Part 20 (2/2)

”What's your name?” he asked.

Again, the risk of a lie didn't seem worth the downside if he caught her. ”Annja Creed. I work for the Knowledge Channel.”

He smiled warmly, almost welcomingly. Her heart rose.

”Outstanding,” he said. ”They'll doubtless be willing to come up with a most handsome ransom. In the meantime-”

A shout brought his head around. His face clouded. Annja turned her own head, at the risk of both a clout from one of the guards still hovering near to her.

A party of eight or ten men had swung into view around the corner of a structure wholly overtaken by the forest. They were led by a small man, even for a Shan, with a large head, who wore a simple blue band instead of a turban. From the way he swaggered, and the fact he wore a handgun holstered at his hip the way the marshal himself did, Annja guessed he had more than just a small-man's complex going on. Nor was he a mere noncom like the man in charge of the group that captured Annja. Such would never dare carry himself that way for fear of being swatted down hard. He had to be one of Qiangsha's chief lieutenants. Not the best beloved of them, by the look he exchanged with his leader.

The newcomer gave her a quick glance. For all its swiftness she had the feeling it had totally undressed her. He spoke to his nominal master in Tai Shan.

Qiangsha's answering tone sounded pleased. They exchanged a few more words. The lieutenant and his entourage wheeled smartly and strutted away.

Despite what even a befuddled Annja thought was a pretty impertinent departure, Qiangsha now was smiling.

”It seems, Ms. Creed, your countryman, that nitwit Cromwell, has met with sudden misfortune,” Qiangsha said. ”It's given me the chance to see off those headhunting little Wa b.a.s.t.a.r.ds once and for all. Then we'll settle with the local savages who have been giving us fits, and finally get settled in.”

He looked past Annja to her guards. ”Put her in my quarters,” he commanded, still in English. ”Guard her well. If anything happens to her, or she escapes-”

He continued his instructions in his own tongue. The stained-oak face of the man at Annja's side went ashen.

Qiangsha nodded briskly and strode off down the steps. The guards seized Annja's upper arms and thrust her up time-eroded stone steps and into cool darkness.

30.

The rectangle of light that was the doorway was no longer the blinding white glare it had been for what felt to Annja like days. Evening had settled onto the cl.u.s.ter of semipreserved buildings where Marshal Qiangsha had set up his headquarters. The sky through the opening was dark blue brushed with pink and yellow.

Lying on her side on a woven rice-straw mat, which offered no more cus.h.i.+on from the cold, hard stone beneath than a sheet of paper, Annja had drifted in and out of consciousness all day. Her eyes had grown accustomed to the cavern gloom. She knew she shared the chamber with the marshal's surprisingly Spartan personal furnis.h.i.+ngs-a cot with a footlocker beside it, a folding table that evidently served as a desk, with a folding chair next to it. A low table next to the cot held a Coleman lantern, currently unlit, and what looked like a couple of paperback novels.

A second door led through the rear wall against which she lay. It was a blank square of blackness. She thought she felt a slight draft, indicating it led to another opening to the outside. She had writhed around earlier to peer down it, but had only seen the dark.

Annja might have gotten to her feet, explored where it led, searched Qiangsha's trunk, the papers on his desk. No one had so much as peeped in at her since she was hustled inside, although she had heard voices off and on throughout the endless afternoon, and smelled periodic cigarette smoke.

But movement still made her dizzy. She saw no reason to take either the effort or the risk. She wasn't here on an intelligence mission.

Whether it turned out to be an intelligent mission was a different question entirely. Right now it looked...not so much.

Marshal Qiangsha had commanded a sizable and relatively effective fighting formation for over ten years, according to Easy. Moreover, he had survived under the most intensely Darwinian conditions, facing constant threats from rivals-Karens, enemy Shan formations, the Tatmadaw Kyee, even the American DEA, which Annja gathered the common folk of Thailand and Burma regarded as just another ruthless ethnic army, no better than any other-and potential challenges from his own subchiefs. Like the c.o.c.ky low-rent Napoleon who'd brought the news of Jerry Cromwell's sudden fall from grace. Qiangsha had to be smart to have survived. And he was clearly a thoroughgoing professional, in his way.

Historian that she was, Annja knew disease killed far more soldiers than bullets or sh.e.l.ls did. Even though they were natives, relatively inured to local contagion, plague would have winnowed the GSSA ranks if Qiangsha had not clamped an iron hygiene discipline on his troops. Whether he'd known it at the outset or had to learn it, Qiangsha clearly understood that.

He understood way too much, Annja feared.

She had taken a calculated risk coming here. Now she wondered in her aching head if she'd calculated well at all. Easy said they were much alike. Which, aside from strongly differing views on professional ethics and even more wildly divergent backgrounds, increasingly struck her as true.

And maybe that means I share Easy's propensity for intellectual arrogance, just a wee little bit, she thought. Or was it some kind of smug subconscious racism that made me underestimate Qiangsha?

One thing was clear to her-if she did not see, and seize, some opportunity soon, she was lost. And so too were the Protectors. And the vast, untold trove of cultural heritage that was the temple complex. And the priceless Golden Elephant.

Overwhelmed, she lost consciousness again.

THE SOUND OF A BOOT crunching on stone roused her. Annja rolled over from facing the stone wall.

Light flared orange, then yellow, then white. Marshal Qiangsha straightened up from where he had just lit the lantern beside his bed. He smiled.

”It has been a good day,” he said. A flare of orange light from the doorway caught her eye. She glanced out to see a bonfire blaze up before the building he had chosen as his personal billet. Voices shouted and laughed to one another outside. ”The Wa barbarians have been routed. We've won,” he proclaimed.

From the slight overprecision with which he spoke, Annja guessed he was drunk. That could be very good for her. Or very bad. Like, basically, everything here and now, she thought.

She forced herself to sit up. Though her head had mostly cleared, the exertion drained her; she slumped back against the wall.

Her s.h.i.+rt was untied and fell open. She still had the green sports bra on, and it was a pretty effective sight barrier. Still, she arched her back to thrust her cleavage, such as it was, toward her captor.

”I know where I stand,” she told the startled-looking marshal. ”I'm completely at your mercy here. If I just vanish, who'd ever know?”

He blinked at her owlishly. ”This is true. But why tell me this? Isn't it against your interests?”

She smiled as seductively as she knew how. Given her track record, that wasn't very. ”I figure my best chance is to earn your goodwill. So I want to show you a victory celebration you'll never forget,” she said.

Cross my heart and hope not to die.

”Ah,” he said.

”Do you want me tied?” She tossed back her hair. ”I can do much better for you if my hands are free.”

He stared at her with one brow arched.

Did I overplay my hand? she wondered as the moment stretched toward infinity.

Then inspiration hit. ”Or are you afraid? You can't take us Western women lightly, you know,” she said, challenging him.

He glared at her. Now Annja feared she had pushed too hard. Then he laughed. His laughter had a ragged edge to it. An ugly edge.

”You Western women,” he said, swaggering toward her, ”are arrogant and spoiled. You always overestimate yourselves. As you underestimate us Asians.”

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