To his astonishment, at his end of the table, M. Petit found himself with a foot on his lap. He was unsure as to what to do with it. He was a shy man, and when it came to carnal knowledge he was very much a freshman. During his three lessons with Mme. Dupré, all the spoken innuendoes and unspoken language of the body had come from her. He wasn’t so naïve as to let them pass unnoticed. He felt that if the chaperone hadn’t been sitting across his study with her knitting, his student would have spread him across the desk and had her way with him there and then. For his own part he’d smiled and blushed a good deal, and done his utmost to cover his obvious excitement.
But his emotions were mixed. A few places along from him sat a man he suspected of being a kidnapper perhaps a murderer. On his last visit to the M’nong village, headman Tuwun had told him everything. The Montagnard had begged him to pursue justice for his sister. But the police and the administrator didn’t consider the locals to be worthy of white man’s laws and he didn’t know where to turn next. And now, as if he weren’t confused enough, in a room full of people, he had the first lady’s foot on his lap. As far as he could tell it was an unclothed leg that rolled there from side to side. The hostess had twice invited him to investigate. She tried a third time.
“You go to South before, M. Petit?” She asked in her awful English.
“No,” he replied.
“The Delta is so dull,” interjected Mrs. Cornfelt, the wife of the reverend.
Mme. Dupré ignored her. “You must go down, M. Petit.” She looked at his quivering hand. “You must go down touch ze Delta.”
The wine had fired his body and his loins and he was suddenly overcome with the adventurous spirit of an early French explorer. He dropped his spoon into his créme caramel and dove his hand beneath the apron of the tablecloth. It immediately found the warmth of her inner calf. Mme. Dupré smiled and raised her glass.
“To ze Delta, M. Petit. To ze Delta.”
The missionaries raised their glasses also. “To the Delta,” they said, although Mrs. Cornfelt had seen nothing interesting enough in those flat plains to warrant this young woman’s fervor. “The French are so easily aroused,” she whispered to her husband.
20.
Bodge pulled into the parking lot behind the Casually Yours showroom. Given the number of people working above the store, he was surprised how few cars there were on the lot.
The first thing he’d done when he arrived back in DC was check into a motel out in Chevy Chase. It was the type of place that didn’t insist on seeing an ID; cash up front, nothing much to steal or damage in the room. His convertible was a deathtrap on wheels he’d rented from the garage opposite. The owner figured a month in advance was more than the heap was worth so he didn’t bother with details either. As far as Washington was concerned, Bodge wasn’t there. He was untraceable. There was a fine line between being careful and being paranoid, but he rather liked the idea of being a live paranoiac.
He was a different Bodge to the soft man who’d first arrived in DC a week earlier. That Bodge had trusted everyone. This suspicious Bodge wouldn’t have been surprised if his own mother was caught turning tricks from the back room of the Women’s Institute. This Bodge had lived six years of intrigue in a week. This Bodge looked twice at everyone he passed and had a .44 Smith and Wesson Magnum taped under the dash. He couldn’t get away from the fact the CIA owned him, but now he was watching for whatever they had planned for him.
In a way he never would have expected, one of his mysteries unraveled all by itself even before he made it into the building. He was walking across the lot toward the side alleyway when he noticed a rear end protruding from the trunk of a Chrysler. The woman wore a tight skirt and was digging away deep inside the trunk. It was a full, but nicely pear-shaped ass — worth a second look. The stockings beneath the skirt were seamed and the skinny heels on her shoes wobbled under all the strain.
If he’d still been his old Bodge he might even have offered to give her a hand to find whatever it was she’d lost. But he wasn’t that Bodge any more. He walked on by, and wouldn’t have given it another thought if he hadn’t heard his name called.
“Agent Leon. I can’t believe you’d ignore a girl in distress.” He recognized the voice from somewhere, but not the accent. He stopped and looked back. She stood there now with her arm on the open trunk lid. She wore a cashmere sweater packed with an impressive bosom. Her hair was short, black, and fell chicly over one eye like a Vogue cover for girls with a fuller figure. Her smile was framed in lipstick and ostensibly friendly. That was what probably threw him.
“I don’t…” he began.
“Don’t what? Don’t get it? Don’t know who I am? Don’t what? Come on, say something. You do remember me, don’t you?”
Then he did. Amazing as it seemed, he did remember some other incarnation of this woman. While he was off changing his Bodge, she’d turned into a whole new Stephanie.
“Barely,” he said at last. A broad smile came to his lips.
“You wanna give me a hand with these?” She produced a dozen box files from the depths of the trunk. He took a few steps forward but still didn’t believe his eyes. She was a hundred pounds lighter. The ugly floral dress, the greasy yellow hair, the mid-west accent, they were all gone. This wasn’t something a beauty salon could achieve in a week at any cost.
“You creep,” he smiled.
“Hey, watch your language, buddy.”
“This is what you were both talking about.”
“Talking about when? You gonna take some of these or what?”
“That was all a set-up last Tuesday.”
She laughed. “We wanted to see if it’d fool anyone, and you being the observant type…”
“Well, you sure got me.”
She slammed the trunk shut and locked it. They started off across the lot. “We intended to run with it for the whole week, fine-tune the hate/hate relationship. But then you went and spoiled all the fun with your truck-busting rodeo show.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t imagine how miserable I might have been after a week of you.”
He looked her up and down as they walked. “Damn you’re…”
“Hot?”
“You’re good. You really are.” He laughed again. “I’m…Hell, I’m impressed.” They were both laughing when they reached the side door to the building.
Palmer looked up from his file when the two grinning agents came into the room.
“Well, I see you’ve met the other Stephanie,” he smiled. “I take it you prefer this one.”
“I dread to think what she might turn herself into next.”
“Good, isn’t she?”
“I’m in awe.” Bodge and Stephanie sat on either side of the boss.
“As long as you’re able to play Pa Kettle to her Ma, I don’t imagine anyone in Vietnam will doubt for a second you’re who you say you are. I’m sorry we put you through that little charade.”
“I’m sorry I said all those things about you two under my breath.”
“You still planning to put in for an early retirement?”
“No, I guess I’ll stick it out.”
“Good man.”
“Swell,” Stephanie agreed.
So it was, the first domino to have fallen, had been stood back up. It didn’t vindicate Palmer, not at all, but it caused Bodge to go back over all the events in New York and cast the man in a slightly different role, one without the cloud of guilt over his head.
The week went well. They were like three college pals working on an assignment together. On the Tuesday they worked through the protocols — learned what they could and couldn’t do as agents on foreign soil. They were there to observe, listen and provide information, both factual and surmised. They were to do all this whilst fulfilling their primary role, that of missionaries. There was to be no hiding in closets or breaking into locked rooms. Nothing they did could endanger their cover.
On the Thursday, Bodge and Stephanie had their f
irst public outing as the Reverend and Mrs. Rodgers. Although thoughts of Lou didn’t once leave Bodge’s mind, for the first time since he’d started his relationship with the operations unit, he actually felt positive about things. He even believed he might be up to the challenge. He liked his new partner and had a feeling they’d do a splendid job together.
They’d driven their own cars to Bodge’s motel. The plan was to change into their alter-identities and travel to the meeting on public transport. Bodge unlocked the door to his room and stood back.
“So, they still make gentlemen,” Stephanie said, walking into the room. “Nice place.” She admired the green and orange décor and the carpet stains.
“It suits.”
“Why would you want to stay all the way out here in this dive?”
He closed the door. “It occurred to me, the fewer people who knew where I was, the better.”
“So that’s why you led our caravan on that merry diversion via Pennsylvania. You still think there’s someone after you?” She put her overnight bag on one of the twin beds and sat beside it, crossing her legs a little uncomfortably.
“Better to be safe than sorry.”
“You don’t think your friend’s death was natural, do you?”
“What makes you say that?”
“Finding his body doesn’t seem to have relaxed you any. And, I’m like you. I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“I’m a naturally suspicious type of Bodge.”
“Where’d you get the nickname?”
“England.”
“What’s it mean?”
“Same as botch, really. We were training for Overlord. I was billeted with a pack of Royal Engineer officers. A more sarcastic bunch of thugs you wouldn’t hope to meet. I guess I must have screwed up here and there. Little things like climbing up to the passenger seat to drive a truck. You can imagine how it is for a young Tennessean in an alien land.”
“Sure.”
“In England in those days, if you didn’t have a nickname you weren’t alive. They were scraping the barrel for some of the boys. There must have been whole battalions of gingers and loftys and chalkies. I was kind of proud to have a name all to myself.” Bodge was never really comfortable talking about himself. He didn’t consider his history to be much of a topic. He changed it whenever he could.
“You got a nickname?”
“No.” She looked up at him. “You got a girl, Bodge?”
The question caught him off guard, especially coming from a woman who was slowly unbuttoning her blouse. That was honestly the first moment it occurred to him he was alone in a motel room with a woman and all of the implications that came with it. Until then he’d seen this as an assignment.
“There…there’s a bathroom over there if you wanted to get changed.” But, of course she knew that.
“No, I’m okay. So, do you?”
“I was married for a while.” A bad case of the nerves came over him. She’d removed her blouse and stood up to unfasten the clasp on her skirt. He hurried to the dressing table and reached for the bottle.
“You want some water?”
“Bodge, is that rouge on your cheeks or are you actually blushing?” He had his back to her but over his shoulder, reflected in the mirror, he could see her skirt and slip collapse to the floor. She stood there with her hands on her hips and a smile on her face. There was a lot of her and most of it was in the right places. He wasn’t sure whether his sudden erection was something he should be boasting about. She could, after all, just have been getting changed.
He held the neck of the bottle away from the glass so it wouldn’t rattle with the shaking of his hands. He knew this was crazy. He’d been alone with women before. But something about her abilities, her confidence, made him feel like a school kid. He heard the ping of her bra and glanced briefly in the mirror as she unhooked the straps from her shoulders.
“Bodge,” she said. He looked down to study the water in his glass. It was splashing around in there something terrible. “I hope you don’t mind...”
“No. You go ahead.” His voice rattled.
“What I was gonna say is, I hope you don’t mind me suggesting something.”
He couldn’t turn around without suggesting something himself. “What’s that?”
“I think it would help if we had sexual intercourse.”
His blood stopped circulating.
“You do?”
“Yeah. I mean, well, we’re gonna be sleeping together for two years so it’ll probably happen eventually anyway.” He heard the snap of elastic but didn’t dare look in the mirror. “So I figure, what the hell, let’s get it over with. We’ll be sick of it soon enough and then we can start acting like real married people. What do you say?”
“Well, yeah. I suppose we could do that.”
“All right.” There was the groan of bedsprings. “I hope you don’t mind girls with fuller figures.” Bodge turned around with a half empty glass in each hand. She looked down at his crotch. “Wow. I guess you don’t.”
Reverend and Mrs. Rogers sat on the seat behind the bus driver. They both had quivering smiles at the corners of their mouths. It was quite remarkable how well the sexual intercourse experiment had gone. Stephanie was bigger now and unmade-up. Her greasy yellow wig was like a urinal mop slung over her head. They were trussed up in shapeless raincoats. Bodge wore a tie that was an acre too wide. His glasses made his eyes look like fried eggs. They were two people you wouldn’t give a second thought to except to mention how nice it was that “even folks like that can find a life partner”.
They got off the bus at a stop almost directly in front of the National Press Building and joined other couples and journalists and VIPs in suits feeding into the auditorium. Bodge was surprised how many people were showing an interest and wondered if any of these other couples were with special operations. He and Stephanie sat at the back as there was nothing much to see. General deLattre, a long-necked stork of a man, sat on a low stage at the front beside a neatly dressed woman. Even before she opened her mouth to introduce their speaker, Bodge knew she was French.
To a ripple of applause, deLattre stood and began to read line by line from his script and pause occasionally for the interpreter to translate. This was the man who had, for the previous six months, orchestrated the gradual taming of the Viet Minh. Before he came along the French had been suffering one embarrassing defeat after another. He was in town to drum up moral and financial support for his beleaguered French troops. He’d spent the day telling stories to Congress and had planned this public press conference in the evening in order to spread his fiction to a wider audience.
It was only natural that the Reverend and his wife, as missionaries on their way to the region, should attend a talk from such an esteemed expert on Vietnamese affairs. The General spoke passionately of the “civil war” in Vietnam. A civil war was a much easier conflict to find funding for than a war against colonists, which was actually what it was. He outlined the atrocities committed by the Reds; the tortures, the rapes, the religious genocide, and by the time he was through, there wasn’t a man or woman in that auditorium (bar two) who wouldn’t have gladly mortgaged their homes to fund the French campaign.
He’d had a similar effect on Congress so his military budget for the next two years was secure. In fact it was increased significantly to meet the growing threat of communist aggression. This was the perfect time in America’s capital to find funding for such a project. All a person had to do was mention the words ‘anti-communism’ a few dozen times and he’d be driving away with a truck-load of greenbacks.
“Do you believe it all?” Stephanie asked. They were seated at the rear of the “whites only” section of the bus. “The way they treat their own people over there? The atrocities?”
“I don’t doubt it happened,” Bodge decided at last. “With a pinch of salt. Don’t forget his funding goes up a percentage point for every thousand torture victims he can pull out of his
chapeau.”
“Does it worry you?”
“That we’re headed off as ministers of the church, to a country where Christians have their ears ripped off with pliers? Sure. How about you?”
“I don’t believe even the reds would assault American citizens.” Bodge rolled his eyes. “No, really. It would be a disaster for them if we entered this war in force. Our money’s already sending bombs down on their heads. I figure they’d sooner the buttons were being pressed by the inept French than the smart Yankees.”
“You believe we’re that smart?”
“Absolutely. If we entered the conflict in Vietnam it’d all be over in six months. We’re Americans, Bodge. Look at the war in Europe and the Pacific. We get the job done.”
21.
Bodge was himself once more when he arrived at Casually Yours the following day. Purely to hone their image as a married couple, Stephanie had spent the night at Bodge’s motel. They both agreed they needed a lot more practice to get things perfect. As it was, Bodge was exhausted. Pushing the two beds together hadn’t given either of them a good night of sleep.
Stephanie had left first in Bodge’s sedan to give the garage opposite a few more minutes to change the oil in her Chrysler. She had some business to take care of and Bodge wasn’t in a hurry. He had a slow shower and shave and strolled on over to the garage.
“Hi.”
“Hi there. How’s my car?”
“It serves its purpose well enough. Thanks.”
“Guess you almost lost it for me last night.”
“How do you mean?”
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