He felt like hitting her, but he controlled the urge. Chantal was right. He must be slipping.
She began to pace the room, her movements as sure as a cat’s in the darkness. “The police are interested. Very interested. And I saw others there—Party members, I think—watching the interrogation. What have you gotten me into, Siang?”
He shrugged. “Give me a cigarette.”
She whirled on him in rage. “Get your own cigarettes! You think I have money to waste on you?”
“You’ll get the money. All you want.”
“You don’t know how much I want.”
“I still need a gun. You promised me you’d get one. Plus twenty rounds, minimum.”
She let out a harsh breath of smoke. “Ammunition is hard to come by.”
“I can’t wait any longer. This has to be—”
They both froze as the door creaked open. The police, thought Siang, automatically reaching for his knife.
“You’re so right, Mr. Siang,” said a voice in the darkness. Perfect English. “It has to be done. But not quite yet.”
The intruder moved lazily into the room, struck a match and calmly lit a kerosene lamp on the table.
Chantal’s eyes were wide with astonishment. And fear. “It’s you,” she whispered. “You’ve come back....”
The intruder smiled. He laid a pistol and a box of .38-caliber ammunition on the table. Then he looked at Siang. “There’s been a slight change of plans.”
Chapter 7
She was flying. High, high above the clouds, where the sky was so cold and clear, it felt as if her plane were floating in a crystalline sea. She could hear the wings cut the air like knives through silk. Someone said, “Higher, baby. You have to climb higher if you want to reach the stars.”
She turned. It was her father sitting in the copilot’s seat, quicksilver smoke dancing around him. He looked the way she’d always remembered him, his cap tilted at a jaunty angle, his eyes twinkling. Just the way he used to look when she’d loved him. When he’d been the biggest, boldest Daddy in the world.
She said, “But I don’t want to climb higher.”
“Yes, you do. You want to reach the stars.”
“I’m afraid, Daddy. Don’t make me....”
But he took the joystick. He sent the plane upward, upward, into the blue bowl of sky. He kept saying, “This is what it’s all about. Yessir, baby, this is what it’s all about.” Only his voice had changed. She saw that it was no longer her father sitting in the copilot’s seat; it was Guy Barnard, pushing them into oblivion. “I’ll take us to the stars!”
Then it was her father again, gleefully gripping the joystick. She tried to wrench the plane out of the climb, but the joystick broke off in her hand.
The sky turned upside down, righted. She looked at the copilot’s seat. Guy was sitting there, laughing. They went higher. Her father laughed.
“Who are you?” she screamed.
The phantom smiled. “Don’t you know me?”
She woke up, still reaching desperately for that stump of a joystick.
“It’s me,” the voice said.
She stared up wildly. “Daddy!”
The man looking down at her smiled, a kind smile. “Not quite.”
She blinked, focused on Guy’s face, his rumpled hair, unshaven jaw. Sweat gleamed on his bare shoulders. Through the curtains behind him, daylight shimmered.
“Nightmare?” he asked.
Groaning, she sat up and shoved back a handful of tangled hair. “I don’t usually have them. Nightmares.”
“After last night, I’d be surprised if you didn’t have one.”
Last night. She looked down and saw she was still wearing the same blood-spattered dress, now damp and clinging to her back.
“Power’s out,” said Guy, giving the silent air conditioner a slap. He padded over to the window and nudged open the curtain. Sunlight blazed in, so piercing, it hurt Willy’s eyes. “Gonna be a hell of a scorcher.”
“Already is.”
“Are you feeling okay?” He stood silhouetted against the window, his unbelted trousers slung low over his hips. Once again she saw the scar, noticed how it rippled its way down his abdomen before vanishing beneath the waistband.
“I’m hot,” she said. “And filthy. And I probably don’t smell so good.”
“I hadn’t noticed.” He paused and added ruefully, “Probably because I smell even worse.”
They laughed, a short, uneasy laugh that was instantly cut off when someone knocked on the door. Guy called out, “Who’s there?”
“Mr. Barnard? It is eight o’clock. The car is ready.”
“It’s my driver,” Guy said, and he unbolted the door.
A smiling Vietnamese man stood outside. “Good morning! Do you still wish to go to Cantho this morning?”
“I don’t think so,” said Guy, discreetly stepping outside to talk in private. Willy heard him murmur, “I want to get Ms. Maitland to the airport this afternoon. Maybe we can...”
Cantho. Willy sat on the bed, listening to the buzz of conversation, trying to remember why that name was so important. Oh, yes. There was a man there, someone she needed to talk to. A man who might have the answers. She closed her eyes against the window’s glare, and the dream came back to her, the grinning face of her father, the sickening climb of a doomed plane. She thought of her mother, lying near death at home. Heard her mother ask, “Are you sure, Willy? Do you know for certain he’s dead?” Heard herself tell another lie, all the time hating herself, hating her own cowardice, hating the fact that she could never live up to her father’s name. Or his courage.
“So stick around the hotel,” Guy said to the driver. “Her plane takes off at four, so we should leave around—”
“I’m going to Cantho,” said Willy.
Guy glanced around at her. “What?”
“I said I’m going to Cantho. You said you’d take me.”
He shook his head. “Things have changed.”
“Nothing’s changed.”
“The stakes have.”
“But not the questions. They haven’t gone away. They’ll never go away.”
Guy turned to the driver. “Excuse me while I talk some sense into the lady....”
But Willy had already risen to her feet. “Don’t bother. You can’t talk sense into me.” She went into the bathroom and shut the door. “I’m Wild Bill Maitland’s kid, remember?” she yelled.
The driver looked sympathetically at Guy. “I will get the car.”
* * *
The road out of Saigon was jammed with trucks, most of them ancient and spewing clouds of black exhaust. Through the open windows of their car came the smells of smoke and sun-baked pavement and rotting fruit. Laborers trudged along the roadside, a bobbing column of conical hats against the bright green of the rice paddies.
Five hours and two ferry crossings later, Guy and Willy stood on a Cantho pier and watched a multitude of boats glide across the muddy Mekong. River women dipped and swayed as they rowed, a strange and graceful dance at the oars. And on the riverbank swirled the noise and confusion of a thriving market town. Schoolgirls, braided hair gleaming in the sunshine, whisked past on bicycles. Stevedores heaved sacks of rice and crates of melons and pineapples onto sampans.
Overwhelmed by the chaos, Willy asked bleakly, “How are we ever going to find him?”
Guy’s answer didn’t inspire much confidence. He simply shrugged and said, “How hard can it be?”
Very hard, it turned out. All their inquiries brought the same response. “A tall man?” people would say. “And blond?” Invariably their answer would be a shake of the head.
It was Guy’s inspired hunch that finally sent them into a series of tailor shops. “Maybe Lassiter’s no longer blond,” he said. “He could have dyed his ha
ir or gone bald. But there’s one feature a man can’t disguise—his height. And in this country, a six-foot-four man is going to need specially tailored clothes.”
The first three tailors they visited turned up nothing. It was with a growing sense of futility that they entered the fourth shop, wedged in an alley of tin-roofed hootches. In the cavelike gloom within, an elderly seamstress sat hunched over a mound of imitation silk. She didn’t seem to understand Guy’s questions. In frustration, Guy took out a pen and jotted a few words in Vietnamese on a scrap of newspaper. Then, to illustrate his point, he sketched in the figure of a tall man.
The woman squinted down at the drawing. For a long time, she sat there, her fingers knotted tightly around the shimmering fabric. Then she looked up at Guy. No words were exchanged, just that silent, mournful gaze.
Guy gave a nod that he understood. He reached into his pocket and lay a twenty-dollar bill on the table in front of her. She stared at it in wonder. American dollars. For her, it was a fortune.
At last she took up Guy’s pen and, with painful precision, began to write. The instant she’d finished, Guy swept up the scrap of paper and jammed it into his pocket. “Let’s go,” he whispered to Willy.
“What does it say?” Willy whispered as they headed back along the row of hootches.
Guy didn’t answer; he only quickened his pace. In the silence of the alley, Willy suddenly became aware of eyes, everywhere, watching them from the windows and doorways.
Willy tugged on Guy’s arm. “Guy...”
“It’s an address. Near the marketplace.”
“Lassiter’s?”
“Don’t talk. Just keep moving. We’re being followed.”
“What?”
He grabbed her arm before she could turn to look. “Come on, keep your head. Pretend he’s not there.”
She fought to keep her eyes focused straight ahead, but the sense of being stalked made every muscle in her body strain to run. How does he stay so calm? she wondered, glancing at Guy. He was actually whistling now, a tuneless song that scraped her nerves raw. They reached the end of the alley, and a maze of streets lay before them. To her surprise, Guy stopped and struck up a cheerful conversation with a boy selling cigarettes at the corner. Their chatter seemed to go on forever.
“What are you doing?” Willy ground out. “Can’t we get out of here?”
“Trust me.” Guy bought a pack of Winstons, for which he paid two American dollars. The boy beamed and sketched a childish salute.
Guy took Willy’s hand. “Get ready.”
“Ready for what?”
The words were barely out of her mouth when Guy wrenched her around the corner and up another alley. They made a sharp left, then a right, past a row of tin-roofed shacks, and ducked into an open doorway.
Inside, it was too murky to make sense of their surroundings. For an eternity they huddled together, listening for footsteps. They could hear, in the distance, children laughing and a car horn honking incessantly. But just outside, in the alley, there was silence.
“Looks like the kid did his job,” whispered Guy.
“You mean that cigarette boy?”
Guy sidled over to the doorway and peered out. “Looks clear. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
They slipped into the alley and doubled back. Even before they saw the marketplace, they could hear it: the shouts of merchants, the frantic squeals of pigs. Hurrying along the outskirts, they scanned the street names and finally turned into what was scarcely more than an alley jammed between crumbling apartment buildings. The address numbers were barely decipherable.
At last, at a faded green building, they stopped. Guy squinted at the number over the doorway and nodded. “This is it.” He knocked.
The door opened. A single eye, iris so black the pupil was invisible, peered at them through the crack. That was all they saw, that one glimpse of a woman’s face, but it was enough to tell them she was afraid. Guy spoke to her in Vietnamese. The woman shook her head and tried to close the door. He put his hand out to stop it and spoke again, this time saying the man’s name, “Sam Lassiter.”
Panicking, the woman turned and screamed something in Vietnamese.
Somewhere in the house, footsteps thudded away, followed by the shattering of glass.
“Lassiter!” Guy yelled. Shoving past the woman, he raced through the apartment, Willy at his heels. In a back room, they found a broken window. Outside in the alley, a man was sprinting away. Guy scrambled out, dropped down among the glass shards and took off after the fugitive.
Willy was about to follow him out the window when the Vietnamese woman, frantic, grasped her arm.
“Please! No hurt him!” she cried. “Please!”
Willy, trying to pull free, found her fingers linked for an instant with the other woman’s. Their eyes met. “We won’t hurt him,” Willy said, gently disengaging her arm.
Then she pulled herself up onto the windowsill and dropped into the alley.
* * *
Guy was pulling closer. He could see his quarry loping toward the marketplace. It had to be Lassiter. Though his hair was a lank, dirty brown, there was no disguising his height; he towered above the crowd. He ducked beneath the marketplace canopy and vanished into shadow.
Damn, thought Guy, struggling to move through the crowd. I’m going to lose him.
He shoved into the central market tent. The sun’s glare abruptly gave way to a close, hot gloom. He stumbled blindly, his eyes adjusting slowly to the change in light. He made out the cramped aisles, the counters overflowing with fruit and vegetables, the gay sparkle of pinwheels spinning on a toy vendor’s cart. A tall silhouette suddenly bobbed off to the side. Guy spun around and saw Lassiter duck behind a gleaming stack of cookware.
Guy scrambled after him. The man leapt up and sprinted away. Pots and pans went flying, a dozen cymbals crashing together.
Guy’s quarry darted into the produce section. Guy made a sharp left, leapt over a crate of mangoes and dashed up a parallel aisle. “Lassiter!” he yelled. “I want to talk! That’s all, just talk!”
The man spun right, shoved over a fruit stand and stumbled away. Watermelons slammed to the ground, exploding in a brilliant rain of flesh. Guy almost slipped in the muck. “Lassiter!” he shouted.
They headed into the meat section. Lassiter, desperate, shoved a crate of ducks into Guy’s path, sending up a cloud of feathers as the birds, freed from their prison, flapped loose. Guy dodged the crate, leapt over a fugitive duck and kept running. Ahead lay the butcher counters, stacked high with slabs of meat. A vendor was hosing down the concrete floor, sending a stream of bloody water into the gutter. Lassiter, moving full tilt, suddenly slid and fell to his knees in the offal. At once he tried to scramble back to his feet, but by then Guy had snagged his shirt collar.
“Just—just talk,” Guy managed to gasp between breaths. “That’s all—talk—”
Lassiter thrashed, struggling to pull free.
“Gimme a chance!” Guy yelled, dragging him back down.
Lassiter rammed his shoulders at Guy’s knees, sending Guy sprawling. In an instant, Lassiter had leapt to his feet. But as he turned to flee, Guy grabbed his ankle, and Lassiter toppled forward and splashed, headfirst, into a vat of squirming eels.
The water seemed to boil with slippery bodies, writhing in panic. Guy dragged the man’s head out of the vat. They both collapsed, gasping on the slick concrete.
“Don’t!” Lassiter sobbed. “Please...”
“I told you, I just—just want to talk—”
“I won’t say anything! I swear it. You tell ’em that for me. Tell ’em I forgot everything....”
“Who?” Guy took the other man by the shoulders. “Who are they? Who are you afraid of?”
Lassiter took a shaky breath and looked at him, seemed to make a decision. “The Company.
”
“Why does the CIA want you dead?” Willy asked.
They were sitting at a wooden table on the deck of an old river barge. Neutral territory, Lassiter had said of this floating café. During the war, by some unspoken agreement, V.C. and South Vietnamese soldiers would sit together on this very deck, enjoying a small patch of peace. A few hundred yards away, the war might rage on, but here no guns were drawn, no bullets fired.
Lassiter, gaunt and nervous, took a deep swallow of beer. Behind him, beyond the railing, flowed the Mekong, alive with the sounds of river men, the putter of boats. In the last light of sunset, the water rippled with gold. Lassiter said, “They want me out of the way for the same reason they wanted Luis Valdez out of the way. I know too much.”
“About what?”
“Laos. The bombings, the gun drops. The war your average soldier didn’t know about.” He looked at Guy. “Did you?”
Guy shook his head. “We were so busy staying alive, we didn’t care what was going on across the border.”
“Valdez knew. Anyone who went down in Laos was in for an education. If they survived. And that was a big if. Say you did manage to eject. Say you lived through the G force of shooting out of your cockpit. If the enemy didn’t find you, the animals would.” He stared down at his beer. “Valdez was lucky to be alive.”
“You met him at Tuyen Quan?” asked Guy.
“Yeah. Summer camp.” He laughed. “For three years we were stuck in the same cell.” His gaze turned to the river. “I was with the 101st when I was captured. Got separated during a firefight. You know how it is in those valleys, the jungle’s so thick you can’t be sure which way’s up. I was going in circles, and all the time I could hear those damn Hueys flying overhead, right overhead, picking guys up. Everyone but me. I figured I’d been left to die. Or maybe I was already dead, just some corpse walking around in the trees....” He swallowed; the hand clutching the beer bottle was unsteady. “When they finally boxed me in, I just threw my rifle down and put up my hands. I got force marched north, into NVA territory. That’s how I ended up at Tuyen Quan.”
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