The Golden City

by John Twelve Hawks

  “Excuse me, sir.” Squires stood in front of him. “I think Mr. Doyle is coming out of the prison ”

  Boone took out his binoculars and circled the trunk of the banyan tree. Captain Tansiri had just escorted Doyle from the administration building, and the big American climbed into the delivery van.

  “That him?” Horsley looked like a boy about to go hunting.

  Boone nodded. “Let’s get ready.”

  The three foreigners put on the motorcycle helmets, grabbed the lances, and climbed onto the motorcycles behind the Thai riders. Seconds later, they were following the van as it headed toward the Bangkok airport. Nothing happened for the first few miles. The van moved slowly down a two-lane road past thatch-roofed houses and vegetable gardens. Boone’s helmet didn’t have any vents, and sweat trickled down his neck.

  “This bird’s not going to fly,” Horsley said into his radio headset. “Maybe he sees us with these pig stickers.”

  “Stay on the bike,” Boone said. “We’re following him all the way to the airport.”

  About twenty miles from the prison, the van entered a large town that appeared to specialize in the manufacture and sale of silk fabric. Crimson dye trickled out of a home workshop and flowed into the gutter. Lengths of silk dried on backyard clotheslines—the fabric so thin and delicate that sunlight made the colors glow. Once again, Boone found himself thinking about the Asian girl standing on the dock with the nuns.

  A marketplace filled a dirt side street in the middle of the town. There were wooden booths the size of small closets, carts piled high with manufactured goods, and market women squatting behind pyramids of oranges. The van stopped to let an ox cart pass. All of a sudden, Doyle climbed out of the van. He wasn’t frightened of the driver or worried about the police. He shouted a threat over his shoulder and sauntered through the open market.

  “Mr. Horsley goes first,” Boone said into the headset, and the Australian slapped his rider’s shoulder. The motorcycle took off—its back tire spitting off flecks of red mud. Doyle heard the engine above the din of the market. He stopped, twisted his head around, and saw a man with a tinted helmet and a white staff speeding toward him like a knight on the battlefield.

  The fugitive began running. He stepped behind a young woman with a basket of peppers balanced on her head, but she saw the bike approaching and flung herself to one side. The lance hit Doyle on his left shoulder blade. It was just a brief shock, but it made the American stagger.

  Squires attacked a few seconds later, hitting Doyle in the lower back. This time, Doyle fell to his knees as the bike continued past him. The fugitive looked back and saw that Boone was about a hundred feet away, lowering the lance into a horizontal position. In few seconds, he was back on his feet and stumbling down a narrow pathway between two stalls.

  Boone grabbed his rider’s belt and held on with one hand as the bike skidded in the mud. They made the turn and roared through the gap. Doyle was about twenty yards ahead of them—his head down, his arms extended as if he wanted to run on all fours. As the motorcycle got closer he dodged to the left, but Boone’s lance hit the big man’s leg and the shock flung him forward.

  The two Australians reached the site and jumped off their bikes. Boone decided that more pain would teach a stronger lesson, so he let them jab their lances a dozen times. Doyle rolled in the mud like an epileptic having a seizure. “It’s the righteous god!” Squires shouted. “Feel that righteous god!”

  * * *

  A local policeman ran up, but the riders showed their military identification and announced that they had just arrested a terrorist. The van arrived a minute later, and plastic restraints were placed on Doyle’s wrists, arms and legs. Finally, he was gagged with a swatch of duct tape and loaded into the van like a slab of meat.

  “Tell the riders to take you back to the hotel,” Boone told Squires. “Your money will arrive tomorrow morning.”

  “Yes, sir. Is there any other way we can help you?”

  “Tell Mr. Horsley to keep his mouth shut.”

  Boone got in the back of the van and told the driver to head to the airport. Then he took a syringe out of his shoulder bag and jabbed it into a vial filled with a powerful tranquilizer. Doyle was lying on this back. His eyes rolled wildly when he saw the needle.

  “When you wake up in America, you’ll have a wound on your right hand and another on the middle of your chest. We’re going to insert tracer beads between your skin and muscle. These devices will tell us where you are at all times.”

  The syringe was full. When Boone leaned forward, Doyle moaned; he was trying to open his mouth and say something.

  “If you run again, I’ll hunt you down just like we did today. You can’t escape, Doyle. It’s just not possible. I’m going to watch you until your task is done.”

  25

  A lice Chen decided that she was still the Warrior Princess of Skellig Columba. Through no fault of her own, she had been taken prisoner by the Queen of Darkness and was being transported to the City of Doom.

  She held this vision in her mind for about ten minutes, and then the tea cart rattled down the corridor outside. Alice opened her eyes and found herself still sitting a train compartment while Sister Joan read a leather-bound breviary. Although Sister Joan was dressed in black, she was definitely not the Queen of Darkness. Instead she was a fat nun with spectacles who cooked delicious scones and got all weepy when someone read a news story about a brave dog that saved his family from a house fire.

  And Alice knew she wasn’t any kind of princess. According to the nuns, she was a disobedient little girl who had been given chance after chance to behave in a decent manner. It was bad enough that Sister Bridget found her leaping across the cliffs, but when Alice was marched back to the convent, the butcher knife had fallen out of her belt. That evening she had waited upstairs in the sleeping room while the nuns prayed for Alice’s soul and discussed the problem in hushed voices. Finally, it was decided: Alice would be taken to Tyburn Convent in London where the Benedictine nuns would watch her for awhile. After inquiries were made, Alice would be sent to a Catholic girl’s school—probably one called St. Ann’s in Wales.

  “This will be better, dear.” Sister Ruth explained. “You need to be around girls your own age.”

  “Field hockey!” Sister Faustina said with her big booming voice. “Field hockey and proper games! No more jumping around with knives!”

  It was easy for the Tabula to monitor air travel, so Sister Joan and Alice rode local buses across Ireland and caught the ferryboat from Dublin to Holyhead. Now they were on a train to London, and Maya would meet them at the station.

  Sister Joan had packed the geometry textbook in Alice’s knapsack. If Alice wandered around the train and bothered the conductors, she would have to read the chapter on right angles as punishment. Sitting by the window, she stared at the little Welsh towns and tried to pronounce their names. Penmaenmawr. Abergele and Pensarn. Thick clouds covered the sky, but the Welsh were outside plowing fields and hanging up laundry. Alice saw a farmer shoveling feed into a trough for a mother pig and her babies. The pigs were white with black spots—not like the pink ones she had seen in America.

  Crewe was the last stop before London. So far, they had been alone in the compartment, but a crowd of people got on the train, and Alice watched them pass down the outside corridor. As they train lurched forward and left the station, a stout woman in her sixties with dyed black hair pulled open the sliding door and checked the seat numbers. “Sorry to bother you. But we have a reservation for two seats.”

  “Do we need to move?” Sister Joan asked politely.

  “Heavens no. You got on earlier—so you get the windows.” The stout woman stepped back into the corridor and spoke like she was calling her dog. “Here, Malcolm! No, it’s here!”

  A pudgy man wearing a tweed suit appeared in the doorway. He was pushing a large black suitcase on wheels. Alice decided to call the two intruders “Mr. and Mrs. Fire Plug” because they reminded her of city fire hydrants—short and stocky, with flushed red faces.<
br />
  The woman entered the compartment first, followed by her husband. He puffed and groaned and finally got the big suitcase up in the overhead rack. Then he sat down beside Alice and beamed at Sister Joan.

  “You two traveling to London?”

  “It’s the only stop left,” Alice snapped.

  “Why, yes. You’re right about that. But, of course, there are connections.” Mr. Fire Plug pronounced this last word with a great deal of satisfaction.

  “We’re going on,” explained Mrs. Fire Plug. “We’ll see my sister in London, and then fly on to the Costa Brava where our daughter has an apartment.”

  “Sun and fun,” said Mr. Fire Plug. “But not too much sun or I’ll look like a raspberry.”

  When the conductor came in to take tickets, Alice leaned forward and whispered to Sister Joan. “Let’s go to the dining car and get some tea.”

  The nun rolled her eyes. “We could have done that four stops ago. No tea for you, young lady. We’re almost in London.”

  Alice left the compartment a few minutes later to go to the toilet. She locked the sliding door and tried to imitate Mr. Fire Plug’s Welsh accent. “Too much sun and I’ll look like a raspberry ”

  Alice detested anyone who smiled too much or laughed too loudly. Back on the island, Sister Ruth had taught her a wonderful new word: gravitas. Maya had gravitas—a certain dignity and seriousness that made you want to imitate her.

  Back in the compartment, the Fire Plugs and Sister Joan were talking about gardening. Sister Ruth once said that the British were a godless people, but they got a holy look on their faces when they talked about bean poles and trellised vines.

  “A good mulch pile is like money in the bank,” intoned Mr. Fire Plug. “Spread it everywhere and you don’t need fertilizer.”

  “I add my kitchen waste—egg shells and carrot peels,” Mrs. Fire Plug said. “But no meat scraps or the pile attracts rats.”

  The three adults agreed that the best way to fight slugs was to drown them in a pie tin filled with stale beer. Alice ignored the conversation and gazed out the window. As they approached the outskirts of London, factories and apartment buildings were beginning to appear. It felt like all the empty spaces were disappearing; the buildings were squeezing together and crushing the little slivers of green.

  “I am sorry,” Mr. Fire Plug said. “But we haven’t been properly introduced. I’m Malcolm and this is my wife, Viv.”

  “Of course, sometimes I call my husband ‘Mush’—which is short for mushroom,” Mrs. Fire Plug explained. “Malcolm once tried to grow truffles in the backyard, but it didn’t work,”

  “Wrong trees. Got to have oak trees.”

  “Pleased to meet you. I’m Sister Joan and this is—”

  “Sarah,” Alice said. “Sarah Bradley.”

  “London! London!” a voice shouted, and then the conductor hurried past the compartment.

  “Well, here we are,” Mr. Fire Plug said. “Here we are indeed ”

  He glanced at his wife, and Alice suddenly felt strange. Something was wrong about these people. She and Joan should jump up and run away.

  “A pleasure to meet you two,” Mrs. Spark Plug said.

  Sister Joan smiled sweetly. “Yes. Have a lovely time in Spain.”

  “We might need a porter,” Mr. Spark Plug announced. “Viv brought everything but the kitchen sink.”

  He stood up to get the large suitcase, groaning and struggling as he lowered it down. But this time, Alice was close enough to see his face. The bag wasn’t really that heavy. He was only pretending.

  Desperate, Alice reached out and grabbed Joan’s hand. But the nun smiled and gave her a little squeeze. “Yes, dear. I know. It’s been a long journey ”

  Why were adults so foolish? Why couldn’t they see? Alice watched as Mrs. Fire Plug stood up and reached into her purse. She took out a small blue device that looked like a plastic squirt gun. Before anyone could react, she grabbed Sister Joan’s shoulder, pressed the device against the nun’s neck, and pulled the trigger.

  Joan collapsed. Alice tried to get away, but the big suitcase was blocking the door. “No you don’t!” Mr. Fire Plug said, grabbing her arm. Alice pulled out her stick and jabbed it at his throat. He swore loudly as the stick snapped in two.

  “You’re a nasty little creature, aren’t you?” He glanced at his wife. “Use the pink one, dear. The blue one was for the nun.”

  Mrs. Spark Plug grabbed Alice’s hair and held the child against her large bosom. She took a pink plastic gun out of her purse and pressed it against Alice’s neck.

  Alice felt a sharp pain and then drowsiness. She wanted to fight like Maya, but her legs gave way and she slumped onto the floor. Before the darkness came, she heard Mr. Fire Plug talking to his wife.

  “I still think you were wrong about the egg shells in the mulch pile, dear. That’s what attracted the rats.”

  26

  M aya sat in the crowded waiting room of the Brick Lane medical clinic and glared at the wall clock. Her appointment had been scheduled for 11:00, but she had been kept waiting for almost forty minutes. Now she would have to hurry across the city to meet the train arriving at Euston Station.

  It was annoying to be in an over-heated room filled with shrieking babies and old ladies pushing walkers. Like most Harlequins, she had always seen her body as an instrument for doing things. When she was sick or injured, she felt as if a disloyal employee had let her down.

  A Bengali woman wearing a pink smock entered the room and checked a list of names. “Ms. Strand?”

  “Right here ”

  “We’re ready for you now. “

  Maya followed the nurse down the central hallway and into an examination room. When five minutes passed and no one appeared, she took out the random number generator hanging from her neck. Odd means stay. Even means go.

  Before she could press the button, there was a knock on the door, and Amita Kamani hurried in carrying a manila folder. The clinic physician looked flustered; a rebellious strand of black hair had broken free and was touching her forehead.

  “Good morning, Ms. Strand. Sorry to keep you waiting. Any improvement in the leg?”

  “No change.”

  Maya had worn a skirt that afternoon so she could avoid the indignity of a hospital gown. Sitting on the edge of the examination table, she reached down and ripped off her bandage. The wound was still swollen and oozing blood, but she refused to show pain. It gave her some small satisfaction that Dr. Kamani looked concerned.

  “I see. Yes. That’s somewhat disappointing.” The physician took some disinfectant and fresh bandages out of the cabinet. She pulled on latex gloves, sat down on a stool near the table and started to bandage the wound. “Any problems with the medicine?”

  “It made me sick to my stomach.”

  “Did you vomit?”

  “A few times.”

  “Any other problems? Dizziness? Fatigue?”

  Maya shook her head. “I need some more antibiotics. That’s all.”

  “You can pick up a refill on the way out. But we need to discuss certain issues.” Dr. Kamani applied one final length of medical tape and stood back up. Now that she was no longer sitting below Maya like a shoe-shine boy, she appeared to regain some confidence. “We still don’t know what’s wrong with your leg, but it’s clear that you should adopt a healthier lifestyle. You need to stop traveling and avoid stress.”

  “That’s not possible. I have certain obligations.”

  “We all have busy lives these days, but sometimes we have to listen to our bodies.” Dr. Kamani checked the folder. “What exactly is your profession?”

  “That has nothing to do with my leg.”

  “You need to talk to a specialist.”

  “I’ve had enough of this.” Maya’s sword was hidden in the carrying case lying on the table. She picked it up and slung the strap over her shoulder. “You’re bloody useless.”

  Dr. Kamani stood a little straighter. Her eyes widened and her nostrils flared as if she were about to smash a tennis ball back across the net. “And you’re pregnant, Ms. Strand.”

 
; “That’s not possible.”

  “Well, it’s true. I ordered a full range of tests, and that was one of them. The pregnancy is probably why you feel sick to your stomach. “

  Crazy thoughts pushed through her mind. Maya wanted to be surrounded by enemies at that moment so that she could draw the sword and slash her way out of the room.

  “When did you last have sexual intercourse, Ms. Strand?”

  Maya shook her head.

  “Do you know who the father is?”

  She felt paralyzed, frozen within that moment of revelation, but her mouth moved and sounds came out. “Yes. But he’s gone away.”

  “Of course there are alternatives if you want to terminate the pregnancy. I usually ask patients to think it over for twenty-four hours before they make an appointment.”

  Dr. Kamani reached into the door rack and pulled out a pamphlet with the words It’s Your Choice on the cover. “This pamphlet explains the various options. Are there any other questions I can answer?”

  “No.” Maya checked the time on her mobile phone. “Right now, I’m late for an appointment.” She slid off the examination table, brushed past Dr. Kamani and hurried out of the clinic.

  Alice Chen and one of the nuns from the island were arriving in London, and Linden had told Maya to meet them. She found an unregistered taxi parked across the street and climbed into the back. .

  “Euston Station,” she told the driver. “I’ve got to be there in ten minutes.”

  As the car jerked forward and headed down Brick Lane, the moment in the examination room returned to her with all its power. She was pregnant with a Traveler’s child. At that moment, it felt like being in a plane crash—an instant of comprehension followed by confusion and pain. What should she do? Could she tell anyone? She was angry and sad, happy and defiant before the car reached Whitechapel Road.

  If this had happened to Mother Blessing, the Irish Harlequin would have demanded an abortion that afternoon. She would have removed this accident growing inside her—destroyed it like a tumor. The Harlequins’ power came from the simplicity of their lives, the single-minded ferocity of their obligation. The body was a weapon that had to be maintained.