Chasing the Wind

by Pamela Binnings Ewen

  He looked at her, thinking of the squirrels darting over the branches of the oak tree just outside Amalise's bedroom window in Marianus. Year after year they scurried around preparing their nests for winter, and the next year they did it all over again. Again and again, an endless circle in the same old search.

  He bent over the bowl of gumbo. Amalise was looking for something more than that, as she'd made clear. If she was right, she'd find out what that was in time. Perhaps her purpose in life would end up having something to do with those shadow children, the ones she'd fixed on in Phnom Penh back in '75.

  Chapter Four

  Phnom Penh, Cambodia 1975

  Samantha Barlow looked up as the office door opened and Oliver Murna walked in. Outside the U.S. Embassy she could hear panic rising in the street, shrill voices and the incomprehensible chatter that came with terror and the unknown—shouts, curses, screams. In the distance she could hear the muffled sound of artillery fire. Refugees came on foot, in oxcarts, rickshaws, automobiles, Jeeps, trucks, all pushing into the city and jamming things up, stirring the dust, stirring the fear. President Lon Nol had fled weeks ago. Wealthy families had followed. Politicians, foreigners, even some of the aid workers had left.

  "Roads are blocked." Oliver shut the door behind him and lowered his voice. "We're leaving, Sam. Evacuating."

  "When?"

  "Three hours. That's all the time we've got, and there are only two planes. Not much room." He looked at her and repeated, "We have only three hours."

  Impossible. "At the airport?"

  "No. Pochentong's already shut down, under fire." His face shone with perspiration as he gave her directions to an old airstrip outside the city. He stuck his hands in his pockets, walked to the window, and gazed at the mass of humanity streaming toward the center of Phnom Penh. When he turned back, she saw the fear in his eyes.

  "The Khmer Rouge are moving in. We're cutting it close, Sam. Now look," he crossed his arms and locked his eyes on hers, "if you're not there . . ." He jutted his chin out. "You have to be there on time. I'd go with you now, but there's too much to be done here, so you'll have to make it on your own. Don't pack much—just the essentials."

  She nodded.

  "I'll be waiting for you at the airfield. But you will be left if you're not there in three hours when the planes take off. It's not me—there are others." He paused. "Do you understand?"

  She nodded again and stood. Her heart was racing; she couldn't think. She'd read of the atrocities. The Khmer Rouge were mindlessly cruel. She waved her hand over the room. "The records a-a-and the families."

  "We're taking care of things here. We'll burn what we can't bring. Just make sure you get to the airstrip on time." He glanced at his watch. "It's two o'clock now."

  His words were like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle she couldn't put together. She'd thought they'd have weeks to prepare if evacuation became necessary. "And what about them?" She turned her head to the window behind her, to the thousands crowding the streets outside the embassy gate. "What about the families? The children? We can't leave them behind."

  He lowered his eyes. She watched in silence as he seemed to gather himself, and when he looked back up at her, his face was hard, unreadable, his lips pressed into a straight, tight line. "Orders, Sam. No one else comes along. We have limited space. U.S. citizens only." His eyes gleamed moist, and he turned away toward the door. "You have to keep this to yourself. And remember, no more than one bag—a small one."

  "What about CARE? USAID?"

  He stopped and nodded. "They're evacuating, too. Some are coming with us." He turned back and fixed his eyes on her again. "The planes lift off at five. No one else, Sam, I mean it. If you bring others, they won't get on. It'll only make things harder if you do. More difficult for everyone."

  She stood behind the desk, dazed, as he closed the door. Three hours to pack, to leave Cambodia forever, to leave behind the hundreds of people who depended on her for food, clothing, and medicine. Once she left, there'd be no contact with the outside world for these people she'd come to love. She had prayed this time would never arrive. Honestly, she'd never been able to contemplate the possibility and couldn't bear to think of it now.

  Samantha pulled her purse from a drawer in the desk. She closed the folder she'd been working on, lists of thousands desperate for help, the elderly, the sick, the hungry, the lost, and all the new ones flooding into the city every day just ahead of the approaching army. She imagined the Khmer Rouge, now just hours away, imagined their relentless march toward Phnom Penh, swarming like an army of red ants over everything and everyone in their path.

  She didn't know if she could do this. She would be abandoning everyone here who needed her.

  Her hand rested on the folder for a moment, and the words of the report came back to her. The pillaging of villages, rape, torture, murder. Slowly she lifted her hand. She was afraid to stay. She was a coward, she realized.

  Digging into her purse, Sam pulled out her wallet. Whatever money she had would go to someone that needed it. She opened the wallet and counted out riel notes. She had only the equivalent of about ten U.S. dollars of her own, not even enough to buy passage out of the city to get to the airfield.

  Her eyes lit on an envelope on her desk that had arrived two days ago. Inside was a stack of worn ten-dollar bills, U.S. currency. One hundred dollars cash. Who would send cash through the mail like that, addressed to no one particular, just U.S. Embassy, Phnom Penh, Cambodia? It was a fluke that it had arrived intact. To be used to help the children, the note had said, with no signature.

  She snatched up the envelope, glanced at the name and address on the back, and stuffed it into her purse. With a last glance at the folder on the desk, Sam turned and walked toward the door, struggling to hold on, not to let the horror reach into her soul because if it did, she would surely fall apart.

  Not yet. Not yet.

  Samantha exited the gates of the U.S. Embassy and ran into the swarm of humanity at the corner of Norodom and Sothearos Boulevards. She looked around before pushing into the crowd. Bodies shoved her one way and then the other. Hot sun. Dust. A fury of sharp elbows, knees, hands shoving, pushing. Children wailed, and women wept. Men with empty faces, knowing eyes, pushed forward. The Khmer Rouge were coming.

  A bicycle rammed past, and she moved aside just in time, clutching the purse as she pushed into the bicycle's draft before the crowd could close around her again. The body heat and stench were smothering. Her toe struck a cement curbstone and she tripped, caught her balance, and fought her way onto the sidewalk, moving against the surge of humanity. Suddenly she was pressed against a building by the panicked crowd moving in the other direction, and she flattened herself against it, catching her breath.

  After a moment the crush lessened. Samantha straightened, took a deep breath, and looked back through the crowd at the embassy gates across the street, to the building beyond. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she thought of all that she was leaving behind.

  And then a small hand slipped into hers, curling to fit her palm.

  Sam started and looked down. A child stood beside her, staring straight ahead into the crowd. No more than three feet tall, he stood there pressing against her leg. She gripped her purse—children could be vandals, too, in this city. But the child only clung to her hand not moving or looking at her or speaking. After a moment, she stooped, sitting on her heels, twisting so that she faced him.

  He looked at her, expressionless.

  "Hello," she said in Khmer. She was proficient after five years here.

  He was silent. She tried again. "Are you lost? Where's your family?"

  As if afraid she'd leave, he inched closer, still grasping her hand. He was thin, like a bag of fragile sticks, but as with all children alone in this city, his belly was round and distended.

  "Where is your moth
er? Your family?"

  But she saw no flicker of recognition. His eyes were flat, emotionless. In them she saw no reflection of happier days—not even questions or hope. She looked around for someone to claim him, but no one seemed to notice them standing there. Every face, every mind was focused on one thing only: survival.

  Sam shifted her purse, feeling hysteria rise. Oh God, oh God. Tell me what to do now. What do I do with this child? I can't leave him alone in this mob, fodder for the Khmer Rouge. And I can't take him with me. What do I do?

  Glancing at her watch, she saw twenty minutes had passed since she'd left the office. She closed her eyes. Two hours and forty minutes, that's all that was left to get home to retrieve things she couldn't leave without—some photographs, some jewelry that Mother had left when she passed on—precious things.

  Artillery fire in the distance startled her, and she opened her eyes, suddenly realizing the enormity of her problem. She might not even make it through this frenzied mob to reach the airstrip by five o'clock. Meanwhile, the Khmer Rouge army continued to push forward into the city.

  She stood, preparing to flee, preparing to work her hand free of the child's. She refused to let her mind dwell on this. She would do it, leave the child right here, sheltering against the wall. As if reading her mind, the boy tightened his grip. She fell back against the cement wall again and stared at the embassy building across the street, feeling the fragile, bird-like bones in her hand. She knew she couldn't leave him behind, and there were only two hours and forty minutes left before the last plane took off from Phnom Penh.

  The minute hand was ticking, and still the child clung to her.

  Chapter Five

  New Orleans—1977

  Bingham looked around the room and smiled to himself. The first meeting for Project Black Diamond. Two lawyers from Mangen & Morris were there representing the group of banks that would finance the venture, and another lawyer, Adam Grayson, had just arrived from New York to represent Robert Black and the other investors. And, of course, there was Robert. They were in the Mangen & Morris offices, in a conference room on the eighteenth floor. The large corner room was bright with sunshine streaming in through the row of windows.

  "Gentlemen," he said in a cheerful tone. He stuck his hand out on the table, arm stretched, loose fisted. "We're going to scatter some stardust over the city of New Orleans. From what I understand, this is a town that likes a little glitter. When we're finished, this tower, this hotel that we're building, will be the first thing everyone sees when they drive into town. You'll be able to see it from every point in the city." He gestured toward a long roll of paper on the table next to Robert. "Take a look at the architect's drawings when you have a minute, and you'll see what I mean."

  The bankers and lawyers looked back at him, expressionless—one of their specialties, he thought. Most of them were men with no imagination, no sense of adventure, and except for Robert, no appreciation for the thrill of embarking on a new venture. He'd be glad when Tom Hannigan got down here. Now there was a young man who saw things in the right light.

  His eyes stopped on the lead lawyer for Mangen & Morris and the bank group. Doug Bastion, a good Louisiana name. And next to him was his double—same suit, same tie, same smile. Bingham probed his memory for the name and came up with Preston Something-or-other.

  Ah, well. He wasn't good with names. There were so many in the old cranium already, he'd have to get rid of some. Details were Robert's job. Cold, precise Robert—Morgan Klemp's finest, Tom had said when he'd introduced them back in New York. Robert who, ensconced in the investment banking department, was still too far down the food chain at Morgan Klemp to have qualified for the boondoggle down in Cayman. Far enough down, in fact, that he'd jumped at this opportunity.

  Tom's rapid shift of loyalty from Morgan Klemp to his own investment in Black Diamond had amused Bingham at the time. Robert would run the hotel, Tom had argued, and later on, the casino. Bingham thought this was a good choice. Robert had two invaluable qualifications for the job: a killer instinct for business and zero empathy. And Robert had a long memory—unlike Bingham, he could take a name and a face and impress them on his mind forever.

  Robert handed him a draft of the term sheet, the principal business points, that Mangen & Morris had prepared. Five pages, stapled at the top left-hand corner. Bingham shuffled through the pages and set it down on the table before him. He had the contacts, the glitz to get things done, and—he smiled to himself—the connections. It was Robert's job to run the deal. Robert's ambition would carry them through the next six frantic weeks to the closing—he wanted that hotel and the power and money. The hotel would be built because Robert willed it. And later on, when gambling was voted in, Robert would have the casino and the tax-free skim off the top that would send him running down to Cayman every month to do his laundry. Ever since Atlantic City had voted in legalized gambling last year, people had been looking at New Orleans.

  But Bingham was the first one here.

  Doug Bastion had agreed to the accelerated deadline he'd demanded. They'd be working hard, long hours and moving fast. Too bad they couldn't just sign a note and be done with it. Bingham looked at the term sheet Doug held up and sighed, imagining the number of documents these lawyers could generate in six weeks.

  At Doug's instruction, everyone looked down at the first page of the so-called term sheet. Once the outline of the transaction was agreed upon and signed, work would begin in earnest. As they began to discuss the provisions, Bingham folded his arms and let the hum recede. The hotel was just the beginning. Gambling was the elephant in the room, although it wouldn't be mentioned in the documents. The impetus: bags of untraceable cash, if they handled it right.

  Robert and Tom had rounded up the other investors. Dominick Costa, Bingham's contractor for the project, had reported on his talks with the men in the back rooms of the capitol building down in Baton Rouge. Gambling legislation was a sure thing, he said. Once Baton Rouge got on board with the idea of a casino in the hotel after the closing, Robert planned to call on the suits on Wall Street, the high-yield guys who could juice a sale of bonds even after the squeeze went dry.

  Bingham smiled to himself. Every one of the investors thought they understood the economics of risk and reward. But this idea was his baby.

  "Can you live with that?" Robert's voice broke into his thoughts. He and Frank Earl were arguing now about push-back from the investors against limits demanded by the more conservative bank lenders.

  Robert nudged him, and he snapped to. "Can I live with what?" He picked up the term sheet and ran his eyes down the page.

  Doug broke in. Cool. Controlled. "The banks, the Senior Lenders, are ready to sign the commitments on the terms you see here, assuming . . ." Doug shot a look at Robert, "assuming that the investors are fully subordinated. The bank's bridge loan is paid back first, in one year."

  "One year?"

  They began to argue again.

  Bingham skimmed through the term sheet. They knew their business all right, but none of them really understood money. He'd set up his first Swiss franc account before these dollar-mongers had grown fuzz on their cheeks, before the franc had given the U.S. the old razoo and turned thumbs down on the international fixed exchange rate, even before the Swiss could slap a negative interest tax on their foreign accounts because the franc was the strongest currency in the world. Bingham calculated the appreciation in dollars of his current account in Swiss francs, up sixty-four percent since his first deposit, while inflation had devalued the U.S. dollar every year during the same period.

  Not that he minded taking a walk on the wild side once in a while.

  Robert turned a page of the term sheet, and Bingham backed up, following, looking at the acronyms and numbers on page after page. Bankers. He thought about the last time he was in Zurich in the cold sharp light, the brisk feel of the air so unlike
this closed room slowly filling up with smoke. He'd like to be there right now. Or on the beach at Grand Cayman, where this whole thing began.

  Pages turned again. Doug Bastion droned on, and Bingham suppressed a yawn. They'd go through the paces, tweak a provision here or there, argue over a word or two, but he knew this was a done deal. For the bankers, the fees were too good to pass up. For the investors—from the corner of his eye he studied Robert's expression, inscrutable now, but Bingham knew that Robert and the other investors hungered, truly hungered, for this hotel.

  Beside him, Robert sat, back straight, ready to ignite, to push, to press, to trade right to the brink, if he had to.

  The voices receded once more. Bingham's gaze wandered to the windows, and in his mind he saw the sun sliding over the clear green waters of the Caribbean, slowly deepening at the end of the day. Without thinking, he waved off a stream of smoke, inhaling to catch the scent of island air as he sat at the little thatched-roof bar on the beach, waiting for the Morgan Klemp bonus babies to show up.

  That trip had paid more than he'd hoped. He'd done his homework on those year-end incentive trips awarded to Wall Street's top arbitrageurs, brokers, and corporate finance guys. Year-end cash bonuses were the bread of life for bankers like Robert and Tom. But the annual testosterone-fueled bonus boondoggle in the warm Caribbean at the height of winter in New York almost trumped the money for these guys. The trips were exclusive—only the big dogs were invited. Some, like Tom, got the company jet. They all got the ritziest hotels, all expenses paid. And best of all, there were no questions asked when they returned to the office a week later, suntanned, smiling, eager and pumped up, ready to tear back into the market.

  The chosen few from Morgan Klemp had checked into the hotel a little after five, just off the plane. He'd spotted them when he'd walked up to the desk for his keys, and Marvin, the desk clerk had done the rest. One hundred bucks U.S. go a long way in the islands.