I smiled bitterly. Maybe that was why I was here. Maybe I was hoping that Thusbammanna would bring me back to life, the way it had for Dad.
Not that I had anything as bad as Dad had. My relationship with my husband Duane was OK—kind of strained, but that’s to be expected when you’re both in full-scale war with a teenaged son, I guess. I still felt guilty about leaving Duane with his hands full, but I just could not stand fighting with Tom again. Or dealing with my daughter Alicia, named after my mom. She was ten years old, and idolized her rebel brother.
But I suppose I could have stuck it out with all of that, if my business hadn’t gone bankrupt and I hadn’t been accused of fraud. My lawyer said that if I wanted to clear my name, I was looking at a year-long court battle. All of that, just to prove that I had no connection with the client that had cheated me and several other people.
I was tired out. I was bitter. I needed to recharge my batteries, but I didn’t think I could have picked a worse place to do it. The Thusbammannan government was still gunning for my dad. His old contact here, a man named Chantlo, had told him that the government had resorted to increasing brutality, clamping down harder and harder on the people who wanted to reinstate their elected government. The elected president had fled to the United States, where he was trying to get American support for his return. America was sympathetic, but reluctant to do much about it because Thusbammanna had a US Air Force base.
An underground had formed in the country, trying to protect the people from the military strongman’s brutality and starvation tactics. The underground was also trying to engineer the return of the elected president, but no one seemed to have any ideas as to how that could be done. My dad had supplied one of their most effective activities, in the form of spreading the food technology that was eradicating starvation from the country.
And here I was, right in the middle of the mess.
My dad had talked about Thusbammanna with such love and affection that it seemed like a magical place to me. He had been delighted when I mentioned that I might go there, and seemed sure that the country had some kind of mystical balm that would heal me, too. Duane had been markedly less enthusiastic, but I just had to get away.
Out the window of the posh hotel, I looked down on several blocks of squalid slums. And this place was going to “heal me too.” Yeah, right. I wasn’t like my dad. There wasn’t anything I could do to help these people, and there was nothing they could do to help me.
I wondered if I would be charged for the hotel room if I checked out immediately. I quickly got up and straightened out the bedspread. I found the little list of rules, screwed into the door as in hotels all over the world. Like everything else in the nice sections of Thusbammanna, they were in English. I bent over and started scanning for the billing rules. Suddenly, someone knocked on the door, just inches from my head. Yikes! I jumped a foot, and took a second to catch my breath before I peered through the peephole. A uniformed waiter or porter stood there, looking down the hall. He raised his hand to knock again, and I quickly opened the door.
“Yes?” I asked, barely able to muster any civility.
“Mrs. Jane Anderson?” he asked.
I jerked in surprise. “Yes?”
“A message for you, madam.” He handed me a slip of plain paper.
I unfolded the paper. Some words were written on it—maybe an address or something. I stared at it uncomprehendingly.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
He looked at the message helpfully. “It is an address, madam,” he said pleasantly. “I am sure that if you were to show that to a taxi driver, he would be able to transport you there.”
I stared at him. “Why would I…?” I trailed off as I saw that he was showing me something cupped in the palm of his hand. I looked down and saw a photo of my dad. I stared at the porter with my mouth open. “Wha—”
“Thank you madam, but I am not allowed to accept gratuities,” he interrupted loudly. Then he winked at me, and walked away.
I staggered back into my room and looked around wildly. What was going on around here? I gazed blankly at my suitcase. I could be on a plane back to the States in an hour, and none of it would matter. Why didn’t I do that?
Why didn’t I just leave?
I had no idea. But for some reason I walked down to the main entrance of the hotel and asked the doorman to get me a taxi.
After driving in a dizzying route through the most congested parts of the city, the taxi driver stopped at a street corner. All around was some sort of farmers’ market, with hundreds of booths and thousands of people. Completely at a loss, I shoved a wad of money at the driver. He smiled kindly, shook his head, and took one of the bills in the wad. Then he made change, and handed it to me with a broad smile.
At least that was something that resembled my dad’s description of the country—they were kind and honest people. I smiled back at him, and gave him back one of the bills in the change for a tip.
I scrambled out of the cab and stood in the teeming crowd, feeling very lost and very American. I jostled my way slowly through the flood of humanity toward one of the booths—it was selling vegetables. Maybe I’d ask for advice from the people there.
“Jane Anderson?” a voice inquired softly in my ear.
I nearly jumped out of my skin. I whirled and looked at a tall man in his fifties. “Wha—Who—”
“What is the name of your child?” the man asked sharply.
I stared at him. “Chantlo?” I gasped.
“Please tell me what your child’s name is!”
I finally figured out that this was some kind of identity check. “I have two,” I said swiftly. “Tommy and Alicia. My husband is Duane. I ran a software business until it went bankrupt two months ago.”
He relaxed a little. “And what did your daughter do in church to embarrass you when just a baby?”
I laughed in spite of myself. “She went potty on the pastor’s shirt right before the service.”
The man flashed an enormous smile, and shook my hand. “Mrs. Anderson, I am Chantlo. It gives me great pleasure to finally meet you.”
“Me too. I’ve heard a lot about you. How did you know where to find me?”
Chantlo was pulling me through the crowd as he spoke. “One of the guards at the airport is a member of our resistance movement. He took your picture through a one-way mirror. When he had the opportunity, he passed the word that you had arrived in our country. Then, when one of the hotel clerks reported your arrival, we located you without difficulty.”
“Wow. You guys have quite a system.”
“Let me assure you, Mrs. Anderson, the security forces have a far superior system. Your picture is in the hands of every security agent in Thusbammanna.”
“Yikes!” I followed him blindly, wondering if it would be possible to tell him that I was heading to the airport to get out of here.
“It is most fortunate that you have arrived,” Chantlo continued. “Your presence at this time of crisis gives us hope.”
“Crisis!” I yelped. “Wait a minute!”
“Your father’s conspiracy has yielded great results,” Chando said as if he hadn’t heard me. “The people, with better and more reliable nutrition, are better able to plot and plan and fend for themselves. But meanwhile, the government has launched a major offensive against the resistance, and is on the verge of smashing the entire network. The people sense the danger, and events may soon explode.”
“Chantlo!”
“Quickly, Mrs. Anderson, into this car!”
I got into a waiting car, and he drove off quickly.
“Chantlo, listen to me!” I insisted.