15

“Excuse me, miss?” A stout Chinese businessman in a blue business suit with sweat streaming down his face behind his knockoff Armani shades stood over her.

“You’re Annja?” a wiry woman with blue-lensed sunglasses pushed up onto her frizz of red hair asked.

“Miss?” the Chinese man said.

Continuing to ignore him, Annja rose from her table in the little tea shop in Bangkok’s Phra Ram 2 district. Outside the window all around the little shop, giant crane-topped buildings rose into the sky. Between the nascent skyscrapers she could see the skinny cone of an ancient wat, or temple, across the Chao Phraya.

“You’re Patricia Ruhle?” she asked as the redhead approached. Annja knew from reading her curriculum vitae online that her guest was in her early forties. As the woman approached between the mostly empty afternoon tables Annja saw that while she looked her age, and had probably never been conventionally pretty in her youth, experience and activity, and probably attitude had given her a rugged exuberance that neither years nor mileage seemed likely to erode any time soon.

The woman nodded. “That’s right. And you’re Annja, yes?”

“Miss, if I may intrude,” the Chinese man said. “I may be able to make a proposition which would be of benefit—”

His English was excellent. But his intent would’ve been way too transparent to Annja even if he hadn’t spoken a word. Since returning to the Thai capital to muster resources for the last leg of her journey to the fabled and elusive Temple of the Elephant she’d learned the hard way that the famed Bangkok sex trade wasn’t just all about rich Westerners purchasing the services of young Thai girls and boys. Well-heeled Japanese and Indian tourists, as well as the Chinese, proved to be anything but averse to leggy russet-haired American girls. This wasn’t the first allegedly lucrative invitation she’d been tendered. She doubted it’d be one of the most peculiar, either.

“Buzz off, Jack,” the red-haired woman said. To Annja’s complete astonishment Ruhle then snarled at him in what Annja could only guess was Mandarin. Whatever she said made his eyes go wide and his features ashen before he turned and practically scuttled from the tea shop.

The woman came up to Annja shaking her red head. “I’m Ruhle. Call me Patty, please.”

She stuck out her hand. Annja shook it, unsurprised to find the grip dry and firm as a man’s. Patty had square, well-used hands. They suited the rough-and-ready rest of her.

Patty wore cargo shorts like Annja’s, red Converse knockoffs, and the mark of her profession: a tan photographer’s vest of many pockets and a camera over a short-sleeved shirt printed in flowers of red and pink on white. Annja was similarly dressed in adventure-ready tropic fashion.

“Not that there was anything wrong with that guy’s concept,” Patty said as they sat, “if you edit him out of it.”

It took Annja a beat to realize she’d just been propositioned. She smiled and shook her head. “Not that I’m not flattered—”

“Say no more,” Patty said. Her grin never slipped. Annja had the impression it seldom did. “It’s usually best to keep professional relationships about business anyway.”

If the older woman felt any resentment about being turned down, Annja could detect no sign of it.

Annja nodded. “I agree.”

The server, a tiny Thai woman with round cheeks who seemed to be the proprietor, came and took Patty’s order for green tea. Then the red-haired American woman leaned forward onto an elbow on the table.

“So,” she said. “You’re mounting an expedition. Tell me about it.”

“Oh, you know,” Annja said with a smile, “a perilous trek through jungle and mountain in search of a lost temple. The usual.”

She anticipated skepticism, possibly snark. She spoke lightly to defuse that, figuring it might make it easier to overcome resistance. Instead Ruhle arched her brows and rounded her eyes.

“No shit?” she said.

“None whatsoever,” Annja said, still smiling.

“But I thought, with satellites and aircraft and all, there wouldn’t be any lost sites left.”

“There probably aren’t. But they’re still finding them, one or two a year,” Annja replied. “Most satellites have higher-ticket tasks than hunting archaeological sites,” she said. “The discoveries are usually made by accident when third parties analyze imaging for other purposes. And in this part of the world the jungle can still do a lot to conceal structures.”

“If you say so,” Ruhle said, less dubiously than Annja expected. “You’re willing to pay even if this turns out to be a wild-goose chase?”

Annja nodded. “I’m paying for the expedition,” she said, “not its outcome. Although I hope—and think—the outcome will mean a lot for all of us.”

Any shots Ruhle took of artifacts would belong to Annja. But Patty was free to snap incidental pictures of the expedition and the country they passed through along the way. She could sell those at a profit. Possibly to her usual employer. If Annja really turned up some amazing new discovery, even incidental pictures would skyrocket in value.

Ruhle stuck out her chin and nodded. “Sounds good so far,” she admitted.

The server brought tea and bowls of soup. Annja smelled pungent spices in the steam. She smiled. It seemed that she spent half her life in tea shops, coffee shops and sidewalk cafés. Almost as much time as she spent being pursued through the brush in remote countries, in fact. Of course both were a product of the life she led—the uniquely doubled life. Or tripled, if she considered her job on Chasing History’s Monsters as distinct from her field archaeology.

Annja had occasion to meet with all kinds of people in the course of her tangled skein of pursuits. Since she drank little and disliked bars, coffee and tea establishments provided nice neutral locations to do so. Nice public locations, where the presence of witnesses provided constraints on certain kinds of behavior. Not all of Annja’s contacts were either reliable or safe.

“It was good of Rickard to recommend you,” Annja said, “since I work for a rival network and all.” A Dutch archaeologist she’d met on a dig in upstate New York had gone to work for the National Geographic Channel; Ruhle was a regular contributor to both the magazine and the television network. That made her technically an enemy of Annja’s television employer, the Knowledge Channel.

Obviously that sort of thing mattered little more to Patricia, or their mutual acquaintance, than it did to Annja.

“How is old Rickard, anyway?” Patty asked. “I haven’t seen him in donkey’s years.”

“No idea,” Annja said. “I haven’t seen him since the Patroon dig. We sometimes get into amiable debates on alt. archaeology.”

“That makes you the only two on that newsgroup,” Patty said with a laugh.

Annja laughed, as well.

“So where is this lost temple of yours?” Patty asked.

“How do you feel about crossing into Myanmar?” Annja asked.

“You know the Burmese-Thai border’s closed.” Like a lot of old-timers Patty didn’t feel obligated to use Burma’s newer, state-decreed name. “Been a lot of political unrest going on that side of the Mekong. More than usual, that is.”

“I realize that,” Annja said evenly. She had checked the CIA World Fact Book online. It mentioned the border closure in a traveler’s advisory, as an aside to advising Americans to stay out of Myanmar altogether. The government was even more autocratic and repressive than Thailand’s.

“Why not just fly right into Yangon?” Patty asked, “Save yourself a hike and a lot of Indiana Jones stuff?”

Annja laughed at the reference. “Because the central government is likely to take too keen an interest in me,” she said, “especially as someone they’re going to think of as a journalist.”

She held up a hand. “I’m not claiming to be one, you understand,” she said. “But I know from experience that because I’m something of a TV personality, foreign governments don’t tend to see much distinction.”

The photographer nodded. “Got it.”

Of course, the Burmese didn’t have to know she was connected with Chasing History’s Monsters. She could arrange to enter the country under an identity other than Annja Creed. She didn’t think Ruhle needed to know that much about her, especially on such short acquaintance, with no commitments either way as yet.

But a little more explanation was in order. “The Myanmar secret police are pretty aggressive with tourists right now, my contacts tell me,” she said. “They’re facing a lot of unrest. And of course the ‘war on terror’ covers a multitude of sins. Frankly, I don’t want to lead a bunch of government thugs to what could prove a trove of priceless cultural artifacts.”

Patty cocked her head like a curious bird. “What, you don’t trust the government of Myanmar to safeguard its people’s priceless cultural heritage?”

“Not on your life,” Annja said. “A lot of my fellow anthropologists and archaeologists would find that heretical—way beyond political incorrectness. But no. Not Myanmar’s government.”

Ruhle barked a laugh. “Good call.” She studied Annja for a moment. Her eyes were blue. They narrowed in a grin that rumpled the older woman’s face all up and made it frankly ugly and delightful at the same time. “You’re not going to be put off by a little border-busting, are you?”

“I haven’t before,” Annja said.

Patty laughed. “Well, one thing’s for sure,” she said, “you may just be a consultant and a talking head on that stupid show, but you’ve got the makings of a true crisis photojournalist. But is your disregard for danger on par with your lack of concern for the, ah, legal for malities?”

For a moment Annja sat returning the woman’s unblinking gaze. It was not unfriendly. Neither was it particularly yielding.

“I don’t know how to answer that,” she said at last with a smile. “But I can honestly say…it has been so far.”

The creases in Patty’s brow deepened. “There’s more here than meets the eye, isn’t there, Ms. Creed?”

“Annja, please. And isn’t there always?”

Ruhle guffawed and slapped the table as if she were killing an especially annoying mosquito. Heads turned at the few other tables occupied this time of day. “What I see I definitely like—and please rest easy I mean that in a professional sense.”

Shortly they agreed on a price. It was steep but not ruinous—notwithstanding what Roux was going to say—but Annja figured that if she was going to hire somebody, she might as well get the best available. Patty seemed to be that, so Annja was willing to pony up.

“All right, then,” Patty said when they settled. “You have yourself an official photographer. How about the rest of the team?”

“At the minimum,” Annja said, “and I want to keep this minimal, for reasons I’m sure you understand—”

Patty nodded. Annja took the risks attendant to crossing a sealed border between two overmilitarized and adrenalized Southeast Asian states very seriously, even if Ruhle didn’t believe she did. In this case it was the world-wise veteran who didn’t know what she was dealing with, not the fresh-faced newbie.

“I want an area specialist, an anthropologist who knows the people and cultures of the ground we’re going to cover. And we need a guide. Preferably somebody who’s not a stranger to border crossing himself. Or herself,” Annja said.

Ruhle nodded. “The guide I can’t help you with—the best man I know for this region died two years ago of acute lead poisoning because he got a little fly around an ethnic army in Myanmar. The second best is doing hard time since the Thais caught him being a little too familiar with informal border crossing, if you get my drift. But as for an anthropologist with regional cred, I have just the man for you. He’s got all the integrity in the world, he’s on a first-name basis with half the tribes between here and the Himalayas and he’s got an A-1 international rep. Plus he’s available and in the area, as of a couple days ago.”

It was Annja’s turn to narrow her eyes. “Do I hear an unspoken ‘but’ here, Patty?”

“With two ts,” Ruhle said. “He is the best. But he can be, well, a total asshole. Not to put too fine an edge on it.”