man just below his knee, and he collapsed screaming onto the floor of the truck.
Bell, who had been keeping Elyse close to him, suddenly let her go. “She’s all yours. Please, I’m not going to do anything.”
Sein immediately rushed over to her daughter, and threw her arms around her.
“Take her outside,” Logan said. “And shut the door.”
Sein looked at him for a moment, then nodded, and helped Elyse to her feet. As they passed, she whispered, “I’m sorry I didn’t trust you.”
“Don’t even worry about it. Just get her out.”
As soon as the door was closed, Bell said, “What are you? Some kind of mercenary?”
“No. Auto mechanic.”
Logan pulled the camera out of his pocket. He stopped the recording, then started it again so he’d have a new file, and then pointed it at Bell.
“Let’s you and I have a little talk.”
44
To say it was a bit of a diplomatic mess was probably an understatement.
The only way to stem the fallout on the U.S. side was to swiftly move to arrest those suspected of being involved in the “Kidnapping for Oil Scheme,” as it was soon labeled by cable news.
Within 24 hours, Charles Bracher, Samuel Schwartz, David Lyons—the CEO of Lyon Exploratory Research and the “L” of LRB Oil—and several other employees of all three companies were behind bars. The government had also filed extradition papers for Scott Bell, Aaron Hughes, and the remaining members of Bell’s team with the Thai government.
As for the secret police team from Myanmar, Logan was never really sure what happened to them. But he had a feeling that even if they were sent back to Burma, things weren’t going to go very well for them.
He heard later there was a little bit of confusion when five Vietnam Vets showed up at the Federal Building in West Los Angeles with three people they claimed were connected to the matter. But it was soon cleared up, and Elyse’s former roommate Angie, along with a Mr. Williams and a Mr. Dean were turned over to the FBI.
Logan was a big part of the mess. He had actually killed someone, and shot a member of the Myanmar secret police. For those reasons, it had been decided early on that his name wasn’t to be mentioned in connection at all with the case. Like what his father and the rest of the WAMO gang had decided about the attack on Tooney, Logan was apparently not involved in this incident either. That was okay with him. He wasn’t interested in the publicity.
Still, the authorities didn’t know what to do with him, so he was detained for nearly a week, talking only to governmental representatives of the U.S. and Thailand.
It was Sein who finally got him out.
They were all in a room somewhere in Bangkok, Sein, two men from the U.S. embassy, three from the Thai government, and Logan. After they’d gone on for a half hour about how it was impossible for Logan to just walk away without paying some kind of price, Sein reached into her bag, and pulled out a laptop. Setting it on the table, she turned it so everyone could see the screen.
“One,” she began. “Mr. Harper is to be release today, within the hour, with no charges made against him.” She looked at the representatives from the U.S. “This includes anything that may have happened in California before he left for Thailand.”
Detective Baker was not going to be happy to hear that, Logan thought.
“Two, if anything happens to Mr. Harper, now or in the future, and I mean anything, I will make a point of including both of your governments’ involvement in the blame when I talk about what happened here. And then I will show this.”
She tapped the spacebar, and a movie began to play on the screen.
As Logan watched, a smile grew on his face. Someone had done a pretty damn good job of cutting together all the footage that had been shot at Doi Suthep. Logan’s footage was there, too, because he made sure to slip his camera to one of Daeng’s refugee friends before the police had taken him in. But there was more than just what they had shot. Intercut at strategic points was news footage and stills showing prominent leaders from both the U.S. and Thailand in the company of Mr. Bracher and Mr. Schwartz and Mr. Lyon.
Logan was released the moment the meeting was over, and was even given a free flight home, courtesy of the Thai government.