Solomon's Compass

by Carol Kilgore

  “We take care of business.”

  Oh, yeah. “Such as?”

  Jake leaned back and steepled his fingers. “I joined the Coast Guard at seventeen, fresh out of high school. My senior year, I’d gotten mixed up with a rough crowd, almost failed two finals. My SATs sank to the bottom of the harbor. Mom knew I’d end up in prison. Pop could’ve cared less. When the recruiter came on campus, I signed up. Pop had to sign, too, since I was only seventeen, but he was happy for me to go. The recruiter told me I had to pass a test or I’d have to take my chances with the draft. I think he was surprised I passed.”

  “The ASVAB.” She went to the counter and grabbed two bottles of water.

  “Right. So I went to boot camp down in Jersey, then to gunner’s mate A School.”

  “Randy was a boatswain.” She handed a bottle to Jake and uncapped hers.

  He nodded. “Thanks. I was a crack shot. Never flinched under pressure. Flaunted all the medals, and earned myself an instant winner ticket to Nam before I graduated boot camp.”

  “Where you connected with Randy.”

  “Five of us in our division of Point boats used to hang out, go on liberty together. Sometimes we’d all be at the beer hall or wherever, sometimes only two or three of us.”

  “Randy told me about going ashore at a couple of different places.” Shipmates often remained lifelong friends. The dynamics of war forged those bonds into hardened steel. Taylor had created a few friendships with former shipmates. Randy would’ve shouldered the world for any of his Nam buddies.

  Jake drank some water, the muscles in his neck working as he swallowed. They looked as strong as those in his arms. Warmth spread through her. She fought her desire to touch them. With a sigh she looked away to clear the image—along with her thoughts.

  He went on with the story. “We were in the boonies. Just the beer hall, usually. Or another boat. Sometimes we’d come off a patrol and barely have time to sleep before they sent us out again.”

  She fumbled with the cap on her bottle. “Did you and Randy go over at the same time?”

  “He’d been in country a while. When they handed over his boat to the South Vietnamese, he went back stateside.”

  “What about you?”

  “The Point Whitebanks was one of the last Point boats we transferred. I hadn’t been in country for the full tour, so they sent me to one of the large cutters with big guns. Got to fire the five-inch thirty-eights.”

  She laughed. Coast Guard and big guns didn’t belong together in the same sentence. “If you liked big guns, you should’ve joined the Navy. They had some sixteens.”

  “I did better with the smaller ones. That’s one of the reasons I got tapped.”

  “Tapped for what?”

  “Special Forces.”

  How many times had his dad told him this story? Hundreds. At least. And made him tell it the same way? A thousand. At least. Three months straight, every day, ten to twenty times a day. Always tweaking, planning ahead for any questions Taylor might ask.

  Jake wasn’t sure if Taylor knew the full story about Bangkok. In a way he hoped she did, so he wouldn’t be the one to tell her. But in his heart, he knew she didn’t. She was open and direct. She would have mentioned the horror of that night before now.

  During all the tweaking, and learning to fully express the deep emotion his dad felt, Jake even relived the events in his dreams as if they were real. Combined with his own SEAL experience, the scene unfolded before him now as he spoke. As if he had lived it himself.

  “I told the sons of bitches I wanted no part of Special Forces. All I wanted was to hang out and do my regular enlistment time before I went home to school. Hell, I wanted to live to see twenty-one, not get my body blown apart in the jungle.”

  “So what happened?” Taylor sipped her water more like a genteel lady than commander of a hundred-person crew. He wanted to get to know her in person, not just on paper. Explore her complexities. But not now.

  “The Whitebanks worked with a number of SEAL teams, putting them in, extracting them. A couple of times under fire. We laid down cover fire as best we could with fifty calibers. Some missions got tricky. The suits said I came highly qualified and recommended.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “Hell, I just did my job. I told them no thanks.”

  “Let me guess—wrong answer.”

  “Completely unacceptable. They knew about the cluster fuck in Bangkok.”

  She frowned. “I’m not connecting.”

  Taylor’s frown broke his heart. She didn’t know. He sighed. “R&R. I went with—”

  “Ham Bone? Is this when you bought the belts?”

  “Yes. There’s more.”

  She sat at full attention. Jake had never wanted a woman as much as he wanted Taylor. His mouth went dry, and he filled it with water. A few seconds passed before he continued with his story.

  “Hamblen Norberg was older, ex-Navy, with a pregnant wife stateside. Ham and Randy were on the same boat. I’d been on the Whitebanks maybe four or five months. We were tied up for a couple weeks with engine problems.”

  “I won’t ask what you did in Bangkok because I’ve heard stories from some Old Guard Coasties.”

  She hadn’t heard his, and he wished he didn’t have to tell her. “We didn’t miss much—Ham and Jake Do Bangkok would have been the movie title. Up and down Patpong 1 and Patpong 2. One night a bargirl got Ham to buy her a drink. Instead of taking him upstairs, she asked him to watch something for her for a few minutes.” The cigarette smoke, stale beer, heavy cheap perfume, fish all came back from his own visits to Patpong a quarter-century after his dad’s.

  “He agreed, of course.” Taylor sat forward, engaged by the story.

  “Right. The bargirl reached under her miniskirt and removed a garter from each leg. We’d encountered a few ladyboys, but she was all woman. She slipped a garter on each of Ham’s arms, and he kept on drinking.”

  “I can see this. Some big bruiser of a Thai pimp came after the garters.”

  “No one came, not even the girl. It was our favorite bar, and we’d seen her before. We were sure we’d see her the next time we were there.”

  Taylor’s focus rested totally on him. He’d rather take her in his arms and make love to her right here on the kitchen table than tell her this story. But he didn’t have that choice. Or that right.

  “As many times as I rehashed all that happened, I’m certain we wouldn’t have done anything differently. Until that point, nothing had raised an alarm. A couple of beers later, we walked outside to an alley several doors down. Both of us had to take a leak. We heard a noise—a moan.”

  “A trap.”

  Taylor’s liquid eyes drank in every word. He had to take his feelings for her out of the equation. This mission held as much risk as any he went on as a SEAL. Taylor believed he was his father. Keep remembering that, Jake. There will be hell to pay if she learns the truth.

  “We were too green to think that. We were full of piss and vinegar.”

  “And beer.”

  He grinned. “Exactly. We thought we ruled the world.”

  “You survived.”

  Others hadn’t. He downed a slug of water. “We heard more noises. Then we heard a scream and loud banging. The bargirl lay partially behind a couple of trash cans. She’d left a trail of blood from farther up the alley. Someone had gone after her with a knife, and she was bleeding out. Barely conscious. She held her stomach together with her hands and banged the trash bin with her head until she died.”

  “Oh, no.” Taylor’s hand covered her mouth. Her eyes filled with pain.

  Jake Solomon, you are the meanest son of a bitch in the fucking valley. “Ham and I eyeballed each other. I’m sure I looked as scared as he did. We sobered up damn quick.”

  “I know you didn’t go to the police.” She placed both hands palm down on the table top, ready to deal with facts, every inch the Coast Guard officer his dad sent him to protect.
<
br />   “We’d have been dead before dawn. No, we gathered she wanted us to look in the trash can. The aroma of Bangkok. . . .” He shook his head.

  “I’ve heard others talk about that. The sewer runs under the sidewalks.”

  “Most of the sidewalks were broken or boarded over. The trash can magnified the entire experience. Under some fish bones, egg shells, vomit, and who knows what else, we found two silk bags and a locked metal box.”

  He should have given a less graphic description of the experience. The muscles in Taylor’s neck and jaw worked overtime until she swallowed.

  If he hadn’t promised his dad, he would stop this charade right now, lay out the facts for Taylor without the dramatics, and beg her forgiveness.

  She drank some water. “You took them.”

  “And ran. Ham ripped off the garters and shoved them in his pocket. We each put one of the bags under our waistbands. The box presented a problem.” According to his dad, they’d stood in the mouth of the alley looking at each other, neither able to think.

  “How large was it?”

  “Like a small safe deposit box, not as long. I gave Ham my bag and he put both bags under his waistband. I shoved the box under mine. I was skinny, and we wore civvies. I had to suck in my gut and pull out my shirttail as well as undo the button and loosen my belt. We reached the hotel without a problem.”

  “What did you find inside?”

  “Jewels in the bags—sapphires and rubies.”

  “What about the box?”

  “Locked. Finally we examined the garters. The bar girl, or someone, had sewn tiny pockets behind the elastic. We found a key in one of them.”

  “How about the other pockets?”

  “This was the height of the Cold War, remember. Most contained tiny tubes, a bit like a flatter forty-five casing. About an inch long.”

  “What were they?”

  “Message containers. One held a map. One a message written in Thai. The others were empty.”

  “And the key?”

  He liked how Taylor sorted through his story. She might have been born with some of those skills, but the military had sharpened them. Just as it had honed his. Kelly would like her, too. Forget it, Jake. You’ll never bring her home to meet the parents.

  “Ah, yes. The key fit the box. Did I mention we didn’t sleep that night? The box held lapis lazuli rocks and cash. A lot of cash.”

  “How much?”

  “Two million.”

  “Damn!” Her eyes grew wide.

  “We figured the bills were Russian counterfeit, so we split it to take it home with us. In the states, we’d find out if we could cash it in.”

  “How did two million dollars fit into a small box?”

  “The bills were the kind banks used to use to transfer funds from one bank to another. Or so they told me later—ten-thousand-dollar bills.”

  “Damn. The money was real?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This is a hell of a story.” She gulped some water. “Did you find out about the bar girl?”

  “We stayed in Bangkok for three more days, and nights—kept away from Patpong, changed hotels—before going back to Nam, and we didn’t ask questions.”

  Taylor opened her mouth to say something, but stopped, apparently not pleased at his non-answer. He wanted to kiss away her annoyance. Make her smile. Instead, he’d get to the rest of the story in his own time, just as his dad had coached him. The good and the bad.

  “Old Ham Bone took everything personally. He felt guilty for profiting from the girl’s death. I told him she’s the one who trusted him and who practically rammed the trash can down our throats.”

  “Ham was older. Perhaps he possessed a more fully developed sense of responsibility.”

  Jake shrugged. “We had the jewels, but people in Bangkok traded sapphires and rubies on the streets. And the lapis lazuli? Hell, we thought they were just pretty blue rocks.”

  “Pricey blue rocks, I think.”

  “Not so much. The lapis rocks in the box ranged from tiny to fist size, and in all shapes. We agreed to have belts and belt buckles made for the gang, and the next day we chose the five smallest rocks to put on the buckles.”

  “That’s when you decided on Solomon’s Compass.”

  She leaned forward, inches away from him. His breath came fast, and he mustered every ounce of reserve he had not to touch her. He forced his thoughts to anything but her—blaring horns in Brooklyn, Kelly’s purple hair, his mother.

  When he could control his breathing, he gave her a smile. “Not exactly. We’d decided to put Compass Points on the belts.”

  “I’m lost again.” Taylor stood and moved about the kitchen.

  “I took charge of getting the buckles, and Ham agreed to get the belts made. On the way to the leather shop he decided to use my name because he said Solomon knew everything. In reality, he wanted any flak to come my way, not his. I was surprised he even used Compass.”

  Her lopsided half-smile told him she thought as much about Ham’s assertion as he did. “I imagine he denied that.”

  “Of course. When I had the buckles made at the street market, the guy in the stall took the stones and mounted them while I watched—no big deal. Bangkok continued to surprise me.”

  “Like the ladyboys.”

  The corners of his mouth twitched. “Yeah. Most of the buckle choices looked like ones you’d win at a rodeo, but I liked these square brushed metal ones. After I got home I learned the lapis is high quality.”

  “What makes it different?”

  “The gold veins.” He held the top and bottom of the buckle with his left hand and used his right thumb to trace the lines in the stone.

  “Randy’s stone looked like gold lightning against a stormy blue sky. Yours does, too.”

  “That’s gold pyrite. Less gold pyrite or more white calcite equals a less expensive piece of lapis. Even high-quality lapis isn’t as expensive as sapphire.”

  She went to the window. “I’m trying to take all this in. It’s quite a story you tell, Jake Solomon.”

  “All true.” True story, but not his story as Taylor thought. He had to get her out of his head. “Cross my heart.”

  She turned around. “I believe you. It’s just so out of the norm. Out of my norm, anyway.”

  “Out of ours, too.”

  “Okay, so you found the girl and her treasures. Did you presume she was a spy or a conduit?”

  “Right. Involved in espionage. Probably a courier.”

  She stopped for a moment before ticking off items on her fingers. “You thought the money was counterfeit. You had belts made for your buddies. You had lapis lazuli stones mounted on belt buckles. What about the sapphires and rubies?” With each point, Taylor made a circle of her thumb and fingers.

  “We kept them safe, thinking they were the most valuable of the lot.”

  She started to the table, but stopped. “What did you do with the map? And the note? The Cold War was going on, your buddies were in Vietnam, and you and Ham were headed back.”

  He downed some more water. “The map looked like Vietnam, but it was drawn out freehand, so we weren’t certain.”

  “Roads? Cities? Rivers?”

  Taylor worked with neatly charted navigational maps, not raw intel from the field. “No. Letters, symbols, numbers at various points. We tried to figure it out, but we didn’t know where either one came from or where they were supposed to go. Ham said if we sent it to the American embassy, someone would run with it.”

  “Why didn’t you just take the map to the embassy yourselves?”

  “We had the stones and the money, and we didn’t want to give them up. More important, we didn’t want to be blamed for the woman’s death. Both of us agreed staying anonymous was best. After we found the address for the American Embassy, we addressed an envelope to the Security Attaché. We figured it would get someone’s attention.”

  “I’m sure you were right.”

  “We wrote
out the lyrics for ‘We Gotta Get Out of This Place’ and put them into the envelope with the map and the page written in Thai. We sent it from the main post office.”

  “No other details?”

  “That was enough.”

  “Why the lyrics?”

  “Oh, baby, that was the song. All of us wanted to go home.” His dad had played the old Animals song as many times as he’d told him the story. Now the music and lyrics played in his mind. Every note. Every word.

  She shook her head. “I don’t understand. Why not just the title?”

  “We thought by including the lyrics, they’d understand an American soldier sent the map. And by extension, they’d realize something happened to the girl—if they knew about the girl—but we’d stay in the clear with the money and stones.”

  Taylor bounced her bottle against her palm. Either she didn’t approve of the way they handled the situation or she was putting the story together in her head trying to make sense of it.

  “After we did everything we could think of, we had one more night in Bangkok.”

  She returned to the table. “Please tell me you didn’t go back to that same bar.”

  “No. We’d been having only a few drinks at the hotel bar, but that night after a few extra beers, caution became way overrated. We were invincible. Beer cost more in the hotel than it did stateside. Local Bangkok bars charged like a quarter. We’d just be extra careful and observant. If anyone showed any interest in us, we’d come straight back to the hotel. We also decided to stay on the main streets, and not go into Patpong.”

  Taylor shook her head as he spoke, and he knew she thought Ham and his dad were fools.

  “We drank too much beer and made the rounds. And didn’t stay on the main streets like we’d planned. On our way back to the hotel, congratulating ourselves on having such a fun time, two thugs came up behind us with pipes.”

  “Oh, crap.” Her eyes widened to whiskey suns.

  “Ham told them to take it easy, we’d give them our cash.”

  “Please don’t tell me you had all the money with you?”

  He laughed, but only for a second. “Of course we did. The jewels, too. Everything would’ve been gone if we’d left it in the room. Thai hotel workers back then would steal you blind while you watched, much less after you left. Remember the time period—early seventies. We suspected the money was counterfeit, but we weren’t taking a chance.”