by Pat Bertram
Fear iced through his heart. How could he keep her safe? He’d known all along he ought to stay away from her, but that seemed to be the one thing he could not do. Then what? Run? But he doubted they’d be able to find a place beyond ISI’s grasp. He would have to find out why they wanted him and somehow neutralize the threat.
He squeezed the pink ball until his hands ached. If anyone could help him discover the truth, it would be Harrison with all his connections, but Harrison was halfway into a six-month world tour promoting his latest best-seller.
“You’re thinking so hard I can hear the gears grinding,” Kerry said, opening her eyes.
He set the ball on the bedside table.
She sat up and yawned. “What are you thinking?”
“Trying to figure out how to contact Harrison.”
Her eyes gleamed. “A séance?”
He drew his head back and studied her. What game was she playing now?
“His agent should know where he is,” he said.
“You mean like where he’s buried?”
“What are you talking about?”
Her eyes widened. “You don’t know.”
He frowned. “Know what?”
She put a hand to her mouth. “Harrison’s dead.”
“No.”
“Yes. I saw it in the paper about six weeks ago. He died of cancer.”
“That’s not possible.” He felt his throat tighten, and the words came out sounding strangled. “He looked okay when I saw him three and a half months ago.”
“All I know is what the papers said.”
He closed his eyes against the sympathy he saw in her face. “Papers don’t always tell the truth.”
“But what would they gain by lying?”
He jumped out of bed and yanked on his clothes. “I have to go make a call.”
“There’s a phone here.”
“I’d feel safer at a payphone.”
She nodded. “If you can wait a few minutes, I’ll drive you.”
While she dressed, he packed his gym bag.
“We’re not coming back?” she asked.
“We’ve been here too long. I’ll get another place tonight.”
***
Kerry drove Bob to a phone outside a convenience store.
Armed with a handful of change gleaned from the bottom of her purse, he made the call to O’Riley’s, a bar Harrison frequented whenever he stayed in Bangkok.
The owner, Hamburger Dan, answered on the third ring. “O’Riley’s.”
“This is Bob Stark. I—”
“Bob? Is that you? Where the hell have you been? Everyone’s looking for you.”
Bob nodded to himself. So it was a mistake after all. Harrison must still be alive.
“The Lotus Room is closed,” Hamburger Dan said, “and you haven’t been around for a while. No one knows where you are.”
“Denver.”
“Denver? What are you doing in Denver?”
“Visiting. Who’s been looking for me?”
“Two Americans who look like spooks. They say they’re friends of yours, but I’ve never seen you with them.”
“They’re not friends.”
“That’s what I thought. Harrison’s lawyer is also looking for you. He needs you to get in touch with him. He has papers for you to sign. Something about Harrison’s will.”
“His will? So he really is . . .” Bob could not continue.
“Harrison is dead,” Hamburger Dan said quietly. “He died from cancer.”
“He never told me he had cancer.”
“He didn’t know. He got sick shortly after returning to New York to get ready for his tour.” A brief pause. “I thought I told you.”
“This is the first I heard of it. I don’t understand. If he just got cancer, how can he be dead already?”
A young man with spiked hair and a pair of miniature handcuffs dangling from one ear crowded Bob. “I need to use the phone.”
Bob turned his back and strained to hear Hamburger Dan’s words.
“The cancer was so extensive, he had to have had it awhile. Even if he had been feeling no pain, he must have known something was wrong. In the early stages of brain cancer, people often get paranoid and see elaborate conspiracies where none exist.”
“Brain cancer?”
“Yes. But the lung cancer killed him.”
Bob swallowed. “He had both lung and brain cancer?”
“Hey, dude,” the young man said loudly. “You deaf or something? I told you I need to use the phone.”
Hamburger Dan sighed. “It was a terrible thing. Before I forget, let me give you the lawyer’s phone numbers. His main office is here, but he also has one in New York.”
Bob wrote the information on the back of his motel receipt.
“You done yet, dude?” The young man thrust his face close to Bob’s. “I got me some business to attend to.”
“Did I mention that Robert Dunbar’s been calling for you?” Hamburger Dan said. “He wants you to get in touch with him. Says it’s about a game of golf you promised him. I have to go, but come see me when you get back, okay? We’ll talk.”
Bob hung up.
“It’s about time,” the young man sneered.
Bob trudged across the parking lot to where Kerry waited. He got in the car and scrubbed his hands over his face. He could feel the rumble of the engine as Kerry drove away.
“Did you see that?” she asked.
Bob lifted his head. “See what?”
She pointed to the white van that had pulled up close to the phone he had been using. Two men jumped out of the vehicle. They grabbed the surly young man and bundled him into the van.
“What do you think they want?” she said. Then she let out a gasp. “You! They thought he was you.”
With an odd feeling of detachment, Bob said, “I think you’re right.”
“Then we better get out of here.”
“Act casually. We don’t want to attract their attention.”
She nodded, her knuckles white as she gripped the steering wheel.
Bob could sense her alarm and knew that somewhere deep in his mind he felt alarmed too, but his struggle to comprehend Harrison’s death overrode everything else.
He stared out the window at the passing scene and saw not Denver but Saigon, where they had met.
Chapter 14
As Bob headed out of the NCO club in Saigon, he could hear Harrison saying, “Two South Vietnamese generals got in a fight. This was not a matter of fisticuffs, you understand, but a mini war with heavy gunfire and bombing raids . . .”
The door closed behind Bob. For a second his ears felt empty. When they adjusted to the silence, the usual muted night sounds intruded: the rumble of traffic, the reverberation of distant helicopters, the chirping of insects.
He was trying to decide whether he should leave or comb his hair differently, put on a pair of non-prescription eyeglasses, and go back inside, when he heard voices wafting toward him. He could not make out the words, but he could hear the urgency behind them.
Glancing casually about, he caught sight of two men: Sergeant Major Jim Cole and Staff Sergeant Andrew Bishop, both of whom were involved with the Khaki Mafia. Cole disappeared into the rear door of the club; Bishop hopped into a jeep and drove away.
Bob hurried to his own jeep and took off after him.
Bishop drove sedately through the base, but once outside the perimeter, he sped along the streets, careened around corners, and several times barely missed running into pedestrians.
They soon arrived in a section of Saigon Bob had never seen before. The muddy, unpaved streets—alleys, really—weren’t flat, but sloped toward the center, forming shallow ditches for the run-off of raw sewage. The shacks lining the alleys looked like the sort of houses small children build out of toothpicks and Popsicle sticks. People and animals spilled out of the shacks into the alleys, impeding Bob’s progress.
He parked his jeep. Even before he c
limbed out of his vehicle, children swarmed all over it.
Gagging on the smell of human waste, decaying vegetable matter, and rotten fish, Bob followed Bishop who drove by fits and starts toward a huge group of unkempt men milling around outside a bar/whorehouse. Most of the men carried weapons.
Bishop stopped and got out of his jeep. One of the men marched forward to meet him.
Unable to hear what they said, Bob inched closer. Seeing Bishop look around, he froze.
Bishop wrinkled his nose. “This place is a sewer.”
“It’s better than the fucking army,” the other said in a New York accent.
Bob inhaled sharply, almost choking on the effluvia. Now he knew where he was. He had heard of this area where U.S. deserters, South Vietnamese criminals, and even VC congregated. Whenever the M.P.s tried to round up the deserters, pitched battles ensued.
He watched a rough-looking Vietnamese man approach the New Yorker. The two conferred for a moment, then the New Yorker said, “We have plenty of M-16s. We need ammunition.”
“We don’t want to get involved with that,” Bishop responded.
An argument broke out. So many men talked at once Bob heard only a jangle of voices.
Finally, Bishop held up a hand. “Okay, but it’s going to cost you.” He leaned forward and spoke softly.
“No way,” the New Yorker shouted.
He pushed Bishop. Bishop pushed back. The other men held their weapons at the ready.
Bob felt a ripple of movement. He looked be-hind him. The bystanders melted away, leaving the streets empty. Then he noticed a long line of military vehicles approaching. M.P.s.
He inched his way back to his jeep, waited until the cavalcade of military vehicles had passed, then made a tight U-turn.
Behind him, the first shots rang out.
***
Bob was sitting at a table with a man who kept calling him Jimmy Ray, when Harrison breezed into the NCO club. Bob watched in amusement as the seasoned soldiers gravitated toward the journalist. In no time at all, Harrison was the center of a large group.
All at once, Bob felt the skin on the back of his neck crawl. He looked around.
Andrew Bishop was staring at him.
Wondering if Bishop had noticed him last night, Bob drew in his shoulders. The staff sergeant was only 5’9” or 5’10”, but he had a powerful build with thick wrists, a massive chest, and hands that looked able to crush a larynx without any effort at all. His hair was cropped close to his skull, and a perpetual scowl compressed his face.
Still feeling Bishop’s stare, Bob rose and strolled over to where Harrison held court. He pulled up a chair and sat, glancing back as he did so.
He did not see Bishop.
The next day, deciding it would be a good idea to get as far away from Saigon as possible to give Bishop time to forget his face, Bob drove to Da Nang.
As usual, Harrison hitched a ride.
***
On Bob’s last night in Da Nang, he noticed Harrison moving around the club, clapping some men on the back, giving others complicated handshakes, laughing with some, listening gravely to others, all the while gulping copious amounts of beer.
Harrison slipped into a seat next to a young man blubbering over a drink. The young man, with his freckled face and his shock of unruly blond hair, seemed no older than a junior high school kid.
“What’s wrong?” Bob heard Harrison ask.
“Jamie, my fiancée, broke up with me,” the kid said between hiccups. “She says she saw on the news that we’re killing babies. She says she can’t marry a baby killer.”
Bob heard the soft murmur of Harrison’s voice. Then in a normal tone the journalist said, “Do you want me to write Jamie a letter? Tell her you never killed a baby in your life?”
The kid looked at him with hope shining in his eyes. “You mean it? I know she’d believe you.”
Harrison dug a notebook and pen out of his pocket. He wrote for a few minutes, ripped out the pages, and handed it to the kid, who accepted it with a broad smile.
Then Harrison moved on to someone else.
Bob stood and made his way to the can. As he finished urinating, the door opened.
A second later, a heavy weight crashed into his back, a vice gripped his head, and he was slammed against the wall above the urinal.
Pain exploded behind his eyes. As the first shock dissipated, he realized someone had one powerful hand at his back and the other on his head, keeping him glued to the wall.
Then he became aware that a second person held the tip of a knife to the soft spot beneath his ear.
He heard a toilet flush, footsteps moving rapidly across the floor, the door opening and closing.
“Who are you?” a voice growled in his ear. “I’ve seen you before. Are you following me, maggot?”
Bob recognized the voice. Staff Sergeant Bishop.
“Not following you,” he said, trying to move his jaw as little as possible. “Following orders.”
The weight disappeared from his back, while the pressure on his head increased.
He could feel Bishop groping through his pockets.
“What orders?” Bishop asked.
“I’m doing a survey of typewriters—”
“What kind of candyass job is that for a man?” the person with the knife asked.
The knife dug deeper into Bob’s neck, and he could feel a trickle of blood.
“I’m supposed to find out how the typewriters are holding up under tropical conditions—”
“I can read, dumbass,” Bishop said. “It’s all here.”
Bob could hear the soft whisper of paper fluttering to the floor, followed a moment later by a muffled thud—probably his wallet.
“How come I keep seeing your face all the time?” Bishop demanded.
“I do my job,” Bob said. “After that I stop for a drink or two. What else am I going to do?”
Bob felt a slight draft as the door opened.
“Come back later,” Bishop snarled.
“I need to take a leak,” Harrison said in an overloud voice. There was a faint flick as if he were brushing lint off a shoulder. “I can see you’re in the middle of something, but do you mind waiting until I’m through? I’d prefer not to get blood on my suit. I just got it cleaned.”
Bob heard the sound of a zipper, then a steady stream of water hitting the urinal.
The pressure of the hand on Bob’s head increased, but otherwise neither of his assailants moved a muscle.
He could hear the sound of a zipper again, the splash of water in the sink, then footsteps moving toward the door.
The door opened.
“By the way, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t hurt him too badly. He’s my ride.”
The door closed.
“I don’t like you,” Bishop said, breathing hotly in Bob’s ear. “If you see me again, you better run, you puke, because next time I won’t be so nice.”
He pulled Bob’s head back, slammed it into the wall, and released it.
Bob had to put out his hands to keep from falling. He waited until Bishop and his sidekick left, then he pushed himself upright.
Noticing that his penis was still hanging out of his pants, he tucked it in and zipped up. He touched a hand to his neck and gazed at the blood smeared on his fingers.
After a moment he went to the sink, where he washed his hands and neck. He gripped the basin and bowed his head, waiting for the pain behind his eyes to subside.
The door opened. He turned to see Harrison step into the room and close the door behind him.
“You okay, pal?”
“I’m fine.”
Harrison nodded. Bob retrieved his wallet and his papers. Together they left the room.
***
Bob closed his eyes against the harshness of the Denver sun. First Hsiang-li had disappeared from his life and now so had the man who’d been more than a brother to him. He thought about the last time he’d seen Harrison and wondered
how he could have missed seeing the symptoms of his illness.
“I don’t believe in conspiracies,” Harrison had said, banging his fist on the table in The Lotus Room.
“I know,” Bob replied. “You’ve told me before.”
“And why don’t I believe in conspiracies?”
“You say whenever more than two or three people know a secret, always someone will let something slip.”
“Abso-fucking-lutely right!”
Bob peered at him. In all the years he had known Harrison, he had never heard him talk like this.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“No, I’m not all right,” Harrison shouted. He lowered his voice and repeated softly, “No, I’m not all right.”
“Are you sick?”
Harrison remained silent for so long Bob thought he might not answer, but finally Harrison said, “No.” After another long silence he added, “Not physically, anyway.”
“Being mysterious is not like you,” Bob said. “The Bill Harrison I’ve always known never hesitated to blurt out whatever is on his mind.”
“That Harrison never stumbled onto such a big story.”
Bob grew still. “Tell me about it.”
Harrison shook his head. “Just knowing about it might put you in danger.”
“I’ve been in danger before.”
Harrison studied him for a moment, then he smiled. “So you have. I’d forgotten you were once the imperturbable James Bond.” His smile faded. He looked to the right and to the left, then leaned forward. “I discovered something that happened during Vietnam.”
“A lot of things happened back then.”
Harrison settled back and toyed with his beer. “Do you know Donald McCray?”
“The big redheaded guy who owns a small air freight business?”
“That’s the man. Shortly before my last trip to New York, I was sitting in a booth at O’Riley’s when Donald approached me and said he’d heard of my interest in stories about Vietnam. He said he was tired of carrying the burden of his secret all by himself and thought he’d be safer if someone else knew.”
“Knew what?” Bob asked when Harrison fell silent again.
Harrison pinched the bridge of his nose between a thumb and forefinger. “He claimed a private trauma hospital outside of Manila had experimented on soldiers during Vietnam. I couldn’t verify it at first. Everyone I talked to, including a couple of generals, claimed to know nothing about the hospital. They also denied any knowledge of experiments. But someone had to have cut the orders.”
