by Pat Bertram
Then the rains fell. There was no light spattering gradually increasing in intensity as in Colorado, but an abrupt opening of the skies as if someone had turned on a spigot.
Fifteen minutes later Kerry returned, dripping wet and laughing.
“I got lost. I kept pointing and asking people if this was the way back to the Fountain Hotel, and no matter which direction I pointed, they said yes.”
Bob felt a pang of remorse. “I should have told you. It’s considered polite to agree. You have to ask direct questions like, ‘Where is the Fountain Hotel?’”
“I know. I finally figured that out. What’s wrong?” She narrowed her focus on him. “Did something happen?” Then her eyes widened to normal. “You were worried about me. That’s nice. When are we going to O’Riley’s?”
“As soon as we get you dry.”
***
Bob stepped into O’Riley’s and paused until his eyes adapted to the dim light. When he could see clearly, he noticed Hamburger Dan, hair now more gray than black, serving a drink to Jim Keating, an ex-Marine reputed to be a drug dealer. Bob could not make out Keating’s words, but he could hear the rumble of his deep voice underlying the ambient noise.
A gaunt, stringy-haired man sat at the piano, played a soft rendition of “Yesterday.”
Kerry glanced about, dark eyes gleaming with excitement. She leaned close to Bob and spoke in his ear. “This place is exactly the way Harrison described it. I feel like I’m in his book.”
Bob smiled at her. With the smile still on his face, he let Kerry tow him to a vacant table where they’d have a good view of the whole bar.
He nodded to Hamburger Dan as he passed. Hamburger Dan frowned as if he could not place him.
“Hey, bartender,” a portly man at the end of the bar called out. The man pointed to the skinny woman perched on the barstool next to his. “The missus needs another a those drinks with a umbrella.”
Hamburger Dan gave Bob a second look then fixed the drink.
“This is great.” Kerry took off her dripping raincoat and draped it across the back of her chair.
Bob took his off, too. In his short-sleeved shirt imprinted with red, green, and yellow parrots, he felt like a tourist. He even found himself gazing around as if he’d never visited the place before.
He saw a couple of the other regulars, a German and an American—both mercenaries—but most of the people were strangers to him, including the four men sitting at the next table. They seemed to be Americans of the right age to have fought in Vietnam. A man in a Yankees baseball cap waved his arms for emphasis.
“I did my job,” Bob heard him say. “Then I got out and continued on with my life. Everything’s great. My life is full. It happened so long ago. I don’t understand what the big deal is.”
The haunting strains of “Hey Jude” filtered through the room.
“What are you going to have?” Kerry asked.
“A Singha in honor of Harrison. It’s a local beer he liked. Also a hamburger with fries.”
When a giggling young waitress approached, Kerry ordered hamburgers, fries, and Singhas for both of them.
Hamburger Dan brought their drinks.
Setting them on the table, he gave Bob a penetrating glance. “It is you. I wasn’t sure at first. How’ve you been—”
Before Hamburger Dan could speak his name, Bob said quickly, “Gandy. I’m Rick Gandy and this is Julie Walsh.”
Hamburger Dan’s eyebrows rose. “I see. Does this have anything to do with the two men sitting in the booth across the room?”
Bob lifted his drink to his lips and gazed over the top of the mug. The men in question leaned back in their seats with studied nonchalance, but their eyes were hard and way too alert—cop’s eyes.
“My supposed friends?” Bob asked.
“Right. They’ve been in and out for the past six weeks or so, but after you called they started spending a lot of time here.”
“Something you should know. Your phone is tapped.”
Hamburger Dan stiffened. “What’s going on? What are you involved with?”
“To be honest, I have no idea, but I’m looking into it.”
“You?” Hamburger Dan had the grace not to smile, but Bob could sense his incredulity.
Seeing the light of battle in Kerry’s eyes and her mouth opening to come to his defense, Bob laid a hand on her knee. She closed her mouth, but her jaw remained set.
The waitress brought their hamburgers. The delicious aroma of grilled meat made Bob’s stomach growl with hunger.
“I’ll leave you to your food,” Hamburger Dan said. “I shouldn’t stay here too long anyway, don’t want to draw the attention of your friends.”
Kerry’s gaze followed him as he moved off, then it shifted to Bob.
“How come he talked to you like that? Doesn’t he know you’re the Bob Noone character in Dark Side of Heroes?”
“I doubt it. Now that Harrison’s gone, you’re probably the only one who knows. And if by chance Hamburger Dan does know, he still wouldn’t be impressed. He’d think Noone was a wimp.”
“Oh.” She took a big bite of her hamburger and ate it slowly. “How did you come up with the names Rick Gandy and Julie Walsh?”
“They slipped out. I decided we shouldn’t advertise the names we’re traveling under.”
“Good thinking.” She chewed on a French fry. “I’m beginning to have as many identities as you. It’s confusing.”
Bob nodded. Munching on his own hamburger, he let his glance fall on the other bar patrons.
“Mike seemed like a brother to me,” the man in the Yankee baseball cap said, tears brimming over. “I tried to save him, but there was nothing I could do.”
The men with the cop’s eyes stood, took a final look around, then sauntered out of the bar, still maintaining their casual air.
Bob felt his shoulders sag with relief.
As he continued to eat, he could hear the gaunt man playing “Let It Be.”
“Who’s the piano player?” Kerry asked. “He’s good.”
“Alan Pierce. He’s an Iowa farm boy raised in a strict Methodist family. He got hooked on heroin in Vietnam. He came to Bangkok after the war, and he’s been drifting from job to job ever since. He’s clean now, but he’s still too ashamed to go home.”
“So many stories,” she said softly.
“That’s what Harrison used to say.”
After the waitress cleared away their plates, Hamburger Dan returned with two more beers. “On the house.” He set the beer in front of them. “Have you two known each other long?”
“Yes,” Kerry said while Bob was saying “No.”
They looked at each other and grinned.
Hamburger Dan shook his head. “No wonder I didn’t recognize you . . . Rick. You’re so different.
“Different how?” Kerry asked, eyes bright.
“Younger. Happier. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him smile before.”
“Happier?” Bob gave a snort of unamused laughter. “With people after me for no reason I can fathom?” But something deep inside him said it might be true.
Hamburger Dan chatted a few minutes, bringing Bob current on the activities of his regulars.
“I don’t see Donald McCray,” Bob said. “Is he around?”
“Haven’t seen him for a while. He took Harrison’s death hard. Blames himself, but I don’t know why. It’s not like he had anything to do with Harrison getting cancer. Strange. I didn’t think they were that close.”
“Does he still use that old air strip west of town?”
“As far as I know. You planning on seeing him?”
“I might.”
“Well, go see Harrison’s lawyer, too. And call Dunbar. Get them off my back.” Hamburger Dan’s quick grin took any sting out of the words. “Are you here to stay?”
“Not this trip.”
“Be sure to stop by before you leave. Take care, you hear? You too, Julie.”
Bob and Kerry finished t
heir beers, then threaded their way around the tables to the door. A few notes of “Imagine” followed them outside.
It was still raining.
Despite umbrellas and raincoats, by the time they found a taxi, their pant legs and sandal-clad feet were soaked.
Kerry sneezed. “Are you going to see McCray now?”
“It’s too late.”
“Would it make you sad to take me by The Lotus Room?”
“No.” Bob gave the cabdriver the address, then settled back into the damp seat, which smelled of mildew and sweat.
When they pulled up in front of the familiar building, Bob paid the driver to wait for them. He and Kerry climbed out and stood staring at the place where he’d spent most of his waking hours for sixteen years. Seen through sheets of rain, it seemed shuttered and remote, though its lines were still pleasing.
Kerry looked from the pagoda-like building to Bob and then back again.
She shook her head. “I can’t picture you in there.”
“Neither can I.”
They climbed back into the cab.
“Where should we go?” she asked.
“To the hotel. I need to get some sleep. I’m still tired from the trip and not as alert as I need to be.”
He shuddered, remembering how slow his reactions had been to the knock on the door earlier in the day. It had only been the room service waiter, but what if it had been the operatives from ISI?
***
Panting and shaking, Bob jerked himself awake.
He lay quietly, trying to remember the dream, but the images hovered out of reach, like chill emanations from a ghostly presence.
His breathing slowed. Calm settled over him.
He fell back asleep, back into the same nightmare. This time when he awoke, he remained edgy.
Realizing he wouldn’t be able to sleep again, he got out of bed and did his exercises. When he finished, he went out for a run in the predawn dark. He ran long and far, but could not outdistance his edginess.
He paused in front of the Siam International Hotel to enjoy its unique roof of overlapping eaves representing an ancient Thai warrior helmet, and found a moment’s respite, but as soon as he raced on, his disquiet settled over him again.
When he returned to the Fountain Hotel, the first fingers of light were stealing across the sky. He sat in the courtyard, watching the night-blooming flowers bow their heads, watching the sun lovers open to welcome the new day. He breathed deeply of the fragrant air and let his thoughts and feelings waft away.
When he finally went back inside, he found Kerry sitting cross-legged on the bed, talking on the phone.
She placed a hand over the mouthpiece. “I’m ordering the breakfast special for us. Something called a Thai Omelet. Is that okay?
“Fine, but be sure to order a glass of whole milk.”
Hanging up, she said, “I didn’t know you drank milk.”
“I don’t. It’s for you.”
She drew back. “Don’t you know by now I never touch the stuff?”
He smiled. “You will.”
The omelets came, sitting innocently in the middle of thick white china plates.
Kerry poked at hers. “Looks like a plain old western omelet to me.” She put a forkful in her mouth. All at once her eyes widened, and tears streamed down her face. She dropped the fork and frantically fanned her mouth with both hands.
Bob passed her the glass of milk.
She grabbed it and gulped a mouthful. Eyes still watering, she said, “How can you sit there so calmly eating that stuff? I think I burned a hole in my esophagus.”
“I’m used to it. You can order something else if you want.”
“No, no. It’s good. Just . . . not what I expected.” After a few more bites of food and gulps of milk, she lifted her chin. “I’m not going with you to the airfield.”
He raised an eyebrow. “We decided we needed to stay together.”
“No. You decided.” She held out her hands and juggled them like a scale. “Sitting in a boring old office waiting for you or going on a tour of Bangkok. That’s a toughie.”
He opened his mouth to protest, but she hurried on. “You want to talk to Donald McCray alone so we’d be separated anyway, and it’s a guided tour. There’s safety in numbers, right?”
He found himself momentarily at a loss for words.
A smile spread across her face. “Good. That’s settled.”
***
McCray seemed older and paler than Bob remembered, but his thatch of red hair burned as brightly as the tip of his cigarette.
He squinted at Bob through the smoke. “Haven’t seen you around for a while. Thought you took off.” His voice sounded rough from decades of smoking.
“I came back to talk to you.”
McCray coughed. “Yeah? What about?”
“A private trauma hospital operating in the Philippines during Vietnam.”
McCray’s eyes shifted to the left as he took a deep drag. Blowing out the smoke, he said, “Don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Before Harrison died, he told me you’d talked to him.”
“So what if I did?”
“He said you told him about the hospital.”
McCray set his half-smoked cigarette on a cracked ceramic ashtray, fumbled in his shirt pocket, and brought out a pack of cigarettes and a cheap disposable lighter. He shook out a cigarette, then dropped the pack on the dusty invoices littering his gray metal desk.
He narrowed his eyes at Bob. “You fixing to get yourself killed, too?”
“No.”
McCray lit the cigarette, cupping his hands around the flame. “Wish I’d never told him. Those bastards killed him.”
The smoke stung Bob’s eyes and scratched his nostrils. “Do you know for sure, or are you guessing?”
McCray flicked a shred of tobacco from his tongue. “Don’t know for sure, but it’s more than a guess. Those people can do anything.”
“I know how dangerous they are,” Bob said. “I promise they’ll never know you helped me.”
“Why do you care what happened?”
“Harrison was my friend.”
McCray puffed a couple of times. The smoke swirled toward the ceiling fan.
“Kept my mouth shut for nineteen years,” he said. “Now look what I started.” He set his cigarette on the ashtray next to the first one, which had burned down to a long ash.
“We flew transport planes out of Bien Hoa, me and my co-pilot Hap. Barry Hapworth. We loved flying, being above it all. We talked a lot about staying in Southeast Asia when our time was up and opening our own air cargo business. Everyone always complained about the shitty weather in Vietnam, but not me and Hap. I came from Chicago, and he came from Detroit, and we had no intention of going back home to face the frigid winters.
“When we had about six months left of our tour, they ordered me to fly with another pilot, and they sent Hap on a special assignment.
“Hap was a quiet guy who seldom talked, which is probably why the brass chose him for those missions, but nobody seemed to realize his curiosity made him stick his nose where it didn’t belong.
“Hap knew from the beginning there was something very odd about his assignment. For one thing, he flew solo with a plane full of injured men, which seemed risky to him. For another, he took them to a privately owned trauma hospital on the outskirts of Quezon City, not to a military hospital. And to top it all off, too much secrecy surrounded what should have been a routine flight.
“He kept his eyes open and discovered that most of the patients were injured badly, but some seemed to be relatively healthy men in drug induced stupors. One day he returned from his special mission really upset. At first he refused to tell me the trouble, but finally the truth burst out of him.”
McCray lit another cigarette and dragged hungrily on it. When it burned down half an inch, he stared at the ash as if he couldn’t bear to get rid of it. Finally, he tapped it into the asht
ray.
The smoke made Bob want to cough, but he held it back, afraid to disrupt the flow of the story.
“Hap told me they did human experiments at that hospital,” McCray continued. “He said they did something to his passenger’s brains. Then he clamped his mouth shut and refused to say another word.
“Two weeks later he had another solo flight to Quezon City. Right after he took off to return to base, his plane crashed. He ended up in that trauma hospital.
“When he got back, I asked him if he found out anything more about the human experiments, and he acted like I was crazy. I didn’t see Hap much after that, but when it came time for us to be rotated out, I went searching for him and asked him if he still wanted to go into business with me. He gave me a blank stare and asked what business. I reminded him we were going to open an air cargo business here in Southeast Asia, and he said—I’ll always remember this—‘I hate flying. I hate the tropics. I can hardly wait to get back to Detroit.’”
McCray finished his cigarette. “If they can scramble a person’s brain like that, they can do anything, anything they want.”
“Do you know who they are?” Bob asked.
“Not really. By chance, several years ago I got a charter to take this guy to Singapore, and we got to talking. You know how it is. Well, maybe you don’t know, seeing’s how you’re not much for shooting the bull. We found out we were in the service at the same time. He’d been some kind of orderly stationed at a hospital outside Quezon City. He mentioned that the military didn’t run the place. Some corporation owned it. ISS, I think.”
Bob gave him a sharp look. “ISI?”
McCray nodded. “Could be.”
“Did he give you a name?”
“Fowler? Crowley? Something like that.”
“Is there any way to find out? Maybe from an invoice?”
“No. It happened too long ago.” McCray lit another cigarette. “I kept asking the guy about the hospital, but he didn’t remember much.” He inhaled, held the smoke for several seconds, then exhaled it with a cough.
“But he did remember something,” Bob said.
“Nothing important. When you were in Nam did you ever hear that story about the freak they called The Sweeper? No, I guess you wouldn’t have since you were just a REMF.”
