Free Fall (41 page)

The whispers of the cops surrounding them grew to a more conversational tone as they quickly gained confidence. Beamon leaned forward and looked up the street again as the Thais continued to use Somporn Taskin's unfortunate absence to pump themselves up.

"Call me, Mark, hon. After all, I think we're going to be sharing the same shallow grave tomorrow."

"Maybe we should get out of here, then," she suggested.

"Seems sensible." Beamon put a hand in the small of her back and they started down the sidewalk. The cops were yelling now, but it didn't sound like they were following. Beamon and Darby had covered about fifty yards when they heard the sound of squealing tires as a car came skidding to a stop in front of the police station.

"What the fuck is going on!" screamed an American voice that he didn't recognize.

Beamon looked over his shoulder and saw the head and torso of a heavyset Caucasian man in his fifties poking from the sunroof of a black Mercedes.

"You recognize that guy?"

"Uh huh."

"Let's run." Beamon sprinted forward, dragging Darby along behind him.

He heard the screech of tires again, and when he looked back, the car and worse, the Thais were coming up behind them fast.

"Down the alley," Beamon yelled. Their positions had reversed within a few seconds of their attempt at a getaway and Darby was now dragging him. He could already feel the blood pounding in his head, protesting the sudden exertion, stifling heat, and deadly Thai cigarettes.

"Come on, Mark!" Darby shouted as they ran through a narrow alley and into a crowded outdoor market.

"If we cut through here, there's a big department store we can go through and get out the back!"

Beamon was unable to speak at this point, but followed along, already starting to stumble over colorful baskets of vegetables and slow-moving short people. He tried to stayed low, knowing that his brown head would poke up a good six inches above the Thai national basketball team's.

When he looked behind him, he could see the obvious disturbance in the crowd as the Thai cops chased after them on foot. He and Darby ducked around a corner and stopped for a moment, giving Beamon a chance to bend forward at the waist and try not to throw up.

"Are you having a good time?" Darby said in an exasperated tone with only a hint of breathlessness.

Beamon looked up at her, confused for a moment, but then the slight smile that he was wearing registered in his mind.

"Sorry," he struggled to get out as he wiped the sweat from his stinging eyes.

"My life's ... been kind of complicated lately. There's a simplicity to this situation that's sort of appealing."

He peeked around the corner and saw that the single, large, disturbance in the crowd had broken into five smaller disturbances as the Thais spread out and tried to pick up their trail. When he turned back to Darby, she had a thoughtful expression on her face that seemed as out of place as his smile.

"I kind of know what you mean," she said, then grabbed him by the front of his shirt and surprised him by pretty much pulling his full weight off the wall he was leaning against and dragging him into a run.

"That's it," Darby said as they came around a corner and ran toward a large white building. When they ducked under its discolored awning, though, they found the doors boarded up. Another victim of Asia's economic collapse.

"No!" Darby yelled, and pounded on the cracked plywood.

"We're okay, Darby. Plan B. Gotta keep moving," Beamon gasped, wondering exactly what plan B was as he ran up the street, confident that Darby would be able to catch up without much effort. He'd barely made it fifty feet when the black Mercedes came skidding around the corner.

"Darby! Here!" he yelled, turning down a narrow side road.

She caught him a moment later and they sprinted along it, only to find that it dead-ended into the back of a dilapidated apartment building after a couple of hundred yards. Sparks flew from under the Mercedes as it turned up the road and barreled toward them.

"Up here!" Darby yelled, sprinting straight at the doorless building behind them. She jumped at the last minute and seemed to run up the wall for about five feet and then grabbed the bottom of a rusted pipe running along the wall. One hard pull on the pipe and she had her fingers clamped onto the bottom grate of a fire escape.

"Come on!" she shouted, dangling effortlessly from one arm as she watched the Mercedes coming at them with four Thai cops not far behind.

Beamon looked up at her and shook his head.

"You've got to be fucking kid " A loud crack was followed by the better portion of the fire escape separating from the wall and crashing down to the street along with its one occupant. Beamon ran over to her and pulled her out from under a support beam just as the Mercedes skidded to a halt behind them.

Miraculously, Darby was able to stand under her own power and appeared to be completely unhurt. Beamon looked around him as the American emerged from the sunroof again and the Thai cops aimed a variety of automatic pistols in their direction. Nowhere left to run.

"Now you have problems," Beamon said to Darby as she shook her head violently, still trying to clear what was left of the effects of her fall.

"An interesting chase, Mr. Beamon," the man sticking out of the sun roof said.

"Pointless, but interesting."

Beamon's mind was desperately trying to work through his options, but it seemed that there were none. He was almost completely exhausted, unarmed, and in a country where he knew one person, and that person had fucked him.

Darby's eyes were completely clear now and she obviously understood the seriousness of their situation.

"Sorry, kid," Beamon said to her.

"I think you might have made it without me."

She shook her head as the Thais slowly moved in on them.

"Where would I have gone?" There was a deep sadness in her voice that for some reason made Beamon think of Carrie and Emory. He'd immersed himself in this case, wanting to escape making the hard decisions about his life, and it seemed he'd succeeded beautifully. It suddenly struck him that he would never see them again.

Beamon didn't notice the subcompact car turning up the narrow street until its driver started honking the tinny little horn. The sound prompted everyone involved to turn and watch the miniscule Honda coast to a stop behind the Mercedes.

"You'll have to accept my apologies, Mark," Somporn Taskin said as he stepped from the car.

"I was unavoidably detained. Are you ready to go?"

The scene suddenly turned from terrifying to comical. The four armed Thais had, once again, become uniformly docile and speechless at the sight of the unarmed man. The American hanging from the sunroof of the Mercedes didn't seem to know what to do as Beamon pulled Darby past him and toward Taskin's car.

"What the fuck is going on here?" he yelled as Darby ducked into the backseat of the Honda and Beamon opened the passenger door.

"What the fuck is wrong with you? Stop them!"

The Thais ignored him as they holstered their guns and began hurrying back down the street. Beamon could see that the man recognized the balance of power had shifted but couldn't figure out why.

Taskin paused in the open door of his car, looking up at the American over its roof.

"Sir, your chances of surviving your stay in my country are diminishing very quickly." As always, Taskin's tone was utterly polite.

This time, though, there was a subtle undertone that seemed to indicate that he was becoming irritated, and that anyone who irritated him ended up cut into tiny pieces next to the pieces of what used to be their families.

The American's expression suggested that he'd heard the same under tone as Beamon and had surmised that Taskin was absolutely capable of carrying out his threat if he should decide to bother.

Rolland Peck pressed his back against the wall as David Hallorin grabbed hold of a heavy iron floor lamp and swung it into a bookcase like it weighed nothing. Sparks rained from the shelf's built-in lighting system, reflecting off the shattering glass and giving Hallorin a brief, supernatural glow.

"You've done nothing for me, Roland!"

"But I..." Peck started, finding it almost impossible to speak through his fear-constricted throat. The panic had struck suddenly and he knew he was losing control of it.

"Nothing!" Hallorin screamed again.

"Why Roland? Why would you do this to me? I've treated you like a son.

Was that not good enough? Is that why you decided to spit in my face?

Mark Beamon, the girl, the file.

They don't mean anything to you, do they? It's not your life on the line."

The words cut through him. Like a son. Hallorin had never spoken them out loud. Peck often fantasized that he was Hallorin's son, like he was the son of the greatest man alive. But now it was all coming down around him. This was his fault. His fault. He didn't deserve the things that David Hallorin had given him.

"I ... I ... spoke with Beamon, David. I spoke with him, offered him everything--"

"You didn't offer him everything! And what you did offer him wasn't enough. Was it?"

"He's not rational, David! I offered ... I offered ..." Peck hung his head and stared blankly at the floor. The rage had drained from Hallorin's eyes and the disappointment that remained tore into Peck.

"No. It wasn't enough."

He heard Hallorin stop pacing but was afraid to look up.

"Beamon and the girl can never come back from Thailand, Roland. If they disappear in Asia, there won't ever be any questions people will assume that they were just casualties of the violence over there. You have a rare thing here, Roland. Life doesn't usually give second chances. Use it."

"They won't ever come back, David. We have people over there; they'll never make it back."

Peck tried to convince himself that was the truth, but he couldn't overcome his sense of dread. The situation had degenerated into a ludicrous mess. Mark Beamon's lifelong friends and acquaintances had been willing almost anxious to abandon him to his current situation. But in Thailand, a place Beamon had never before been, he had been befriended by a man whom Peck had never heard of but who seemed to hold an almost unshakable position of authority there. Through Hallorin, Peck controlled almost unlimited money, but was finding it impossible to hire anyone willing to move against Somporn Taskin.

Peck closed his eyes tightly when Hallorin put his powerful hand on top of his head and gently pushed it back.

"Look at me, Roland."

Peck's face tightened.

"Look at me."

He opened his eyes to find Hallorin's face only a few inches from his.

"I've got nothing, Roland. Nothing."

"But you've moved up so far," Peck said anxiously.

"So far. You're running second now behind Taylor..."

"A distant second." Hallorin turned and walked back across the office.

"In one week the people will vote. History doesn't remember who came in second."

Peck had known this would happen. The polls had moved exactly as he'd predicted. Based on the press's perfect coverage of the explosion, the disproportionate number of undecideds had resolved their inner conflicts in Hallorin's favor and had been joined by a small but significant group of Taylor's supporters. It had brought Hallorin to within two points of the lead.

But then the unavoidable backlash had begun. The Democratic candidate's numbers, initially unchanged by Hallorin's heroics, suddenly plummeted as liberals, fearful of a mandated President David Hallorin, ran to Robert Taylor the lesser of the evils. When the dust settled, David Hallorin was left seven points behind.

As he watched Hallorin move slowly across the room, Peck decided that he couldn't tell him about the problem that Somporn Taskin posed.

The file was on the verge of being retrieved and that would be enough.

Right now, only that mattered. Mark Beamon and the even less significant Darby Moore could be dealt with later.

"No one would have done what I did, Roland," Hallorin said, falling into his chair.

"They would have run from the fire. The country the people need someone with courage to lead them. You have to make them understand that, Roland. You're the only person who can."

Peck dared to look directly into Hallorin's gray eyes and tried to control the trembling in his stomach. He could still see the pictures:

Hallorin shouting orders, disappearing into the smoke, carrying out the little girl.

Peck had already let fade the memory of the planning that went into it setting up the mechanics and timing of the explosion, making sure there would be no chance of injury to Hallorin, the hours that the two of them had spent practicing his reaction. Now he saw the same heroic man as the rest of the world saw. And that man had chosen him as a son. low that's an improvement." Beamon took an exaggerated sniff of the air.

"And you smell better, too."

Darby Moore, still damp from a recent shower, was wearing a blue golf shirt with "Phuket Country Club" tastefully embroidered on it and a pair of pleated khaki shorts. Unfortunately, the black rubber sandals that seemed only slightly less a part of her than her skin were still strapped to her feet. Despite his exhaustive efforts, she had refused the pair of fabulously expensive golf shoes he'd had his eye on for her.