“You showed us a picture of your mother and they could have been twins. It became obvious that your plan was to rescue your mother, but not have the prison even realize she was gone.” He added, in genuine admiration, “It really was a brilliant plan, Ms. Steers.”
“Continue,” she said tersely, but her expression showed that his praise had pleased her.
“However, without the men knowing, Thura overheard them saying that they were going to kidnap your mother and hold her hostage. They were planning to blackmail you into paying a hundred million in U.S. dollars for her return.”
Steers once more looked at Thura. “You heard this?”
He nodded, keeping his gaze on her. “Yes. Their passports said they were Pakistani. But they were speaking English at the hotel where I overheard them. They were stupid to do so. Everybody speaks English in Burma, but Urdu or Pashto, not so much.”
“So you still call it Burma?” questioned Steers.
“Yes. What is this ‘Myanmar’ bullshit? I was born inBurma, not this other place.”
Steers actually smiled warmly at the man’s heartfelt words.
Nash was surprised at how much this changed the woman’s overall appearance.She seems. . .human. Well, almost.
Nash then gave Thura an appreciative look and took up the conversation. “So we decided not to meet up with them, but to follow them instead. We got there before the ambulance. The team you hired shot all the prison guards when the ambulance arrived and were about to shoot your guy on the inside when I set off some homemade bombs. We managed to kill all of them and save your mother and the guard. We gave him the monies we found on the kidnappers. They obviously had no intention of paying him. We told him about their plan and then had him drive the woman substituted for your mother on to the hospital in one of the kidnappers’ vehicles. The woman is no doubt at the prison, the guard is a hero, and the other guards and the ambulance driver and the kidnappers are dead. So they can’t tell anyone about the substitution. Your plan, as modified by conditions on the ground, worked to perfection.” Nash added, “And Thura here went above and beyond the call of duty, so I told him that he would be taken care of, too. He has earned a just reward.”
Steers glanced at each of them before settling her gaze back on Nash. She said nothing but studied him for several uncomfortable moments. Nash felt like his mind was being x-rayed by the woman. But he kept his expression calm and stared earnestly back until she finally said, “Thank you for successfully bringing my mother to me.”
Nash said, “And thankyoufor your faith in us.”
She looked at him again, conjuring in Nash that x-ray feeling once more.
Fortunately Temple said, “So where do we go from here, Ms. Steers?”
“I think showers, fresh clothes, food, and sleep are the obvious next moves for each of you,” she said, running her eyes over their dirty faces and hands, soiled clothing, and wan features. “We will reconvene when you have sufficiently recovered.” She took up her phone and sent off various messages. Within a minute more attendants had entered the space and led the men away.
Nash looked back at Steers as she sat in her throne chair, staring off. He knew her suggestion that they reconvene later had been made more to buy herself time to process all this than it had to do with concerns over their personal comfort.
Yet where it went from here, Nash did not know.
Perhaps now, with her actual plan foiled, neither does Victoria Steers.
CHAPTER
26
THE NEXT DAY, BATHED, RESTED,and fed, and wearing clean clothes, Nash and Temple stood outside on the balcony of their apartment. As before they had also turned on the radio to disrupt any sort of electronic eavesdropping.
Thura had been ensconced in another apartment on the same floor.
Temple yawned, stretched, and said, “I have to say I’m happy as hell to be out of Myanmar, but I’m not sure we’re any safer here, really.”
Nash nodded, his look absent, his thoughts far away.
His voice as low as possible, Temple said, “And you played it really well turning the tables on the other guys and lettingthembe the scapegoats.”
Nash kept his gaze on the cityscape below. At the airport in Hong Kong he had surreptitiously thrown away the phone Thura had given him. He didn’t like not having communication capability, but he knew that Steers would search all they had, and if she found it the woman would demand that he unlock it. And while his communications with the FBI were secure, the app he was using to communicate with the Bureau would be impossible to explain. And if she demanded that he show her his messages, and he refused?
I’d be dead, regardless of my having saved her mother.
He couldn’t be candid with Temple, either, since his goal was to take him down too. So his thoughts were his own for now, and his counsel as well.
He said quietly, “What interests me far more are how things will be now between mother and daughter.”
“You’re thinking maybe the queen is no longer the queen?” noted Temple.