“You mean I’m addicted to it?”
“Kind of, yes. Your body is. Anyway, the drug is used to control symptoms, but it’s not the kind of thing you want to stay on for a long time. It’s pretty nasty stuff, by the sound of it.”
Mui said quietly, “But we still don’t even know what’s wrong with me.”
“No, which is why I think we need to get you to a specialist, soon as we can.”
“Can I see the specialist in Bangkok?” said Mui.
“Well now, that brings me to my other news. I had an old friend in Langley put out a trace on this woman, Lee.”
“Jessica Lee,” said Harry. “According to Chang she’s in Shanghai now.”
“Not any more she’s not,” said James. “My friend dug up an old alias she used in Europe, Jennifer Childs, and guess who just showed up in Bangkok.”
Harry said, “So, she’s tracked us here.”
“It seems they figured out your fake names and where you flew from. I don’t think they’ll find this place, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to go around making appointments with blood specialists in the capital. Bangkok’s high-end medical establishment is just too small, she’ll have them all covered somehow.”
Mui said, “What if we leave the country? Will they follow us?”
“Very likely,” said Harry. “They must know the names on our passports, so they’ll be monitoring the flight lists. Even if we got on a plane at the last minute, they would know where we went by the time we arrived.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“There’s more,” James continued. “I told you that Ms Lee went dark after working in Europe,” he said to Harry. “Well, under the name Jennifer Childs a whole new story comes up. During that time she was known to have stayed in southern Brazil, and south-eastern Russia, close to the Chinese-North Korean border.”
“I don’t get it,” Harry said.
“Well considering the theme of the day, I did a few simple internet searches, and some unlikely coincidences came up. In Brazil she stayed in Minas Gerais for five months. In Russia she was in Primorsky Krai Province for over a year.” He paused for dramatic effect. The other two were hanging on every word. “Both are close to sites of supposed recent UFO crashes.” He pulled some printed internet pages out from his pocket. “Dalgenorsk in Russia, 1986. A UFO is reported to have crashed into a remote mountainside. Varginha, Brazil, 1996. Reports of a UFO crash and alien bodies being recovered by Brazilian Military Intelligence.”
The other two were quiet for some time. Finally Harry said, “So, you think Lee is…”
“I’m just saying it’s quite a coincidence, her showing up in these two places while working for the Agency, and then in Hong Kong, mixed up in this business.”
The silence stretched out into the bright morning air. It seemed to stretch across the waters of the bay. It was Mui who broke the spell, “Okay, but still guys. Whoever she is, she’s in this country, and she’s after me. What am I going to do?”
Jim James snapped out of his trance, “Oh don’t worry,” he said happily, “We’ll think of something. We always do.” He slapped her on the thigh cheerfully, and disappeared into the house. Harry and Mui sat on the veranda, staring out to sea. The wind, which seemed to have been stilled by the silence, took up again, blowing around the corners of the house, bringing them back to life.
Harry said, “Don’t worry, he’s right. She won’t find us here.”
“She followed us to Bangkok,” Mui countered.
“That was the easy part. Now she’s just waiting for us to make a mistake.”
“And what if we do make a mistake? What then?”
“Well we’ll just have to make sure we’re careful,” said Harry. Mui was not happy with the response. She stared out over the bay. Fishing boats still crawled across it, as before. The blue-green sea, with its little white tips, seemed to stretch on into the distance, on and on forever. But it no longer seemed quite so far from Hong Kong.
*
That evening after dinner they discussed options. “Okay,” started James, “friends in the medical business. Come on Harry, who have you got?”
“No one directly, outside Hong Kong. I’ve got contacts in Tokyo or Seoul who could reliably hook us up.”
“Well, I guess she knows, or can guess, that you’ve come to me, so she’ll be monitoring most of my contacts from the Agency days. Still, I know some people in Shanghai who could help us, or set you up in Beijing. Failing that, you can go to America.”
“No,” Mui interrupted. “It’s too far.” The men looked at her. “If she’s looking for our passport names on flights out of Thailand, she might try to have people waiting for us at the other end. On a short flight we’ve got a good chance, she doesn’t have much time. Sat in a plane for twelve hours going to LA? Well, we’d be sitting ducks.”
“Flying ducks,” James corrected. “Still you’re quite right. And that puts the antipodes out of the picture, as well. You could try several short hops to throw them off the scent.”
Harry disagreed, “No. Every flight brings a same risk. She only has to get lucky once.”
“Well, we could try to smuggle you out the country, which is risky, or get you new passports but that’s gonna take some time way out here in the sticks. I don’t know anybody in Thailand who could do it.”
“I want to go soon,” Mui said. “If we have to leave, let’s get it over and done with.”
“So,” Harry summed up, “we’re looking for a single flight within Asia, and soon. It makes sense. Which city?”
James said, “Hong Kong is obviously too dangerous, and so is Shanghai. Huang has plenty of influence there. I figure they know that you’ve been working in Tokyo recently. Huang does a lot of business with yakuza, so they’ll be ready for you. But they’ll expect you to go back to Seoul, where Huang doesn’t have any people. It’s the most obvious place for you to go. They’re probably flying people out there now.”
Harry said, “So you think…”
“Exactly. Fly in to Shanghai. They won’t expect it.”
“Wait a minute,” said Mui. “Fly in to Shanghai because it’s dangerous?”
“Damn straight. Then get the hell out of there. Shanghai has a hundred or more specialists you might see, a dozen of which they can probably link to me somehow. As soon as they realise that’s where you’ve gone, they’ll be kept busy trying to cover them all. Take the train to Beijing, and I’ll have a meeting set up for you when you get there.”
“That sounds crazy,” Mui said.
“It is crazy,” added James with a big grin, “but it’ll work. And I’ve got another friend in Beijing who should be able to hook you up with a few useful things in no time at all. He owes me a few favours. You’re going to need new passports for a start, if you plan on ever leaving China.”
James set about finding them a flight. They decided it would be safer to fly from the smaller Phuket airport, which was also closer than Bangkok. Checking past flight lists, he chose a mid-week take off that never sold out, so that they could be sure of getting a ticket at the airport at the last possible minute. He made reservations for them, under a different name, on the Shanghai to Beijing sleeper train.
Within a couple of hours, while they were still sat out on the veranda, the preparations were finished and there was nothing left to do but wait out the last few days until leaving.
*
Mui found the waiting hard. She still played on the beach with Anna, but it no longer seemed so innocent. Now the bright sun only seemed to create more shadows, and she couldn’t help looking over her shoulder.
Anna must have sensed it, too. She stopped following Mui around so much, stopped copying the things she did. Harry carried on as before. Mui guessed he was used to this kind of situation, and Jim James kept himself busy with whatever it was he filled his time with. For Mui the next few days dragged like never before. This time it wasn’t a trip she could look forward to. This time she
was going towards, not away from, the things she didn’t want to face.
On the morning they were to leave, Mui was up before dawn again. She put on her swimsuit to go for one last run/swim along the beach. Her other clothes were packed, but she would hardly be needing a swimsuit in the middle of a Beijing winter.
The sun was just rising above the hills behind the house as she walked through the garden. She ran along the beach as fast as she could, but the harder she ran, the more her feet sank into the soft sand. The wind was stronger this morning, colder. It whipped spray across the beach from the white-topped waves. There wasn’t a single other soul in sight.
She dived into the chilly water, the freshness driving the last feelings of sleep from her body, and swam out as far as she dared. The waves were higher and rougher today, and as she treaded water, gasping to get her breath back, a couple of times they threatened to swamp her. She swam slowly back in to shore, helped along by the current, but was still completely out of breath when she reached the beach, and she staggered through the surf, and collapsed as soon as she was clear of the water.
Lying on her back, she closed her eyes. She didn’t want to look at the sky. Not really, not anymore. She wanted to be back in the city, buried under skyscrapers and apartment buildings, restaurant signs and telephone wires. The places she had always known. The openness didn’t feel safe anymore, not if they’d been followed as far as Bangkok. It was time to face the danger, but at least she would do it in a place where she could get her back to a wall.
She walked along the beach towards the house. The wind raised goose bumps on her arms and legs, so she rinsed the sand off her body and wrapped the sarong around her shoulders. As she had half expected, Harry was outside waiting for her. “Breakfast is nearly ready,” he said, nodding towards the kitchen from where the now familiar morning smell of bacon was drifting. “Are you?”
She stopped and stood in front of him, hugging the sarong tighter around her shoulders against the cool breeze. She smiled at him and said, “I am now.”
After breakfast and a quick shower, they said their goodbyes. They thanked Sunisa, sure that she understood the meaning, if not the words. Anna, looking sad, gave Mui a big hug. Outside, Jim James was waiting for them.
He wrapped Mui in his big arms and squeezed her tight. “Now you come back anytime, you hear? But for now, go sort out the things you have to do. Don’t worry, Harry’ll look after you, so you look after him.” And then they were back on the road, still heading south, away from Bangkok. It was silent in the car. Harry drove and Mui smoked out the window, her thoughts far away. The airport was little more than an hour away, but Harry had made sure they arrived in plenty of time.
He drove slowly past the front of the small airport, scanning the people for anyone suspicious, ready at any moment to floor the accelerator and turn the car around. Mui hunched low in her seat, watching nervously out of her window. In a week, she had grown unused to the tension that she had lived with in Hong Kong.
Deciding it was all clear, Harry parked up outside a tiny restaurant several streets away. They had an early lunch, and drank green tea and smoked until it was nearly time for their flight. They both knew the plan, and neither felt the need to talk. When it was time they dropped the car off at the rental company, and bought tickets at the counter inside the airport with fifteen minutes to spare. Security rushed them through the airport to their gate, no time for duty free, and then they were on the plane, barely taking their seats before it started taxiing for take-off.
Mui wanted to feel elated, wanted to celebrate, to shout ‘We did it. We escaped,’ but she knew that the most dangerous part was coming up. Now they had to just sit, and wait, and hope that the plane wasn’t delivering them straight into the arms of their enemies. The real danger would be on arrival. But buckled into their seats, there wasn’t a thing they could do about it, nothing but wait.
The flight was tense. Neither of them spoke much. Five hours of sitting and waiting for Shanghai to arrive. Mui tried looking out the window and watching the movie, but she couldn’t keep her mind on anything. She felt restless, ready to run, or fight, or do anything but sit there helplessly.
At least it felt good to be alone with Harry again. She held onto his hand and stared out through the tiny porthole. The world outside started to grow darker, and then they covered the final stretch of water and Shanghai came into view, first the suburbs, and then the city centre, seemingly half lit by neon in the early evening. Mui was ready for men with guns to be waiting outside the airport doors, or Jessica Lee herself to be waiting for them in a car. In truth, she didn’t know what to expect, and that was half of what made it so difficult.
From the moment they touched down, everything seemed to happen together: the rush through the airport, the paranoid stalk to the taxi stand, ducking down in the back seat as they got stuck in the evening traffic. Jim James should be changing the names on their train tickets right now. Then they were at the train station, with panicked looks over their shoulder, expecting to be accosted at any moment.
The station was like another airport, and they struggled to find their way, until finally they were through security, checked in, and stood waiting nervously in the plush departure lounge, with just fifteen minutes to spare. And, at long last, they were across the platform and on the train, seeking out their cabin. It was a luxury two berth, with bunk beds on one side and a small chair and table by the window, and a private bathroom in the corner.
Mui was impressed. “Wow. I’ve seen trains like this in old movies. I didn’t know they still existed.” She threw her bag on the floor, collapsed on the lower bunk, and sighed out loud, “Thank Christ. I didn’t think I could take any more of that.” She looked at Harry. “We can relax now, right Harry?”
They felt a jerk as the train started to pull out of the station. Harry pulled the curtain aside to watch the platform slowly start to recede. “I think so, yes. At least until we reach Beijing.”
“What time do we arrive?”
“Half past seven in the morning. It’s non-stop from here to the capital.” Harry pulled the curtain aside again. The suburbs flew by in the darkness. “Come on, let’s get something to eat.”
“Okay, I’m just going to change.” Mui pulled the dress that Harry had bought for her from her bag and stepped into the bathroom. Her stomach was cramping, and she didn’t feel like eating, but she supposed she should try and get something inside her. If they were seeing a doctor tomorrow, it could be a long day.
Mui stripped off her clothes and looked at herself in the mirror. She would have to be strong. She couldn’t just let Harry protect her. She felt as though she had left her childhood behind on the beach with Anna. Now was the time to stand up for herself and face the world.
She pulled the dress over her head. It might be her last chance to wear it for a while, in the well-heated train. Shanghai had been freezing, though she’d hardly noticed it, and Beijing would be colder still. She would have to buy a coat as soon as they arrived.
Coming out of the bathroom, she poured herself a glass of water and took a pill, then followed Harry down the corridor to the restaurant car. She hadn’t seen anything like it before, except in movies. It was like a proper restaurant, but with the tables lined up on each side of the narrow carriage. The food was delicious, but she hardly touched it. Nausea was creeping through her stomach.
After the meal they sat smoking, and Harry asked her if she wanted a drink. “I’ll have what you’re having,” she said with a smile.
Harry ordered two Chinese beers. She made a face at him, but she really hadn’t wanted anything stronger. It was late – peeking outside she could make out nothing but inky blackness – and she was yawning. Thirty minutes later they were back in their cabin. While Harry was in the bathroom she stepped out of her dress and slipped under the covers of the lower bunk. Harry came out of the bathroom and sat in the chair by the window. He seemed distant and thoughtful. She watched him for a while, the
n half sat up. She said to him, “Come to bed.”
Harry looked up at her, smiling softly, and walked over to her. She took hold of his arm, but he gently lay her head down on the pillow, pulled the sheet up across her shoulders, and lay down on top of the sheets behind her, like he had in the motel. He reached above his head for the light switch, and put his arm around her. She lay in the darkness for a couple of minutes, then turned round to face him, hugging him tightly and nuzzling her face into his neck. “Goodnight, Harry,” she whispered, and within minutes she was asleep.
*
Harry woke early in the morning. The bed was empty. It took him a few seconds to realise that what had woken him was Mui retching violently in the bathroom. He stood up wearily. It was still dark behind the curtains. He poured a glass of water and handed it to Mui as she came out of the bathroom, her face pale. She smiled weakly up at him, drained the glass, then crawled back into the bed. Harry said, “We have about an hour until Beijing, if you want to get some breakfast.”
“I don’t think I could, but you go ahead.” Harry looked at her with concern. “Don’t worry,” she said, “I’ll be fine in just a bit.”
He went into the bathroom to wash and change his clothes. When he came out she had the TV on. She took her whole bag of clothes into the bathroom with her. He sat down and watched CNN on the TV. Scientists discover exoplanet that could support life. He turned it off. Mui came out wearing several layers of clothing, with Sandra’s hoody over the top. He handed her his leather coat. “That’s okay,” she said. “I think I look silly enough as it is.”
Stepping off the train into Beijing Central Station, the first thing that hit them was the wind. Mui swore loudly, “Fuck! It’s like fucking Siberia out here.” She pulled her hood up and tried to pull her arms up inside the sweater, but the icy gusts cut through her clothes anyway. It was morning rush hour, and the station heaved with commuters.
They pushed their way through the crowds, trying not to get separated, until they walked out to the great plaza outside. Cold bright sunlight was just pushing its way over the buildings. The wind hit them again, blowing Mui’s hood down and spraying her hair across her face. She swore again. They turned a few streets until they found a bakery with tables inside, and ordered coffee and pastries for breakfast. Mui hugged the hot cup with her red fingers. “Christ! Even London was never this cold.”
The Sky Might Fall (Harry Vee, PI) Page 10