Restless Soul

by Alex Archer

  “Want one?” She gave him a cola and pulled out two Red Bulls for herself.

  It was hot, even after the sun set, and despite their speed clouds of gnats stayed with the Jeep, sticking to her skin. She liked the smell of the country, though mostly what she picked up was damp earth. It was preferable to the smog of Chiang Mai and the ugly odors of the antiques shop and the alley.

  She let herself breathe deep.

  “You are not going to let me go, are you? You are going to kill me and leave my flesh to rot,” Nang said.

  Annja stayed silent. Let him remain in fear of her to keep him cooperative. She didn’t like herself very much at this moment. Several moments later, she said, “We’ll see, Nang. We’ll see.”

  29

  To avoid a checkpoint along the road, Annja cut across a field, nearly miring the Jeep in mud. Her passport might have sufficed to get her across the border without too many questions, but she couldn’t risk Nang causing problems.

  She took him into the restroom with her when they stopped at a gas station a few miles over the Vietnam border. It was a small town, and the station had been ready to close. The owner accepted her Thailand baht, but charged her extra because he would lose some money in converting it to dong. She’d needed Nang to translate for her, and she hoped he hadn’t said anything foolish like, “Help, I’ve been kidnapped by a mad woman.”

  She loaded up on candy bars and chips, which was all the fare for sale, and ushered Nang back into the Jeep, watching him while she filled the tank. If her calculations were correct, she wouldn’t have to stop for gas again until they were headed back out of the country. Correction, she thought, until she was headed back. She’d leave Nang in Hue and hope against hope that he would find a different calling than smuggling. Maybe he would have to if she could catch Lanh Vuong and return him to prison.

  “Are you married, Nang?”

  “No.”

  “Is there someone you—”

  “No.”

  She wondered how Luartaro was doing and if he’d been able to return to the treasure cave with the authorities. She wished she could have called him from the antiques store to tell him what was going on and where she was going. Maybe if there was a consulate in Hue she would stop and try to reach him.

  When Nang fell asleep, she coasted to the side of the road and extricated the map from his hands. She found a small flashlight in the glove box and used it to check her route. Annja was proficient at reading maps, but the inset map for Hue was tiny and listed only major roads. She would wake Nang when they reached the city.

  Hue sat in central Vietnam, perched on the bank of the Huong River and a dozen miles inland from the port of Bien Dong. She guessed it was a little more than four hundred miles south of Hanoi, which she knew would have a consulate or embassy.

  “Nang, tell me more about this city.” Annja nudged him awake. He looked angry at being disturbed. “What is that?” She pointed to an ornate building at the edge of the city, set back from a main road she turned on.

  “Hue has many monuments, and that is one of them. I do not know the name. But that building, that one—” He waved his arm at a much larger structure, the ornate top of which rose higher than all the buildings around it. Through gaps in the other buildings, she saw that the massive one was walled. “That one is called the Citadel. Once there was an entire city inside it, a forbidden place where only emperors and their concubines and guards were permitted. The punishment for trespassing was death. It is a tourist attraction now.” He paused. “You are going to kill me, are you not?”

  “And what is that building?”

  “The Thien Mu Pagoda, the largest one in Hue. It is the symbol of the city. Some of the royal tombs are behind it. The tombs were built while the rulers still lived. Some look like miniature palaces.”

  Several blocks later he pointed out Quoc Hoc High School, Hai Ba Trung High School, a series of old French-style buildings, mandarin houses and the Hue Museum of Royal Fine Arts.

  Annja spotted several businesses that were still open, despite the late hour. Some had signs in English and French for the tourists. One advertised all-night foot massages, another banh khoai and com hen, which Nang explained were savory pancakes and mussels served on rice.

  Annja was hungry again and ate the last candy bar.

  “How far are we from the antiques store, Nang?”

  He was shaking again; the neon lights of the bars they drove by showed that he was sweating profusely.

  “Tell me the best way to get there.”

  In halting words, he did.

  It was in an old part of the city; the buildings looked beat up, and half the ones on the block were closed and boarded up. There was a tavern on the corner, the only business open along the street, with a winking light that advertised Bia Hoi beer. Laughter spilled out of its propped open door, but it looked as if the patrons were sparse—so were the cars on the street. She circled the block, seeing the antiques store in the middle, and found an alley to pull into.

  “You will kill me now?”

  “Does your uncle Lanh speak English?”

  “And French. He learned in prison.”

  “Does he live nearby?”

  Nang looked up. There was a low light in one of the windows. “He owns the building, the block. He lives up there, above his store.”

  “Get out.” She reached over and unsnapped his seat belt. “Get out.”

  He slid out, stumbling in his nervousness.

  “Go home, Nang. Go somewhere.”

  He stared at her, barely visible in the light that spilled into the alley from a lamppost.

  “I’m not going to kill you. I’m not going to hurt you. Just—” She didn’t have to say anything else. He took off running, turning the corner past the alley, his feet slapping against the sidewalk. “I hope I don’t regret that,” she said to herself.

  Nang could well stop somewhere, the tavern even, and call Lanh to warn him…or call some of his uncle’s muscle. He probably would call, but hopefully after she’d concluded her business and was headed back out of the city. Better she got rid of Nang now than worry about him while she confronted the smuggling mastermind.

  She could make out next to nothing in the alley; the light coming from the far end was faint like the first hint of dawn. There were backs of buildings and staircases leading to second floors, and plenty of insects that she couldn’t see but could hear and feel all around her.

  Not a single light burned in any windows in the back. There were stairs directly behind the antiques shop, sturdy and narrow and incongruous to the rickety appearance of the front of the building. As she climbed, the clouds of gnats and mosquitoes following her, she touched the sword with her thoughts. Hopefully she wouldn’t need it against a man in his eighties or nineties, but she would be prepared nonetheless. The steps were not steep; in fact, they were lower than usual, perhaps made to accommodate an old man’s failing legs.

  At the top, the door looked sturdy and resisted her attempts to force it open. Finally, she summoned the sword, and carefully used the blade to worry at the hinges until she could get it open. Unless he was deaf, he had to have heard her. She noticed as she passed through the door frame that she’d tripped a silent alarm.

  “Wonderful,” she muttered. It would either be keyed to a police station or private security firm, or perhaps—like the antiques store in Chiang Mai—to thugs who would come roaring up with guns ready.

  The kitchen was dark, but she could pick through the shadows enough to make her way toward the doorway. The kitchen smelled of dirty dishes and food that had been left out. She wrinkled her nose and picked up the scent of something far worse.

  Insects were thick inside the apartment, too.

  “No.” She entered a hall and felt around for a light switch, turning it on and holding the sword out in front of her.

  He was lying on the couch as if he’d fallen asleep, a newspaper flat against his chest and flies buzzing around his face. H
e’d been dead for at least a few days. Annja dismissed the sword and cupped her hand over her nose, trying to cut the smell. She saw a chair near the couch and dropped into it.

  Lanh Vuong had been a small man who looked ancient. The wrinkles were deep, and the skin thin like parchment, the hands twisted with arthritis to the point they looked like the claws of a bird—claws that were thick with gold rings. Three thick gold chains hung around his bloated neck. She looked away from the corpse, feeling the candy bars rise.

  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 associates. 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 embassy 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 embassy, 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 button 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 cassette 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 bypass 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 massive and braced to support the weight of the objects spaced 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, and a mythological 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.