Little Girl Gone - Brett Battles

“Instead, my friends led me out a back window and away from the temple. We found a family that gave us clothes so that we could change out of our robes, and hats so that we could try to cover our bald heads. Those three monks stayed with me all the way to the border. But they didn’t cross with me. They wanted to make sure I got out, so I could let people know what had happened.” He stopped again, his eyes watching the street, but Logan wasn’t really sure which city he was actually seeing. “They went back to Rangoon to continue the fight. Two of them disappeared the next day. The other was crippled.

“When I came back here, I never put my robes on again. It wasn’t some kind of protest or fear that the Myanmar Secret Police would find me. I was back in Thailand. There was nothing they could do to me. What made me quit was that moment in the temple in Rangoon while my brothers were screaming in pain, and the temple was filled with chaos. I wanted to rush out…yes, to help them, but I also wanted to hurt those who were hurting my fellow monks. I felt rage, and hatred, and it didn’t go away when I returned. I knew I couldn’t be a monk anymore.

“What I could do, though, was find other ways to help. Make some money on the black market here, send some much needed supplies there. Help smuggle out videos so the rest of the world could see what’s happening over the border, and make sure the lines of communication were never severed. Of course, no matter how much I do, it’s not enough.”

He turned and looked at Logan. “This Elyse, she might be American, but she’s also Burmese. We have to look out for one another, you know.” After nearly a minute of silence he said, “What about you? Why are you doing this?”

Once more, Logan was caught off guard. Why was he doing this? First and foremost for Elyse, because she was in no position to help herself. And for Tooney, of course. And even for his father.

But he was also doing it for Carl.

And, ultimately, for the girl in the street.

“I’m helping a friend,” he said, and left it at that.

Just after noon, Daeng’s cell phone rang. He smiled as he talked and nodded at Logan.

“They’re finishing up,” he said when he was through.

They positioned themselves so that they had a clear view of the door they expected the men would use as an exit. Five minutes later, it opened, and the two men walked out, each carrying a large duffle bag.

“Recognize either of them?” Daeng asked.

“Both.” The first was the guy who’d carried Elyse onto the airplane in Santa Monica. The second was the guy Logan assumed was Aaron Hughes.

“So we’ve got the right guys?”

“Definitely.”

Logan and Daeng watched as the men flagged down a taxi, then hopped in. A few seconds after it took off again, a motorcycle taxi with one of Daeng’s men on it followed. And three minutes after that, Logan and Daeng were doing the same in Daeng’s car. They drove around for a half hour, then the driver, who’d been keeping in constant contact with the guy on the motorcycle, turned his head and spoke with Daeng.

“The cab pulled over, but only one of the men got out,” Daeng translated. “I have people following both now, but which one do you want us to stick with?”

“The younger guy,” Logan said, thinking of Aaron.

Daeng had a quick exchange with the driver, then said, “He’s the one still in the taxi.”

“Then we follow the taxi.”

Logan checked his watch. It was just after 4:30. Who knew where Elyse was now? His only hope was that Aaron or the other guy would lead them to her.

A couple of minutes later, Aaron’s taxi made a second stop.

“He’s taken the duffle bags out, and entered a construction site,” Daeng told Logan, relaying the information from the driver.

“Can you get us close enough so we can see?” Logan asked.

The driver took them to within a block of the structure. It was a ratty, unfinished building that looked like construction had stopped soon after they’d poured the concrete for each of the seven floors, and long before any interior work or walls on the outside had begun. Moss and dirt covered the pillars, while wild grass and bushes had been left to flourish across the lot. Logan got the impression that several people were making the place their not-so-temporary home.

Daeng took the phone from the driver so he could talk with his man on the scene. “He’s gone all the way through the building to the open area in back,” he said to Logan as he listened.

Logan looked ahead, straining to see, but that portion of the lot was out of sight.

“He’s talking to someone…a squatter, it sounds like…my guy can’t get close enough to hear the conversation…okay, the farang is handing over the duffle bags…the squatter’s carrying them to…I guess there’s a fire pit back there…he’s putting the bags in the fire…the farang’s watching…the bags are fully in flames now…okay, hold on, hold on…they’re walking back toward the street and… the farang is handing him some money…”

Talk about thorough, Logan thought. Aaron and his friends were apparently not willing to just toss whatever they’d cleaned up into the trash. They wanted it burned. That was too bad. It would have been nice to see what was inside those bags.

“…he’s heading back to the taxi now,” Daeng finished.

Logan looked down the street. A few seconds later, Aaron came out from the building and climbed into his cab. The pursuit then continued as before.

The third stop was at a building that couldn’t have been more different than the one Aaron had just visited. It was a modern-looking, glass business tower, twenty stories high. One of Daeng’s men was able to get into the lobby just as the elevator doors closed on the car Aaron was in. The man watched the indicator. It stopped on the fourteenth floor, then headed back down.

“Send him up,” Logan said, after Daeng asked him what he wanted to do.

According to the man, there were several different suites on the fourteenth floor: an import-export business, an accounting firm, and a few offices that were only marked with names of people.

“Make sure he doesn’t give himself away,” Logan warned.

Daeng shook his head. “He won’t.”

Suddenly he pressed the phone tightly against his ear, listening hard.

“I think the farang just came out of one of the offices. My man can’t talk.”

There was a tense several minutes when they didn’t know what was happening, then Daeng said, “They’re in the main lobby, heading out. He says another man came out of the office, too. A farang also. They both got onto the elevator, and my man joined them.”

“You’re kidding,” Logan said, concerned.

“It’s okay. Standing in the hallway like he was, he’d have been more noticeable if he hadn’t gotten on.”

That may have been true, but it still had Logan worried.

“He says they didn’t talk on the way down, but did give each other a little nod as they got out at the bottom. Also says our guy is now carrying a large envelope.”

An envelope? Logan was very interested to see what was inside of that.

Daeng was silent for a moment, then said, “The two farang are outside now. The young guy is heading back to his taxi, but the other one is walking down the street. What do you want to do?”

“Your guy in the building, is he the only one other than us following the cab?”

“No. There are three others.”

Logan raised an eyebrow, impressed. “Then have him follow this new guy, and see where he goes. The rest of us will stay with the cab.”

Suddenly they had quite an operation going. Along with the group following Aaron’s taxi, there was a man tagging after the guy who’d gotten out of the cab before Aaron had burned the duffle bags, and now there was this new guy, too.

Logan’s phone began to vibrate in his pocket. He frowned as he read the name on the display screen: DAD. Things were a little too crazy at the moment to deal with his father, so Logan sent the call to voicemail.

A half a minute later, his phone rang again.

“Dad, not now,” he said, realizing the only way to get rid of him was to talk to him.

“Logan, is that you? I think we got disconnected before.”

“No, I sent you to voicemail on purpose. I’m a little busy here.”

“We haven’t even heard from you. We didn’t know if you made it or not.”

“I made it, okay? I’ll call you later.”

“Have you found her?”

“That’s what I’m working on right now.”

“Oh. Oh, okay. So you’re busy?”

“Dad, please. I’ll call you later. I promise. Okay?”

His father said nothing for a moment. “Tooney wants to know what you really think the chances are of finding Elyse and bringing her home.”

Logan took a breath. “Better than I would have hoped. Now, I really gotta go.”

“Wait, there’s something else you need to know.”

“What?”

“Elyse’s mother is on her way to Thailand.”

Logan paused. “Sein?”

“She finally called Tooney back. Yelled at him for not telling her what was going, then said she was going to go take care of it herself.”

“How did she find out?”

“We don’t know.”

“Great. Just…great.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Dad. Nothing you could do. I’ve really got to go now.”

“Okay. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Daeng was staring at Logan as he hung up. “What was that all about?”

“A complication we don’t need.”

“What complication?”

Before Logan could answer, Daeng suddenly pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at the screen. He then pushed a button, said something, then listened for several seconds. Finally, he looked over. “It’s the man I have following the guy from the meeting with Aaron.”

“What’s going on?”

“Apparently, he entered another office tower. My man followed him up to the eighteenth floor, only when he got out of the elevator he was on one of those floors where a single company uses the whole space. There was a reception area and a waiting room, but the guy he was following was gone. My man immediately came back down.”

“Did he get the name of the company?”

“Let me check.” Daeng talked into his phone again. The back and forth went on longer than Logan would have thought. Daeng then said, “Sorry. His English isn’t so good, but he knows the alphabet, so I made him spell it for me. He had to find the directory downstairs first. The place is called Lyon Exploratory Research. Mean anything to you?”

Logan shook his head. “Never heard of it.” He pulled out his notebook, and jotted down the name so he wouldn’t forget.

“The cab’s pulling over again,” Daeng announced. “They’re at…oh, crap.” He leaned forward and said something quickly to the driver.

Suddenly they were accelerating down the street, no longer trying to blend in with the traffic. They came around a corner onto a wider road, then stopped in front of a large building with hundreds of people milling around.

“Where are we?” Logan asked.

Daeng already had his door open and was starting to climb out. “Hualamphong train station,” he said. “Come on!”

Logan jumped out, and ran after Daeng through the crowd.

“I told my guy to follow the farang inside.” Daeng lifted his phone back to his ear, and had a quick conversation with his man. Without warning, he came to a sudden stop, grabbing Logan’s arm so he’d do the same. “He’s just inside. Seems to be waiting for something.”

He led Logan over to a spot against the outside wall.

“Maybe this is just another quick stop,” Logan suggested.

Daeng shook his head. “His cab’s gone.”

“So where’s he going then?”

“Trains go all over the country. He could even go all the way to Singapore if he wanted. Or he could head over to the MRT, the subway, and take it to somewhere else in the city.”

Daeng’s phone vibrated once. The conversation that followed only lasted a few seconds before he lowered his cell again.

“That was about the farang who got dropped off earlier. He said the guy just pulled up in front of the train station.”

“This train station?”

“Yes.”

That explained who Aaron was waiting for, Logan thought.

Daeng nodded toward the street. The man who had been on clean-up duty with Aaron was walking toward the station entrance. Logan was pretty sure the guy had no idea who he was. Still, he turned away as the man neared just in case.

Daeng was on his phone again, this time with the man inside the building. “As soon as the two farang found each other they were joined by a third.”

“A third?”

“Yeah. A black guy. He handed them train tickets, and now they’re all heading to the platforms.”

Logan took a step away from the building. “They’re leaving?”

“It looks like it.”

They shared a quick look, then ran for the station entrance.

Once through the doors, they found themselves in a large, central hall, its roof rising above them in a gentle arc that stretched the length of the space. In the middle was a tiled area crowded with people, and on one side a couple of hundred plastic, orange-colored seats that all faced the same way. Along the edges of the hall were small shops selling food and magazines and whatever else travelers might need.

“This way,” Daeng said.

They quickly worked their way through the crowd to the glass doors at the left end of the hall where they were met by Daeng’s man. Through the doors, Logan could see the platforms, several of which had trains waiting next to them.

The two men talked quickly, then Daeng said to Logan, “You see them?” He pointed out the window. “Over there, just about to get on that train.”

“I see them,” Logan said.

“Then come on. We need to hurry.”

Instead of leading Logan through the door, Daeng headed straight for the ticket counter in the other direction.

“My bag,” Logan said, suddenly remembering that it was sitting in the back of the car.

Daeng said something to his man, who then ran off while Daeng and Logan continued to the counter. The line was a dozen people deep, but Daeng pleaded their case, and got them to the front. As soon as it was their turn, he told the clerk what they wanted.

There was a quick conversation, then Daeng asked Logan, “You have sixteen hundred baht?”

Logan pulled a couple of one thousand baht bills out of his pocket, and Daeng exchanged them for two tickets and change.

“We’ve got to run,” Daeng said, glancing up at a station clock. It was almost ten after six. “The train leaves in two minutes.”

As they neared the glass doors, the man who’d been driving them around town rushed up, carrying Logan’s backpack.

“Thanks,” Logan said, grabbing it as they passed.

“Mai bpen rai,” the man said.