Chasing the Wind (12 page)

A bicycle taxi following the oxcart jolted its way through the swarming mass toward Sam and the boy. She could see fury on the faces of the two passengers behind the bicycle man as they hunkered down behind him. One, a hefty man, leaned forward and shouted something she couldn't hear over the noise of the crowds, poking at the driver's back as if somehow that would move them on at a faster pace. A woman huddled beside him, clinging to his shirt and swatting wildly at people grabbing at the cycle.

The cycler spat something back at the passenger and waved one arm in the air. Closer now, Sam could hear him. "Get out if you don't like! Get out. Get out! Get out! There are others who will pay."

Fear and hope twisted inside and without thinking, Sam hefted the boy onto her other hip and began moving toward the cart, raising one arm high, shouting to the bicycle man, "Eastside airstrip! Take us to the airstrip!"

The bicycle man turned. Frowning, he glared at Sam, and she saw it in his eyes.
Ach! White woman, American woman. Don't I have trouble enough?

Still she shoved her way toward the cart, ignoring the current passengers, seeing only a way to the plane if she could just reach the cyclist. The boy moaned and clung to her neck. The bicycle, hemmed in by the crowd, rolled to a standstill. The man in the cart pounded his fists on the cycler's back shouting for him to drive on. "Move! Now!"

The cycler swatted back, glancing over his shoulder at the attacker, and Sam, drawing closer, shouted again, catching his eye. The cyclist gave Sam a speculative look and his eyes dropped for an instant on the child before he turned away, hunching over the bicycle bars, prepared to force his way through the wall of frantic refugees blocking the road.

At that moment, with a loud curse, the hefty man in the cart half stood, leaned forward, and whacked the bicycle man's head from behind with the palm of his hand. The cyclist's foot sprung from the pedal, slammed to the ground, and straddling the bike, he whirled, his purple face contorted with humiliation and fury.

Sam glanced at her watch—only fifty minutes to reach the airstrip. There'd be no escape after that once the Khmer Rouge entered the city, she knew. To be left behind was death. She'd read the intelligence reports: Entire villages had been razed by the Khmer Rouge in the past few weeks, burned to the ground without mercy. Mass murder, torture, rape. Survivors force-marched to labor camps where they now toiled for
Ankah
, Father of the New, the Reborn, the Red State. No food, no medicine or time to sleep. She'd read of babies swung on pikes, of families torn apart, children just out of diapers pressed into work in the rice fields, young boys turned to slaves in a mindless army.

The reports hadn't yet been made public. No one was certain how much was true, but the possibility drove her forward at this moment with a vengeance.

"Fifty dollars, U.S.," she called, waving her arm at the cycler. "Fifty dollars for a ride." She had almost reached him now. Terror eviscerated any concern for the man and woman sitting behind him. "Fifty dollars for a ride."

She saw it in the man's eyes. Fifty U.S. dollars would feed his family for a year, maybe two or three, with enough left over to purchase a new cycle. It was an unimaginable sum. "Sixty," he countered, almost breathing the words, eyes riveted to hers.

The man behind him, flushed and sweating, suddenly realizing his predicament, stood, swearing and rocking the cart. The woman held onto the sides of the cart and began screaming. Sam avoided their eyes, ignoring her guilt.

"Let me see the money first," the cycler said, holding out his hand palm up, stone-faced.

Sam locked eyes with the man while digging into her purse for the envelope she'd found on her desk at the embassy. How long ago that seemed, years since Oliver had walked through the door and said they must leave. Her fingers located the envelope, and she pulled out six of the ten-dollar bills. She was careful to hide the remaining money that might be needed later on, to spur him forward if things got rough. Now she fanned the sixty dollars just out of reach of the man who could save their lives.

She saw the hunger in his eyes. He would do it.

Nodding, the cycler planted both feet flat on the ground, stood, and twisted around, shouting at his passengers, waving them off. "Get out of my cart! Out!"

Gasping, Sam held the child and watched as the woman froze, not comprehending. The man swung his fist, but the cycler raised his arm, shielding himself from the blow and the passenger, hitting muscles like stone, stumbled back, tumbling from the cart. Riveted, horrified, Sam watched bright blood streaming from the man's forehead as he lay prone on the road beside the cart wheels.

"Help!" the woman screamed, scrambling down. She looked straight at Sam, and Sam, suffused with shame but driven by desperation, looked away. "Help me!" the woman yelled again, pushing her way to the man, stiffening her arms before her as she fell, kneeling over the body. Sam glanced down at them over her shoulder.

"Help him. He'll be crushed!" Bending over the man, the woman shielded him.

The child trembled in Samantha's arms.

"Mem!" The cycler shoved Sam, reaching for the money.

Sam's head snapped up and, holding the boy with one arm, she curled her fingers around the money, fisting it, shaking her head. "When you get us there," she said, forcing herself not to look at the couple on the ground, pointing east.

The boy whimpered.

"Get in then," the cycler said, jerking his head toward the now-empty cart. Averting her eyes from the evicted passengers, the man prone on the ground, bleeding, his wife, huddled over him, Sam lifted the boy into the cart and climbed in behind him.

The cart jerked forward and swayed as the cyclist forced his way through the crowd. Sam turned back once to see the man slowly rising to his feet, supported by the woman. Wide-eyed she swiveled, face forward again behind the cyclist who was forging ahead to the other side of the street where an alley cut through the buildings.
Forgive me.
She would make herself forget this moment, block it from her memory. But despite the din of the crowd, behind her she could still hear the woman's shrill screams, and she knew those cries would stay with her forever.

The alley when they entered it was dark and a few degrees cooler. She let herself relax and took a deep breath. She knew where they were now. The alley would cut across the main thoroughfares, away from the crowds. The boy settled against her, quiet but still clinging to her neck. As the frenzy receded behind them, Sam leaned forward and gave the cyclist directions to the airstrip.

The airstrip was located at the edge of town, dangerous because the perimeters of the city were already under attack. She could hear the sound of gunfire again, closer now. Instantly the cart slowed and stopped. Over his shoulder, the cyclist studied her with a grim look. His eyes traveled down to her fist, still clutching the money, and seconds passed as she held her breath. Finally, he nodded.

As he began peddling again, Sam fell back against the seat with a strangled sob and hugged the child. The boy trembled and she patted his back gently, soothing him, as she glanced again at her watch. A chill ran through her as she realized that only half an hour now stood between escape and certain death.

At the end of the alley the bicycle turned onto a smaller, less-crowded street. Moving against traffic, they turned again and again, winding their way through a warren of alleyways and narrow streets, each one in a poorer area of town than the last.

"How much longer?" she called to the driver.

He shrugged. "Depends." Then quickly: "Sixty dollars no matter what happens, Mem. Whatever time. Sixty dollars."

"Yes," she said. No matter what happened, he'd be paid. He'd simply take it if she refused. She looked at her watch: twenty minutes to five. "Hurry, please hurry!" she cried.

The child pressed closer, silent now.

New Orleans—1977

Ashley Elizabeth walked into Amalise's office
and dropped a stack of mail into the wooden in-box on the corner of her desk. Amalise looked up and smiled.

"Today's mail," Ashley Elizabeth said. "And Raymond was looking for you earlier." Her eyes strayed to the pile of agreements on Amalise's desk, and she frowned, glancing at her watch. "Should I book help from the typing pool tonight?"

"Yes, four or five hours, I think. And thanks." Amalise swiveled, picked up the phone, and dialed Raymond's extension as Ashley Elizabeth left the office. He answered right away. Had she completed the due diligence they'd discussed on Murdoch and his company?

"Yes. All the corporate records check out. Cayman counsel's working with us on the subsidiary and the letter of credit. Nothing outside of that on Murdoch himself, though. And there was nothing on either company or Murdoch in our library. No litigation, no mention anywhere."

Raymond was silent for a moment. "Doug's going to want something. Let's check him out in newspaper archives, that sort of thing."

"In the public library?"

He hesitated. "Yeah," he finally said. "But don't spend too much time on it. Doug's probably not going to bill the time if we've got nothing to show."

She grimaced. "All right," she said. She'd go to the library this afternoon. Looking at the agreement she'd been working on, she said, "I'll have my comments on the latest draft of the loan agreement to you soon, and then I'll take a walk over there."

The day was sunny, though crisp and cool, and Amalise enjoyed the walk to the main branch of the library on Loyola Avenue. She'd finished marking her comments on the agreement, and Ashley Elizabeth had dropped them off to Raymond. Once he'd reviewed the changes, her secretary had promised to get them to the typing pool for revision overnight. She couldn't do the work herself, Ashley Elizabeth had said, or she'd be late for tennis. But unlike at the start of their relationship two years ago when Amalise was a new associate, Ashley Elizabeth had smiled this time when she'd made the excuse.

The librarian helped her find the newspaper microfiche tapes she needed. She pulled two years of reels for the Sunday
Times-Picayune
and
New York Times
. Sitting in a dark cubbyhole in the corner of the library where the viewers were kept, she leaned forward and began the grueling work of feeding the tape into the lighted machine, scrolling through each thin plastic reel, scanning page after page of the newspapers for any reference to Bingham Murdoch or his company, Lone Ranger.

Nothing came up on Bingham Murdoch. And the company name, Lone Ranger, Inc., turned out to be a troublesome distraction—a false lead in the news because of the cowboy connection. That fact alone nearly doubled the time it took to do the search.

An hour passed this way. Then two. She yawned, stretched, and rubbed her eyes. Her eyesight had begun to blur. Winding through a new reel of the
New York Times
twenty minutes later, her eyes stopped on a paragraph halfway down the page, on a reference to the company name. She bent closer, blinking to focus her eyes in the dim light.

The date was 1971, she saw, and then she leaned back, disappointed. The story was well known and irrelevant to her assignment. Still, it was amusing in a dark way. Raymond would like this one. A lone pirate had hijacked Northwest Orient Flight 305 out of Portland, Oregon, on Thanksgiving Eve six years ago and was never seen again. D. B. Cooper, reporters had mistakenly named him, but the name had stuck.

She smiled and decided to copy the story for Raymond. He was a fan of the Cooper caper. A quote from one of the lead detectives on the case containing a reference to Lone Ranger had caught the article in her search net. "The guy was a real lone ranger," the detective had said, referring to the hijacker.

Pressing the print button for the page, she scrolled to the next. She propped herself on an elbow and read. During a brief stop in Seattle, Cooper had released the passengers but not the crew. He'd demanded two hundred thousand dollars in ransom, plus four parachutes—two backpacks and two chest-packs. The plane took off. Midflight, Cooper jumped with the money and escaped.

The mystery of D. B. Cooper had enthralled the press for years. Police, the FBI, and thousands of volunteers had searched the forested area between Portland and Seattle for Cooper with no luck. A small cache of bills was later found in the Columbia River, but that was all. No other trace of the legend remained.

Amalise pressed the print button on the machine for a copy of the article, and then rolled the tape to the end of the reel. She returned the reels to the librarian, picked up the article from the printer, and stuck it in the folder. Glancing at her watch, she calculated the unbillable time she'd just expended. But, as stated, Bingham Murdoch was a silent investor in the nature of a phantom. He didn't want to be seen, and he wasn't.