Chapter 23 - A Silent Glimpse

Thursday, August  15, 2024 - 10:54 AM

Jia Kun struggled to gain consciousness. Sleepy, eyes cracked open, a blur of light, she was curious where she was. Bruised, the back of her head, her calves, a spot on her right hip, and a sharp pain in her left thigh. Her whole body ached, and a mild throbbing in her chest.  Lifting her head was hard. She felt weak, without control. Where was she? She couldn’t remember much of anything. But what about now? She was lying on a bed, a thin mattress, no blanket, and a strange odor. She tried lifting her right arm, but without control, it flopped over her chest. Something hard was in her left hand, cold, metallic; she squeezed her hand, hard edges, small. Turning her head, blurry images of a room, olive green walls, and small windows up high. Can’t feel legs, disoriented, despairing. A myna’s whistles, clicks, and squawks…okay…in a room, somewhere in a jungle. That was better, feels good. 

“Jia?” a faint, small voice called out.  “Jia, that you?” 

Jia Kun slowly, forcefully, turned her head toward the sound. Gazing through the blur, she blinked her eyes, squeezed them shut, willed them open, then squinted. Nearby, a metal-framed bed with a thin grey mattress and a small person lying on her side. “Jia?”  The voice called out again, a little stronger.

Jia Kun tried to speak, but her mouth was dry and bitter. “Gely?” 

Gely Suy's voice was small, quiet, laced with fear. “Jia, where are we? What happened?”

Jia Kun tried to sit up, focus, and look toward the figure on the other bed. Moving caused her ankles and wrists to sear with pain, as if her skin had been scraped to the bone with a knife. Finally…sitting on the side of her bed, she opened her left hand. Inside, a small medallion. She stared at the medallion, thinking about it, when Gely stumbled across the room and flopped, sitting onto the bed next to her.

“That’s your medallion, Jia. Your Auntie gave you.”

Jia Kun's eyes were still blurry, but she could make out the medallion in her hand and Gely sitting beside her. She couldn’t remember how she got in this room, or why she felt sleepy and bruised, but she did remember Auntie Sabriya giving her the St. Michael Foundation medallion. Where was the gold chain?

“I’m scared, Jia. I don’t know what’s happening. Why are we here? Why aren’t we at school?” Gely began to weep quietly. She was afraid someone might hear her. 

“Don’t know, Gely. Let’s get out…go home.”

Jia Kun's body hurt all over; she was weak, and her vision was still blurry, although not as bad as a few minutes ago. She tightened her fist around the medallion and stood up, pulling Gely up off the bed with her. Turning and looking around the small room, there was only one door. The walls were bare, and the windows were very small, set way at the top of the room, too high to reach or see out of. The cold cement floor was cracked from one side of the room to the other. She went to the heavy wooden door and pulled on the square handle; the door would not open. She pushed, but it would not move. She could not see how the door opened or closed. There were no hinges or straps that seemed to hold it in place. She got down on her knees and looked through the crack next to the floor, centimeters wide, into the room beyond. It looked like there was furniture, a chair, and a table, but she could see nothing else, nor anyone else. She got up, and with Gely, they both pulled and pushed on the square handle. The door didn’t budge. 

Gely wept, went back to her bed, and sat down. Jia Kun joined her and opened her hand with the medallion. “My Auntie taught me a prayer if I was ever in trouble. It’s a prayer for help to the angel on the medallion. Can you see the picture of him? He holds a sword?”

“Idols aren’t real, you know,” said Gely. 

“Auntie said this isn’t an idol like some people have and worship. This is just a picture of a powerful angel from heaven, named Michael. I want to say the prayer. Do you want to say it with me?”

Gely shrugged her shoulders. “I dunno. What good will it do?”

“I don’t know, but it’s something. Maybe it will help us.”

“Aren’t you scared?” asked Gely.

Jia Kun held out her hand; her whole arm shook. 

Gely was skeptical. “I just think idols are stupid.”

“It’s not an idol.” Jia Kun opened her fist so Gely could see the image of Michael. “Okay, I’m going to pray it. You don’t have to.” Jia Kun stared at the medallion in her hand and, in a shaking, soft voice, prayed. “Dear St. Michael, defend us in battle…”

After she was done praying, she wondered what to do with the medallion. “I have no pocket to put the medallion into. I might lose it. No necklace. I need a string.”

Immediately, Gely started scratching the edge of the mattress. The corner of the mattress was ribbed. Gely got on her knees and chewed on the ribbing. The outer layer came loose, and she pulled on the threads inside the outer sheath. The threads would not come out. She crawled a meter down the mattress and began chewing on the rib again, revealing the internal threads. But she kept chewing until the threads were broken through. She pulled, and a long, strong string or piping emerged from the outer sheath.  There was a hole on one edge of the medallion where the ring clasp had once attached itself. Jai Kun threaded the piping through the hole, tied the ends together, and Gely took the loop and put it over Mi’s head. After that, Jia tucked the medallion inside her top. 

“Now what?” Jia Kun asked. “I’m getting hungry.” The backpacks they had worn to school, which contained books and their lunch, were gone…along with their memory. 

Just then, an outer door in the adjacent room opened with a metal squeak and a clang. Men’s voices mumbled as heavy footsteps approached. More murmuring, and then a crash bar was removed from the outside of the door to the room where Jia Kun and Gely were imprisoned. The door creaked open, and two men in jeans, tennis shoes, black T-shirts, and hoods entered the room. 

No words were spoken. One man grabbed Jia Kun's forearms, and a second grabbed Gely's, and the girls were marched, stumbling out of the room. An unseen observer would have heard two girls weeping as they were led off, the footsteps scuffing across cement, then gravel, another door clanging shut, several doors of a car opening along with a trunk, some more shuffling and crying, then a door slamming shut, a car driving off…and finally silence. 

Chapter 22 - Sapphire Wat Phra Temple

Note: Name change. Jai Kun's friend, who was kidnapped at the same time, was known as "Dao."  I've recently changed her name to "Gely Suy" to honor a Customer Service Representative from S.E. Asia that helped me solve a problem with software. Thanks, Gely...Gely Suy is an important character in this story, though you won't know why until the very end. 

Master Sengha

Thursday, August  15, 2024 - 10:04 AM

The Pangina Mountain terrain, just west of Yung Fa Ho, was a paradox of lush, fertile valleys and ancient, weathered rock columns left by natural erosion. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years ago, Buddhist and Daoist monks carved a steep, sacred staircase into the rock substrate, leading from the valley’s green vegetation to the massive, moss-covered conglomerate pillar on which the Sapphire Wat Phra temple was perched. At the base of the ascent, large white aerial roots of an ancient Banyan tree channel a mammoth boat constrictor as they wrap around the walls of an antecedent shrine, commanding awe, if not adoration, of how natural and man-made structures can coalesce.

Sabriya’s SEC would not scale the 400-meter-high, steep, and narrow staircase to the monastery, and, despite her physical conditioning and sometimes fearless demeanour, heights were her foe and vertigo her ruin.  As she climbed the staircase and calmed her nerves, she was reminded of the Buddhist emphasis on suffering, the pursuit of perfection, the importance of virtue, wisdom, patience, and truthfulness, and of how actions have consequences that determine one’s future. On the surface, such values and the recognition of karma were not that different from Catholic moral teachings on Natural Law, which explained how a Buddhist monk and a Catholic nun could become friends, as Master Singha and Sister Linsim had become, while pursuing the intricacies of Wing Chun kung fu.  

Sister Linsim

Near the top of the staircase, before she entered the Temple gate and Monastery plaza surrounded by cream brick buildings and pointy canopied roofs of green tile with upturned corners, Sabriya came to a rocky outcrop that loomed hundreds of meters above the verdant valley. There on the edge, in Padmasana, or Lotus pose, sat her venerable sensei in his brown and maroon priestly robes, facing the infinite expanse of the haze-covered valley. Master Sengha was the picture of serenity, basking in a state of relaxation that Sabriya could not imagine. In her mind, she saw Jia Kun on the outcrop, but her daughter was not sitting securely on the rock; she was dangling over the edge, suspended by a frayed thread. 

Joining Singha on his rock required a literal leap of faith, over a 50-meter chasm, at the bottom of which was a mystical stream of water, the source of which was a mystery at this height on what appeared to be a barren monolith. Evidently, reaching serenity required risking one’s life. Sabriya was sure Jia Kun was not risking less. She jumped and landed with a thump—suddenly shattering her sensei’s peace.

 The monk turned in surprise. “Sabriya?!”

Sabriya bowed low in honor of her sensei.”I come on an urgent matter, Master.”

“A long way you have come. Are you well?”

“Well enough, but not in mind.”

“Anguish is temporary, my dear, made smooth by the many waters of a flowing, ever-changing stream.”

“Miwu Cun. Do you know this village?”

Singha thought for only a moment. “Yes, the lost mist village. It is nearby, not nearly lost as it would seem.”

“My niece and my daughter, who is 12 years old, live there with my sister. Only recently, after many years, have I been reunited with them.”

“They are one and the same, this niece and daughter? ”

“Yes, a long-held secret for her safety.” Sabriya paused to collect her thoughts and a semblance of serenity. “Yesterday, two men kidnapped her and a friend on their way to school. We believe they are being trafficked, perhaps out of the country. They were taken from the village in an old, green, rusted cargo van and driven here into the Yung Fa Ho district. To find the van, rescue my daughter and her friend, and bring justice to the traffickers is my objective. The boy who escaped from the captors described the van as resembling a frog. Do you know of such a van, possibly green and old?”

The Sensei closed his eyes, relaxed, and thought deeply. After a minute, “My daughter, this may not bring you the peace you seek.”

“What do you mean? To seek justice is to seek peace. To avoid justice is to avoid peace.”

“Do you really seek justice or revenge?”

“When a child is violated, justice and revenge are one and the same, are they not?”

“It may seem so, but to bring harm to another is not peace. To aggravate belligerence will only increase hostility.”

“Hostility will not increase or even continue if the justice is swift, sure, and secure. Wing Chun does not seek increasing attacks, but complete surrender.”

“With honor.”

“Is punishment for wrongdoing honorable?”

“It is desirable.”

“Is wrongdoing honorable?”

“It is not, but surrender can be.”

“Is evil honorable?”

“It is not, but to recant from evil can be.”

“If there is no recanting, is there honor?”

At this, Sensei recanted. “There can be honor in retreating, but only when retreating from evil.”

“And returning to good.”

“Yes.”

“So, if evil has taken my children and refuses to recant, how can justice without revenge bring peace?”

Sensei sat upright, straight-backed, and respectful, staring coldly at his student for a long time. Finally, “I am sorry. I am not familiar with such a vehicle. Perhaps those who are younger and visit the villages are more observant than I. We shall ask them. Come.”

Sengha effortlessly rose to his bare feet, skipped over the chasm to the path, and led Sabriya up another flight of steps through the temple gate and into the monastery proper. He stopped at a double door, bowed, and spoke quietly to the doorman, who, after listening to the older monk, scuffled off. Sengha gestured for Sabriya to follow him, and they turned down a hallway and followed a stone path. Several moss-covered steps led to a quiet garden, where they waited patiently in silence.

After a few minutes, a half-dozen young men in traditional sabongs (wraparound orange-and-brown robes) with shaved heads and eyebrows entered the garden on bare feet and stood before Venerable Sengha and bowed respectfully to Sengha and Sabriya. Sengha explained Sabriya’s situation and request.  The young monks chatted quietly among themselves, excitedly nodding, and then the oldest spoke with an enthusiasm that Sabriya considered unnatural for the otherwise patient and calm personalities. 

“Master, a few of us are familiar with a vehicle such as you describe, but it is associated with men who are not peaceful, and are known to be associated with activities that bring unrest, theft, and danger to villagers.” He bowed his head for a moment before continuing, embarrassed to reveal what came next. “One morning, our brothers here were making alms rounds, and some of these men appeared, took our bowls, looking for money, but only finding rice and mangos, threw them to the street, and destroyed the gifts with their feet. To Sabriya, he said, “If you search for this van, you must take an army.”

“Where might this particular van be?” asked Sabriya. “It was used to kidnap two girls from a village.”

The young men chattered among themselves for a moment. Then came the answer Sabriya sought: “On the road, from here, just before Yung Fa Ho, there is a village of corrugated dwellings and one cinderblock building, surrounded by a field of old conveyances, motor vehicles, and farm implements. There is a water tank on a building north of the road, just a few kilometers from the city. You might find the van there among the others. But you will not be safe, they are very dangerous men. ”

Sabriya thanked the young monks and her sensei, then hurried to the staircase. She didn’t want to disrespect the young monks and Venerable Sengha, but the danger that lay ahead was not for her, but for the men who took Jai Kun and Gely Suy; she cared not in the least about their peace.

Chapter 21 - Sapp's Plan - Muddy Tracks - Finding Busaba

Miwu Cun Village Constable Pak Budi

Thursday, August  15, 2024 - 8:30 AM - Mannu District

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, so the twat saw you at Cabbage. Maybe she’ll scare…not so bad. That she got as far as Miwu Cun is more than I expected. Are you in Yung Fa Ho?” 

Sapptoso stopped in mid-sentence, listening to the flip phone plastered against his left ear. He stood in his office, a converted exam room in the abandoned Mannu Clinic, gazing out the window at the moss-covered canal that nonetheless opened to the South China Sea. He took a slug of his beer; the day promised to be hot. He’d keep cool in his trench waiting for events to percolate, perhaps better than he had planned. Revenge was so sweet…if he could have it. Suddenly, Sapp put down his beer and turned sharply in a huff, listening to his phone. 

“What d’ya mean there’re two?” His eyelids blinked away a cobweb. “What? There were three?” Sapp’s whole body shook in disgust. “Let me get this straight. Phillipo grabbed two girls? Are they healthy, good-lookin'?” 

Sapp listened.

“Marco, if the kid saw Sully’s weird van and can give a description, she'll find them." Sapptoso paced as he listened. 

“And she’s alone? Good! Better than I hoped for. Okay, listen. Here’s what we do. VJ is letting us know where she is, so you don't need to track her. Stay with the kids, Phillipo, and Da Rik.  Grab the bitch when she shows up at Sully’s and eliminate her. Three against one should be a snap for you three grunts.” 

Sapp scratched a mosquito bite on his neck, then looked at his hand to see a smear of blood. He spit on his hand and rubbed the bite again. 

“Naw, she won’t stay at Miwu Cun long. Sully’s van is well known up there. She’ll find it, and then you three can take care of business. It’s like I was hoping, the kid is bait. Be as rough as you want."

Sapp listened, frowned, and threw back his head in disgust. “No! I want her gone…all of her.”

There was more chatter on the other end of the call.

“Yeah, yeah! Don't worry. I’ll come and get the kids before she shows up. Again, you three and the kids stay put at Sully’s place. Yeah, I know it’s a junk yard, but it’s safe.”

Sapp slapped his flip phone shut and put it in his jeans’ back pocket, looked around for his can of beer, shook his head in frustration, and downed the rest of the warm brew. “Jerks, all of ’em. Can’t follow the simplest of instructions.” 

Walking to the hallway door, he yelled down the corridor, “Sarsak!? Get your ass in here.”

A barbell clanked onto the floor, and Sarsak, a 19-year-old Pellagorian, muscle-bound, protégé thug in training, jogged out of a doorway toward Sapp.

“Provision the Tank,” demanded Sapp. “Two days to the mountains. Those idiots are going to need help getting our merchandise down here. Flippin’ retards.”

 As Sarsak jogged off, Sapptoso slipped into his Kasdan throne room, knelt before the mammoth bronze representation of his god, lit three candles, and bowed low, praying for sweet revenge.

Thursday, August  15, 2024 - 9:27 AM - Northwest of Miwu Cun

The broken herringbone gold chain, the description of the frog-green van, the tread impression in the mud, and Constable Pak Budi’s suggestion that the Southern Veil gang was involved prompted Sabriya to waste no time in retrieving her SEC from the village, maneuvering it through the underbrush, and heading off to the northwest on the overgrown roadbed, all the while looking for tread marks to confirm she was on the right path.

The going was slow due to the overgrowth. She concluded that the sides of the van must have been scratched while getting through the road. She flicked the toggle on the bike’s console to activate the full duplex comm channel. “Scorp. Sabriya. Copy?”

A moment later, Landon’s voice filled her helmet. “Copy, Sabriya.”

“Are you tracking my movements? I just left Miwu Cun, heading northwest.”

“Yes, we have you moving where there doesn’t seem to be a road.”

“It’s barely one, but it was used by the van that drove off with the kids. I’ve found evidence, a tire tread mark…there’s another one in a bit of mud… and I have a good description of the van. There were two men, ski-masks, all black, muscular. The boy’s not hurt physically, but the village is still in shock. Is David over his vexation?”

There was a pause before Landon came back. “I just sent Vinnie to find him. Any sign of the Chinese?”

“None. No foreign elements or military. I did talk with the part-time village constable. A guy named Pak Budi. He's not aware of any trafficking activity in this region, but his weekly police briefings match the M.O. of Jia Kun's kidnapping with the House of Southern Veil, a mostly coastal trafficking ring.”

“I’ll ask MI6 if they have anything on those names…wait a minute, Vinnie’s back.” 

The comm channel went silent for a moment. 

“Vinnie says David does not…well, let’s just say he’s unavailable.” 

“Okay. That figures. David gets moody when he can’t get his way. Tell him I’ll call in after I defeat the People's Liberation Army and broker a treaty between China and the rest of the world.”

At that moment, the overgrown roadbed led onto a little-used concrete road, forcing Sabriya to the north or south. There were no tread marks, but there was mud debris heading north. “Landon, I just turned off the unmarked road and onto a secondary concrete route that looks familiar...been here before years ago.  I’m heading north, I think toward Yung Fa Ho? If so, isn’t the Safire Wat Phra Buddhist Temple just west of the city, 15 clicks or so?”

“One moment, let me zoom in.” 

There was silence for a moment as Sabriya raced north on the much better road surface. 

“Yes, that’s right. You’re familiar with the Safire Wat Phra?”

“That is where Master Singha is from. I think I will pay him a visit. I know where I am, now. Talk later.”

 As Sabriya accelerated her SEC as fast as she dared, she hoped Jia Kun still had the St. Michael medallion and remembered the prayer she had taught her. Jia Kun's situation was certainly different from how she had revered the amulet and prayed to find Busaba, or so she remembered.  

Flashback - April 2013 - West of Meijing

In the dead of night, Sabriya and Jai escaped the house along Meijing’s Cabbage corridor and managed to evade the goons who had chased them by hiring a series of taxis and ferries, and double-backed across Meijing several times, before they ended up 100 km west of the city. The next day, about noon, they came to a cluster of village shacks stacked close together, constructed from scavenged wood and corrugated aluminum.  Jia Kun was in a sling wrapped around Sabriya’s torso and shoulder. Finding what appeared to be a vacant dwelling, Sabriya sat down outside in the shade on a makeshift bench to rest and breastfed Jia Kun. While her daughter nursed, Sabriya reached into her provisioning bag, dug out Kasden’s sacred amulet. and stared at it. 

 Was the charm powerful enough to help her? Protect her? Give her direction? Her oppressor had used it effectively, or so it seemed, against her and those around him to gain status, exact vengeance, amass power, and accumulate some wealth. She wasn’t sure what she believed about the hunk of embossed tin. Her oppressor believed that the sacred item bestowed magical powers on whoever possessed it. She wondered if, when worn, the charm would protect and guide her, ward off evil, attract good fortune, and give her access to supernatural forces. That sounded too good to be true, but she had little choice. Intended to be worn around the neck on a lanyard, the amulet or medallion was an elaborately stamped oval of tin, 7 cm tall and 3 cm wide, depicting the god of riches, power, and wrath—Kasden —seated on a throne of gold coins and holding a skull.  

Sabriya slipped the charm’s lanyard around her neck, kissed the hunk of tin, caressed it, and silently asked the god of her warden for protection and to help find her sister, Busaba. Would it work? She had never trusted in anything spiritual before. It all seemed superstitious. But she had nothing else, and the task ahead was beyond her understanding and perhaps beyond her strength.

Her objective was the Pangina Mountains. After her parents were killed and her village burned, Sabriya’s brother, Huy, and sister, Busaba, fled the northeast village of Hathou. A cryptic message from her brother, delivered by a stranger, said that Busaba and Huy were heading southeast into the Pangina Mountains, near the Chinese border, but exactly where Sabriya had no idea. She grasped the tin charm in the hope that Kasden would help, but everything she knew about the god of vengeance had led to manipulation, harm, or death.

After hitching rides among wagons and cars headed west, she came to the hill country. Busaba and Huy would never stay in a crowded shack village found on the agricultural plains; her family was mountain folk. She began to ask hill villagers if a couple matching her sister’s and brother’s description had settled there, and if not, where she might look next. There were few roads into the mountains and their fertile slopes and foothills, and into the villages, there were many paths. Finding Busaba would take a while, but she had no other choice, and so she continued to wear the amulet and revere it. She had always associated the amulet with harm, manipulation, and vengeance, so she was surprised when she and Jia Kun were treated with kindness and generosity throughout their journey.

Before long, and it was not as long as she expected, she found Busaba in the small, remote village of Miwu Cun, high in the foothills of the Pangians. Sabriya was sad that Huy had left Busaba to find work. But finding Busaba, nonetheless, was not luck—there had been supernatural help. But was the help from Kasden or something else? 

Chapter 20 - Discovery

 

 Thursday, August  15, 2024 - 7:00 AM

Sabriya rose early, as did Busaba. After a quick breakfast of eggs, berries, and milk, Busaba took Sabriya to the village’s big man, Chief Long Chan, and introduced her as the wife of British Ambassador David Kensington, Jia Kun's aunt, and the woman working with the Queen of Pellagore to stop Pellagore’s trafficking epidemic. 

Chief Long Chan was literally a big man with small eyes, short-cropped black hair, and a round head. But his eyes were active and engaged, and he gave Sabriya his undivided attention. He asked Sabriya many good questions, which Sabriya tried to answer as best she could. She also explained how she, too, was impatient with Parliament’s slowness in establishing a national criminal investigation unit. The Chief had heard that Constable Pak Budi was on his way to their village, but had not yet arrived, and he discounted the idea that the man would be of much help. The school, of course, had been alerted, and parents had been instructed to escort their children to and from school for the foreseeable future. 

Long Chan told Sabriya he had gone to the abduction site but found nothing of interest and doubted that she would either. He explained that Gely Suy, Jia Kun's friend who had also been kidnapped, was not a resident of the village but was visiting an aunt and uncle in the village and was only attending the village school for a few weeks at Jia Kun's invitation. He did not know anything about Dao’s immediate family, who were from a fishing village in the south. The aunt and uncle were so depressed by what had happened that they left the village for a while to stay with relatives in Meijing. 

At her request, the Chief took Sabriya to Liang’s home, where Sovann Chan, Liang’s mother, was still emotionally upset over his close call and thus far had refused to let Liang out of her sight. She had also rejected the idea of allowing Liang return to school, even with an adult escort. Yesterday, Liang’s father and a few other men had gone off to search the area for the girls or their captors, but came back dejected. Today, they had returned to their agricultural and construction jobs. 

Sabriya explained to Sovann, as she had to the Chief, who she was and asked if Liang could accompany her to the kidnapping site and explain where the events took place and what he had seen.

“No, he not need go there. It dangerous,” a wide-eyed Sovann said. “He my only child. He not need to go to school. I always say he should stay and help me. His father have other ideas.”  

Chief Long Chan listened politely to Sovann, then took her aside and whispered gently to her for some minutes. Sovann listened to the Chief and didn’t argue like she was set to do with Sabriya. 

“Okay,” Sovann relented to Sabriya. “I go with you and Liang to place. The Chief, he come, too.”

Usually, it took the Miwu Cun children most of an hour to walk to school. It took the adults about 20 minutes to arrive at the place where Liang indicated they had been abducted, and where they had first seen the men. He explained how the men blocked the path, grabbed them, carried them through the underbrush, and brought them to the truck. Liang took Sabriya through the underbrush to where the truck had been parked on an overgrown roadbed about 20 yards off the school path. 

“What did the truck look like, Liang? 

“It was old. Green like a frog, with spots.”

“Brown spots, like rust.”

Liang shrugged his shoulders.

“Was it a tall delivery truck with no windows, or was it short, about the height of a man, with windows on the side”?

“There were no windows except in the front. There was a door on the side.

“Did the door on the side swing open like a door, or did it slide sideways?”

“It swung open. There were two. One went one way and the other the other way. But they only opened one.”

“Was the top of the truck taller than the men?”

“A little.”

It was a cargo van, Sabriya thought. She walked along the roadbed, looking for tire impressions. Although the ground was soft, grass and vegetation obscured any tire marks. Further along, however, there was a low spot, some mud, and an unmistakable tread mark. She studied it, trying to commit the tread pattern to memory. 

“Show me what tree you hid behind to watch when the van, which I think was a cargo van, drove away.”

Liang took her to a banyan tree and showed her where he hid behind it to watch. 

“You saw the back of the van as it drove away?”

Liang nodded. 

“Do you remember the number plate?” 

Liang thought for a moment and shook his head. 

“You don’t remember what it was, or there wasn’t one?”

“I don’t know.” Liang thought more deeply. “I don’t think there was one.”

“What did the back of the van look like? Was it green with brown spots like the side? Were there windows in the back?”

Liang thought again, trying to recall. “There were no windows. And there were no brown spots, except it was brown near the bottom.”

Rust, thought Sabriya. “Did it look like there were doors on the back?”

Liang thought. “Just one big door with a black handle.”

“Black? Not silver?”

“It was black, ma’am.”

“And it took off in that direction?” She pointed to the northwest.

Liang nodded.

“Now, the men that took Jia and Gely, what did they look like, how many were there?”

“Two.”

“Did you see their faces?”

Liang shook his head. “They had masks, black hoods, like socks.”

“Were they tall and skinny, short, fat?”

“Big arms. Not skinny, but strong. Big shoulders.”

“What color pants and shirts?”

“Black. They were wearing just black, with white running shoes.”

Sovann stood in the underbrush leading back to the path, her arms folded in defiance, and yelled at Sabriya. “You done now? My boy need go home. If not careful, they come back and take all of us.” Her voice trembled, reminding Sabriya of terror’s reality. 

“Okay. Liang, let’s go back to the path and show me again where you and the girls were walking when they grabbed you. Can you do that?”

Liang nodded again and made his way through the underbrush, his pants snagging on thorns and bristles. We’ll have to pick those pickers off by hand when we get back, thought Sabriya. 

Once back on the path, Liang spent a minute or two walking back and forth while studying the ground. Finally, “It was right here,” he said, pointing at the ground.

“And which way did they carry you? Tell me exactly.”

Again, Liang studied the path and the underbrush. “That way.” He pointed obliquely away from the path and toward where the van would have been.

Sabriya walked carefully in the direction Liang pointed, through the brush, looking carefully at the broken stems of bushes and crushed undergrowth. They had not walked this way before, but the men, carrying the kids, sure had. Many twigs and branches of ground shrubs were broken. Suddenly, something caught her eye, a glint. She leaned over and then dropped to her knees, moved aside some foliage, and lifted a gold, herringbone chain necklace. It was the necklace on which the St. Michael-Foundation medallion had been suspended. The clasp had been broken; there was just the chain, no medallion. Sabriya looked carefully among the forest floor for the medallion all the way to the roadbed, but no medallion was found. Perhaps, she thought, Jia Kun still has the medallion in her grasp. 

 

Jia Kun panicked. A big man, dressed all in black and his face covered by a mask, ran at her. She turned to run and pulled Gely after her. But she didn’t see the other man behind them, who instantly grabbed Gely and Liang, who had been lagging behind. For a moment, Jia Kun thought she was free to run back to the village, but suddenly she was yanked from behind and lifted off her feet. The medallion, which she had been showing to Gely, flew into her forehead really hard. It hurt so badly that she grabbed the medallion and clasped her fist around it. But just as quickly, her arm was pried from her body by the man’s arm that encircled her upper body to carry her off. The force pulled at her forearms, her hand, and the medallion. Suddenly, the chain snapped, unthreaded from the medallion, and fell to the ground. 

 

Sabriya reverently lifted the necklace into the open, brushing off the debris. “Look, Busaba!”  

Busaba came quickly and grasped the necklace, gazing at it carefully. “Is this…was the medallion on this?”

“I’m sure of it. I hope she still has it.”

“I gave in and let her wear it. Yesterday was the first day I said yes.” Busaba cried.

“Pray she still has the medallion. It may save her.”

When the troupe returned to the village, Constable Pak Budi was waiting for them. Introductions were made, and Sabriya briefed Pak on what information she had gathered. “Have there been any other reports of trafficking in this area, especially involving young children?” she asked.

“No, Mrs. Kensington,” said Constable Pak. “Nothing at all like this. We’ve been briefed about kidnapping just like you’ve described, but it’s all happening much closer to the coast and Meijing. Kidnapping this far from the coast is very unusual. I’ll ask around and let Chief Long know if anything turns up.”

Sabriya was curious. “Constable, you just said you’ve been briefed about kidnappings just like this one—involving two 12-year-old girls? What was similar, and how far out is too far out?”

“Actually, that 12-year-old girls were involved is the second unusual thing. Usually, the Southern Veil gang is involved chiefly along the southern coast and sometimes in Meijing….”

Sabriya interrupted. “What did you say? The Southern Veil? House of the Southern Veil?”

“Yes, that’s it. ‘House of the Southern Veil.’ Are you familiar with them?”

Sabriya said nothing, but her blood ran cold—ice cold. In her heart she knew that if she didn’t act quickly, the girls would disappear within 12 hours, at the most 18.