Sidney Sheldon's Chasing Tomorrow (Tracy Whitney) (11 page)

She tried not to think about Jeff Stevens, but this was another impulse beyond her control. Was Jeff sleeping somewhere now too? Was he well and happy? Married to someone else? Was he even alive?

If she put her mind to it, Tracy could probably have found out the answers to all these questions. But over the years she’d trained herself not to. Jeff Stevens existed only in her heart and in her memory. She found her mind wandering back to the last job the two of them had done together. It was a diamond heist in Holland, before they were married. A mental picture came back to her of Daniel Cooper, the odd little insurance agent who had doggedly followed them across Europe, but had never been able to pin them to any crime. He’d been watching, the day that Tracy left Amsterdam. She’d actually seen him, seen the crushing disappointment on his face. She remembered feeling sorry for him.

Where was
he
now?

Where were any of the characters from those long-gone days?

For Tracy, and for Jeff, the scams and heists and capers had become a game. But to Daniel Cooper they’d clearly been more than that.
Did we hurt people back then, with the things we did?
Tracy wondered. She’d never regretted her old life, but perhaps she should have? As she gazed down lovingly at her sleeping son, it occurred to her that maybe her moral compass was off. Certainly Blake Carter represented goodness and decency and honesty in a way she aspired to, but didn’t really recognize in herself. Or in Nicky.

I must do better.

I must be a better mother, for Nicky’s sake.

Tracy kissed her son good night and went to bed.

CHAPTER 10

L
ISA LIM LOOKED AT
the man zipping up his suit pants and fastening his cuff links beside the bed. As a high-class hooker, servicing Singapore’s elite, she was used to all kinds of clients. Fat or skinny, old or young, straight or kinky, married or single, overbearing or shy. As long as they could pay the requisite $500 an hour and agreed to wear a condom, Lisa Lim was an equal-opportunity employee. She did this job for the money, nothing else. Still, it was a pleasant surprise to come across a client she not only found attractive, but actually liked. Thomas Bowers checked both boxes.

“Are you all right to get home?” he asked her, slipping her fee plus a hefty gratuity into a hotel envelope. He was staying at the Mandarin Oriental in the Oriental Suite and had picked Lisa up in the lobby. “Can I call you a cab?”

“I’m fine, thank you. I have my own transport.” She took the money. “I enjoyed myself tonight.”

“So did I.”

Thomas Bowers pulled her close and kissed her. He smelled of expensive cologne and his stubble felt wonderfully masculine and rough against Lisa’s soft skin. His kiss was like his lovemaking. Passionate. Tender. Confident. Thomas Bowers was that rarest of things, a john who actually liked women.

“If you’d like to see me again while you’re in town, I could make myself available.”

“I’d love to. But unfortunately I leave tomorrow.” Bowers walked her to the door. “I’m taking the Orient Express to Bangkok. I’m rather looking forward to it.”

“How lovely.” Lisa smiled. “I’ve heard that’s a stunning journey, through the Malaysian jungle. Is the trip for business or pleasure?”

Thomas Bowers thought about it, then grinned broadly.

“A little of both, I suppose. I’m meeting a friend. But let’s just say I intend to enjoy myself.”

THOMAS BOWERS, AKA JEFF
Stevens, had jumped at the Singapore job for three reasons.

First, because he loved Asia. The food was delicious, the climate warm and the women wildly uninhibited in bed. Second, because he’d always wanted to try the E&O, the Singapore-to-Bangkok version of Europe’s famous Orient Express. There was, in Jeff’s opinion, a romance to old-fashioned train travel that not even the most luxurious private jet could match. Third, and most important, because the object he had come here to steal was one of the rarest and most exciting pieces he had ever gone after, an early Sumerian statue of King Entemena in perfect condition.

Gunther Hartog told Jeff, “The statue is currently in the possession of General Alan McPhee.”

“The American war hero?”

“Exactly. The general will be on the Eastern and Oriental Express (E&O) leaving Singapore on April twenty-fourth at three o’clock. He plans to hand it over to his buyer in Bangkok on the twenty-eighth. Your job is to see to it that he doesn’t.”

Jeff had arrived in Singapore four days early, to give himself time to rest and to recover from jet lag. He’d enjoyed his time in the city, especially his last night with Lisa. These days, Jeff slept only with hookers. They were good at what they did, honest about their motivations and expected nothing from him other than money, of which he had plenty. He no longer missed Tracy with the raw, visceral pain he’d felt for the first year after she left him. But he knew that he would never love again. Not like that. Fleeting liaisons, such as the one with Lisa, fulfilled him sexually and protected him emotionally. These days Jeff reserved all deeper feelings for his work. He specialized in rare antiquities, and the only objects he ever stole were ones that genuinely fascinated him.

“I don’t need the money,” he told Gunther Hartog. “If I work, it will be for the love of it or not at all. Think of me as an artist.”

“Oh, but I do, dear boy. I do.”

“I need to be inspired.”

Singapore had been fun, but sorely lacking in inspiration. Jeff had dined on oysters at Luke’s on Club Street and indulged in some rocket-fueled cocktails served by gorgeous waitresses at the Tippling Club on Dempsey Hill. But overall the city reminded him of nothing so much as an Asian Geneva: clean, pleasant and, after a few days, really quite crushingly dull.

Thomas Bowers was ready to board that train.

Let the battle begin.

GENERAL ALAN MCPHEE’S VOICE
carried through the intimate dining car like a stage actor booming out a soliloquy.

“Of course Iraq’s a beautiful country. Bringing freedom to those folks is probably the thing I’m most proud of in my life. But I don’t know if I’ll ever go back. A lot of painful memories there . . .”

It was the second night aboard the Orient Express and the general was holding court, just as he had done the first night. Jeff Stevens, aka Thomas Bowers, observed the way the people around the man listened with rapt attention. The women, particularly, seemed impressed by him. There were four at his table tonight, along with two men. Two older Japanese ladies, sitting with their husbands, were part of a large group of Japanese tourists who had boarded the train at Woodlands Station in Singapore. They were joined by an elegant Frenchwoman, traveling alone, and an American goddess with waist-length red hair, a knockout figure and amber eyes, who rejoiced in the name of Tiffany Joy. Thomas Bowers had made Ms. Joy’s acquaintance the previous night. A few discreet inquiries had confirmed his suspicions that she was the general’s mistress, traveling as his secretary in an adjoining cabin.

“Amazing, isn’t it, Mr. Bowers, to be sharing our journey with a true hero.”

“Absolutely.”

Jeff smiled at Mrs. Marjorie Graham, an English widow in her sixties traveling with her sister. The management of the E&O, and in particular Helmut Krantz, the train’s hilariously uptight German chief steward, encouraged guests to “mingle” at mealtimes and share tables. Last night Jeff had endured his overcooked duck à l’orange in the company of a profoundly tedious Swedish couple from Malmö. Tonight he had the Miss Marple sisters. Complete with tweed skirts, twinsets and pearls, Marjorie Graham and her sister, Audrey, both looked as if they’d walked directly right off the pages of an Agatha Christie novel.

“One hears about celebrities on these trips,” Marjorie Graham went on. “I half expected some ghastly pop star. But General McPhee, well, that’s quite a different matter.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” said Jeff. “Believe me, no one’s more excited than me to have the general on board.”

“Being an American, you mean?”

“Sure.” He nodded absently. Tiffany Joy had gotten up from the table, presumably to use the restroom in the next car down. As she passed, she smiled at Jeff, who smiled back, touching her lightly on the arm and exchanging some pleasantry or other. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the general watching them, and observed the jealous souring of his expression.

At the end of the meal, another depressingly average offering—putting a German in charge of hospitality was bad enough, but Jeff strongly suspected that they’d hired one of Helmut’s countrymen as head chef as well, which was unforgivable—Jeff headed toward the piano bar. As he passed the general’s table, a sharp jolt from the train propelled him into the lovely Miss Joy once again.

“I’m terribly sorry.” He grinned, looking anything but. “These narrow-gauge tracks are hellish, aren’t they?”

“Oh, they’re awful.” The redhead giggled. “I was rattling around like a coin in a jar last night in my bunk. You should see my bruises.”

“I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours,” Jeff quipped.

“I don’t believe we’ve met.” General McPhee looked at Jeff with all the warmth of a nuclear winter.

“I don’t believe we have. Thomas Bowers.” Jeff extended a hand.

“Mr. Bowers is an expert in antiques,” said Tiffany.

“Antiquities,” Jeff corrected. “And I wouldn’t say an expert, exactly. I’m a dealer.”

“Is that so?” The general’s expression shifted. “Well, Mr. Bowers, we should have a drink later. I have something in my cabin that I think may interest you greatly.”

Jeff allowed his eyes to linger on Tiffany Joy’s quite spectacular bosom. “I’m sure you do, General.”

“It’s not for sale,” the general snapped. “Not that you could afford it even if it were. It’s priceless.”

“Oh, I believe you, sir.” Jeff’s eyes were still fixed on Tiffany’s, and hers on him.

Thomas Bowers really was disconcertingly good-looking. Tiffany knew she shouldn’t flirt. It upset Alan. Married or not, General Alan McPhee was a wonderful man, noble and brave and lionhearted. It was his strength and integrity that had attracted Tiffany to him in the first place. Well, that and the power, if she was honest. But she couldn’t let him down, just because a handsome stranger paid her some attention. She blushed, ashamed of herself.

“I’ll take you up on that drink tomorrow, General, if that’s all right,” Thomas Bowers was saying brightly. “Unfortunately I have some work I need to catch up on tonight. Sorry to have intruded, Miss Joy.”

He nodded gallantly and took his leave.

Tiffany Joy’s blush deepened. “Mr. Bowers.”

Well,
Jeff thought, grinning all the way back to his cabin.
That should put a fox in the henhouse. Step one completed.

JEFF’S CABIN WAS CHARMING
but minuscule. Tracy had once pulled off a spectacular jewel theft aboard the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express traveling from London to Venice and had compared her room to “the inside of a candy box.”

This was similar, a riot of red velvet and brocade with a single armchair, tiny table and foldout bunk bed that Jeff suspected had been shipped in especially from Guantánamo Bay, so torturous was it to attempt to sleep on. The decor was certainly nostalgic, and had a certain Art Deco glamour to it. But Jeff’s enthusiasm for the romance of the Pullman car was fading almost as fast as his appetite. Roll on, Bangkok.

Having attempted to shower in a stall so cramped Houdini would have thought twice before entering it, Jeff lay on his bunk rereading Gunther’s encrypted file on General Alan McPhee.

In 2007, the general was in command of U.S. forces in the holy city of Nippur, about 160 kilometers southeast of Baghdad between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Since 2003, Coalition forces had been charged with preventing looting at archaeological sites like Nippur, a treasure trove of pre-Sargonic, Akkadian and old Babylonian artifacts. A statue of King Entemena, a Mesopotamian monarch from around 2400 BC, similar to the one looted from the National Museum of Iraq in 2003 and of equivalent value, was discovered in a tomb in Nippur by a French ground unit. It went missing from a “secure” Coalition safe house six weeks later, days before it was due to be transferred to the Louvre. Extensive local searches produced no result, although a wealth of circumstantial evidence pointed to a local man, a petty thief named Aahil Hafeez. Hafeez was arrested, but before he could be tried, he was abducted and hanged by an angry mob. He always protested his innocence. The statue was never seen again.

Reliable sources now suggest that General McPhee himself commissioned the theft. The much-decorated general has in fact for years been running a profitable sideline in looted treasures and war spoils, although nothing quite as spectacular as this. Having paid off his local accomplices, the general wisely waited some years before searching for a suitable buyer for the Entemena statue. He has agreed to sell it for two million U.S. dollars to a Thai drug lord by the name of Chao-tak Chao. Chao is an exceptionally corrupt and ruthless individual, responsible for countless abductions, murders and incidents of torture. Illiterate and uneducated, he is nevertheless a collector of statuary in all its forms.

The general is traveling by boat and train to avoid the more intrusive customs searches prevalent throughout Asian airports. He is also clearly protected to a large degree by his status, both in the United States and abroad, as a military hero, much decorated for his valor and admired for his charitable endeavors.

Jeff thought,
Everybody loves this guy.
Almost as much as he loves himself. But he’s a fraud. Worse than that, he’s a killer.

Jeff closed his eyes and tried to imagine the terror of the young Iraqi man as he was dragged to some makeshift gallows by his own people. Strung up like an animal and choked to death for a crime of which he knew nothing. General McPhee could have stepped in and saved him. He didn’t
need
a scapegoat. The crime could have remained unsolved, like so many others in the chaotic aftermath of the war. But in order to cover his own tracks twice over, that powerful, guilty man had allowed the powerless, innocent man to die a horrific death.

And that was when Jeff changed his mind.

Stealing the statue’s not enough.

This bastard deserves a taste of his own medicine.

IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG
for Thomas Bowers to engineer his next meeting with Miss Tiffany Joy.

He’d observed that the general always went to breakfast before his “secretary,” and alone. Once he’d gone, Miss Joy would slip back into her own cabin, making sure it looked as if both berths had been slept in; there she showered and dressed, then joined her boss after a suitable interval. It was the easiest thing in the world to bump into her as she emerged into the corridor.

“Miss Joy. You look lovely this morning, as ever. How are the bruises?”

“Mr. Bowers!”

Tiffany blushed despite herself. She wished she didn’t enjoy these encounters with the antiques dealer, or whatever he was, quite as much as she did. But Thomas Bowers was so
young,
and handsome, and Alan, bless him, was so
old.
Quite the antiquity himself, come to think of it!

“Is something funny? You know you’re frighteningly pretty when you smile.”

“And you’re a terrible flirt.”

“I’m crushed. Here was I thinking I was rather a good one.”

Tiffany laughed. “I mean it. Alan . . . General McPhee . . . he wasn’t too pleased last night. He said you bumped into me on purpose.”

“He was quite right.” Jeff moved closer. The train corridor was so narrow, his nose and Tiffany’s were almost touching. “Not that I see what business it is of his. Isn’t there a Mrs. McPhee somewhere? Keeping the home fires burning and all that.”