The Steward Files: Kidnapped (Prologue)

Luang Prabang Province, Laos


A tourist bus cruised leisurely along the dusty road which was flanked on either side by a colourful array of stalls: foodstalls, mostly, but there were also a handful of stalls displaying apparel and accessories, most of which looked pretty dubious, on creaky-looking clothes-racks and wooden tabletops.

All in all, it was a pretty normal sight to behold. Inside the air-conditioned bus, most passengers had given up on trying to look out of the window: the hours of dreary travelling on bumpy roads had given even the most resilient traveller a headache; the worst of them had been reduced to vomiting in plastic bags every half hour. Most were sleeping; the rest were either eating, drinking, or listening to the tour guide, who looked almost as tired as the travel-weary tourists themselves.

There was something slightly different about the atmosphere, though. A faint, ominous disturbance in the air around the area. A young girl on the road who accidentally brushed past someone had a slight stactic shock accorded to her. The air seemed heavy and charged with some dangerous, unknown matter. To the younger ones, these signs merely appeared to be the prelude to some heavy thunderstorm which would undoubtedly ravage the area less than an hour on. The older ones knew better, though. Their rheumatism did not act up. It wasn't the rain. It was something else. Something more, much more.

The tourist bus cruised on, oblivious to all that was going on.


********************


"Mummy! I need to go to the toilet!"

The thickset woman in her 40s, beside the young girl in the floral dress, heaved a gigantic sigh.

"Not now, my dear. It's in the middle of nowhere. There are no toilets here. Bear with it a little longer, would you? That's my girl. I'll give you your lollipop now, to help take your mind off things."

Fishing inside her handbag frantically (undoubtedly, in the hope for some peace and quiet during this migraine-stimulating bus ride), she drew out a spiral-shaped candy, red and white on the end of a white candy stick. The little girl, for a while, seemed placated; however, five minutes later, she started pulling on her mother's clothes again.

"Mummy! I really need the toilet! It's urgent!"

The woman turned to her daughter, saw her daughter's frantic face, and decided that perhaps it was really as urgent as it seemed. Edging out from her seat, she pushed her way past the gigantic man, who was seemingly stuck to his seat in the middle of the back row of the bus, unceremoniously, and started to make her way to the head of the bus, grabbing onto random handholds here and there, without even realizing that some were not handholds, as they seemed, but rather, were the dignified wigs of indignant old women from a myriad of European countries. She almost fell, two or three times, but there was always something near her for her to grab onto. It was hard for there not to be: the bus was overcrowded: with bulky luggages, shopping bags, as well as extra tourists which the tour company had decided to squeeze onto the tour, in the hopes of gaining a few extra dollars in the nasty downturn.

A particularly nasty lurch sent most people in the bus forwards, sidewards, and back: the woman even did a nice little cartwheel before managing to regain her balance. At that point of time, she made up her mind never to go anyplace which was without a proper toilet facility again. Too much of a hassle, really. Especially someone on holiday.

Finally, finally, she made it to the front of the bus, right next to the tour guide. She turned to him with a looked that spelled annoyed, and asked, "Is there a toilet anywhere here? My daughter needs to go. Urgently. I'm sure you don't want this bus to be any stinkier than it already is."

She could have screamed, but then, it wouldn't have been good for her image; and besides, the tour guide looked affronted enough to be almost unapproachable. She didn't want to push it.

"I'm sorry, Madame", he replied stiffly. "The nearest toilet is a mile away. Perhaps you could bring your daughter to the bushes? Right after we cross this district, madame." Apparently, the migraine was getting to the tour guide. With each word he spoke, he made a slight wince.

"Excuse me, but I paid for this tour, and as a paying customer, I suppose that I should receive better treatment?" The woman literally snarled at the tour guide. "Shouldn't you all have planned for this, beforehand?"

"Madame, we can't possibly plan for everything," He enunciated the words with quite a bit more force than was required. "This is a rural area, and perhaps you should have thought of it before we got onto the bus, when there were still functional toilets."

"That doesn't make your attitude acceptable!"

"Why, Madame, if you wanted a tour guide with better service, perhaps you should have thought of paying more for an upgraded tour. With a mobile toilet attached to the bus. Or, better still, a tour to somewhere where toilets are aplenty. Like France, for example. Or - "

Before he could finish his tirade, the bus gave another sudden lurch. Both he and the woman fell off balance, and before the woman could stop it, the tour guide had pushed against the woman such that he regained his footing, while the woman lost hers: she fell backwards, onto the driver's seat.

The empty driver's seat.


********************


United States, California, San Francisco


The next day, far away, in San Francisco, literature professor Mark Steward was leaning back on his armchair and smoking a cigar, watching the 9pm news. The news anchor was reporting a shocking accident in Luang Puabang Province, Laos. Apparently, a tour bus driver that vanished into thin air while the bus was still moving, causing it to bulldozer over a couple of unknowing pedestrians, before crashing into a brick house at a turning ahead. Police were still investigating the incident, the news anchor said, but cannot come to any conclusion as of yet.

"Police," Mark Steward snorted. "As if they can turn up anything."

He leaned back further and waited for the phone call he knew was coming. Soon.