Little Girl Gone

24



The first flight Logan could get out on was at 12:55 p.m. on Cathay Pacific. There’d be a plane change in Hong Kong, and by the time he reached Bangkok, it would be nearly midnight the following day. In the best of cases, he would be at least fourteen hours behind the people who had Elyse, but thought it prudent to assume the difference would be closer to sixteen.

Would that be too late? As much as he tried not to think that way, the thought did keep creeping in.

His father was true to his word. He and his friends brought Logan an envelope containing five thousand dollars in cash to the motel before he left.

“If you need more,” his dad told him, “just let me know. I expect you to check in everyday, too.”

“Don’t,” Logan said. “I’m not going to stop whatever I might be doing just to let you know what’s going on.”

“I didn’t mean that, but—”

“Dad, please. If I can, I’ll call. If I can’t, I won’t.”

Harp was going to say something else, but Barney put a hand on his shoulder. “Do what you need to do, Logan.”

Logan nodded his thanks.

“And just in case,” Barney said, then handed him a small bottle. “Sleeping pills for your flight.”

On the way out, Logan stopped by Tooney’s room. Elyse’s grandfather was sitting on the bed, his packed bag on the floor near the door. As soon as Logan left for the airport, he and the others were all heading back to Cambria.

“Are you doing okay?” Logan asked, sitting down beside him.

“I’m happy she’s still alive, but…am still worried.”

“I’ll…I’ll bring her back.”

He looked at Logan, and tried to smile. “I know you will.”

Logan patted him on the arm, then stood up. “I gotta go.”

“Thank you, Logan,” he whispered. “Thank you.”

Logan didn’t know what to say, so he simply nodded, and left.

Outside, Dev was waiting next to the El Camino, ready to drive Logan to the airport, then take his car back up the coast.

“Thanks for all the help,” Logan said once they were on the road.

Dev shrugged like it was no big deal. “I assume you just want us to hold onto everyone?”

Logan hesitated. “Eventually we’re going to want to turn them over to the police, but I don’t want to do that yet. Let’s see if I can learn anything that can help us out first.”

“Okay.”

“That is, unless your people do mind.”

“They don’t mind.”

They fell silent for several blocks.

“Dev, I need to ask you for a little more help,” Logan said. “I’m hoping someone you know might have contacts in Bangkok that can assist me. Probably someone who—”

He stopped as Dev pulled a piece of paper out of his shirt pocket, and handed it to him.

“What’s this?”

“What you just asked for,” Dev said. “A phone number. When you get there, call it.”

“A friend of yours?”

“A friend of a friend.”

Logan hoped he’d say more, but in typical Dev fashion, that was it.

“So you were expecting me to ask for help,” he said.

“If you didn’t, I would have given it to you anyway. Tooney’s a good guy. Find his granddaughter, Logan. And if you can, make the ones who took her pay.”

• • •

Logan wasn’t sure how long after his plane had taken off that he fell asleep, but he knew they hadn’t reached cruising altitude yet. Barney’s pills really worked. By the time Logan woke, he’d been out for seven hours. Which was nice until he realized he still had about another seven to go before the plane was due to land in Hong Kong.

He filled some of the time by working on his laptop. In the morning before he’d left the motel, he’d received an email from Ruth containing Forbus’ latest information on Burma. Not having time to look at it then, he’d saved it to his hard drive. He’d also found some stuff online about Elyse’s mother, Sein, and saved those to the computer, too. Now that he had nothing else to do, he was able to go through most everything.

Ruth’s Burma info didn’t really add much to what he already knew. Decades of repression, peppered with occasional bouts of protest that were always put down. The latest had been in the fall of 2007 after the government had raised fuel prices, putting further strain on a population that had very little money in the first place. This time the Buddhist monks in the city of Rangoon had gotten involved, leading the protest, until government thugs had put a stop to that. Logan could understand why Sein had such a passion for trying to free the people of her birth country.

When he’d looked her up online there had been hundreds of links. Human Rights websites, Burma-centric websites, news articles, interviews. There were also several dozen videos of talks she had given, and a couple of television interviews. He hadn’t downloaded everything, but those he did, he watched.

He was surprised that she didn’t look much different than the girl he remembered from twenty years before, and was impressed by her intelligent, matter-of-fact delivery. He’d expected more emotion, more rhetoric, but her calm, confident demeanor was so much more effective than any ranting would have been.

She talked about the crimes the Myanmar generals had committed, the deaths they had been responsible for, and the stranglehold they had on Burmese lives. Then she talked about her mother, how Thiri had gone to support Aung San Suu Kyi in hopes of making Burma a place her children could come back to without fear.

“Though they took her life, they did not take what her life was about. Her dream is still alive in me, like it should be in you. When tyranny and oppression are imposed on one person, they are imposed on us all. We must not stop until our brothers and sisters enjoy the same freedoms as we do.”

It was all pretty heavy stuff. Logan was almost glad when his battery ran out of power.

After a few hours layover in Hong Kong and a second flight, this one only two and a half hours long, he finally landed in Bangkok.

It didn’t take long to clear immigration and customs, and soon he was in a taxi on the way to a hotel his dad had booked for him online.

Logan had been to the country once before, in the summer between the Army and college. It was long enough ago, though, that he didn’t recognize most of what he saw on the drive.

The Angel City Hotel was a little boutique place, five stories high with a dozen rooms on each floor. While the building itself might have been old, the interior décor and the front façade were all new. Logan’s room was surprisingly large with tiled floors, a king size bed, and a bathroom he could have set up a cot in, all for less than the price of a room at a discount motel back home.

He took a shower and changed his clothes. Though it was around 12:30 a.m., his body clock was telling him was only 10:30 in the morning. His stomach was also sending him the message that it wanted to eat, now.

When he’d arrived, there’d been a lot of activity on the street, despite the late hour. Dozens of food vendors were set up along the sidewalks, while several of the shops were still open. As he went back outside, his intention had been to pop over to the 7-11 he’d seen across the road, and pick up whatever he could find to munch on, but the aromas coming from some of the nearby food carts drew him over.

A lot of the people he used to work with were skittish about eating food from street vendors, especially in developing countries, but Logan never was. Perhaps if he’d ever had a really bad reaction, he might have thought differently, but he hadn’t. So he picked out a couple of skewers of pork, a fried rice patty, and a bowl of vegetables and noodles, then sat at one of the temporary tables that had been set up near the carts.

As he knew it would be, the food was delicious. It was also dirt cheap. If he kept eating like this, the WAMO boys were going to get most of their money back.

When he finished, he did a quick calculation in his head. Thought it was the earliest hour of morning here, it was still afternoon in D.C.

“Logan, you’ve got to stop calling,” Ruth said in a strained whispered when she answered his call.

“I know, but at least I’m using your cell.”

“I told you not to call me on it either!”

“Sorry…Were you able to keep track of the plane?”

She remained silent for several seconds, then said, “After Tokyo, it went to Taipei, then Bangkok.”

Though he knew from the records at the Midwin-Robb office that the plane had been scheduled to come to the Thai capital, it was nice to hear it independently confirmed. “Do you know what time it arrived?”

“Around noon, local time.”

Noon? He wasn’t sixteen hours behind. He was only a bit more than twelve. It wasn’t particularly great news, twelve hours was still half a day, but it was better than he’d hoped.

“Great. Thanks, Ruth. And thanks for the Burma info, too.”

“You can thank me by never calling me again.”

She didn’t give him the chance to respond before disconnecting the call.

As he stood up from the table, he pulled out the piece of paper Dev had given him. The polite thing to do would be to wait until morning to call, but he didn’t have time to be polite.

He dialed the number. Unfortunately, the only thing that answered was a beep. There wasn’t even any greeting, or instructions. He left his name and number, hoping he was actually being recorded, then hung up.

Okay. So, now what? The best answer he could come up with was sleep. He might not get a chance later, so he knew he should grab it while he could.

Back in his room, he took one of Barney’s pills, and stretched out on the bed, staring at the ceiling. As he started to slip under, the image of the man carrying Elyse into the plane played across his mind. He tried calling to her, but she didn’t even look up. Then the scene at the plane gave way to Elyse in a cap and gown, then those were replaced a simple dress and wings growing from her back. Then even the wings faded away, and the girl was no longer Elyse any more. It was her. She was standing near the tan wall, tearing flowing down her cheeks. As she began moving away from him, he yelled out. But it only made her run faster, and faster, and—

Logan’s phone vibrated on the nightstand. With effort, he pushed open his eyes, and picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Logan Harper?”

“Yes.”

“You called me.”

What? Called who?

Then, through the haze of the pills he’d taken, he remembered the number from Dev. Only he’d been expecting a man to call him back, but the voice belonged to a woman.

“Yes. Yes, I did. I’m sorry, but I don’t know your name.” He paused, waiting, but apparently she wasn’t ready to share that information with him yet, so he went on. “I got your number from a friend in California. He said you might be able to help me.”

“I’m familiar with your situation, Mr. Harper.”

He sat up, his senses coming back to him. “You are?”

She remained quiet.

“Then you know a girl’s life is in danger,” he said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been in Thailand. I don’t have any contacts, and I don’t speak the language. I’m looking for someone to point me in the right direction. I was hoping that maybe you—”

“Be downstairs in ten minutes,” she told him, cutting him off. “You’ll be picked up.”

The line went dead before he could say anything else.