I WOKE IN a dark room. How long had I slept? A sheet fluttered on my chest, moved by the breeze of a ceiling fan. I touched the bandage on my neck and winced. I had a vague memory of a monocled stranger with a stethoscope leaning over me and putting a cloth over my mouth, sickly sweet. I remembered the glint of a curved needle with a long thread hanging from it, and how I had stared at it with dread.
I remembered landing on a beach and taking a train that hurtled through the night. I saw a brass bell with a dark wood handle on the bedside table. Someone had told me to ring it if I needed anything. I jangled it fiercely.
A man came into the room and I tugged the sheet to my chin. A moment later, I realized it was Byron. He had a beard, which was new.
Byron, from the Clockwork Gang?
“How are you?” he asked, sitting in a rattan chair beside my bed.
“Fine,” I said. I didn’t want to admit I was muddled, or there was something important that he wouldn’t let me do. My voice had come out hoarsely. “Could I have some water, please?”
He jumped up to grab a glass pitcher on an antique side table that had a foreign look, Chinese maybe. As he fussed with the ice cubes, I decided that the beard suited him. Unlike most people, he looked more handsome now that he was older, though of course he hadn’t been a lady-killer before. His features had sharpened and the craggy lines about his eyes proved he’d seen more of life. He still looked uncomfortable in his own skin, but I was glad of it, because his vulnerability was the sweetness in him. Wherever I was, I knew that I was safe with him.
The image of a foreign man in a cap, yelling, came to me. “Is this Bangkok?” I asked.
“Yes.”
Link Hughes was the reason I was in Bangkok. He was in danger. Where were my shoes? The high-ceilinged room, sparsely decorated, yielded no clues about where they might be. The floor was bare. Getting up to look seemed too challenging.
Byron handed me the glass of water with an expression of concern. I supposed I must look terrible. “Why are you here?” I asked.
“I live here, remember?”
“Yes, of course.” I hadn’t until he told me, but things were starting to come back.
“What on earth happened to your neck?”
“Some men boarded our ship to steal our money.”
“Good lord, men who steal things on ships are called pirates. You were attacked by pirates?” His face transformed from frantic to angry—he seemed to take the whole thing personally.
Gathering my strength, I sat up, ignoring the stabbing pain in my neck as I pushed my legs off the bed and onto the floor. Time was short. Link could die of his battle injuries or the Russians could take him for some dark purpose. Byron gripped my arm.
“You will not get out of bed.” He smiled to soften his words. “That’s what the doctor said.”
“Your doctor doesn’t know me. Look, I came here to find someone and that’s what I’m going to do. I suppose if you’re here, you must know about him?”
“Mostly. Link Hughes, you mean.” Byron sounded cautious.
“So you’re in with Bill again. How could you, after all he’s done?” I tried to stand up, but my head started spinning. I put my hands over my face, hoping the world would settle. It was only my wound that made me feel this way. “After he let us think him dead for three years? Or did you always know?”
“I was as shocked as anyone. Only heard a few months back, when I was in Washington. I don’t know. When a dead man summons, don’t you go?”
I stared at him silently.
“You came.”
I was amazed Byron had the nerve to say such a thing. It wasn’t like the old Byron at all, but it was true. “Only because of Link Hughes. Bill tried to ruin my life when he was in jail. He threatened to tell everything he knew about me.”
“Jesus. That’s low. Did he do it?”
“He seems to have told one person, at least. That was enough.” I lay on the pillow with my eyes closed. “Please tell me about Link.”
“Bill was working with the British in Siam right after the war, liberating the prisoners who worked on the Death Railway—”
“Oh God. Death Railway?” I felt sick. What had I done?
“I’m sorry. I thought you would know that. At least your friend lived.”
Bill probably had some plan to keep Link away from me as long as possible, so I’d have to talk to him instead. I would not do it. There were other ways. I gathered all my strength to smile at Byron sweetly, and took his hand. He flushed. Byron had always been a simple puzzle.
“Can I see him? Right away?” I asked.
He whispered something, a single syllable.
“What was that?” I prodded.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“He disappeared from the POW hospital in Nakom Paton, but don’t worry. We’ve got men combing the city for him. You need to rest now.”
I couldn’t stand it. I’d come all this way and been so close. What if the Russians had him? But I could not move, or even open my eyes. Once again the world seemed to slide away.
I WOKE WHEN the darkness was broken by a pattern tossed on the floor by the pale blue dawn, coming in through the perforated wooden screens. The air was hot and humid, and I remembered right away I was in Bangkok. I felt a momentary sense of panic, wondering if Miss Maggie could be tracing me every step of the way. But how? I had to focus on Link. He was the reason I’d taken these risks. I had to get moving. I rang the bell by my bed.
A few minutes later there was a gentle knock at the door, which swung open with a creak. The light flared on over my bed, a crystal chandelier that I found too bright. Byron had some dresses hooked over one arm, and he was also carrying a tray. He must have been awake already.
“You look better,” he said, and put the tray carefully on my lap. “Eat up, you need your strength.”
“Does that mean you have news about Link?”
He sighed and sat down, moving the dress he had draped over the crook of one arm onto the rattan chair. “There’ve been some sightings that sound promising, but we haven’t got him yet.”
“He’s in danger. There are people who are out to get him.” I tried to sit up, and Byron propped up my pillows for me.
“There’s nothing we can do in the next five minutes. Will you please eat?”
“It does smell good,” I admitted as my stomach growled. I hadn’t eaten since I was on the Quarlo with Frederick, I realized. A day ago, if not longer. I had a clear memory of his wooden sailboat now. Surely I would soon be strong enough to look for Link myself. I supposed there’d be time to grill Byron further when I was done eating. He wasn’t going anywhere. I cut up the meat, which seemed to be kidney, and pushed it with my knife onto some warm buttered toast.
“Sorry it’s so British. These heavy breakfasts are all you can get,” he said. “Only a handful of Americans live here.”
“It’s delicious,” I said, between mouthfuls. Finished in only a few minutes, I laid down my silverware with a clatter and leaned back against my pillow.
Fidgeting in his chair, Byron stood up again, and held up the dress. “Do you like it? The one you’re wearing got wrecked.”
I looked down and saw the orange dust on it, a rip at the sleeve, and splotches of dried blood down the front. “You’re not kidding.”
He still looked at me anxiously.
“Yes, I like it,” I said. And I did. At least I would look pretty when I finally saw Link again—if I ever did see him.
Byron lifted the tray from my lap and put it on a side table.
“So, from the beginning, Byron,” I said. “How did you end up in Bangkok?”
He settled himself back into the rattan chair, steepling his fingers in front of his mouth. He looked nervous, but he’d always been nervous around me. “I owned a little bar in Washington. Then I got a message out of the blue from Bill, inviting me to join his business here. He said he’d gone clean, or I never would have considered it.”
“And is he clean?”
Byron looked pained, hesitated, and picked up a red fan from the side table. He flipped it open and shut, open and shut. “The business is opium, but he seems to be.” He waved the fan in front of his face. “Believe it or not, the drug’s legal here. The government runs opium dens, and any extra is sold to the British for their Indian hospitals. There’s strict quotas. It’s pretty mundane and bureaucratic, really.”
“But lucrative, from the looks of your house.”
“Yes,” he said, smiling.
“So how did Bill escape from jail?”
“A powerful person was involved and it was covered up. That’s all I know.”
“How’d Bill know where to find me?”
“Shively, the navy man. He was on the Esquimalt base.”
The name was familiar and I tried to place it. Goddamn it, it was the dreadful little man who brought me Bill’s threats three years ago. I should have known he’d been tracking me, but it hadn’t seemed to matter after I thought Bill died. A dog never does any tricks when the master is gone.
“Did you know about Frederick?” I asked.
“Who’s Frederick?”
His puzzlement seemed genuine. I studied his face a moment longer. “Sho-nuff. He changed his name and got that boat he always wanted. He sailed me here from Honolulu. Bill asked him to do it.”
“Sho-nuff? That’s strange. Bill never mentioned it. It’s like he’s bringing the gang back together.”
I ignored that comment. I wanted no part of it. Bill’s schemes were an eternal wheel, crushing everything in its path, and I did not want to get dragged under it.
“Frederick did my stitches,” was all I said.
“The doctor added a few more, but he admitted the ones you had were done well enough, for an amateur job.” Byron paused and seemed to join me for a moment in wondering at the strangeness of it all. “It’s funny to hear him called Frederick,” he said. “It sounds so formal.”
“I guess we’ve all changed in some way, and don’t want to be seen as we were before.”
“I’ve certainly changed.”
I thought of what I’d seen of this mansion when we arrived yesterday. Byron had no need for such show. It wasn’t his style, and he didn’t seem to have changed so much to me. “This is Bill’s place, isn’t it,” I said. I stared around the room, panic and rage battling in me, past Byron drooping in his chair, almost expecting Bill to be somewhere nearby, grinning. The man I once loved more than anything. The man who sold my freedom to Miss Maggie.
Byron nodded miserably. “I’m sorry.”
“I won’t stay here another second. I don’t ever want to see him.” I raised myself in bed, suppressing a groan, and put my feet onto the ground. The bastard probably took pleasure in thinking of me crying over his death. I’d never tell him, or Byron for that matter, that I had. Tears were transient, just water, after all—they would sizzle into nothing under a hot sun. It was only sorrow for the time I wasted on him, that was all.
“You need help,” he said. “I’ll take you to a hotel.”
I didn’t answer.
“I know Bangkok, and you don’t. I can help you look for Link Hughes. If you’ll let me. I’m on your side.”
I felt like I was tumbling into a pit in which my old and new life, and all the mistakes from both, were roiling around together, a bunch of bloody crocodiles. I was angry with Byron for going along with it all, but I had to take my allies as I found them. He was easily influenced by Bill, but in the end I meant more to him—or at least I had, in the old days. Maybe Byron would lead me to Link Hughes and I could bypass Bill entirely.
“Fine. Get me out of here,” I said.