Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. – Samuel Johnson

This wasn’t about me anymore. – Jase describing the moment he saw Nessa in Kentung

Jase should have noticed the repetitive vibration in his pocket much sooner than he had, but only after he had dashed past the light and settled himself in the shadow of the compound wall did Jase sense the unexpected movement.

Pulling out the phone, he checked to see if he had somehow missed a phone call. No missed calls, but the flashing icon in the corner indicated that he had received some sort of message. No text message, either. No email.

Finally, Jase fiddled with the phone enough that he managed to scroll directly to the flashing icon. One new voice mail, it said when he clicked on it.

He hadn't even set up a voice mail, he reasoned. Still, he clicked again and pressed the phone up to his ear. Only two people knew his new number, maybe three if Thomas had told Briel, and hearing from any of them boded ill.

As soon as he heard the tone of Nessa's voice, he knew that something horrible had happened. Not panic; Nessa's voice held a mixture of contempt and angry command.

“So, ‘with your appetite, I can't exactly hold your interest?’” Jase wracked his brain for her meaning. “‘I was just a challenge for you,’ and you’re ‘done with’ me?”

Finally, the words wrenched his mind back to his parting moments in San Antonio and his conversation with Drew. Some friend Drew had proven to share those words with her, not that he could blame the man.

How else would he compete with what Jase and Nessa shared? Still, surely, she hadn't chosen to believe Jase's words then over his actions since; maybe she was saying them for someone else’s benefit, for misdirection. Not that he would find out any time soon.

Jase leaned his head back against the mud walls and worked to catch his breath; the whole thing was irrelevant. He wasn’t doing what he was doing to win Nessa’s approval. Even if he died while she hated him, he would count it a small sacrifice to keep her safe. The thought made him sick, but it didn’t change his course. He listened again for some hint of her mind.

“I can’t believe I let myself trust you,” she continued with as much fury. “I can’t believe that I was naive enough to believe that you could change, especially for me.”

Jase listened to the silence for several seconds, hoping to discern the verity of her declarations. Her quiet sob answered the question, jabbing him in the heart and shattering it into a million pieces, pieces which wedged in his mind and rendered him incapable of reason. For several seconds, he couldn't move.

Think, Jase, he commanded himself. Don't be an idiot.

Her anger did not shock him; he had always expected it, and he found himself more surprised by her continued forgiveness. Neither did her rejection or her vitriol bother him too greatly.

Her misery, though, cut him to the quick. It told the depth of her unfounded belief in him, and Jase hated himself for dealing such a deadly blow. Only in the next moment did he realize how deadly.

“On the day you came to ‘rescue’ me from Liam, you were negotiating with Amélie to get back with Bill Henry? Drew told me all about your relationship with Amélie, all the time you were using her to make me jealous. When really all of it stemmed from your plans to get back into ProtoComm. You traitor!”

For a vague minute, Jase couldn’t hear the words coming from the speaker. He suddenly realized the truth of Nessa’s words: “contacted Amélie.” The other person on the computer had been Amélie; how could Jase have missed it? He even recognized the petulance of the tone now that he thought about it. Even as she had stayed in his home, Amélie had worked against Jase to facilitate Nessa’s demise. Typically jealous Amélie.

When Jase recognized the real significance of Nessa’s revelation, though, the hair on his neck stood on end. Three words etched themselves into Jase's mind: “Drew told me...” Drew had told Nessa about Jase’s computer communication with Amélie. How could Drew know?

Only three options presented themselves: either he had heard it from Jase, he had heard it from Amélie, or he had hacked one of their computers. Jase had certainly not revealed his communication over the computer to anyone, and he had not known Amélie's identity, anyway. Also, Jase had left no trail for Drew to follow to gain access to the computer or the conversation; he had brought it with him to Bangkok.

Therefore, Drew had communicated directly with Amélie or hacked her computer. Jase had never even considered the possibility of Drew's corruption. Drew corrupt changed more events than Jase could imagine.

He couldn't stop the snowball of thoughts in his mind. If Drew had communicated with Amélie, he had communicated with ProtoComm, and if he had communicated with ProtoComm, Drew had compromised Jase. Drew had also brought Nessa to Thailand. Why?

Jase could think of no reason except as a means to control Jase. Past events took on new meaning: how had Nessa’s possessions ended up in Jase’s apartment so many times? Jase had questioned how someone could have gained access to both of their apartments. The feat turned out not too difficult if the person had been trusted. Or, rather, “the people.”

Drew and Amélie, working together. True, Jase had not trusted Amélie, but he had still given her unfettered access to his apartment, and she had taken advantage of his negligence. Even worse, Jase had fallen from his own hubris, his assurance that someone as apparently simple as Drew would prove incapable of any true deception.

If Drew had been working with Liam, the meeting in New York took on new meaning, any statement Drew made about Liam. And Jase’s idea of using Drew as a bodyguard for Nessa proved the most foolish idea of all.

“...beneath even you, but I was wrong. To plant those things in my apartment just to toy with me? Just for the “challenge”? Even despicable seems too positive a term for such childishness. Well, here’s an even bigger challenge: while you wander through the backwoods of Burma trying to get in on your cut of Bill’s deal, Drew and I are going straight to the compound, which I found in some ProtoComm computers we confiscated from Banff. We’re going to interrupt your precious China-Burma deal, and it wouldn’t matter if Bill Henry or the president of the United States wanted to broker a deal between them. Drew and I will destroy them.” With her insolent declaration, the phone went silent.

The words rang in Jase's ear – Nessa intended to attack Bill Henry, most likely in the Myanmar compound, with Drew as her backup. And Bill would expect Jase. Suddenly, the little bunker that lay in front of him took on an entirely new hostility. He had to change his entire plan. With Nessa inside, Jase couldn’t go in, guns blazing.

A hostage changed everything, and Nessa changed it even more. Drew Pearson. If anything happened to Nessa before Jase got to her, the assault might turn more violent than Jase had intended, and most of it directed toward Drew. No clean tactical strike. The echo of Nessa's voice still jabbed at Jase from the phone; most likely, Drew had told her the words to make her more cooperative – enthusiastic, even.

Settle, he commanded his brain, working to reconfigure his target. The faster he worked, the more likely he could accomplish his goal before Nessa ever arrived at the compound. He had intended to take his time, observe and wait for an opportunity when Bill was alone. Now, he had to make the opportunity – and there would be no retrieval. Bill would have to die.

Jase could have left the compound and searched for Nessa and Drew, to save her and abandon his more ambitious plan against ProtoComm, but he had no guarantee that he would find her. He knew she and Drew would eventually show at the compound. With any luck, Jase could just intercept them before they made it to the reinforcements of the soldiers. Preferably, the delay between taking out Bill and saving Nessa would be small – otherwise, he might have to kill everyone in the compound to stay alive.

The building itself covered over an acre, and Jase felt certain that he could gain entry without detection, even if trained guards kept an eye out for him. His first goal, then, was to assess the security manning the building, and that without being caught. With the amount of care he would need to take, the process could cost hours, and every second ticked away painfully as he tried to remain rational in the face of Nessa's looming danger.

The one-story roof no doubt hid guards in its shadows, so Jase would not start there. Perhaps he could find a more secluded or abandoned section of the building. After shunning the usual points of entry, Jase settled on a dark, overhanging balcony that seemed to jut out from a high slit of a window.

The abundance of shadows surrounding the compound made this point unremarkable, and Jase felt certain that no guard could actually hide on the narrow ledge.

As he approached the exterior wall, he noticed a garden hose spout which stuck out from the wall about two-and-a-half feet from the ground. He used the metal spigot to leverage himself up to the ledge. Pulling himself up from there, he hooked his knee over and scurried onto the top. He paused for a moment, listening for evidence of humanity and finding none.

From his vantage point, he could easily see into the yawning darkness of the room below. He had waited for the darkness to deepen for a few minutes before he had crossed the field, and the interior now stood only a tad darker than the moonless night outside.

The light beyond the room revealed no silhouettes that would have indicated human presence, and after watching for several minutes, Jase began to work on the window that lay along the ledge. After a few seconds, he slid it open and listened. When no whisper of human presence replied, Jase lowered himself gingerly to the ground.

When his feet hit the floor, he noted a texture that spoke either a neglected and thus dirty room, or a dirt floor. Though he knew of the ubiquitous poverty in Myanmar, Jase also realized full well that the rulers would spare no expense on their own luxury, so no doubt this room served as a storage room or lay in some abandoned wing of the palace.

The door lay slightly ajar, and Jase eased up to it to gain a better view of what lay beyond. Though the lack of human presence benefited him, the complete silence and absence of evidence for habitation increased Jase's nervousness. Any movement of his would alert a close bystander.

After glancing cautiously out the door, using its wood as a makeshift shield, Jase crept into the hallway. To his right lay a dead end, so he glided to the next alcove on his left, crouching low to the ground as he went.

No sign of a guard in the next room, so Jase continued in the pattern until he grew close to a perpendicular hallway. Still no evidence of security. As he had advance, the inky darkness in the passageway had faded into a dusty grey, and Jase knew that he neared the end of his uncomplicated progress, light proving his enemy.

He had as yet heard no sound, but he increased his vigilance as he neared the oncoming T in the corridor. Once again, he encountered an apparently vacant and dead-end hallway to his right, but from his left floated several echoed voices, their distance rendering them indecipherable.

Contrary to instinct, Jase opted to take the path away from the voices. The passage to the left might have led to humanity and thus, Nessa, but the passageway to the right led toward the center of the building, and Jase felt certain that the central location would prove advantageous to his purposes. Most likely he could find a window that would offer a view of the more populated sections.

Jase tensed as he prepared to make a dash across the open hallway. No escape broke the entrapping uniformity of the corridor walls, and Jase's entire route lay open to any eyes that chanced to glance down the hall. To his relief, no one appeared at the nearby threshold, and the remoteness of the voices told Jase that no one would likely pass by before he entered the last room.

When he reached the terminus of the hallway, he realized that he had misjudged it. An ell swung to his left, and he paused only an instant to take in the nature of the next hallway before entering it at a speedy but silent clip.

At the next turn, though, Jase halted immediately, adrenaline rushing up in his throat. He noted to his right a series of long, narrow windows that gave view to a lushly landscaped courtyard. Just across the courtyard, he could spy identical windows that revealed an explosion of light and activity. The opposite corridor would be his destination.

Some nebulous sensation stopped him before he could crystallize a plan.

First, he noticed the smell emanating from the shadowed doors on his left. The mild, disinfected odor of bodily waste seeped through the air, so much so that it smelled like a hallway of sick people. At first, he thought he had stumbled upon the septic tank, but then he heard the noise.

A quiet murmuring rustled through the nearby air, but it gave way quickly to an all-but-silent sobbing. Then, too, he could make out the shapes, the silhouettes of the doors that held a small, bar-enclosed window. The doors of a prison.

Though Jase felt sure that the whimpering he heard belonged to either one woman or many women, he initially wanted to ignore them, running past them as fast as he could so he didn't have to see them. Would he find women as he assumed? Or worse, would he find Dao's counterparts bound in chains and condemned to who knows what life? That thought arrested him.

His need to rescue the captives went against every rational thought; Jase had a mission and needed to focus on the task at hand. Unfortunately, Meg still haunted him as he tried to push his conscience away. Would these prisoners' eyes disturb his future dreams? Even if she didn’t, would he be able to look Nessa in the eyes and tell her he passed them by?

He could not erect his usual walls of disinterest, instead easing up to the first door. Inside he spied a young woman, not restrained, he noted gratefully, but completely filthy and unkempt. No one had made a pretense of caring for her, and she looked dirty and sallow. Still, Jase saw no obvious evidence of abuse.

Jase noted immediately he could spring the lock with little effort. Before attracting the woman's attention, Jase noiselessly picked the lock and pulled the door open. A slight pop reached the lady's ears, and she jolted her face toward him with a look of panic.

Jase did not enter, but pressed his finger to his lips hoping that she would understand his intentions. For a moment, she looked beyond Jase as if she searched for some expected apparition – most likely the soldiers accompanying the wealthy “white Indian” to retrieve a slave.

To alleviate her anxiety, Jase raised his other hand, gesturing for the young woman to follow, and after a moment she adopted a look of apprehensive hope. He bowed respectfully to her before gazing back toward her with what he hoped a pleasant expression. Pressing his lips into a self-conscious smile, Jase returned his eyes to the lock he had picked.

Next door to the woman’s cell, another door stood with its yawning, toothy window. Having grown accustomed to the silence, he could now hear the quiet murmurings of the women inside. He really wanted to get them out as well.

Gracefully and with a hint of genuflection, the woman he had just freed moved toward the exit. Jase stood aside to let her out, making sure not to touch her in any way lest he add to her anxiety. Instead of leading her to the exit, he pointed to the next cell, hoping that she would help him persuade the other women to leave.

Without hesitation, she moved to the neighboring door and hissed gently through the bars. Jase moved just into view, but not into a position where he would appear threatening, and gestured to the door to let the next woman see him. Though she looked at him with apprehension, her fellow prisoner's expression seemed to reassure the woman, and she shuffled to the door. Jase then quietly picked the lock and stood back to make for an open exit.

His initial rescue glided silently to each of the next three doors, and Jase succeeded in freeing all of the cells' occupants without incident. Sadly, Jase realized that they must have suffered greatly in the compound to make them choose the unknown presence of a stranger over the known presence of their captors.

Leading the way, Jase crept back to the end of the hallway from whence he had come and gazed down its length toward the occupied corridor. Still no loud voices, no shadows, no signs of human presence. He motioned for the women to stay and dashed to his original hallway of entry. When he rounded the corner, he saw no one, so he glided back to the ladies and gestured to the first woman he had rescued to follow him. Again, she complied without hesitation.

After each woman's egress, Jase listened for a sign that someone moved their direction, but no one appeared, and in less than two minutes, he had all of the women gathered into the hallway outside the first room he had entered. He led the captives into the abandoned, dirt-floored room and lifted a heavy wooden table to place beneath the window.

Before he led them up, Jase scrambled through the narrow opening and made sure that they would encounter no interference. He lowered himself back in the room and sat on the table, working out his next phase of action.

“Does any of you speak Thai?” he whispered hoarsely. One very petite woman from the back of the group stepped forward, her head bowed in both fear and humility. “I do not know if I have saved you,” Jase began, wanting to prepare them for whatever might happen. “I saw no guards outside, but you are inside a wall that will be hard to escape. You can hide in the woods for several days, and I will try to come out and help you in a few hours. But my friend may be inside, and I have to save her.”

Nodding, the woman quietly translated Jase's words so the others could know their fate, and Jase waited patiently before proceeding. “I bypassed the walls through a tunnel that lies about two hundred yards from this window. I will point you in the direction, but I don't know if you will find it. And if you do find it, I'm not sure the men inside won't kill you when you try to enter.”

As the small woman translated, another woman from the back began to murmur excitedly, and Jase turned to his translator for explanation.

“The tunnel belongs to her man,” the small woman informed him, and Jase almost gasped in disbelief. “If you show her the direction, she will lead us there, and her man will help us. The usurpers brought her here to punish him.”

If Jase hadn't needed to maintain silence, he would have laughed in relief. He had absolutely despised the idea of leaving the women to their own devices, but he couldn't lead them out, not with the chance that Bill had Nessa inside.

“I'm so glad -” Jase began, but a quiet voice from the back interrupted him in the Myanmar tongue. He waited for the translation.

“This woman and another have children held in a different part of the palace. Two are hers, this woman had one.” The translator motioned to a tall woman in the back of the cluster. “Do you think you can help them?”

Jase saw no other option. “If I live,” he assured them, “I'll get your children out.”

Both of the women bowed, gratitude apparent on their faces. Again, he stood and peered out the window. He lifted the translator up beside him and pointed toward a cluster of trees. “If you follow a straight line through those trees, you will find the tunnel entrance,” he informed her before lifting her the rest of the way up to the ledge.

The woman nodded, and Jase began to lift the other women out the window. As he lifted the last woman to the table, she gestured to him to stop. She hissed out the window, and the diminutive translator stuck her head back in. They began an interchange, and a few seconds later, the translator explained.

“If you go back to the hallway of our prison,” she explained, “you must go past the last cell to the final window on your right. This you can open and enter the courtyard. If you go through the courtyard, no one will see you because no one is allowed in the yard except the governor and, once a day, the gardener. On the opposite side, a glass door will open into the governor's private parlor. There you must be careful, but you will find the governor nearby. He may have your friend if she is here.”

Jase offered his thanks and lifted the final woman out the window, peering carefully after them until they disappeared into the nearby copse. When his feet touched the dirt floor of the room once again, he refocused onto his paramount goals - find Bill and find Nessa.

With the information from the women he had freed, Jase felt a little more confidence in his direction. Nothing interrupted his return trip to the corridor of cells from whence he had led the captives, and when he reached the last window on his right, he spied a hand crank that turned the window outward. Aesthetically, the crank would not have appeared significant, thus maintaining the illusion of an unreachable courtyard.

Plush verdure provided plentiful cover as Jase traversed the span across the courtyard, and the dancing lights of the gas lanterns camouflaged his movement through the brush. To his far right, he could see the parlor of which his informer had spoken, but before he attempted to enter the governor's private quarters, Jase eased to his left to begin an examination of the other windows.

The light shining through the far-left pane of glass slanted differently than that of the parlor, and Jase knew that the narrow pane would reveal a separate room.

Before he even reached the window, Jase froze, his heart speeding with adrenaline. He had expected another corridor, parallel to one of the ones he had previously negotiated. Instead, he could see that a huge room lay on the other side of the small window through which he peered. From his position, Jase looked through a small nook that lay on one wall of the large space. Across the room, a twin nook looked out onto some dark expanse.

Between the two nooks sat a luxurious chair, raised in exaggerated fashion, and upon it sat a middle-aged, well-dressed Burmese man: target number one. The man sported slightly overstated, trendy attire, and if Jase hadn't felt the seriousness of his situation, he might have laughed at the man's attempt to appear in vogue. Still, Jase felt no humor at the realization that this man had agreed to deal with Bill.

The room into which Jase now peered looked like some sort of a meeting room. Beside the pseudo-king stood a stoic guard, poised and looking on edge. The presence of a guard meant that going through the window would prove impractical, though Jase might possibly conceal himself long enough to gain access to the leader.

Until he saw Bill himself, though, Jase did not wish to confront the man on the nominal throne. Now that he knew where to expect the meeting, Jase wanted to analyze it from every angle so he could make a plan of action.

He tracked rapidly back across the courtyard, ignoring the commander's parlor, and back into the abandoned hallway. If Jase could reach the opposite niche, he might find a way to enter, and from there see more of the room.

Quickly, Jase rushed down the corridor and found himself facing another set of cells. Noting their position, he vowed to return to release any tenants - perhaps the children of whom the women had spoken.

After creeping the rest of the way down the corridor, Jase finally encountered a hostile human presence. Though he heard voices floating through the hallway from some distance away, he nearly missed seeing the man who stood only a couple of feet beyond the doorway into the next passageway.

Fortunately for him, Jase stood in deep shadow, as most of the building through which he had traversed lay in a darkened, abandoned state. The guard stood several inches shorter than Jase, and though Jase felt little doubt he could take the guy, his tensed, wiry muscles promised a significant battle.

Just past the guard, apparently securing the next doorway, Jase spotted another, shockingly sizable sentry, at least half a foot taller than Jase and with the build of a competitive athlete. Not a walk in the park, Jase admitted to himself, but he could manage. If Jase remembered correctly, he had covered the entire southern portion of the building in his initial trek, and what lay to his north seemed much smaller, so he likely would not encounter too many more guards.

Instead of advancing to the nook, Jase retreated to the empty room closest to the corridor; he wouldn't engage the guards just so he could go look through a window. Still, he needed visual confirmation of Bill's presence. Jase's instinct told him that Bill's presence would bring with it a flurry of activity, and as yet, Jase hadn't encountered that.

Pausing, Jase closed his eyes for a minute. Though he had initially rejected the idea of entering the commander's office, Jase now recognized the advantage of seeing the entirety of his destination before he entered. He headed back to the garden. Again without interruption, Jase passed through the hallways and into his destination. Crouching behind a low hedge, he perceived the cacophonous clatter of unfolding chaos.

He spun quickly, peering through the lace of brush back into the dim light of the hallway he had just vacated. The hallway from which he had released the prisoners. Several uniformed men sprinted past, their boots casting exaggerated shadows across the ground at Jase's feet.

They had discovered the empty cells. If he hadn't freed those women, he thought, no one could possibly have detected him. Even if the soldiers had no idea who had entered their facility, they now knew they had an enemy within their walls. And once Bill figured out there was a problem, the man would know who had caused it. Jase hoped that the commander would hide the prisoner’s escape to save face.

Steeling himself, Jase darted as quickly and covertly as he could manage from brush to tree trunk, crouching as he zigzagged his way to the wall of windows and into the leader's office on the opposite side of the large atrium. No one seemed to think of looking into the courtyard. When Jase peered through the window into the nook, the official no longer sat languidly on the throne-like chair in the large chamber. No doubt the man had abandoned his casual stance when the soldiers had sounded the alarm.

No egress appeared from the courtyard, so Jase slithered along the glass panes searching for a new escape. He couldn't return the way he had come, because two vigilant sentries now posted in the opposite hallway precluded Jase's retreat. When he reached the northeast corner of the opening, Jase encountered the door of which the translator had spoken.

He slipped his kit off its hook on his waist and began gently jimmying the lock. After several seconds, he heard the click of the latch. With little effort and no sound, Jase edged the door open a few inches.

When he did, he halted immediately.

“My entourage is ready, and the premier is ready to begin negotiations,” a voice explained. Jase could see nothing, but the thick accent arrested his forward progress. He could only see a narrow alcove, filled almost entirely with a potted tree. Jase listened carefully, surprised that the man spoke English. “No, sir. We do not expect any interruptions.” His path impeded, Jase started to pull his head back through the window, determined to find an alternate route to the rest of the compound.

“You do not seem to understand, Mr. Henry.” Jase froze. “Our country does not suffer the unpredictability of yours. We maintain total control of our population."

Eagerly, Jase lapped at the sound of the man's voice. Surely, the speaker would betray some information that might supply Jase’s much needed details. Unfortunately, the conversation revealed nothing more useful than the name.

“Thank you, Mr. Henry,” the man concluded. “We look forward to your arrival.” The words seemed to speak the end of a conversation, but Jase could not know for sure. Elation warred with disappointment. Who knew how long he would have to wait for Bill's arrival?

According to Bill's calendar, the meeting should have taken place that day, but the clock hands had stretch to 7:30 p.m. and still no Bill. At least Jase had confirmation that Bill Henry would indeed arrive at the compound sooner or later. Now Jase only had to watch and determine which action to take first.

If Nessa arrived before Bill, Jase would try to intercept her away from the commander and dispatch Drew as quickly as possible. Jase could send Nessa toward the rebel entrance, though she would need to stay out until Jase joined her.

Jase might have appreciated the rebels’ aid, but he was not going to trust Nessa to them in an enclosed, well-armed space. All this hinged, of course, on whether or not Jase could convince Nessa to ditch Drew.

If Bill arrived first, the job would be harder: somehow to disable the guards or remove Bill from their presence, plus remove whatever security Bill had brought for himself. I really am crazy, Jase sighed.

Cautiously, he eased the door further open until it revealed enough space for him to squeeze into the office. The plant provided only a small amount of cover, but Jase only wanted a quick peek at his adversary. No sooner had Jase pushed his head in than a door on the wall opposite from him burst open. Jase jerked his head back so that the room's new inhabitant could not see him.

“No, Mister Henry,” the original speaker continued, and Jase's hopes renewed slightly. Maybe Jase would hear something after all. “I assure you; we are very secure. No one dares confront us here.”

Curiously, Jase watched as the government official slid his hand across his throat, clearly communicating something to the officer who had entered; apparently, a wordless command for silence.

“In that case, we will increase our security...Yes, sir. I understand, but I will bring my available soldiers around to your point of entry. I have enough to withhold several men, much less one. Yes. Mr. Henry. I anticipate your arrival any moment.”

Jase didn't know whether to laugh in triumph or to growl in frustration. If Bill had felt nervous enough about Jase to call ahead and warn the Burmese minister, then Jase felt pretty smug about his reputation. Still, the advanced notice meant a harder job for Jase.

A tirade in Burmese interrupted Jase's smug musings, and Jase peered around a large leaf to see what course the men would now take. Apparently, the man talking to Bill had been some form of government official, and Jase recognized in him the commander from the other room.

As the two men continued to talk, the officer spoke only in a soft, deferential voice, and the now-traditionally garbed official spat his words at the less prestigious man with apparent anger.

Only moments later, both men left, and Jase, glancing back for a quick assessment before continuing, examined the other three walls of the courtyard. The lights in the abandoned wing of the compound now blazed into the atrium, and Jase knew that his position in shadow would protect him from the view of anyone inhabiting those hallways. The east and west sides held no evidence of humanity, but their proximity to the inhabited wing discouraged Jase from taking either of those routes.

Instead, he eased into the room the official had just vacated. As he had found in Thailand, the walls wore a somewhat garish display of gold carvings, and the simple red rug contrasted the ornate painting on the ceiling. The room seemed more like a palace than a compound, and Jase gritted his teeth at the injustice of a government that would force its poor citizens to create such luxurious settings for its rulers for basically nothing in return.

Along the wall to his right, a window stretched the entire thirty-foot length of the east side of the room, opening into a smaller common, a patch of grass that bordered two angular buildings and a wrought-iron gate.

To his surprise, Jase realized that this new courtyard fronted the building, and beyond its half-height fence lay a vast green lawn with a protracted length of driveway that faded into the darkness beyond. He had maneuvered through the entire compound, and knowing its exact limits gave him a larger measure of confidence in planning his next steps.

Jase peered cautiously around the room, making certain that no one else occupied it. Lunging silently from his spot in the alcove, he wedged himself between the large, plush sofa and the heavy wooden coffee table before it.

Despite the characteristically Asian colors and styles, this official had adopted the furnishings of a typical Western dwelling. Just as Jase coiled to spring from his hiding place, his hand brush against an unexpectedly soft texture on the cold lacquered tabletop.

Restraining his motion, Jase turned to see what his hand had touched. A leather-bound legal pad, the identical color of the table, lay flat on the surface. Curious, Jase flipped the cover open and sifted through the pages. Most of the pages contained neat rows of Asian characters, though Jase couldn't decipher their meaning.

Sticking out from the clear edges of the yellow legal pad, a white sheet of paper peaked out conspicuously. When Jase turned to peruse its contents, he smiled. The paper contained a letter from Bill to the government official, and since Bill hadn't bothered using Burmese conventions, the letter cleared up another piece of the mystery that Jase had faced.

“Dear Aung San,” it read.

“We have confirmed our meeting for October 20th and need only receive directions to the meeting place. We have sent an email containing the encryption key by which you will need to relay these to Jack Buckley. Please respond promptly.

“Due to the recent release of your political competitor, we anticipate an alteration of our agreement, but we believe that our relationships will still offer you some beneficial contacts and have plans in place to ensure that you enjoy many lucrative years of business with the infrastructure we will provide.

“We look forward to a long and mutually beneficial relationship with you and those you represent...” Someone had written Asian characters interspersed with the English words as if making notes or translations on the page which looked to be printed from a computer.”

Disgusting, Jase snarled silently.

He had seen it on a screen in New York. To touch the evidence with his hands further enraged him and drove home has already intense desire to bring Bill Henry down. Rather than focus on that thought, Jase used his anger to hone his plans. Jase wished his cheap burner phone had a camera so he could take the picture to someone who could translate, but he would have to satisfy himself with just getting Bill.

Jase glanced around the paneled room. His initial intentions had lain in trying to covertly maneuver out a door to his left, though he could not see to where it led. In choosing such a direction, though, Jase would plunge himself into the unknown, and more than anything, he needed to control the variables that he might encounter until such time as he could establish a satisfactory strategy.

While expecting Bill, the soldiers would stand with increased vigilance. For avoiding the men altogether, the courtyard outside that window beckoned Jase. If he could gain the little enclosure outside, he would enjoy a clear view of the entryway into the compound. From there, he could watch Bill's entrance.

Unlike with the inner terrarium, the windows facing this patio opened in several places, and Jase easily wedged one open without drawing attention to himself. As soon as his feet hit the grass, however, Jase heard the telltale sounds of boots on pavement.

He ducked behind a large hedge and waited as two soldiers passed his hiding place within about twenty feet. When they had passed, Jase slid stealthily along a plaster wall that lay behind the row of hedges.

He followed the line of shrubs around the interior wall of the quadrangle until he could spy, without too much fear of exposure, a long, manicured drive toward the front of the building. When the lights of a limo appeared, an automatic gate which stood about eighty yards from Jase's current spot opened, and Jase glared as the vehicle traversed the space and curved up to the lighted front entryway.

The door to the limo opened, and Jase's knuckles whitened with anger, pressed tightly to his side. As Jase had anticipated, Bill himself stepped out of the car, but what peeked from behind the aged man wrenched Jase's attention away from his primary goal. Right behind the powerful man Jase could see lush, dark hair that cascaded across a beautiful, feminine form. Jase held his breath. Had Drew delivered Nessa to Bill before their arrival to the compound?

When the legs unfurled from under the tight skirt, however, Jase growled silently.

Amélie, he hissed to himself. He had never recognized how similar Amélie's shape and bearing seemed to Nessa's, but watching the Frenchwoman at that moment, Jase now knew her as the woman from Bangkok.

With the realization, he blew out a sigh of relief – Bill did not yet have Nessa. He should have expected Amélie, but had somehow missed the possibility. Behind Amélie, Perry exited the opening that gaped from the long, black side of the car. Fortunately, no Drew, and definitely no Nessa.

Though he could have engaged the trio immediately, before they entered the security of the compound, Jase decided not to confront them until after the meeting with the Myanmar official took place. With Amélie and Perry in tow, Bill would hold a distinct – though not total – advantage over Jase.

From Jase's current vantage point, he could see that only two guards greeted Bill, and their camouflaged forms brought to a total of ten all the Burmese guards that Jase had encountered in the compound.

The official had no doubt sent half of them to find the unknown intruder who had freed the precious human contraband, so maybe five left to guard the official and Bill.

Even if a few had stood in the meeting room the entire time, Jase doubted more than an additional two. Strategically and for secrecy, the numbers would stay low.

Only two that Jase had seen held guns, and one of those now marched sentry around the entirety of the building. If he wasn't going to confront Bill now, Jase needed to decide just how he would manage the attack.

Peering around him, he saw that, despite his earlier concern about guards, the roof offered the best position, if only to gain perspective on the meeting that would soon take place.

Jase waited until Bill and his two companions had entered the compound completely. As soon as the two sentries had closed the door behind the CEO, Jase used a series of protruding stones to leverage himself to the top of the stone pillar which held the patio gate. After pausing for a moment to make sure he hadn't drawn attention to himself, Jase wrapped his fingers around the edge of the flat roof and slowly pulled his head up until he could see the surface onto which he would climb.

Contrary to his original prediction, his eyes did not encounter a single human presence along the entire length of the roof. He smiled with relief and anticipation. Such a location would multiply his intel immensely and increase his options dramatically.

After he had hoisted himself up to a crouch on the tar and gravel surface, he glided noiselessly across the top of the compound toward the meeting room. He soon encountered a shallow chimney-like protrusion, a raised section of roof with narrow windows underneath on all four sides.

Jase gazed inside and saw only a small, sparsely furnished room - obviously something used by the soldiers and not by the official. Along the length of the roof, Jase spied several of the chimneys, and he made his way from raised surface to raised surface, like traversing a series of mesas in the desert.

Inching carefully, he moved from skylight to skylight until he finally encountered the large meeting room, possibly now holding the official on his throne-like chair. No doubt he would want to appear at his greatest advantage with the prosperous Westerners.

Unlike his first view of the room, Jase could now view almost the entirety of the vast space, and he noted that Bill had entered directly and now sat in a chair parallel to but lower than the official's. Behind Bill stood Amélie and Perry, sentinels of strength, and perhaps, in Amélie's case, intended as a distraction.

For several seconds, Jase peered and listened into the room, unable to discern the words spoken. When the official raised his hand, several servants entered carrying trays of food which the humble staff placed between Bill and the official.

After twenty minutes of mundanity – Bill had shunned the offered food in place of an Asian liquor and a cigar – the old man pulled out several diagrams, and Jase grew curious despite himself. Whatever Bill had planned with the official, Jase wanted to know. It just might offer him some advantage in his mission to bring down ProtoComm. From his elevated position, Jase could discern nothing of the papers.

Rather than return the way he had climbed, Jase skirted the perimeter of the roof, searching for a better perspective from which to observe the dealings in the great hall. When he reached the western wall, he followed the ledge south for a few yards and felt a measure of surprise when he hopped down a small ledge and encountered more of the mesas that he had noticed before, these aligned neatly in a row as if along a corridor.

The windows stood only a few inches from the roof-line, and Jase couldn't fit underneath them, but he could see that they shed light on a strange, covered alleyway, an external corridor of doorways that on one side led into the large great hall and on the other into the building to its north.

When he saw these, Jase lifted his head and noted two other rows of mesas which formed a U-shape around the great hall. The three corridors delineated the great hall, one by which he stood now, one that ran along the wall between the great hall and the parlor he had earlier entered, and one that ran along the opposite wall of the large room.

Judging by the direction from which the servants regularly entered, the far corridor led from the great hall into some sort of preparation building where the servants had prepared the feast that Bill now enjoyed. With that in mind, Jase could explain the very dim illumination that pulsed occasionally from under that row of caprocked skylights, most likely the opening and closing of doors into the preparation wing.

Back in the alleyway, Jase saw no signs of life. Though he could not access the corridor through the skylights, the end of the alley stood open to the field beside the compound, a short metal gate securing the path from those without a key. He gazed over the ledge and into the alleyway, preparing to lower himself over the side.

As he pulled his head back up preparing to lower himself feet-first onto the gate, his ears caught the unexpected click of a door, crackling as it broke its seal with the frame. Jase eased his head back down to see if he would need to change his plan. What he saw froze him to the spot, rendering him incapable of rational thought for several suspended moments.