Dragon's Triangle (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 2) (17 page)

Cole was alive! She kept repeating it over and over to herself but she still wasn’t sure she believed it. He was alive and she didn’t know whether she wanted to kiss him or beat him to a bloody pulp.

When he’d started to talk to her, to explain or apologize, she couldn’t deal with it. There was a man dying on this boat because of her. She’d met up with Peewee and started this chain of events, and now it was taking all her reserves of strength to continue to function. Her one priority was to get the boat driver to the hospital. She had to let her training take over. She could not afford to get emotional right now.

She came in to the dock a little too hot and threw it into reverse. Fortunately, the big diesel slowed her down and the boat nudged up against the black tires that lined the dock. Cole jumped ashore and tied off the lines while Riley helped the paramedics aboard with their gurney. These guys were good. It was only a matter of seconds before they had him on the board, breathing bag on his mouth and one attendant continuing the heart pumps as they carried him toward the ambulance. One of the guys spoke excellent English, and Cole followed them to the ambulance, telling them what little he knew about the fellow’s identity.

“I hope he makes it,” Peewee said.

She turned to face him. “You’ve got some explaining to do, too,” she said.

“First I want my hat back.”

Riley rolled her eyes. When she went to grab her backpack off the engine compartment, she saw the other poisonous dart stuck into the wood.

She tossed the backpack to Peewee and said, “Front zipper pocket.” Then she grabbed an oily rag and pulled the dart out of the wood. “I’ll be right back.” She ran out to the ambulance and gave the dart to the attendant who was closing up the back door.

“This has got some of the poison on it,” she said.

The man nodded, then stepped around to the front and climbed in. Then with a belch of exhaust and a screeching siren, they were gone.

She turned back and walked through the passage along the side of the bridge that led back out to the river. Cole was leaning against one of the supports that held the roof up. She paused for a minute to just look at him. There was nothing more she could do for that boat driver. Perhaps she could allow herself to let her guard down, to allow herself to feel.

He looked so different with the beard—and the last four years showed on his face. He had aged. He was still fit, though. If anything, he probably weighed less than he had back in the Caribbean. He was almost too thin.

She thought about the times she had imagined their first meeting. Not one of those scenarios included the stink of a Bangkok canal, the sound of horns honking and sirens, and a guy dying from being hit with a dart from a blowpipe.

But now, there he stood. She opened her mouth, wanting to say something to him, but no words came to her. She had trusted him so completely once, but so much had changed since then. How could he have lied to her for four years?

That was when she noticed who was missing.

“Irv’s gone,” she said.

Cole turned around and a small smile lifted one corner of his mouth. In spite of her worries, her body reacted as though he had touched her.

“Good riddance,” he said. “I don’t trust that guy.”

“Oh, no.” Riley ran over and jumped aboard the boat, but her backpack was right there on top of the engine box. The front pocket hung open and Irv’s hat was gone. She felt a flush of panic as she reached into the other pocket and rummaged around. There. The Tibetan prayer gau was still there.

It wouldn’t have been a crime if he had taken it. It was his, after all. She wasn’t at all sure she believed the story about her grandfather wanting his son to have it. But she wanted it to be true.

So why hadn’t he taken it? And why had he really given it to her in the first place?

Riley stepped off the boat and approached Cole. She should show him the trinket, as Irv had called it, and see what he thought about it. His head swung from right to left. He was watching the traffic passing on the bridge above them.

“There’s something I want to show you,” she said.

“Okay, but I feel like a sitting duck here.”

She followed his eyes and saw all the pedestrians flowing across the bridge. “You’re right. Irv said this Benny has an uncanny ability to track people. If Irv took off, we’d better get out of here, too.”

“Then let’s go.” The engine was still running on the canal boat, and when Cole stepped aboard, she expected him to shut it down. Instead he turned and looked at her expectantly.

“You coming?”

“That’s not our boat.”

“The hell it isn’t. I paid the man to charter his boat for twenty-four hours. It’s my boat until, oh, about four o’clock tomorrow. Let’s get the hell out of here. Throw off those lines.”

Riley shrugged. She couldn’t argue with that logic.

Saphan Taksin SkyTrain Station
Bangkok, Thailand

November 17, 2012

Elijah arrived at the SkyTrain station early and staked out his corner of the structure far from the turnstiles, where a few straggling passengers passed in and out of the arrivals and departure area. It was too late for the working people, and perhaps too early for the denizens of the night. He leaned on the concrete barrier and looked down on the pedestrians walking beneath the elevated platform. Assorted carts selling everything from barbecued skewers of meat and cold drinks to jewelry and T-shirts lined the sidewalk beneath him. The people hurried past, ignoring the bored-looking vendors, most of whom sat on upended plastic buckets and avoided making eye contact with their prospects.

After an exquisite meal at the Oriental, along with several whiskies, he felt sleepy and irked at getting called out for a meeting at this hour. Benny had better have good news for him.

“Mr. Hawkes?”

Elijah turned around and the moment he saw the hesitance in the man’s manner, he knew it had all gone to shit.

“So you lost them again?”

“Yes, sir.”

Elijah swung around and slammed the palm of his hand on the top of the concrete wall. “Fuck!” He dropped his head back as though he were staring at the roof over them, but in fact, what he was seeing was his longed-for interlude with a lovely little Thai girl slipping out of his grasp.

And he had so been looking forward to the next meeting in San Francisco, where he would announce his success with his methods for defeating gold fingerprinting. It would all be for naught if there wasn’t any gold.

He turned and leveled his eyes on Benny. “How difficult could it be to find a ninety-three-year-old man and a woman?”

Benny said nothing.

“I should know better than to rely on some little Malay faggot with his fucking blowpipe.”

Benny still didn’t say a word. He stared back at Elijah.

So he was going for the inscrutable Oriental thing, was he? Elijah considered pulling out his boot knife to see if that would make the gook widen his eyes a little.

Elijah stepped in closer, then leaned in until their eyes were six inches apart. His voice was soft but tight. “The old man outrun you? The girl outsmart you?” He shoved Benny back against the railing and shouted, “Say something for yourself! What the fuck happened, asshole?”

“They had help.”

“You’re sure this time?”

Benny nodded.

Elijah stepped back. “What happened?”

“When I went into the hotel restaurant, they had already gone out the back door. Both of them. The old man and the girl. I followed
them to the docks but before I could get to them, someone offered them a ride on a canal boat. They disappeared down the river.”

“Did you shoot?”

He nodded. “I hit the driver.”

“Any idea who this is who’s helping them?”

Benny shook his head. “There were two of them on the boat. The driver and another man. The other one is the one who is helping. He’s Caucasian.”

“Does the old man know him?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where do you think they’ll head?”

“That’s why I asked to speak to you. It was no use following anymore. She is a sailor and she will want to return to her boat. It’s down in Phuket. The old man, I don’t know. I believe he will stay with her. I still don’t know what he stole or what skin he’s got in this game. It makes more sense for me to go to Phuket and intercept the girl there. Assuming she still has what you want.”

Elijah looked out over the rooftops of the city at the crazy web of tangled electric and telephone lines. The man was right. There were dozens of ways they could travel to Phuket. Better to jump to the other end and not try to follow their trail. He nodded. “Okay.”

“Mr. Hawkes, I could do a better job if I knew exactly what I was looking for.”

Elijah sighed. Benny was getting out of line. He didn’t know his place anymore. His part in this operation was strictly on a need-to-know basis. On the other hand, he didn’t want Benny bringing back the wrong goods. And a tattooed heathen was expendable. In fact, that would give Elijah something to look forward to.

“The old man was working on certain documents. As usual, old stuff from the Second World War. They were found at a historical site in the Philippines. The first one was a typed letter written in Japanese. The second was a hand-drawn document with some pictograms. Both
of these were wrapped in a piece of silk. The old man stole the lot, and now we’re going to get them back.”

“Yes, Mr. Hawkes.”

“Good. Go down there and get our property back. These are old and fragile artifacts. Don’t let them get damaged. The girl, you can get rid of, but bring the old man to me. We need him alive. Unfortunately, he’s the only one who can figure out these damn Japanese codes.”

The Chao Phraya River
Bangkok, Thailand

November 17, 2012

After Riley pushed the bow of the boat off the dock, Cole let the current do the rest to turn the boat around. He shoved up the throttle and headed back down to the river. There was plenty of traffic on the canal, even past nine. If anything, it seemed like the city was just coming to life.

She was right that it wouldn’t take too much guessing for that guy to figure out where they’d headed—that they would try to get their man to a hospital. If Riley had figured out this was the closest hospital, someone else could do the same math. The only thing they had in their favor was that traffic on the streets of Bangkok was in a constant state of gridlock. Even if the guy took one of the motorbike taxis, he’d still be working his way across town.

When they started down the canal, Riley stayed at the back of the boat, looking at something in a piece of cloth. The damn canal boat had no autopilot so he couldn’t leave the helm to go talk to her.

“What’s that you’re looking at?” he shouted over the noise of the engine.

She walked up to the bow and held out a small, tubelike container made of lacy gold filigree.

“That’s beautiful. Where’d you get it?”

She didn’t say anything right away. He waited.

When she did speak, it was to answer his question with one of her own. “How’d you know where to find me?”

Keeping his eyes on the narrow canal ahead, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a cheap disposable phone. “Theo called me. He’s got an alert set so he knows every time you post something online. He told me you were going to a hotel called the Napa House down by the river. I decided to charter a boat in case I needed to make a fast getaway. I sure didn’t expect to see you come running down the dock an hour later.”

“How is Theo?”

Cole stared at the dark water of the canal ahead. Now wasn’t the time. “He’s fine.”

“Where is he?”

“On the boat. In Subic Bay. That’s in the Philippines.”

“I used all my State Department connections to search for your boat. How’d you make her disappear?”

“Well, you wouldn’t recognize her today. We made some big changes in Guatemala a few years ago.”

“A new name, I guess.”

He nodded. “We all got new names. And we fly under the Cayman Islands flag now.”

“When I couldn’t find either one of you, I really worried about Theo. I’m glad to hear you say he’s okay.”

He looked away from their course and stole a quick glance at her face. He’d heard something in her voice, and for a minute he thought maybe she knew somehow. But that was impossible.