of internet a.s.sociates. Lanh Vuong didn't have a computer that she'd seen, though there might be one downstairs in the antiques store. That would be her next stop. She didn't want to take the time to search the apartment.

"And I didn't want to call the police just yet, Pete." She'd have too much explaining to do.

Pete told her there was a U.S. Consulate General in Ho Chi Minh City, and an emba.s.sy in Hanoi-both too far away to be convenient, though he gave her phone numbers for some men he knew there and told her to call them-immediately.

"I'm coming back to Chiang Mai," Annja said. "I'll be leaving soon. Hey, you don't need to yell at me." She wanted to look through the antiques store below for...what? Maybe for any records of the smuggling operation or artifacts. Maybe for a list of names of people buying the relics or working for Lanh Vuong. Maybe a laptop or hard drive she could take with her and dig through later. Something to put the last pieces of the puzzle in place.

"Yes, I'm coming right back. Right away," she told Pete when he pressed her to leave and to let the local authorities sort things out-not a "vacationing American archaeologist with a nose for trouble looking to get herself tossed in a foreign jail."

"You can stop yelling. I'm heading back now," Annja said.

Well, soon, she thought. A trip downstairs first. She considered calling the lodge to find Luartaro, again dismissing the notion because of the late hour. She considered calling the consulate or the emba.s.sy, too, as Pete had suggested, as well as Doug Morrell to see if a crew was on its way to Thailand to film the teak coffins.

Instead, she pushed the b.u.t.ton to listen to Lanh Vuong's messages. She figured she might learn just how many days ago he died based on the age of the messages. It was an old-style answering machine, with a ca.s.sette tape in it. She didn't think they made those anymore. The tape was full.

There were nineteen messages, the first was five days ago, so he'd not been dead longer than that. Most of them were in Vietnamese, and she could pick out only a few words, not enough to yield anything useful. But there were four messages in English, all from the same man-Sandman, he called himself.

"I'm worried about you, old man," Sandman said. The voice was scratchy and distorted because the tape had been used so much. "You haven't returned a single call."

Another message said, "I wanted to tell you this face-to-face, but you're obviously not around. Something's rotten inside."

The next said, "Old man...pick up the phone. Are you there?"

The last was from the previous day. Sandman was worried about his friend and would have someone stop by to check on him tomorrow...which would be later that day. It was after midnight.

Annja paced in the tight confines of the room. She should leave-after a quick look downstairs-hop in the Jeep and return to Chiang Mai to tie up any loose ends with the authorities and the consulate. She shouldn't cool her heels in a dead man's apartment waiting for someone called the "Sandman."

She left the apartment, turning off the lights as she went, stopping to look in the refrigerator and taking out a block of cheese and a bottle of ginger ale. The rest of the items looked either fuzzy with the first hints of mold or unidentifiable. She took the back staircase down, eating the cheese as she went. It was sharp cheddar, and it helped to cut the smell of Lanh's corpse.

She retrieved a small flashlight from the Jeep. The back door to the antiques shop required a little work to open, and she managed to bypa.s.s the alarm-it was an older security device that anyone with a little thought could dismantle. She closed the door behind her and flicked on the flashlight.

A shiver coursed through her.

At the top of a hutch-style desk across a crowded and cramped back room sat a skull bowl.

30.

The bowl was stoppered, and Annja held the base of the flashlight in her mouth as she worried away at the waxy seal. There were no voices in her head this time, just a desire to see what was inside.

Four more dog tags were stuck in an inch of dried blood. She pried the tags out and stuck them in her pocket and left the bowl sitting on the desk; it would be leaving with her, along with any others she found.

She squeezed past a bank of file cabinets. There was no computer out in the open in the office, or in the first three large drawers she opened, and so she suspected the old man kept all of his records on paper; he'd been from another era, after all. She stepped back and opened one of the file cabinets; the drawer had only a few folders in it. Riffling through some of the pages, she saw the writing was all in Vietnamese. Worthless to her at the moment.

"So much for hauling away any evidence," she muttered. Still, she pulled out one file and placed it next to the skull bowl; she'd have someone translate it later.

Then Annja entered the shop. It was similar to the setup of the shop in Chiang Mai. There was a comfortable sameness to all old buildings-a showroom and a back office, with a restroom tucked to the side for the employees and patrons.

The odors were intense. She was far enough below the apartment that she no longer smelled Lanh, but she picked up the strong scents of old things-wood and clay, cloth, relics threatened by mildew and the years in general. Annja relished these kinds of smells and wanted to turn on the ceiling lights so she could get a better look. The beam of the flashlight was terribly inadequate.

There were packing crates at the back, and mounds of packing materials. They extended farther than she could see, and she realized that the antiques shop was much bigger than the outside storefront implied. It extended into the other boarded-up businesses and was virtually a warehouse of antiquities ready to be packed up and moved out to buyers in other countries.

The shelves were unfinished plywood, but they were ma.s.sive and braced to support the weight of the objects s.p.a.ced out across them. Busts, urns, statues and more stretched farther than the flashlight beam. Annja could not help herself; she had to take a closer look at some of the works.

One shelf was filled with what to her practiced archaeological eye looked to be artifacts from the Champa culture in Binh Dinh's coastal central province, hundreds upon hundreds of years old. They included ancient bowls, cups and vases made of fire-hardened clay. They were museum pieces, especially the soccer-ball-size containers covered with reliefs of a sea monster called a makara, makara, and a mythological and a mythological naga. naga.

Another shelf was filled with a collection of jewelry pieces from the holy land of Cat Tien, including figurines of deities made from terra-cotta, silver, gold and bronze.

There were stone tools that were clearly prehistoric. Annja would have liked to take them back for study to determine what region they came from and just how old they were. It wouldn't hurt to take one small piece, she told herself. She reached for a stone ax and stopped herself. She was upset that Luartaro had taken jewelry and who knew what else from the treasure cave. She had no right to take anything.

She edged toward a gap in the aisles, where some large objects took up a considerable section of floor. An ancient cart with intact wheels captivated her. Nearby was a large bronze drum she guessed was at least two thousand years old. These large treasures were priceless archaeological treasures that Annja knew should be displayed in a major museum.

It was a crime against the world to smuggle these things. Annja recalled reading an article several months earlier about two Chinese men arrested in Vietnam with a truck full of antiquities they were taking across the border. She wondered if they'd been part of this operation.

The artifacts had been Vietnamese-a bronze drum, dozens of earrings, statues and ceramic jars. She rubbed her forehead, smearing dirt and the gnats that had stuck there. She was feeling so many things at the same time-anger that people would steal from history and deprive the public of an opportunity to see these relics and deny archaeologists the opportunity to study them; elation that she'd uncovered what obviously had been a ma.s.sive smuggling operation; fear that some of the parties involved were still out there and could resume the nefarious practice; worry that the authorities might not properly handle all these priceless things.

She pulled in a deep breath, taking the dusty air into her lungs and relishing the oldness. Her breathing was loud in the stillness of the building. That and the shush-shushing of her shoes against the plank wood floor were the only sounds. The tavern was too distant, and the walls and shelves of this place kept its music and laughter at bay. There was no traffic on the street at this hour in this part of the city.

Annja wouldn't be returning to Chiang Mai right away, as she'd told Pete. She would stay in Hue a day or two, call the American consulate and emba.s.sy, contact Doug and beg him to send a second film crew here and call the various experts she knew in the field of ancient Vietnamese relics. She wouldn't be able to see everything through, but she could put things in motion, and that would give her a better sense of accomplishment and closure. She'd done nothing illegal, save drive a Jeep from Chiang Mai that didn't belong to her...and temporarily force Nang to accompany her. She would talk her way out of trouble-she was good at that.

Annja glided down the next aisle, seeing bronze jewelry dully gleam in her flashlight beam. She wanted pictures! She reached to her f.a.n.n.y pack as she heard an engine roar and gravel crunch. Someone had arrived out back. The pictures would have to wait.

She summoned the sword and hurried to the back of the shop, leaving her flashlight on a shelf. She'd meet them outside, refusing to risk even one relic being ruined in the fight that was to come.

And Annja knew there would be a fight. It wasn't the police she slipped through the office to meet. Either Nang had summoned Lanh's thugs or the alarm she'd tripped upstairs had called them. She stepped out the back door and clung to the shadows up against the wall.

Two men got out of a dark SUV, and a van pulled up behind it, turning off its headlights and disgorging four more men. Neither driver door had opened, so there were at least two more people that she couldn't see.

The only light in the alley filtered down from a lamppost at the far end. It was nearly as dark as a cave. She couldn't make out any details regarding the men, though her instincts told her they were well armed. They looked like moving splotches of black against the gray of the walls and the vehicles-shadows upon shadows. She stared at the man heading to the door she'd just exited. All she could tell was that he was bigger than her.

The man behind him started up the steps to Lanh's dwelling.

Common sense told her she should creep along the wall and get out of there. The odds were too great and the visibility too poor. Alive and away, she could report what she'd seen and retell what had happened in the past few days.

But common sense was rarely Annja's friend, and so she angled the blade so the flat of it was out, pivoting slightly. Her feet made a sound against the gravel that alerted the closest man. He stopped and stared at the wall, and she wondered if his eyes were more acute than hers and he could actually see her. But then the moment pa.s.sed and he reached for the doork.n.o.b, and she swung the blade up with all her strength behind it.

Annja drove the flat of the blade against his neck, and he collapsed on the stoop, dropping something that made a metallic sound. He grabbed at his throat, hacking. She hit him again just as the man who'd started up the stairs retreated and called to the others.

Annja had managed to take one out without spilling blood, but she'd alerted the rest to her presence. The odds were five-to-one now, plus the two drivers and hopefully no more. Seven-to-one, she decided. She'd faced worse.

They shouted to one another in Vietnamese, one word in English ringing out and making her heart jump. Sandman. Sandman. The van's lights snapped back on and caught Annja in a midleap kick at the man who'd just come off the stairs. The heel of her right foot landed solidly against the small of his back and sent him forward into another of his fellows. The van's lights snapped back on and caught Annja in a midleap kick at the man who'd just come off the stairs. The heel of her right foot landed solidly against the small of his back and sent him forward into another of his fellows.

Though the light wasn't bright, it momentarily blinded Annja, and she slammed her eyes shut as she planted her right foot and spun with a roundhouse kick that connected with the same man. She kicked him one more time and heard him drop, and then she opened her eyes to see two men pointing guns at her.

Her eyes better adjusted, she could tell that the men were a mix of young and middle-aged Asians, all with some bulk to them, and all wearing jackets despite the summer heat. They shimmered in the headlights like ghosts fazing in and out.

The one closest to her shouted that she should drop the sword, and she considered sending it away to find a peaceful resolution. But she noticed that the guns were sleek, recent models-all with silencers-and she was confident they would kill her quietly. She dropped to a crouch as bullets whispered above her head, and then she somersaulted forward, the gravel from the alley biting at the top of her head and the back of her neck. Rising right in front of the men, she swept the sword in hard, cutting through the jacket of the man on her right and into his rib cage. He howled as she dragged the blade in deeper, killing him.

Bullets whizzed by her ear as she stepped in close to the falling corpse and wrenched the sword free, driving the pommel up into the chin of the man who'd been standing shoulder to shoulder with him, cracking his jaw and breaking teeth. A slug slammed into her left arm, feeling like a piece of fire imbedded in her flesh.

Annja bit down hard on her lower lip in a failed effort to keep from crying out, tasting her own blood in her mouth and feeling a surge of adrenaline. This was a fight she shouldn't have picked, should have listened instead to her common sense. But since she'd started it, she knew she'd have to finish it quickly if she wanted to keep breathing.

The man whose jaw she'd broken swung his gun on her, firing just as she sidestepped it and she felt a bullet graze her right arm. She drew her sword down to her side and thrust it up at an angle, essentially skewering him. More whisper-hisses sounded, none of the bullets striking her, but hitting the man she'd skewered and the side of the van.

What were the odds now?

Her mind raced as she twirled away from the two she'd just dropped and rushed to the back of the van, buying her cover.

Four-to-one?

Had she counted right and cut the number in half? Was this a war she could possibly win?

Her arms burned from the bullets, and her chest felt on fire from the exertion. She stepped around to the other side of the van, nearly running into a man who'd just emerged from an open side door.

How many were there? An army?

Without hesitation, she drove the tip of the blade into his stomach, her charging momentum sending it in deeper and out his back. When he fell, she dropped with him, planting her knee on his chest and pulling hard to free the sword. She jumped to her feet and ran to the front of the van, darting around it just as someone hugging the shadows by the SUV opened fire.

31.

This is madness, Annja thought. It was madness thinking she could fight all these men, madness that anyone would smuggle artifacts precious to all of humanity, madness that Zakkarat died.

"Madness!" Annja screamed the word as she charged a man coming around the other side of the van. She held her sword as if it was a lance and ran him through. "Madness!"

She fell on him, using the momentum to spring up, turn and tug the sword out of his gut.

What were the odds now? Better, but by how much? How many men had she dropped? Had more come out of the van or SUV?

She was close to two more men, so close that another two she spotted didn't fire, not wanting to risk their fellows. The closest two flanked her, and she used it to her advantage, ramming her elbow back into the shorter one, catching him squarely in the chest. She stepped back with him when he doubled over, striking him the same way a second time, hearing his gun drop. The move had bought her just enough s.p.a.ce to bring her sword up on the man in front of her. One slice finished him.

Annja was spattered with blood and the insects had become a second skin, stuck to her sweat. The wound in her left arm continued to feel like fire, her right arm stinging where she'd been grazed. Sweat poured off her, from the heat of the summer night and all the fighting. She saw only two men left standing, and they yelled at each other, again. "Sandman" was repeated several times.

She heard a siren, but it was distant and receding, attending to another matter and leaving this private war to her and the remaining thugs. Both of them fired, missing because she was moving so fast and the shadows from the van helped cloak her, darting and weaving and never staying still for even a heartbeat. The slugs. .h.i.t the side of the van, one of them breaking a headlight and making everything murkier.

Annja preferred that, not wanting to see too closely the faces of the men she was going to have to kill. She was haloed by the sole headlight, backlit like a movie monster as her feet churned to eat up the distance, feeling another bullet graze her left arm, and changing her grip so she held the sword only in her right hand.

Blood flowed down her left arm, that hand practically useless now, and mingled with the sweat as she hollered, "Madness!" once more and swung her weapon with all of her waning strength. She'd aimed high, and with one blow killed one of the men. Spinning from the energy of the swing, she followed through and struck the second, felling him, too.

She slouched forward, panting, holding her left arm in close to her body, the fire of it fading and turning to numbness. She needed a hospital. But more than that she needed to end this war and finish the puzzle. Gulping in the humid, bug-filled air she turned and staggered toward the SUV. A man climbed out, taller than the others, thinner, and with hair so pale it looked like mist. In the light from the SUV's dome she saw that he wasn't Vietnamese, and that his deeply lined face was so pale it branded him a Caucasian.

"Sandman," she guessed.

"And you are a madwoman."

She couldn't argue with that. "Hands out to your sides." She raised the sword for emphasis, and he complied. She listened for any movement, either from the few men she'd knocked out rather than killed or from the vehicles, hinting that there were still more inside.

"You are impressive," he said after a few moments had pa.s.sed. "An army unto yourself. I should have not dismissed Nang's ramblings so easily. He called you a pretty demon. I should have brought twice this many men."

"Who are you?"

"Sandman, as you know," he said. His face was an emotionless mask, cold and empty. "It is the only name I've used in, well, quite a long while."

Annja put him in his sixties.

"Tell me about this, about all of this." She pointed the sword behind her to the back of the antiques store. She had plenty of other questions, but she'd start there.

He gave a great shrug of his shoulders, and she realized that beneath the long coat he wore, he was frail and rail-thin. "What about it?" he said after another few minutes had pa.s.sed.

In the silence she'd heard nothing but her own labored breathing and the buzzing of the d.a.m.nable insects. Then somewhere out on the street a car horn honked.

"The smuggling," she started. "The cave in Northern Thailand." She paused. "All the guns. Vietnam and all of this!"

He leaned against the side of the SUV and dropped his hands to his sides. "Did you kill Lanh?"

Annja pointed the sword at his chest. "No. But he is dead. I don't think anyone killed him."

"He hadn't been well," he said. "It was only a matter of time. It's only a matter of time for all of us, actually."

She narrowed her eyes and her voice dripped with ire. "Tell...me...about...all...of...this."

"That could take a bit."

"I'm not going anywhere. And neither are you."