Part 14 (1/2)

He took off his Dodgers cap and wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of a hand. His normal ebullience had definitely flattened.

”Are you a tracker?” Phil asked superciliously. But Annja sensed it was pro forma.

Eddie shook his crew-cut head. ”No way. But I do know what a path made by a bunch of guys on foot who don't much care what kind of a mark they leave on the environment looks like.”

”Wouldn't elephants leave signs like knocked-over trees?” Patty asked.

Eddie nodded. ”And their feet'd mush up the ground more.”

”So who were they?” Annja asked, taking off her sungla.s.ses and putting them up on the front of her boonie hat.

Eddie shrugged. ”Like I say, I'm not a tracker.”

”Tribal people move carefully,” Phil said. ”They leave few marks.”

Eddie nodded. ”I'd say it's an army. Or a militia. Whatever.”

”Militia?” Annja asked.

He shrugged. ”Ethnic army, drug army, bandit gang. Any of the above, all of the above. Take your pick.”

”To the extent there's a difference,” Patty said.

Eddie nodded crisply. ”Exactly.”

Annja felt her cheeks draw up and turn her eyes to unhappy slits. ”Great. I'm guessing these are people we don't want to cross paths with.”

”Whether they're worse than the government forces is kind of an open question,” Eddie said. He seemed to be sweating more than before, even though he wasn't exerting himself. ”The important thing is we don't want to find out.”

”Well.” Annja stood a moment with hands on her hips. She noticed some trash trodden into the pathway, little plastic wrappers from snacks or cigarettes. ”At least they're going a different way.”

”They were when they pa.s.sed by here, anyway,” Patty said. ”Do we know where they were going?”

Everybody looked to Eddie, even Phil. He was, after all, the man with the best line on Myanmar's famously large and cantankerous ethnic armies. His eyes were big.

”You got me,” he said. ”Wouldn't I have to be, like, psychic to know?”

”This could've been just part of a larger group, too,” Patty said, ”headed out on patrol, or maybe coming back.”

”How do you reckon that?” Phil asked. His tone held no challenge-he seemed just to want to know. As did Annja.

Patty jerked her head at the trail. ”No tire tracks,” she said. ”Any self-respecting gang of thugs is at least going to have a pickup or a Land Cruiser or something for their big boss to ride around in.”

”Maybe,” Annja said.

”We need information,” Phil Kennedy said decisively.

”We need out of this area,” Annja said. ”We can move faster than a big mob of men on foot, can't we?”

”If they're not real elite or moving with real purpose, like as not,” Patty said.

”But we don't know for sure,” Phil said, nodding as if he had it all worked out. ”Do we really want to risk blundering into them? Or their main force, if Patty's right and this was just a patrol?”

”Or their enemies, for that matter,” Eddie said.

”Maybe we should find out who's who, then,” Phil said. ”Don't the Arabs say, 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'?”

”Maybe that works for Arabs,” Eddie said slowly. ”Around here-not so much.”

”Not so much in the Muslim world, either,” Patty said. ”I think the proverb was meant to apply to temporary alliances.”

”Yeah, and what if these guys' enemies are the Myanmar army?” Annja said. ”They're not our friends, for sure.”

Phil spread his hands and smiled knowingly. ”You're all making my case for me,” he said. ”We need to find a village and find out what we can.”

”OKAY, NOW WHAT?”

It was Patty who asked the question. The four crouched in the brush behind a fallen tree trunk. Beyond it a small cultivated vegetable patch was visible. Annja could make out the sharply peaked roof of a small wooden temple above the trees a couple of hundred yards away. A village lay nearby.

”I guess we might as well talk to them,” Annja said. She had to admit she found Phil Kennedy's logic compelling-they vitally needed information.

”That would be me,” Phil said smugly. He gave a covert side glance to Eddie Chen that Annja caught.

”Why you?” Eddie demanded a bit sullenly.

”I know this area,” the anthropologist said. ”These people are De'ang. They speak a Mon-Khmer dialect related to Cambodian. I speak it, as well. Do you?”

Eddie scowled. He didn't, Annja already knew.

For the past couple of days a mostly friendly rivalry had developed between Phil and Eddie. Phil, Annja suspected, felt challenged by Eddie's superior knowledge of the Tibeto-Burman languages used in some places they'd pa.s.sed through. Under other circ.u.mstances the irony might have amused her. He had been behind Eddie's hiring, after all.

Annja didn't care; she mainly wanted Kennedy for the cultural work necessary to doc.u.ment and start in motion proper preservation measures for the Temple of the Elephant. His relations.h.i.+ps with certain groups whose territory they had to pa.s.s through on the way were a potential plus, not the reason for hiring him. Eddie was their guide and main liaison.

Flies swarmed around them like biplanes buzzing King Kong. The smell of the human excrement that was the main fertilizer for the little garden overwhelmed the usual jungle odors. It was no improvement.

They all looked to her. Even Patty's face was paler than normal and taut beneath her sunscreen and the brim of her floppy hat. Her mouth was set in a line. No wisecracks for the moment.

The joys of being in charge, Annja thought. She drew a breath down into her belly, which did little to calm either pulse or misgivings and said, ”Okay, Phil. But for G.o.d's sake be careful.”

He frowned. ”What's there to be afraid of? These people are peaceful. You Westerners regard all preindustrial people as savages.”

He straightened and stepped over the log. The brush crackled as he swept through it. Annja winced. He called out across the little garden s.p.a.ce in a warbling tonal tongue.