Gift of the Golden Mountain (51 page)

     Now it was the old man's turn to confer with one of the men who was, she could see now, Chinese. They spoke earnestly for a
few minutes, then he turned and motioned her over. "This man say cannot go so far now," he said. "He say too much long they go, man no come."

     Her legs gave out under her and she sat down hard, hitting her tailbone on the exposed root of a great tree. She wailed with pain. The old man came to squat beside her, his face registering concern. That was all she needed: she began to cry, short, soft sobs came gulping out of her.

     The Chinese stood staring at her. The Meo woman busied herself picking something off her arms. The old Burmese man made soft cooing sounds.

     "Okay," she said, rubbing her hand across her face and mixing the sweat and dirt in a large smear. She took a deep gulp. "Okay. Now ask him if he wants more money."

     The old man looked puzzled, but he did as she asked.

     "No," he said, "no money. Nothing. Can't go."

     "Why?" she wailed. "Why can't we go?"

     "Man no come," was the only way he could think to explain it.

     "So I can't go on? I can't go to China and you can't even tell me why?"

     The old man stood there, looking at her and shaking his head in sorrow. She felt numb. This can't be, she thought,
Sam was so sure
, Sam had made her believe. A sharp cramp ripped through her stomach and she bent forward, to ease the pain.
Sam was wrong, and I was wrong to believe him.
The sick, empty feeling of failure went through her like a wave.

     She looked at the watch she had bought in Bangkok. In eight days Hayes would be in Hong Kong.

     Or wouldn't be, either way.

     There was time, at least, to get back.

     Something dark seemed to hover and settle in her chest.
Her mother was just over those mountains, but it might as well be a million miles.
She lifted her eyes—they did not seem that formidable, not so high or wild as mountains she had crossed in the Pacific Rim.
She put her hands on her head.
Why? Why couldn't she seem to do this thing, this one thing?
A small, hiccoughing sob broke out of her as she accepted her failure.

     The old man took them back, until they met another smuggling caravan heading south, toward Thailand. The old man arranged for this one to take her for $200 U.S. By now she and the Meo woman had worked out a certain routine: for food, for water, for waiting while one or the other went into the bushes. The woman's foul odor no longer offended May; she suspected it was because she smelled as bad herself.

     She was trudging mindlessly behind one of the ponies when it stumbled and fell. For a minute she had to balance, to keep from tumbling herself. Several of the men gathered around the beast, two of them taking off its load while the third helped it up again. May sank to the ground nearby, resting against a stand of bamboo. One of the men tossed the heavy bags from the pony's back to the ground beside her, and a brown rock about the size of a football fell out and rolled to her. She reached to touch it, turning it until she noticed a shiny square that had been cut and polished. Through this square she could see into the boulder: a deep green and, below that, a pure lavender color. It was jade, a huge chunk of it, to be sold in Chiang Mai.
God
, she thought, watching the man who stood guard, his rifle drawn.
How did Sam get mixed up in this?

     At that moment the guard called out sharply, and the other men grabbed their weapons and scattered to the edges of the caravan, the animals inside. May looked for the Meo woman, and found her crouching in the bushes, her eyes black with fear. She crawled in beside her and they sat silent for a time, only the ponies making an occasional shuddering sound. Then two of the men moved off, into thick underbrush on both sides of the riverbed. May closed her eyes and thought: It can't get any worse.

     She had no idea who was hunting them, but she knew that someone was as they moved through the southern part of Burma. She could not sleep more than a few minutes at a time, she was exhausted, her body too tired to feel the aches and bites and cuts,
her feet swollen and bruised and molding inside her walking boots. She could not slow down, she had to go when they went, stop when they stopped. She ate the rice the Meo woman cooked, and never questioned whatever else was in it—though she could make out bits of bamboo shoots and vegetables, she did not know what some of the other things were. Now it was simply a matter of lasting; she wasn't certain she had any control over her own body, she would go as far as she could and stop. That was all. And if that happened, she had no doubt that they would leave her behind, she meant nothing at all to them.

     But they did not leave her behind. When she could not get up again after a rest period, they rearranged the loads the ponies were carrying and lifted her onto one of the small, hardy creatures. Her long legs almost touched the ground, and its backbone cut into her, but she didn't care, she was so glad not to have to take another step.

This time she knew when they reached the Thai border, because three men were waiting for them with elephants, to carry out the jade stones.

     One of the men, with a soft face and eyes that fluttered said to her, "You know American Sam?"

     She nodded.

     "Come," he said, leading her to an elephant. The young mahout signaled the elephant to kneel, and put out his hand to help her climb on. The man handed her a small package. "This for Sam, you give it him."

     As weary as she was, she could feel the fury rising in her. "No," she said, looking hard into his moving eyes.

     "Yes," he answered, his hand increasing the pressure on her arm.

     "No," she came back, her eyes beginning to smart at the pain. "No," she repeated through her teeth.

     He jerked her aside, crashing into a thicket. He tore open her shirt and saw the moneybelt. His eyes fluttered even faster. She tried to cover her breasts with her hands, but he slapped them aside. He was not interested in her breasts, he was interested in the money belt. When he began to rip at it, she held her hands up and said, "Wait, I'll give it to you."

     He waited as she unbuckled the belt; her fingers were stiff and swollen, she could hardly manage, but his fierce tugs pushed her on. His back to the others who were busy now loading the elephants, he flipped through the bills she had left. She knew there should be about $1,500.

     He removed all of it, replaced it with the package she did not want and pulled the buckles so tight she could scarcely breathe. She said nothing, wanting only to get away from him, wanting only to get onto the elephant and out of Thailand as fast as she could, wanting was using her as his personal drug runner. She was finished with Sam forever.

     It took all the strength she had left not to slide off the elephant at the same time that she struggled to get the belt off. Her fingers were too swollen, too bruised. A knife, if she could get a knife and cut it off.

     The sound came shrieking out of the forest, one sharp loud wail of warning, and then they were surrounded. On all sides, small hard men with menacing faces holding automatic weapons on them.

In Bangkok she was taken to the jail on Mahachai Street. There she was given a shower and a set of cotton pajamas. Her watch was taken from her on the day she was to have met Hayes in Hong Kong, if Hayes had gone to Hong Kong. Probably he had not, probably he was with Marie-Claire in France right now. Even if the telegram had reached him, even if the boy in the hotel had sent it.
She sat on the floor in the corner of the room where it was dry, opposite the hole that was the toilet, and stared at the things that had drowned in the damp corner: great flat black bugs, clots of hair, dirty strips of rag. She lifted her eyes to the barred window near the ceiling. Dust motes danced in the sunlight that filtered down, and mixed with the sounds that drifted in, people talking, laughing, calling to each other. The sour smell of rotting vegetables rose from outside. She could hear the splash of water and guessed that the jail was next to one of the city's old klongs.

     "In Thailand, only fifteen years for drug smuggling," one of the young police guards had told her, adding, "Very good for you, other places give you death."

     She had asked them, each time they brought her in to be questioned, to call the American Embassy. "American?" they would say skeptically, and she would explain again that her passport was in a safe deposit box at the Oriental Hotel, that the key was in the money belt they had taken off her. They had not answered, had looked at her with blank expressions and asked her questions she could not answer about where she had been and whom she had been with.

     She did not give them Sam's name, she didn't know why. She told them there was a man named Phorn she had met at the night bazaar in Chiang Mai, but they did not ask the name of his shop, and she did not offer it. Then they put her in the room with the wet floor, and brought her good food which she would eat and then throw up, and she would spend the night curled in a knot on the floor, her stomach churning.

     On the morning of the third day she was led down two flights of stairs and into a room with a table, two chairs and on the wall a picture of the King and Queen. She was sitting, staring at the royal couple, when the American walked in. He was young and brisk, and wore a starched light blue shirt, and striped tie, a tan Panama suit, and well-polished shoes. "Miss Wing, is it?" he began in distinct American accents, the annoyance seeping out in nasal tones.
"Looks like you've got yourself into some trouble, miss."

     She took a deep enough breath to marshal all of her strength, she stood to face him, and when she spoke it was with all the authority she could command: "My name is Wing, yes. Dr. Wing Mei-jin. What is yours?" She scarcely gave him time to answer. "All right Mr. Stanson, here is what you need to do. First you tell your ambassador that he is to contact Mrs. Katherine McCord at her San Francisco headquarters at once. If you don't know who she is, he will. He is to tell her my situation here, and that the drugs found on me were put there against my will—only minutes before the police arrested me. I had no intention of passing them on to anybody, I intended to throw them away as soon as I possibly could. Most important," she looked him hard in the eyes so he could see the determination, "I need to be out of here, I need to be in Hong Kong today."

     He stepped back and stared, not knowing what to make of her.

     She stepped toward him, bearing down. "I promise you, if you don't get onto this, and now, the State Department is going to be very unhappy with you. All you have to do is get word to Kit . . . Mrs. McCord."

     "I know the name," he answered, defensively.

     "Good," May said, using the brisk tone he had abandoned, "then you know my aunt—and guardian—knows how to make things happen."

     He looked at the floor, and ran his hands through his hair. When he looked up again, his expression was one of sweet wonder. "I'll get right on it," he said.

SHE SAT IN the back of the taxi, the thick Asian heat pressing in on her, the food she had tried to eat on the plane churning angrily in her stomach. The driver swerved and pitched, darting into every opening, wasting energy. The traffic was too dense to move more than a few feet at a time.

     I could get there faster on foot, she thought, it can't be more than a few blocks. She looked at the perpetual movement of the crowds that surged along Nathan Road. For a moment it seemed hopeless, she could not survive out there, she would not be able to walk, her legs would not move. A sharp pain shot through her stomach, as if to warn her. She put her hands over the thin, gray fabric of the pajamas they had issued her that morning when they released her from prison. She clutched the purse the man from the embassy had given her; it held her passport, three thousand Hong Kong dollars, and a new American Express card. Kit had arranged that. Kit had also arranged a hotel for her in Bangkok and a later flight to Hong Kong, but she had not wanted to wait. She had made so many mistakes, she could not make another, and she had
caught the first flight out.
She was so close, so very close now.
The taxi passed Peking Road.