No Reason to Trust

by Tess Gerritsen

  “Where you met Valdez,” said Willy.

  “He was brought in a year later, transferred in from some camp in Laos. By then I was an old-timer. Knew the ropes, worked my own vegetable patch. I was hanging in okay. Valdez, though, was holding on by the skin of his teeth. Yellow from hepatitis, a broken arm that wouldn’t heal right. It took him months to get strong enough even to work in the garden. Yeah, it was just him and me in that cell. Three years. We did a lot of talking. I heard all his stories. He said a lot of things I didn’t want to believe, things about Laos, about what we were doing there....”

  Willy leaned forward and asked softly, “Did he ever talk about my father?”

  Lassiter turned to her, his eyes dark against the glow of sunset. “When Valdez last saw him, your father was still alive. Trying to fly the plane.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “Luis bailed out right after she blew up. So he couldn’t be sure—”

  “Wait,” cut in Guy. “What do you mean, ‘blew up’?”

  “That’s what he said. Something went off in the hold.”

  “But the plane was shot down.”

  “It wasn’t enemy fire that brought her down. Valdez was positive about that. They might have been going through flak at the time, but this was something else, something that blew the fuselage door clean off. He kept going over and over what they had in the cargo, but all he remembered listed on the manifest were aircraft parts.”

  “And a passenger,” said Willy.

  Lassiter nodded. “Valdez mentioned him. Said he was a weird little guy, quiet, almost, well, holy. They could tell he was a VIP, just by what he was wearing around his neck.”

  “You mean gold? Chains?” asked Guy.

  “Some sort of medallion. Maybe a religious symbol.”

  “Where was this passenger supposed to be dropped off?”

  “Behind lines. VC territory. It was billed as an in-and-out job, strictly under wraps.”

  “Valdez told you about it,” said Willy.

  “And I wish to hell he never had.” Lassiter took another gulp of beer. His hand was shaking again. Sunset flecked the river with bloodred ripples. “It’s funny. At the time we felt almost, well, protected in that camp. Maybe it was just a lot of brainwashing, but the guards kept telling Valdez he was lucky to be a prisoner. That he knew things that’d get him into trouble. That the CIA would kill him.”

  “Sounds like propaganda.”

  “That’s what I figured it was—Commie lies designed to break him down. But they got Valdez scared. He kept waking up at night, screaming about the plane going down....”

  Lassiter stared out at the water. “Anyway, after the war, they released us. Valdez and the other guys headed home. He wrote me from Bangkok, sent the letter by way of a Red Cross nurse we’d met in Hanoi right after our release. An English gal, a little anti-American but real nice. When I read that letter, I thought, now the poor bastard’s really gone over the edge. He was saying crazy things, said he wasn’t allowed to go out, that all his phone calls were monitored. I figured he’d be all right once he got home. Then I got a call from Nora Walker, that Red Cross nurse. She said he was dead. That he’d shot himself in the head.”

  Willy asked, “Do you think it was suicide?”

  “I think he was a liability. And the Company doesn’t like liabilities.” He turned his troubled gaze to the water. “When we were at Tuyen, all he could talk about was going home, you know? Seeing his old hangouts, his old buddies. Me, I had nothing to go home to, just a sister I never much cared for. Here, at least, I had my girl, someone I loved. That’s why I stayed. I’m not the only one. There are other guys like me around, hiding in villages, jungles. Guys who’ve gone bamboo, gone native.” He shook his head. “Too bad Valdez didn’t. He’d still be alive.”

  “But isn’t it hard living here?” asked Willy. “Always the outsider, the old enemy? Don’t you ever feel threatened by the authorities?”

  Lassiter responded with a laugh and cocked his head at a far table where four men were sitting. “Have you said hello to our local police? They’ve probably been tailing you since you hit town.”

  “So we noticed,” said Guy.

  “My guess is they’re assigned to protect me, their resident lunatic American. Just the fact that I’m alive and well is proof this isn’t the evil empire.” He raised his bottle of beer in a toast to the four policemen. They stared back sheepishly.

  “So here you are,” said Guy, “cut off from the rest of the world. Why would the CIA bother to come after you?”

  “It’s something Nora told me.”

  “The nurse?”

  Lassiter nodded. “After the war, she stayed on in Hanoi. Still works at the local hospital. About a year ago, some guy—an American—dropped in to see her. Asked if she knew how to get hold of me. He said he had an urgent message from my uncle. But Nora’s a sharp gal, thinks fast on her feet. She told him I’d left the country, that I was living in Thailand. A good thing she did.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t have an uncle.”

  There was a silence. Softly Guy said, “You think that was a Company man.”

  “I keep wondering if he was. Wondering if he’ll find me. I don’t want to end up like Luis Valdez. With a bullet in my head.”

  On the river, boats glided like ghosts through the shadows. A café worker silently circled the deck, lighting a string of paper lanterns.

  “I’ve kept a low profile,” said Lassiter. “Never make noise. Never draw attention. See, I changed my hair.” He grinned faintly and tugged on his lank brown ponytail. “Got this shade from the local herbalist. Extract of cuttlefish and God knows what else. Smells like hell, but I’m not blond anymore.” He let the ponytail flop loose, and his smile faded. “I kept hoping the Company would lose interest in me. Then you showed up at my door, and I—I guess I freaked out.”

  The bartender put a record on the turntable, and the needle scratched out a Vietnamese love song, a haunting melody that drifted like mist over the river. Wind swayed the paper lanterns, and shadows danced across the deck. Lassiter stared at the five beer bottles lined up in front of him on the table. He ordered a sixth.

  “It takes time, but you get used to it here,” he said. “The rhythm of life. The people, the way they think. There’s not a lot of whining and flailing at misfortune. They accept life as it is. I like that. And after a while, I got to feeling this was the only place I’ve ever belonged, the only place I ever felt safe.” He looked at Willy. “It could be the only place you’re safe.”

  “But I’m not like you,” said Willy. “I can’t stay here the rest of my life.”

  “I want to put her on the next plane to Bangkok,” said Guy.

  “Bangkok?” Lassiter snorted. “Easiest place in the world to get yourself killed. And going home’d be no safer. Look what happened to Valdez.”

  “But why?” Willy said in frustration. “Why would they kill Valdez? Or me? I don’t know anything!”

  “You’re Bill Maitland’s daughter. You’re a direct link—”

  “To what? A dead man?”

  The love song ended, fading to the scritch-scritch of the needle.

  Lassiter set his beer down. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know why you’re such a threat to them. All I know is, something went wrong on that flight. And the Company’s still trying to cover it up....” He stared at the line of empty beer bottles gleaming in the lantern light. “If it takes a bullet to buy silence, then a bullet’s what they’ll use.”

  “Do you think he’s right?” Willy whispered.

  From the back seat of the car, they watched the rice paddies, silvered by moonlight, slip past their windows. For an hour they’d driven without speaking, lulled into silence by the rhythm of the road under their wheels. But now Willy couldn’t help
voicing the question she was afraid to ask. “Will I be any safer at home?”

  Guy looked out at the night. “I wish I knew. I wish I could tell you what to do. Where to go...”

  She thought of her mother’s house in San Francisco, thought of how warm and safe it had always seemed, that blue Victorian on Third Avenue. Surely no one would touch her there.

  Then she thought of Valdez, shot to death in his Houston rooming house. For him, even a POW camp had been safer.

  The driver slid a tape into the car’s cassette player. A Vietnamese song twanged out, sung by a woman with a sorrowful voice. Outside, the rice paddies swayed like waves on a silver ocean. Nothing about this moment seemed real, not the melody or the moonlit countryside or the danger. Only Guy was real—real enough to touch, to hold.

  She let her head rest against his shoulder, and the darkness, the warmth, made sleep impossible to resist. Guy’s arm came around her, cradled her against his chest. She felt his breath in her hair, the brush of his lips on her forehead. A kiss, she thought drowsily. It felt so nice to be kissed....

  The hum of the wheels over the road seemed to take on a new rhythm, the whisper of the ocean, the soothing hiss of waves. Now he was kissing her all over, and they were no longer in the back seat of the car; they were on a ship, swaying on a black sea. The wind moaned in the rigging, a soulful song in Vietnamese. She was lying on her back, and somehow, all her clothes had vanished. He was on top of her, his hands trapping her arms against the deck, his lips exploring her throat, her breasts, with a conqueror’s triumph. How she wanted him to make love to her, wanted it so badly that her body arched up to meet his, straining for some blessed release from this ache within her. But his lips melted away, and then she heard, “Wake up. Willy, wake up....”

  She opened her eyes. She was lying in the back seat of the car, her head in Guy’s lap. Through the window came the faint glow of city lights.

  “We’re back in Saigon,” he whispered, stroking her face. The touch of his hand, so new yet so familiar, made her tremble in the night heat. “You must have been tired.”

  Still shaken by the dream, she pulled away and sat up. Outside, the streets were deserted. “What time is it?”

  “After midnight. Guess we forgot about supper. Are you hungry?”

  “Not really.”

  “Neither am I. Maybe we should just call it a—” He paused. She felt his arm stiffen against hers. “Now what?” he muttered, staring straight ahead.

  Willy followed his gaze to the hotel, which had just swung into view. A surreal scene lay ahead: the midnight glare of streetlights, the army of policemen blocking the lobby doors, the gleam of AK-47s held at the ready.

  Their driver muttered in Vietnamese. Willy could see his face in the rearview mirror. He was sweating.

  The instant they pulled to a stop at the curb, their car was surrounded. A policeman yanked the passenger door open.

  “Stay inside,” Guy said. “I’ll take care of this.”

  But as he stepped out of the car, a uniformed arm reached inside and dragged her out as well. Groggy with sleep, bewildered by the confusion, she clung to Guy’s arm as voices shouted and men shoved against her.

  “Barnard!” It was Dodge Hamilton, struggling down the hotel steps toward them. “What the hell’s going on?”

  “Don’t ask me! We just got back to town!”

  “Blast, where’s that man Ainh?” said Hamilton, glancing around. “He was here a minute ago....”

  “I am here,” came the answer in a shaky voice. Ainh, glasses askew and blinking nervously, stood at the top of the lobby steps. He was swiftly escorted by a policeman through the crowd. Gesturing to a limousine, he said to Guy, “Please. You and Miss Maitland will come with me.”

  “Why are we under arrest?” Guy demanded.

  “You are not under arrest.”

  Guy pulled his arm free of a policeman’s grasp. “Could’ve fooled me.”

  “They are here only as a precaution,” said Ainh, ushering them into the car. “Please get in. Quickly.”

  It was the ripple of urgency in his voice that told Willy something terrible had happened. “What is it?” she asked Ainh. “What’s wrong?”

  Ainh nervously adjusted his glasses. “About two hours ago, we received a call from the police in Cantho.”

  “We were just there.”

  “So they told us. They also said they’d found a body. Floating in the river...”

  Willy stared at him, afraid to ask, yet already knowing. Only when she felt Guy’s hand tighten around her arm did she realize she’d sagged against him.

  “Sam Lassiter?” Guy asked flatly.

  Ainh nodded. “His throat was cut.”

  Chapter 8

  The old man who sat in the carved rosewood chair appeared frail enough to be toppled by a stiff wind. His arms were like two twigs crossed on his lap. His white wisp of a beard trembled in the breath of the ceiling fan. But his eyes were as bright as quicksilver. Through the open windows came the whine of the cicadas in the walled garden. Overhead, the fan spun slowly in the midnight heat.

  The old man’s gaze focused on Willy. “Wherever you walk, Miss Maitland,” he said, “it seems you leave a trail of blood.”

  “We had nothing to do with Lassiter’s death,” said Guy. “When we left Cantho, he was alive.”

  “I think you misunderstand, Mr. Barnard.” The man turned to Guy. “I do not accuse you of anything.”

  “Who are you accusing?”

  “That detail I leave to our people in Cantho.”

  “You mean those police agents you had following us?”

  Minister Tranh smiled. “You made it a difficult assignment. That boy on the corner—an ingenious move. No, we’re aware that Mr. Lassiter was alive when you left him.”

  “And after we left?”

  “We know that he sat in the river café for another twenty minutes. That he drank a total of eight beers. And then he left. Unfortunately, he never arrived home.”

  “Weren’t your people keeping tabs on him?”

  “Tabs?”

  “Surveillance.”

  “Mr. Lassiter was a friend. We don’t keep...tabs—is that the word?—on our friends.”

  “But you followed us,” said Willy.

  Minister Tranh’s placid gaze shifted to her. “Are you our friend, Miss Maitland?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think it is not easy to tell. I think even you cannot tell your friends from your enemies. It is a dangerous state of affairs. Already it has led to three murders.”

  Willy shook her head, puzzled. “Three? Lassiter’s the only one I’ve heard about.”

  “Who else has been killed?” Guy asked.

  “A Saigon policeman,” said the minister. “Murdered last night on routine surveillance duty.”

  “I don’t see the connection.”

  “Also last night, another man dead. Again, the throat cut.”

  “You can’t blame us for every murder in Saigon!” said Willy. “We don’t even know those other victims—”

  “But yesterday you paid one of them a visit. Or have you forgotten?”

  Guy stared across the table. “Gerard.”

  In the darkness outside, the cicadas’ shrill music rose to a scream. Then, in an instant, the night fell absolutely silent.

  Minister Tranh gazed ahead at the far wall, as though divining some message from the mildewed wallpaper. “Are you familiar with the Vietnamese calendar, Miss Maitland?” he asked quietly.

  “Your calendar?” She frowned, puzzled by the new twist of conversation. “It—it’s the same as the Chinese, isn’t it?”

  “Last year was the year of the dragon. A lucky year, or so they say. A fine year for babies and marriages. But this year...” He shook his head.


  “The snake,” said Guy.

  Minister Tranh nodded. “The snake. A dangerous symbol. An omen of disaster. Famine and death. A year of misfortune....” He sighed and his head drooped, as though his fragile neck was suddenly too weak to support it. For a long time he sat in silence, his white hair fluttering in the fan’s breath. Then, slowly, he raised his head. “Go home, Miss Maitland,” he said. “This is not a year for you, a place for you. Go home.”

  Willy thought about how easy it would be to climb onto that plane to Bangkok, thought longingly of the simple luxuries that were only a flight away. Perfumed soap and clean water and soft pillows. But then another image blotted out everything else: Sam Lassiter’s face, tired and haunted, against the sky of sunset. And his Vietnamese woman, pleading for his life. All these years Sam Lassiter had lived safe and hidden in a peaceful river town. Now he was dead. Like Valdez. Like Gerard.

  It was true, she thought. Wherever she walked, she left a trail of blood. And she didn’t even know why.

  “I can’t go home,” she said.

  The minister raised an eyebrow. “Cannot? Or will not?”

  “They tried to kill me in Bangkok.”

  “You’re no safer here. Miss Maitland, we have no wish to forcibly deport you. But you must understand that you put us in a difficult position. You are a guest in our country. We Vietnamese honor our guests. It is a custom we hold sacred. If you, a guest, were to be found murdered, it would seem...” He paused and added with a quietly whimsical lilt, “Inhospitable.”

  “My visa’s still good. I want to stay. I have to stay. I was planning to go on to Hanoi.”

  “We cannot guarantee your safety.”

  “I don’t expect you to.” She added wearily, “No one can guarantee my safety. Anywhere.”

  The minister looked at Guy, saw his troubled look. “Mr. Barnard? Surely you will convince her?”

  “But she’s right,” said Guy.

  Willy looked up and saw in Guy’s eyes the worry, the uncertainty. It frightened her to realize that even he didn’t have the answers.