by Robert Gandt
They’d gotten through the introductions, the Americans meeting Li Che Kim. Now they were into their second round of drinks.
“Ah, you’re from Vietnam, Mrs. Ferrone?” said Boyce. He was working on a bourbon and coke, playing with an unlit cigar.
“I’m Australian,” she said, “but I was born in Ho Chi Minh City.”
Behind the bar, Ferrone winked at Kim. He’d warned her about Boyce. He would be nosy, fishing for information. Kim was being discreet with the facts, causing Boyce to be frustrated.
A couple of stools away, Maxwell was keeping up a polite conversation with the American woman, Boudroux. She was sipping at the Vodka tonic—just one twist—while Maxwell nursed a Halida, a local beer that Ferrone himself favored.
Ferrone had been surprised when the woman arrived with Boyce’s group. She was some kind of scientist—no one was saying exactly what kind—but Ferrone could guess. It had to do with the technology of the secret airplane they also weren’t saying anything about.
Watching her now at the end of the bar, swizzling her drink and chatting with Maxwell, Ferrone wondered if the two were an item. For young Maxwell’s sake, he hoped not. The woman was good looking enough, that flaming red hair and Vogue model figure. Probably a fitness freak, judging by the tight body. Definitely smart, tough as nails.
And a nutcracker. He’d picked up the signals. She was the kind who would chew you up for breakfast and spit you out before lunch.
He knew about such women because he’d been married to one. His ex-wife used to think it was she who wore the stars instead of her husband. He knew that “Mrs. Admiral” was the not-so-secret name his staff used for her. By the time she and Ferrone divorced, she had pissed off most of the officers in his command staff and all their spouses.
That was ten years ago. Ferrone had assumed he would live out his years as a crusty but content old bachelor. That was before he met Li Che Kim.
He was still at the National Security Council. Her official title was Deputy Director of the Australia-American Trade Council. They were introduced at a cocktail reception at the Australian embassy. She was a dozen years his junior, still a teenager when Ferrone’s ordeal as a prisoner of war began in the autumn of 1967.
With the fall of Saigon, Kim and her parents fled to Brisbane. She started a career in advertising, married a lawyer, had a daughter, divorced the lawyer, accepted the post in Washington with the Trade Council. And met Joe Ferrone.
Boyce was still fishing. “So you and Joe—ah, Ambassador Ferrone, I mean, are—”
“Having dinner with you tonight,” said Kim. She smiled.
“That’s right,” said Ferrone, looking at Maxwell and Boudroux. “You’re all invited to join us here at the embassy.”
“That’s very sweet,” said Dana Boudroux, “but I’d like to see something of Hanoi before we leave.”
“You’re leaving so soon?” said Kim.
“In the morning.”
“That’s too bad. Back to the U.S.?”
Dana hesitated. “Mm, yes, eventually.”
Kim caught Ferrone’s glance and asked no more questions. She knew that more went on in the embassy than cocktail parties and polite chatter.
“But you shouldn’t go out by yourself,” said Kim. “In Hanoi, you need an escort.”
“I have one,” said Dana. “Isn’t that right, Commander Maxwell?”
A look of surprise flashed over Maxwell’s face. “Ah, sure,” he said. “Let’s see Hanoi.”
“Sounds like a plan,” said Ferrone. “I’ll send my driver with you.” He signaled for Trunh Bao, who was watching them discreetly from the entrance of the lounge. “He’ll keep an eye out for you.”
<>
The streets of Hanoi were chaotic. Thousands of mopeds flowed in an endless stream through the city.
Trunh showed them how to cross the street. It was an act of faith—walking slowly into the stream, letting the cyclists flow around you like water around a rock.
“Only in Vietnam,” said Trunh. “Please do not try this in America.”
The sidewalks teemed with vendors, beggars, cyclo drivers, all competing for their attention. Sellers of bia hoi—freshly made draft beer—beckoned for them to sample the brew. Maxwell tried one. It was warm, foamy, and not bad at all. Dana stopped at another stall and bought dried squid and pork rolls.
Before leaving the embassy they had changed into street clothes. Maxwell wore khakis, a polo shirt, and deck shoes. Dana had put on a designer tee shirt and jeans which, he couldn’t help noticing, nicely accented her derriere as they strolled the sidewalk.
They continued walking until they came to the shore of a lake in the center of Hanoi.
“A very symbolic lake,” said Trunh. “Legend has it that in the fifteenth century, a magical sword was sent from heaven to our Emperor, Ly Thai To. He used the sword to drive the Chinese away from Vietnam. One day after the war he came upon a giant golden tortoise swimming in the lake. The tortoise seized the sword and dived to the bottom of the lake with it. Since then the lake has been known as Hoan Kiem, which means lake of the restored sword, because the tortoise returned the sword to its heavenly owners.”
“Maybe that’s what Vietnam needs,” said Dana.
“What would that be, Madame?” said Trunh.
“Another magical sword to drive the Chinese away.”
Trunh smiled.
They walked through the old quarter, stopped for another bia hoi, then they told Trunh he could leave.
Trunh looked skeptical.
“Not to worry,” said Maxwell. “We’ll take a taxi home.”
The driver bowed politely and left them. They continued through the market district, then kept walking through the Old Quarter.
“This place gives me a funny feeling,” said Maxwell.
“Because?”
“Because my dad dropped bombs all over here. He and Joe Ferrone and their squadron mates. Now we’re walking around here like tourists.”
“We are tourists,” said Dana Boudroux. “Wars don’t last forever.”
“They do for some people. A lot of the old guys think we should have turned Hanoi into a parking lot.”
“Joe Ferrone doesn’t.”
“Neither does the President.”
She kept her silence for a while. “I felt that way about Beirut for a long time. I wanted to see it made into a parking lot.”
“Why?”
“Because my father was killed there.”
Maxwell nodded. “Sorry to hear that. What happened?”
“He was a Marine officer, a captain, assigned to the U.S. mission in Lebanon. The militia kidnapped him and executed him. They made a video of him hanging from a ceiling. I was twelve years old.” She said it in her dry, matter-of-fact scientist’s voice.
“That had to be a tough thing for a kid to go through.”
She shrugged. “I learned.”
“Learned what?”
“That life is provisional. It gets snuffed out—” she snapped her fingers, “—like that. No matter how much you love someone, you lose them.”
Maxwell didn’t reply.
They had walked for nearly an hour since detaching Trunh. Darkness had come to Hanoi. They came to another market area. The vendors were closing down their stalls, loading pots and griddles and vats onto pushcarts.
Maxwell had only a vague sense of where they were. He stopped and pulled the Fodor’s map from his shirt pocket. In the thin light he couldn’t make out the street names.
“Maybe we should take a taxi,” said Dana.
“That’s a cop out. It can’t be more than a few more blocks to the embassy.”
He squinted at the map. The U.S. embassy was in the Ba Dinh district, on Lang Ha Street. It had to be west, near the shore of another lake, Hoy Tay.
“That way.” He pointed across the market area, to a narrow side street.
After they’d gone another two blocks, the stream of pedestrians and bicyclers thin
ned. The narrow street ahead appeared to be empty. On either side were shuttered windows of rickety buildings, laundry hanging limp in the still air, darkened entrances.
They kept walking. Something—a cat or a rat—scuttled across the darkened surface ahead of them.
“I don’t like this,” said Dana. “Let’s turn around.”
Maxwell tried again to read the map. The light was too dim. “It’s farther to go back than to go on ahead. I’m sure this street comes out by the lake. Then we’ll be close to the embassy.”
They continued down the empty street. Dana clutched his arm.
Another two blocks. The street was still deserted, still dark.
“Okay, navigator, what kind of mess have you gotten us in?”
“Don’t be negative. You wanted to see Hanoi, didn’t you?”
“Not this part. This is a black hole.”
“Hang on. We’re almost out of it.”
He saw lights ahead. Vehicles were passing at the end of the street. It had to be the street that bordered the lake.
He could feel Dana’s grip on his arm relax. It occurred to him that in the course of their evening together she had shed some of the old hostility. Dana had become almost friendly. Almost.
“Remember that little bar we passed down the street from the embassy?” he said.
“What about it?”
“We should stop there for a—”
A scuffing sound. Light, barely audible.
“Maxwell?” said a low voice behind him.
He whirled around. He saw only a dark silhouette. A man in the shadow of a doorway.
He felt Dana release her grip on his arm.
“Brick. Behind you.”
He turned again. There was another man, standing in front of them. Both were dressed in black, arms out in front of them. In the dim light, Maxwell saw something metallic.
The glint of a blade.
“Run!” he yelled to Dana. He faced the closest of the attackers.
He took a quick glance over his shoulder. She was still there.
“Run, damn it!”
She wasn’t running. In his peripheral vision he saw her moving forward. Toward the shadowy figure closest to her.
“Dana, get the hell away. He’s got a—”
The man he was facing lunged at him. Maxwell dodged, seeing the knife blade slash at his midsection. The man was a head shorter than Maxwell. He was lithe and fast.
He slashed again, holding the knife low, thrusting it like a fencer. Maxwell sidestepped, swinging the edge of his left hand around, nearly missing. His hand glanced off the side of the man’s head.
The attacker stepped back, shook his head, then lunged again. Maxwell got a glimpse of his face. He had gleaming brown eyes and a round, unlined face that looked neither young nor old. A bristle of coarse black hair covered his head.
Maxwell had only rudimentary martial arts training. He had been a middleweight boxer, not a knife fighter. He balanced on the balls of his feet, trying to weave and dodge the knife thrusts.
The attacker was too quick. Maxwell felt a stab of pain in his right arm. He glanced down and saw a remnant of his sleeve hanging loose. Blood was spurting from his upper arm.
The sight of Maxwell’s wound seemed to spur the attacker. The dark eyes flicked over Maxwell, measuring him, deciding where to thrust the blade.
Maxwell’s arm throbbed. He was right handed and now his goddamn right arm was useless. Timing was critical now. He had to catch this guy off balance. Surprise him. It was their only chance.
He heard scuffling noises beside him, feet scraping cement, heavy breathing. Dana didn’t run away and now she was in trouble. He had to do something very soon or—
Too late. The attacker was coming at him, feinting left, stepping to the right. Maxwell lurched back. He caught his heel in the broken pavement, and fell backward. He saw the black form sweeping down, the knife going for his chest.
Out of the darkness swelled another shape. Maxwell heard a thump. The man with the knife lurched to the side, hitting the concrete on his back.
Before he could get up, a foot lashed out, connecting with his chest. The air left him in an audible umph, and he skidded across the crumbling cement.
Maxwell shoved himself to his feet. The man who had attacked him was also back to his feet. The man glanced around, then turned and ran down the darkened street.
Maxwell heard a scuffing noise and whirled. The other attacker was running away too.
It took Maxwell a full second to comprehend what happened.
“What did you do to that guy?” he said.
“Kicked him in the crotch,” said Dana. “Same as I did to the first one.”
She wasn’t even breathing hard. Maxwell stared down the street. The two men had disappeared in the darkness. He could still hear the pounding of their feet on the broken pavement.
“Where’d you learn how to do that?” he asked.
“You don’t want to know.” Then she saw the blood streaming from his right arm. “Uh, oh. How bad is it?”
“It doesn’t matter. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Chapter 10 — Embarked
Hanoi, Socialist Republic of Vietnam
0750 Friday, 27 April
“Unbelievably fucking stupid,” growled Boyce.
Maxwell nodded and continued eating his oatmeal. Boyce was letting off steam.
“I should have restricted everyone to the embassy compound,” said Boyce. “This mission is too critical to be compromised by getting two key players killed in some damn alleyway.”
Joe Ferrone was sitting across from Maxwell at the breakfast table. He had been alerted last night about the attack on Maxwell and Boudroux. He’d called the embassy physician, who dressed Maxwell’s wound and gave him a tetanus shot. It turned out to be only a shallow gash in his upper arm, bloody but not serious.
“It’s my fault,” said Ferrone. “I thought Hanoi was a safe city. Tourists get hassled by beggars and vendors, but there’s hardly ever any violent crime.”
“Maxwell and Boudroux weren’t tourists,” said Boyce. “They’re players in a sensitive operation. They shouldn’t have been someplace where they could get mugged and robbed.”
“It wasn’t a robbery,” said Maxwell.
“How do you know?”
“One of them knew my name. It wasn’t money they wanted. They wanted me dead.”
“And they damn near succeeded,” growled Boyce. “Sounds like our lady scientist is tougher than we gave her credit for.”
Maxwell nodded. Dana Boudroux was tougher than the would-be killers too. Otherwise Maxwell would have been found in the alleyway with his throat cut.
“What did the Hanoi cops have to say about it?” said Boyce. He’d already wolfed down his breakfast and was pacing the room with a fresh Cohiba in his hand.
“Clueless,” said Ferrone. “Or else they’re not talking.”
“How did the muggers know Maxwell’s name?”
Ferrone shrugged. “Easy. The Chinese have operatives all over Vietnam, especially in Hanoi. They like to keep tabs on foreigners. I get tailed sometimes when I go walking in the city. It goes with the territory.”
“Tailing isn’t the same as killing,” said Boyce. “Sounds like the game is ratcheting up to a new level.”
Maxwell peered out the window. The sun was breaking through the early morning haze. In the courtyard outside, two Vietnamese orderlies were loading bags into a van.
“Ten minutes,” said Boyce, looking at his watch. “Time we said goodbye.”
Maxwell nodded, still finishing his oatmeal. The van would carry them to the Noi Bai International Airport. A Navy C-2A Greyhound was standing by to fly them out to the USS Reagan.
Boyce and Maxwell were wearing plain gray-green flight suits with black rank symbols on the shoulders. Sanitized and subdued. No name tags, no Dragon Flight patches while they were in Vietnam.
Ferrone and Kim walked them out to the co
urtyard where the van was waiting. Dana Boudroux was already in the van, wearing a khaki jump suit. She didn’t look up or smile.
Ferrone shook hands with Boyce and Maxwell, wished them luck, then stood watching the van carry them out the front gate, past the Marine sentries, off to the airport.
Maxwell waited until they were at the airport and through security. They were walking across the ramp toward the C-2A COD. Boyce had gone to chat with the COD crew.
“Something the matter?”
“No,” said Dana. “Why?”
During the drive from the embassy, across the Thang Long Bridge, through the countryside to the airport, she kept herself buried in a newspaper.
“You haven’t said a word since we left the embassy.”
“Why do men always think something is the matter if a woman doesn’t participate in banal conversation?”
“Sorry,” he said. “I must have missed something. For a while last night I actually thought that you and I might be friends.”
She looked at him through the tortoise shell glasses. It was the same frosty glare she had given him when they first met at Groom Lake. The Ice Queen look.
“Look, Commander Maxwell, I think we should—”
“It’s Brick, remember?”
“Whatever. I think we should keep our relationship on a professional level, and not let our, ah, emotions complicate our jobs.”
“Would it complicate our jobs if I thanked you for saving my life?”
“Yes. Don’t bother.”
Maxwell suppressed the anger that rose in him. He was an idiot. In a weak moment he had let himself think that he and this redheaded automaton had something going. Boudroux was as human as the computer in the Black Star.
“Okay,” he said. “I won’t.”
She didn’t hear him. She was already walking toward the airplane.
<>
USS Ronald Reagan
That smell.
Maxwell stopped inside the door at the base of the Reagan’s six-story tall island structure. He stood transfixed, inhaling the evocative scent—a mixture of paint, steel, oil, sweat, hydraulic fluid. Every ship had its own distinctive inner atmosphere. This one belonged to the USS Ronald Reagan. He was home.
