Return to Tomorrow (4 page)

“I don't think you understand,” Bart attempted once more to talk the two men into trying to move the mired Land Rover.

“You don't understand, buddy,” the black man said menacingly. “Get whatever you need and let's get going.” He was wearing an olive-green T-shirt that strained across heavily muscled shoulders and fatigues of the same color. The hilt of a knife protruded above the top of his boot. He spread his legs and folded his arms across his chest. “Move,” he barked, and Bart did just that.

“Is there anything you need for the night that I can help you with, ma'am?” the younger man asked politely. Rachel shook her head.

“I have everything I need right here.” She indicated a roomy woven tote, a
yaam,
that did double duty as purse and overnight bag. “It is important that I get word to Father Dolph Hauer at Border Camp Six. He's expecting me.”

The black man removed his mirrored sunglasses for the first time. His eyes were dark brown, hard as agates, hard as the line of his jaw. “Father Dolph's been at Camp Six for two years. He's learned by now not to expect anyone or anything until they show up on his doorstep. This way.” He gestured toward the jeep with his thumb.

Rachel took a step forward, then another. Her legs were shaking but not so badly as she'd feared they might. She stopped directly in front of the tall black man. She held out her hand. “My name is Rachel Phillips.” If he was a bandit, as she still half suspected he might be, and he intended her harm further down the road, then she was determined he know her name. She refused to become a nameless victim, not ever again.

For a long moment he did nothing. Then he took her hand in his. He gave it a quick, powerful shake. “Billy Todd. I'm a teak buyer. I'm meeting…a business associate…at the
wat
I told you about.”

A teak buyer. Teak smuggler, more likely.
Rachel didn't voice the thought aloud but she relaxed a little inside. Something in Billy Todd's handshake had reassured her, however ridiculous it seemed. He might be operating outside the law, he most likely was, but she no longer suspected him of being a highway robber and murderer.

The younger man also held out his hand. It trembled noticeably. “Lonnie Smalley,” he said. “I'm from Ohio.”

“I was born and raised in Pennsylvania, Mr. Smalley,” Rachel said, attempting a smile.

“That practically makes us neighbors, this far from home. Call me Lonnie.” He shivered, although the air was still hot and close. His skin was dry and rough, his color an unhealthy gray beneath the red of sunburn.

“Let's get goin'.” It was an order, not a request, from Billy Todd. Lonnie Smalley jumped to do his bidding. Rachel also moved forward without a protest. Harrison Bartley made one more attempt to assert his nonexistent
authority and found his arm caught in a vise-like grip. “Get in the jeep or start walkin'.”

This time he did as he was told.

Rachel climbed into the jeep reluctantly, for when Billy Todd turned away from her, she saw the bulge of a gun tucked into his waistband beneath the thin cotton of his shirt. Perhaps she was foolish to trust him at all. As if sensing her thoughts, he turned and looked her straight in the eye. He didn't flinch or look away, as Rachel studied his hard-cut features for a long moment. Satisfied, she dropped her gaze.

She had no choice but to accompany him. Perhaps it was because she was back in the hills, where the
phi
spirits ruled everything, that she could do nothing to save herself. Or, perhaps, her instincts were right and she was going into the unknown to meet her future.

T
HE JUNGLE WAS QUIET
. The night air at this altitude, just over three thousand feet, cooled quickly after sundown in the winter. The birds were silent. Only a faint breeze rustled the palms growing at the base of the ruined temple wall.

Brett Jackson propped one foot on the parapet and stared out at the five stone Buddha statues sitting in a row in the moonlight. Their hands were folded across their round bellies, their lips curved in smiles of great serenity.

“This place looks like it belongs in another world at night,” Billy said, coming up behind him, soft-footed in the darkness.

“It does.” Brett flipped open his lighter and touched the flame to his pipe. He'd given up smoking cigarettes but he still allowed himself one pipe a day.

“Yeah, I guess you're right. This might as well be another world compared to Columbus, Georgia.”

“Or a ranch outside Butte.” Brett had been born and raised in the Big Sky country of Montana, a land of wide open spaces, high skies and bone-chilling cold that now seemed alien to him. He hadn't been home in five years, not since his father died. The pipe and silver lighter had belonged to the old man. It was one of his last ties with the past.

“A long ways and a lot of years.” They were quiet for a while, listening to the jungle settle into silence.

“How's the Acharya handling our visitors?” The old holy man and his half dozen young followers had recently moved into the
wat
and claimed it as their own. Brett had used the ruined temple as his base camp for several years, but now its days of usefulness were numbered. Not only because of the aged monk and his followers, but because Harrison Bartley had a map of its location, however crudely drawn, and that meant its existence was becoming known in Bangkok and Chiang Mai.

“About as well as can be expected.” Billy grinned. “Our Ivy League diplomat complained long and loud about his supper. Seems cold rice and thin soup don't cut it with the embassy set. Mrs. Phillips, she handled it real good. She thanked the old man for giving shelter to a lowly
farang
woman and passed out some dried fruit to the monks for tomorrow's meal. They appreciated it, even if the Acharya didn't.”

“Good for her.” Brett had heard Rachel's voice echoing through the empty high-ceilinged rooms of the temple, but he hadn't shown himself. “Are they all settled for the night?”

“Everyone's tucked in, safe and sound. I'm going to make one last patrol and turn in myself.”

“I'll be right behind you.” His sleeping quarters were in the main section of the temple, the only area where the roof hadn't fallen in. The monks weren't pleased to house him there but the powerful radio transmitter and other electronic devices he needed to keep in touch with Bangkok couldn't be left to the mercy of the sudden
drenching thunderstorms that came up unexpectedly, even during the dry season.

Billy melted into the darkness. A few minutes later Brett saw him, a darker shadow against the mammoth stone shapes of the Buddha statues, and then he was gone. Brett lingered on the parapet. Something held him there, perhaps the spirits of the temple or the memory of Rachel's voice. Or maybe it was only his own restlessness that kept him awake.

He couldn't stop thinking about the deal with Khen Sa.

No one, so far as he knew, had ever persuaded the wily warlord to allow them to take consignment of his entire supply of refined opium. Brett intended to do just that. The shipment would be worth almost one hundred million dollars when it reached the streets in the States and Europe. The man Brett Jackson was working for wanted that opium badly. Badly enough to offer Brett what he wanted most in the world—anonymity and enough money to buy the peace and quiet he longed for—in exchange for making certain the narcotics never made it to their destination.

If he lived to deliver the goods.

At the moment it was a toss-up whether he'd succeed in his delicate negotiations or not. He certainly didn't need the presence of D. Harrison Bartley on the scene.

Or the very feminine distraction of Rachel Phillips.

 

R
ACHEL COULDN'T SLEEP
. She lay staring into the darkness, watching the moving patterns of moonlight through the intricate thatch roof over her head. It needed mending before the rainy season, she decided, or whoever slept
in this cell next would certainly wake up wet. She sat up and pulled her knees to her chin, wrapping her arms around her legs to ward off the slight chill of the damp night air. Something had awakened her. She wasn't sure what, but sleep seemed, suddenly, very far away.

Rachel got up, smoothed the wrinkles from her skirt and stepped into her shoes, after shaking them out to make sure no unwanted visitor had crept inside. She would go out onto the crumbling parapet of the ancient temple and look at the Buddha figures in the moonlight. Perhaps their serenity and peace would communicate itself to her restless soul and she would be able to come back to her small room and sleep.

The temple had at one time, in ages past, been very large, covering several acres. Now, only the main section stood with roof intact. She paused at the foot of a wide staircase guarded by two winged lions. Her night vision wasn't good but tonight the moon rode high and bright, lighting her way. A
chedi
, or temple spire, rose above the treetops. The temple must once have been very grand. The outer skin of the walls had been stripped away by time and weather, leaving thick slabs of some unknown brick-red stone exposed to further erosion. The inhabited buildings were thatched in such a manner that they resembled nothing so much as large, untidy bird nests. The rest of the temple complex was now no more than huge slabs of rock hurled to the ground, as though scattered in some giant's fit of temper.

Rachel climbed the steps to the wide stone parapet. Level with the treetops, she walked along, aided by fitful moonlight as she picked her way among the broken stones. Above her, the sky was inky black, the
stars achingly bright points of light. The night and the temple, with the jungle beyond the walls, seemed a place of enchantment from another time.

Then she smelled the pipe smoke and knew she was no longer alone with the spirits. A shadow moved, detaching itself from the larger shadow thrown by a griffin statue guarding a corner of the wall. Rachel took a step backward, prepared to run. The figure coming toward her was not a boy monk in flowing saffron robes. He was a man; tall, broad-shouldered, Caucasian.

He was also a complete stranger. She'd never seen him before in her life.

“I wouldn't run if I were you,” he said, as she made up her mind to do just that. “You might fall and break a leg. I don't think the Acharya will feel enough
namjai
—enough milk of human kindness—to house a
farang
female for six weeks while you heal.”

“No, I suppose you're right.” In the Buddhist way of things monks topped the social order with ordinary men next, then Buddhist nuns. Ordinary women were at the bottom of the heap. Rachel held her ground despite the heavy, frightened beating of her heart. The man moved two steps closer. He knocked the bowl of his pipe against the stone and ground the smoldering tobacco beneath the toe of his boot. “Who are you?” she demanded.

“I might ask you the same question.”

Rachel didn't answer. She watched him, instead. He was tall, as she'd already noticed, with a full head of dark blond hair that caught and trapped the moonlight in its depths. There was a shading of silver at the temples. His eyes were dark and glittered in the moonlight. He wasn't a young man. There were lines from nose to chin
that could only have been etched into his skin with the passage of time. His jaw was hard as granite, shadowed, more by a day's growth of beard than by the night. She guessed his age to be very close to her own. He looked strong and dangerous.

“Are you a friend of the men who brought us here?”

“Yes, I am.” He took another step forward and blotted out the moonlight. He was very close. Rachel could smell the smoke from his pipe that still clung to his skin and the faint, musky odor of his sweat. He was as tall and broad through the shoulders as her brothers, but his presence gave her no brotherly sense of security. Rachel took a hasty step back, tripped on an upthrust stone and almost fell. The man reached out, grabbed her arm, steadied her, then let her go in the blink of an eye when she flinched from his touch.

“Thank you,” she said automatically.

“You're welcome, Mrs. Phillips,” he responded with equal courtesy and, Rachel thought, just a hint of amusement.

“How do you know my name? Who are you?” she asked a second time.

“I thought by now you might have guessed who I am.” She could not be certain in the play of light and shadow that partially obscured his face, but she thought he was smiling more broadly now.

“Why should I recognize you?”

“I assumed Micah would have described me to you. My name is Jackson.”

“You're Tiger Jackson?” Micah hadn't told her for a long time how badly things had gone wrong in Laos two years earlier. Her attack of malaria had caused them
to miss their rendezvous with this man who could have led them safely out of the country. Instead, they'd been picked up by a Vietnamese army patrol and held for ransom by a corrupt army colonel.

“I'm afraid so.” He lifted one leg to rest his booted foot on the parapet. He leaned one arm on his knee, his pipe held easily in his large, strong hands. Rachel knew instinctively he could hold a gun just as easily—and use it, too. The knowledge left her feeling cold and frightened again.

“Did Micah ask you to keep an eye on me? Is that what you're doing here in the middle of the jungle?”

“Would you believe me if I told you that was my only reason for being here?” He tilted his head and watched her, his face a mask of light and shadow that hid all expression. His tone warned her she'd get no other explanation.

“No. I'd say you're here on some business of your own. My coming here is a coincidence. But you don't have to feel it's necessary to watch over me. I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself.” Rachel regretted the petulant tone of her words the moment they left her mouth. It wasn't this man's fault that her brothers still treated her as if she were some fragile and helpless woman-child.

“This part of Thailand is no place for a woman traveling alone.” Tiger Jackson's voice was as hard as the stone beneath her feet.

“I'm not alone,” she pointed out.

“Damn near as good as alone.”

Irrationally, Rachel felt herself compelled to defend
Harrison Bartley. “How was Bart to know the map was inaccurate?”

“He should have had enough sense to stay on the main road. Even someone with as low a security clearance level as Bartley's must know that Khen Sa is active in the region.”

“Khen Sa. The warlord?”
And Opium King, if what Simon told her was correct.
Somehow she didn't want to bring up the subject of opium smuggling with Tiger Jackson. That was probably his real reason for being here, far from any civilization, far from any authority. It was hardly the prudent thing to do; still, somehow it didn't seem out of place at all to be carrying on a conversation about warlords, with a mercenary, in a setting such as this one. “Simon briefed me on Khen Sa before I left the States,” she said carefully.

“Simon is your brother who works for the Census Bureau?”

“Yes.” Rachel looked at him sharply in the moonlight. He was looking out at the jungle, his rough-angled profile hidden in shadow, his voice neutral, giving nothing of his thoughts, of himself, away.

“He's very well-informed. The Census Bureau usually doesn't have a lot of interest in Southeast Asian politics.”

“Khen Sa is very well-known in Washington. He controls nearly all of the opium trade in the Golden Triangle. Am I correct?”

Tiger Jackson swiveled his head to face her directly. His voice was cold. “So I've been told.”

“I think that's sufficient cause to make his movements
of interest even to an employee of the Census Bureau, if his only sister is traveling in the region.”

“It would be reason enough for my sister to stay at home.”

“What are you doing here, Mr. Jackson?” she asked, not bothering to point out that she wasn't his sister. She didn't seem able to bring herself to call him Tiger, although standing in the moonlight, it was easy enough to imagine him as some large, predatory jungle cat.

“I'm here on business, as you already guessed.” He answered easily, but his expression was still guarded. It probably always would be.

“What kind of business?” Rachel wondered if she were losing her mind or if the moonlight were playing tricks on her reason. She shouldn't be playing cat-and-mouse word games with him. “Are you also a buyer of teak?”

“Yes, I am.” He still stood with one leg raised on the stone ledge. He looked relaxed; his hands and arms below the rolled-back cuffs of his khaki shirt were still. The image of calm was deceptive. Below the surface Rachel sensed a coiled tenseness, danger and aggression, power, held in tight restraint. “Billy Todd is my partner. He's been in Bangkok the last few days. He saw you in a restaurant.”

“The Lemongrass?”

He hesitated, then nodded. “A friend pointed you out to Billy.”

“Then it is only a coincidence that Billy Todd followed us down that road?”

“A very unfortunate one.” He straightened to his full height and Rachel stepped back warily, unable to control
the reaction as she assimilated the faint tinge of menace lacing his words.

“I don't understand,” she managed, although her voice was husky with renewed apprehension.

“It's unfortunate that you were on the
wat
road to begin with. If
farangs
the likes of Harrison Bartley have heard about this place, it won't be long before it's overrun with tourists. I don't want to see that happen.”