“Did you ask his name?” Allie said.
“I will. Is there anything else?”
“How about finding out how we’re supposed to get out of here? Can we at least get an escort to the Thai border? The area’s got to be crawling with Red Moon and Shan,” Drake said.
Joe nodded and spoke to the officer. He looked Allie over as Joe talked, and then nodded once and called out a curt order.
“What did he say?” Allie asked.
“He said he has a daughter about your age, so he’ll take pity and have some of the soldiers take us to the river. From there we’re on our own.”
“I need my backpack,” Allie said. “It’s in the cave. The phone’s in it.”
“I’ll ask, but he doesn’t seem like he’s in a good mood, does he?” Joe asked.
“Camera’s in my pocket,” Drake said. “Worst case we can always get a new phone.”
Nobody was surprised when the general denied the request. After a brief inspection of the temple while they remained outside, the general emerged and called out to his men. Ten soldiers approached and he gave them direction. The oldest, whose uniform bore sergeant’s stripes, saluted and snarled an order at Joe, who relayed it, although no translation was necessary.
“He says to move. He wants to be in town by evening. They have trucks a four-hour march from here, and it’ll take another three to get to Tachileik.” Joe nodded agreement and wiped his brow with the back of his arm. “Time for another hike.”
Drake tried a grin, but his face wouldn’t cooperate. “I never thought I’d be this happy to hear those words in my life.”
“Positive vibes, my man.”
“I’m a believer.”
Chapter 57
Senator Whitfield strode through the crowded restaurant to his customary table, a lacquered wooden booth in the rear of the eatery, well away from prying eyes, where more matters of state had been decided than in the Oval Office. The skin on his face hung like that of a tired dog, although his two-thousand-dollar suit was crisp and his burgundy tie radiated quiet authority.
The last week had been brutal — easily the worst he’d seen in his long years on the Hill. Every day brought new revelations that threatened to topple the power structure of the Beltway, and his phone rang from dawn to well after midnight as an unending litany of atrocities appeared online, with no obvious rhyme or reason.
Whitfield had long ago parked his ethics at the door, and he wasn’t so much surprised at the level of criminality that was the norm in government work as he was that the idiots at the DOD would keep records. It was mind-numbingly stupid, an invitation to exposure, and not a minute went by that he didn’t curse the worldview that insisted that everything be documented — including the sins.
That morning had been another shocker for the fourth estate — the record of a domestic assassination of a liberal journalist with a Milwaukee newspaper who’d been digging around money that had gone missing in Iraq. There it was, in black and white, as the operation had been described in detail, and now the bastard’s family was calling for an exhumation so the suicide ruling could be reviewed in light of the new information. Even though the apparatus had a chokehold on the press, some things couldn’t be ignored, and even the most pliant editors had to approve articles breaking the news and calling for heads to roll.
Whitfield ignored the veiled stares of the other power brokers in the room and waited for his ex-wife to appear. She’d flown back from Thailand two days earlier and had demanded the meeting. Margaret was a wonderful woman, but she had no idea how the real world worked, and the naiveté that had been charming when they’d been students in the idealistic sixties had been her downfall when he’d taken up public service and bowed out of practicing law. She’d been unable to accept the compromises that were called for, and by the time Christine entered high school, their marriage had been a tense cease-fire rather than a partnership of any real sort.
They’d gone their separate ways and hadn’t spoken for months at a time; when they did, it was to sort out some aspect of their property, which had been distributed equitably. The divorce had lacked the typical acrimony and more resembled a negotiated surrender of two tired armies, where it was largely unclear even after the victory parade who had actually won the encounter.
Her voice had been terse on the call, and he’d had to park his impatience at her demand when she’d mentioned Christine offhandedly. Margaret might have been unsuited for the Machiavellian schemes of Washington, but she’d learned a trick or two while they’d been married, and Whitfield knew better than to underestimate her. So he’d agreed to a late lunch, and now found himself staring bleakly across the restaurant as he waited for another in a seemingly unending parade of unpleasant shoes to drop.
A server approached in a white vest and matching bow tie, and smiled a welcome with a nod of his head. “May I get you a drink?” he asked, and Whitfield nodded. “Gin and tonic. Light on the tonic. And the ice.”
“Yes, sir. Of course, sir. And how many are we expecting today?”
“Only one.”
“Very well. One gin and tonic on its way. I’ll bring water and bread in a moment.”
Whitfield waved him away, wondering for an instant whether bread and water was a crack at the rumors swirling around the town about investigations into his chairing of the defense department committee, but decided that it wasn’t. Not everything was about him, he reminded himself. His complicity in the crimes being aired on the web would be impossible to prove — at least, he hoped so. God help them all if his role had also been memorialized on the compromised servers. He’d be finished. But he’d take others down with him if he was disgraced; he’d see to that.
Whitfield had always believed that the lessons that had served the country well during the Cold War were valid in every walk of life. Mutually assured destruction kept everyone honest and reduced the tendency to view cogs in the machine like himself as expendable. Nobody was going to throw him to the wolves, he was certain — because if he began opening his mouth, the news on the web would seem like a trip to Disneyland compared to what he could recount.
Margaret entered the restaurant and made her way to the table, her expression as placid as a mountain lake — her ‘moon face,’ Whitfield had teasingly called it in the early years, before the term had taken on the aura of a ritual insult intended to demean. As so many things had. For an instant he wished he could take it all back, start over, and be the young firebrand who wasn’t afraid to tilt at windmills, Margaret at his side.
The server arrived with his drink and set it down in front of him, the glass carefully draped with a napkin to preserve its chill and conceal the amount of active ingredient the senator was having with his lunch. Whitfield waited until the man had left to unpeel his treat and take a healthy slurp, and wished it was reasonable to gulp it through a straw as he registered the look in Margaret’s eyes as she neared.
She slid in across from him and delivered a frosty smile. “Hello, Arthur. Oh, dear, you do look like you’ve been through the wringer, don’t you?”
“Nice to see you as well, Margaret.” He took another appreciative sip and set the glass down. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I wanted to let you know that our daughter is alive and well.”
Whitfield leaned forward. “You saw her?”
“No. I had an all too brief call while I was in Thailand. She was trying to explain why I’d probably never hear her voice again.” Margaret swallowed back a small sob.
“Why did she run?”
“You want to sit across from me and pretend that you don’t know? After all the news that’s broken, you’re as puzzled as I am?”