by J C Ryan
To check on the Frenchman required more caution. Rex and Digger took evasive maneuvers as they approached his position, Rex keeping an eye to their rear and flanks while Digger crept forward. Now and then, Rex would pause and let Digger creep further out while he watched the video feed on the iPad. They were almost to what Rex thought of as the Frenchman’s main spot, the nook in the storage containers, when Digger’s camera finally picked up movement in the watcher’s position.
Rex commanded Digger to stop and hide, while he moved up to the same spot, moving slowly until the Frenchman stood, turned his back, and stretched. Rex took the opportunity to rush quietly forward to Digger’s position and watch with his own eyes instead of relying on the camera. The Frenchman set off on his established rounds, and Rex knew this was his chance. He’d have to hurry to get back to Margot and get her out of her yacht before the Frenchman returned to his post.
“Digger, keep watch,” he whispered, before rising quickly to his feet and speeding back to the yacht.
Rex tucked the iPad into his shirt and went back inside to check on Margot’s progress. He found her standing still, a designer backpack looped by the strap over her shoulder. She’d taken his ‘pack light’ instruction to heart, and that boded well for getting her to cooperate for the rest of the plan.
“Got your papers?”
She nodded.
“Okay, let’s go.”
He grabbed her hand and they left through the same door he’d come in. He hustled her across the street to the concealment of the trees and bushes around the restaurant where he’d spent so many hours observing the yacht. Then he retrieved the iPad to see where Digger had gotten to.
“What’s that?” Margot asked.
Rex didn’t have time for a long explanation, so he just said it was an iPad and he used it to keep track of Digger. When she opened her mouth to say more, he gave her a slight shake of his head. She made a show of zipping her mouth shut. Rex could imagine that wasn’t the end of it. “I’ll explain later,” he conceded.
With his main focus to get Margot away as quietly and quickly as possible, he would not confront the watchers. Rex gave Digger the command to return to him. Just then, the lights came back on, casting long shadows where Rex and Margot waited. Digger was caught in the middle of the street and poured on speed. Seconds later, he was all over Rex, standing on his hind legs trying to lick Rex’s face and wagging his tail. Rex whispered, “Good boy. Okay, boy, off! That’s enough.”
Digger eagerly turned his attention to Margot, but before he could welcome her back to their pack, Rex commanded him to sit. “We’re still working, Digger. You’ll have your chance to greet her later. We need to get out of here now.” He pointed in the direction he wanted them to go and said, “Scout-hide.”
Digger immediately adopted his military bearing and trotted off with caution, looking from side to side. Rex followed his progress on the iPad screen, and when Digger was about ten yards ahead, he signaled Margot to get up and follow him.
Rex took Margot’s hand and stayed in the shadows as they made their way to the exit. Once out of the port area and on the streets, Rex was relieved to join the crowds milling about in a cacophony of music, laughter, shouting, and honking vehicles. Everywhere they turned, there were motorcycles cruising the streets with a man driving and a woman passenger. Some were parked alone or in groups, with the drivers and passengers drunk, laughing and clinging to each other, and more than a few times they were engaging in very public displays of affection.
It made Rex wonder if those that were on the streets were also drunk, but everyone seemed happy. Despite several near misses, pedestrians crossed the streets while disregarding the motorcycles and cars streaming by bumper to bumper.
The ideal environment to hide in plain sight.
“Margot, see how the women have their heads slightly bowed as we pass them. Follow their lead. I think most of these people are too drunk to notice us, but we do stand out a bit. Keep your head down.” Fortunately, it wasn’t far to his hotel, where he intended to stash her while Rehka did her magic and found them a flight out.
***
IN SHORT ORDER, they reached the hotel. The clerk at the desk gave Rex a wink as they walked through. Rex was momentarily indignant on Margot’s behalf, but as he thought about it, this was the perfect cover. Her head was down, her silky black hair swung forward, obscuring her face. From the desk clerk’s point of view, she could be a local prostitute, and Rex still had hold of her hand. He winked back.
He hustled her up the stairs, slipping around between her and the clerk so her decidedly non-Asian features couldn’t be seen. When they reached the next floor, Margot was out of breath.
They hurried into the room and Rex quickly closed the door behind Digger and propped a rubber wedge-shaped door-stopper under the door so that it couldn’t be opened from the outside.
Margot dropped her backpack on the nearest chair and bent to praise Digger. “Who’s a clever boy? Yes, you are so clever, aren’t you Digger? Did you miss me?”
Digger lapped it up, his mouth opened in a wide grin and his tongue getting a lick to her face in now and then, with Margot trying to dodge them. “No, I don’t need a kiss, thank you, Digger.”
Digger paid her protests no mind as he dodged in and out frantically, evading her hands that were trying to fend him off to lick her face.
“Rowan, aren’t you going to rescue me?” she squealed.
He snapped his fingers, but it didn’t faze Digger, who continued to express his joy at being with Margot again.
At last, she stood. Rex had enjoyed the show from the corner of his eye while he pulled out the satphone and dialed Rehka. She’d answered while Margot was still dodging Digger’s kisses. He’d told Rehka they needed to pull out all the stops to supply Margot with a new forged passport in a hurry. The sooner he could get her out of Vietnam, the better.
“Where do you want to send her, Ruan?”
“I’m bringing her to you, where we can plan what to do next without all the unwanted people blowing down our necks.”
Rex made a mental note that the name was going to be a bit awkward, with Rehka calling him Ruan and Margot knowing him as Rowan. Then he thought again. They’d probably be speaking English, the only language common to all of them, and the two women’s accents would account for the slight difference in pronunciation. Or he could just mention to Rehka in a quiet moment that Margot knew him as Rowan Donnelly. Rehka would understand. He relaxed.
The next bit of awkwardness might have been that there was only one bed in the room, but Rex quickly dispensed with that, when he said, “You should get some rest. You take the bed, and I’ll take the floor.”
To his relief, Margot didn’t argue. She went into the bathroom and came back out a few minutes later wearing no makeup and wrapped in a hotel robe. She turned her back to him as she slipped out of the robe and under the covers.
“Where’s Digger going to sleep? Does he usually sleep on the bed with you?”
“Occasionally. Not always,” he answered.
“Well, he’s welcome to get on the bed if he wants.”
Rex smiled. “Let’s ask him. Digger, where do you want to sleep? With Margot on the bed, or with me?”
Digger had turned his attention to Rex and then looked at the bed and Margot. He padded over to Margot, pushed his wet nose against her cheek, then turned and went back to Rex, curled up next to him, sighing, and closed his eyes.
“I guess that was a goodnight kiss from Digger,” Margot giggled and turned out the bedside lamp.
Just when Rex thought she’d gone to sleep, she asked, “Is now a good time for you to tell me all those things you said weren’t important before?”
“Maybe,” he said. He was cautious, certain he couldn’t answer all her questions. “It depends on what you want to know.”
After a short silence, when he imagined she was picking her questions carefully, she asked, “Well, what about Digger? He’s very cl
ever, but sometimes you sound like you’re giving him orders, like someone in the military. And he acts like he understands them. And what’s this business with the iPad. I could see what looked like security camera footage on it. What’s the story?”
Rex sighed. She was far too observant. “Well, you’re partially right. I told you before that he’s a service dog. It’s true. He’s my emotional support animal. But he was trained as a military dog before that. So, yes, he’s very clever, and he does follow orders when I give them in a certain tone as if he were still in the military.”
“What about…”
“Margot, we’ve got a long day ahead of us, and not many hours to sleep. That’s enough for tonight, okay?”
“Okay,” she said in a small voice.
Ten minutes later, she whispered, “Rowan, are you awake?”
He pretended to sleep. A few minutes after that, his eyes popped open in the dark. The captain of the yacht! Would he raise an alarm when he found Margot gone? Would he be too drunk to notice before morning? Rex gritted his teeth.
It’s too late to worry about that now. We’ll deal with it in the morning.
Chapter 41
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
DAWN FOUND REX stretched out on the floor next to Digger at the foot of the hotel bed. Margot almost stumbled over his legs as she sleepily made her way to the bathroom. Her movement woke Digger, who yawned widely, emitting his signature squeak at the most intense part of the yawn. And that, in turn, woke Rex. He noticed Margot’s retreating figure and closed his eyes again for a few more moments sleep before she returned.
Forty-five minutes later, the scent of soap and shampoo woke him again. He opened his eyes to find Margot seated in a chair and watching him. She smiled.
“Good morning.”
Rex yawned and answered, “Good morning, yourself. Did you sleep well?”
“Probably better than you did. If we’re going to be here another night, I insist you take the bed.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” Rex sat up and immediately remembered his concern about the captain. “Hey, will the captain raise an alarm when he finds you missing?”
Margot’s expression changed from her indulgent smile to one of concern. “Henri? He might. He’ll probably phone my brother.”
“I think we’d better do something to stop him from doing that. You can’t call him on your phone, and I’d rather you didn’t return to the yacht. Maybe write him a note that you met a friend last night after he left, and… I don’t know—you went off with her for a couple of days... No wait—that might cause problems as well. I’ll call him on my phone and you talk to him.”
Margot started to ask the obvious question, why is your phone safe and mine not? But Rex pre-empted her question with a waving index finger. She knew the answer—not important to know for now.
As soon as Rex heard the line open, he thrust the phone into Margot’s hands.
“Henri? Is that you?”
Rex had set the phone on speaker, so he could hear both ends of the conversation and help Margot if she was at a loss for words. He heard the captain say, “Yes, I just said so, didn’t I? Margot? Is that you? Where are you calling from? Aren’t you in your stateroom?”
Rex relaxed, the captain hadn’t yet missed Margot. That was good. And he sounded rough. Hangover, probably. They must have woken him with the call. He probably hadn’t even looked at the caller ID, but that would have done him no good anyway. The number was spoofed. If he called it back later, he’d get a message that the owner of the phone was unavailable at the time.
“No, Henri, I’m onshore. Some friends of my brother turned up last night unexpectedly. I’m with them. I’m going to spend a few more days here with them, and then they’ll take me to Da Nang.”
A heavy sigh wafted through the speaker, and then he answered, “Okay, no problem. Did you take your things?”
“I’ll come back for them day after tomorrow. I’ll call before I come out. Is that all right?”
“We’ll be here for a few more days, yeah.”
“Thanks, Henri.”
“A pleasure to serve, sweetheart. Take care.”
She was still smiling when she handed the phone back to Rex, who clicked the End Call icon quickly.
“Okay, with that out of the way, next we need to get you some new papers. And before we do that, we need to age you, and get you some appropriate clothes for the persona you’ll be with your new passport.”
“Age me? How?”
“A little makeup, some temporary white in your hair, unless you’d prefer a wig. Glasses, and I think we’ll make you an elderly Eurasian woman, so some appropriate clothing.”
“Definitely a wig!” she exclaimed, ignoring the rest. “Do you know what it would take to put gray in this black hair?”
Rex grinned.
Margo held her hand up as if she was a student in a classroom indicating she knew the answer to a question asked by the teacher.
Rex raised his eyebrows.
“I just remembered the people from the convent are supposed to pick me up today.”
“Then we should get word to them also that your plans have changed. But before that, I need some breakfast. How about you? We have a lot to do today.”
“I’m ready for breakfast, but I don’t think you are,” she pointed out.
Rex looked down and realized he was still in the gym shorts and t-shirt he’d slept in. “Oh, yeah.”
A few minutes later, he emerged from the bathroom with wet hair and dressed in jeans, t-shirt, and his usual Timberland boots.
Margot looked at him and shook her head.
“What?”
“You were in there about five minutes, in that time you shaved, showered, shampooed, and dressed?”
Rex grinned. “Yeah well, I’m in a bit of a hurry, and I’m hungry. I usually do it in six minutes.”
“Don’t tell me you actually time yourself?”
Rex just laughed and opened the door for her as they headed for the hotel restaurant and got a table. No one seemed to mind when Digger crept under the table and lay down at Rex’s feet.
Rex found the phone number for the convent online. While they waited for their breakfast to be served, he called the convent and pretended to be Margot’s brother, Bert as he mournfully informed them that she had suffered a miscarriage and would no longer need to be there.
His expression conveyed deep grief. He acted it so well that Digger got up from beneath the table and laid his head on Rex’s lap, a concerned wrinkle between his expressive ‘eyebrows’. It was all Rex could do to remain in character as Margot clapped both hands over her mouth to keep from laughing at him.
When he’d ended the call, Margot burst out, “Mon Dieu, that was perfect! I’m sure they will light a candle for the baby.”
Rex reassured Digger he was fine and sent him back under the table, where a few moments later he was enjoying a treat of scrambled eggs and Western-style bacon.
After breakfast, Rex took Margot back to their room, explained to Digger that he had to guard her, and then went shopping alone for the supplies he’d need to pull off Margot’s transformation.
He came back with a gray, human-hair wig, a pair of slim-legged, black pants in her size, and a simple, white button-down shirt he thought she could wear untucked to create a bit of mystery about her figure. The conical straw hat made her laugh.
“Why the hat?”
“It’s all the rage among the older women. It’s too bad you haven’t put on a little weight yet. I could have done a lot with that. But changing your body shape is a little beyond our time limits right now. Oh, and here.” He handed her some wire-framed glasses with non-prescription lenses and an oversized pair of sunglasses. “You’ll wear the sunglasses when we’re outside, and the others for your passport photo. Now sit still while I make you into a woman twice your age.”
“I can put on my own makeup,” she protested.
“Have
you ever aged yourself?” he asked.
“Well, no.”
“Then sit still and let an expert do it.”
She opened her mouth and closed it again as she already knew his standard answer to her intrusive questions.
While putting the makeup on her, he had to put in a conscious effort not to start laughing as he remembered some of the hilarious bantering among them when they went through the make-up training sessions at CRC. Some of the recruits thought learning to put on makeup was an utter waste of time for tough guys like them. ‘If you can’t shoot your way out of it, you sure as hell won’t paint and powder your way out of it,” one wisecrack reckoned.
Rex, however, was one of those who paid close attention, and later on, there had been more than once when he was grateful he did. One such an occasion, that had him smiling from time to time when he thought about it, was when he dressed up as a big-bosomed blonde, red lipstick, high heels and all, and slipped past a contingent of mean-looking, heavily armed, testosterone-filled security guards in Romania without a request for proof of ID, only their licentious stares.
In about twenty minutes, he’d transformed Margo so well that it was all but impossible to pick up the false wrinkles in her neck, the crow’s feet, or the bags under her eyes as phony. He’d slightly tilted the look of her eyes, and now she looked like an aging Eurasian beauty. Not even crow’s feet or wrinkles in her neck could erase the underlying structure of her lovely face, but he did shade under her cheekbones to exaggerate their height.
When she looked in the mirror, she was in awe. “Is this what I’ll look like at sixty?” she asked.
“Not exactly, but close enough,” he answered but refrained from adding, and you’ll still turn heads.
When he’d finished with her, he made a few changes to his own appearance, in case they bumped into Ida by accident. He didn’t think much was necessary. It was a long shot they’d even see Ida, in the first place. If she did turn up, seeing him out of context, she wouldn’t necessarily make the connection. He had the kind of looks that one encountered everywhere and took no notice of. A pair of thick-rimmed, black, plastic glasses with flat lenses and a sprinkle of powder in his hair to turn it a bit gray would do the trick. He could only hope that if they were so unfortunate to get near Ida she wouldn’t recognize Digger. However, Rex was not too worried about that. Ida would have to first recognize Digger, and then she’d have to recognize Margot and himself through their disguises.
