The Three-Nine Line

by David Freed

  Mai didn’t blink at my untruths. “I’m just glad you made it back, love,” she said. “I was beginning to grow worried about you.” She turned to Tan Sang with a disarming smile. “And who might these very serious-looking gentlemen be?”

  Tan Sang flipped open his wallet and showed her his identification with a practiced flourish.

  “Ministry of Public Security,” Mai said, glancing at his silver badge and pretending to be impressed. “You must be very important.”

  He asked to see her identification. Mai retrieved her passport from a white leather shoulder bag. The colonel gave it a quick look and handed it back.

  “I see you are from Singapore.”

  “Born and bred.”

  He asked if she was a guest of the hotel. She said she was. He asked the purpose of her visit to Hanoi. She told him. He asked if the two of us were sleeping together.

  “None of your business,” I said.

  Tan Sang smirked. “It is unlawful in Vietnam for unmarried individuals to sleep together in the same hotel room.”

  “If I’m not mistaken,” Mai said, “that particular provision of Vietnamese law pertains strictly to a foreign national who sleeps with a Vietnamese woman and is not married to her. As you know, looking at my passport, I am not Vietnamese.”

  “Better watch yourself, Colonel,” I said, “she’s an attorney.”

  Tan Sang was a man who didn’t appreciate being schooled by anyone, especially a woman. Tersely, he told her he was conducting a homicide investigation and that I was interfering with his efforts.

  Mai didn’t seem the least bit surprised by his telling her that, which struck me as curious. “Well,” she said coyly, looking straight at me, “perhaps someone should distract Dr. Barker sufficiently such that he’s no longer a distraction to anyone.”

  The colonel glared at us both, then said something in Vietnamese to one of his goons, who promptly headed for the door—I assumed to retrieve his Lexus.

  “I will not warn you again, Doctor,” he said. “Continue to cause trouble and I will have you arrested.” Then he turned and headed for the hotel exit, the other goon following close on his heels like some devoted dog.

  As he was leaving, I watched Tan Sang slip Elvis the doorman some cash. It wouldn’t have been a big deal anywhere else in the world where people tip the hotel staff routinely. But there was something about this exchange that didn’t seem right. It wasn’t like a tip rendered for good service. It seemed more like a payoff, swiftly and discreetly pocketed with no acknowledgment—in much the same way I’d observed what appeared to be a cash exchange three days earlier outside the hotel between Tan Sang and the same doorman. Let me put it this way: it looked like a bribe.

  “Come on,” Mai said, taking me by the arm, “let’s get you out of those wet clothes and into something warmer.”

  What a fine idea, I remember thinking. First, though, I had to call Buzz. I told Mai I had to take care of some business and that I’d be by in a few minutes.

  “Try not to be too long,” she said.

  FOURTEEN

  I swept the room once more for electronic bugs, took a quick shower, and telephoned Buzz.

  “Thanks for taking time out of your busy day,” he said, irritated at having had to wait for me to call.

  I laid out my suspicions about Colonel Tan Sang’s possible involvement in Mr. Wonderful’s murder. I hadn’t ruled out the very real possibility that one or more of the Americans were responsible, particularly Billy Hallady and/or his grandson, but I made clear that the focus of my investigation had shifted and was aimed increasingly at Tan Sang.

  Buzz expressed frustration at my lack of progress. Time, he reminded me, was waning: The Vietnamese government had cabled the State Department hours earlier, informing Washington that both Cohen and Stoneburner would stand trial within a week, and that Billy Hallady, safely back in the United States, would be tried in absentia. Vietnamese lawyers would be appointed to represent all three former prisoners of war.

  “Does the term, ‘kangaroo court’ mean anything to you?” Buzz said. “Hallady’s lucky as hell. Those other two guys are as good as toast unless we get something going A-SAP.”

  “If I could hunt up something more implicating on Tan Sang, get him more pregnant, we could turn the tables.”

  “What about that terp we hired, the MiG pilot. He doing you any good?”

  “Phu Dung? The jury’s still out.”

  Buzz exhaled audibly. “Okay, I’ll let the White House know about all of this. Just keep me posted.”

  “Roger that.”

  I thought he’d hung up without saying good-bye, as he always did, but then he said, “It must suck, having the fate of two old men in your hands.”

  “Nothing like a little pressure.”

  “You do your best work under pressure, Logan.”

  The fate of two old men is in your hands. Buzz’s words echoed inside my head like a tune you can’t shake.

  V

  We called room service and ate dinner naked, listening to the sound of the rain thrumming against the glass of her balcony door. I tried not to think of Savannah, or the two men being held prisoner one floor above us. I tried living in the moment as all true Buddhists do—to taste, really taste, the beef skewers in lemon grass I’d ordered, and to savor the company of the woman in whose bed I found myself. I’d be lying, however, if I said my thoughts weren’t elsewhere. Who killed Mr. Wonderful and why? I was no closer to finding out than when I’d first touched down in Hanoi.

  “Hey,” Mai said, leaning over and kissing my shoulder, “are you okay?”

  “Yeah, fine. Just thinking about work, that’s all.”

  She sat back under the sheets, sipping a glass of French merlot and eyeing me with curiosity. “I’d love to know what that was all about down in the lobby.”

  I feigned ignorance. “Something happened in the lobby?”

  She playfully tapped my foot with hers. “The man from the Ministry of Public Security, what was his name? Tan Sang? I don’t think he much likes you.”

  “What gave you your first clue?”

  She smiled. “So what are you, some sort of international criminal or something? A jewel thief, perhaps? A wanted man. That would be terribly exciting.”

  I debated how much of the truth to share with her. She needed some logical explanation as to what had gone down in the lobby, and I needed to maintain my operational cover, so I told her in the vaguest possible terms about the murder of Mr. Wonderful and about Cohen and Stoneburner, how they were under house arrest on the sixth floor. But that was as far as I went with the facts. I stuck to my psychologist story, that I’d been contracted by the government to monitor the mental health of the two former POWs and to provide to them whatever counseling they required. I told her nothing of the real reason I’d come to Hanoi.

  “The police believe you’re someone other than who you say you are,” Mai said.

  “I don’t know why they would think that. I mean, look at this face. Is this the face of a pretender?”

  “Well, as I pointed out when we met, you don’t look like a psychologist to me.”

  “Yeah, well, you don’t look much like an attorney or the vice president of Kia Motors to me.”

  She snuggled into me. Her hair smelled of lavender.

  “Perhaps you could tell me,” Mai said, “what precisely in your estimation an attorney or a vice president of Kia is supposed to look like?”

  “Well, for starters, they don’t usually have legs like yours.”

  “That’s a rather sexist thing to say, don’t you think?”

  “We all have our faults.”

  She kissed me. Her lips were warm and I didn’t want it to end.

  “Who are you really? I promise, your secret’s safe with me.”

  “I told you who I am.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Mai said, slowly kissing my shoulder and working her way down my chest. “If you tell me the truth, I promise you
, you’ll be amply rewarded.”

  Maybe it was her persistence, or the intoxicatingly seductive tone of her voice—breathy, intentionally alluring. Or maybe it was simply the cynic in me, the skepticism a covert operator harnesses and hones over the years, that voice in your gut that compels you to question the veracity of every word that comes out of everyone’s mouth because everybody has a hidden agenda, and sometimes those agendas will get you killed.

  “What kind of reward are we talking about?”

  “What kind would you like?”

  “How ’bout a new car? A Kia Ambassador, like my friend’s I told you about.”

  Her fingers stroked the inside of my thigh, inching closer to more sensitive anatomical turf. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said, still kissing.

  Buzz didn’t drive an Ambassador. To my knowledge, Kia has never made a car called the Ambassador. A Kia vice president would’ve likely known that and would’ve just as likely corrected me. Was I being played? Was Mai a plant working for the Vietnamese government? I was beginning to wonder—but that didn’t make me stop her hand from wandering, or doing everything that came so naturally in the hours that followed.

  V

  She snored. Not offensively. Not in a sawing-of-logs sort of way. More feminine than that. A soft, almost melodic whistling. Shortly after 0500, I extricated myself from Mai’s embrace as gently as I could and slipped from her bed. She stirred briefly, rolled over on her side, and fell back asleep. Her shoulder bag rested on the floor near the desk. I carried it into the bathroom and quietly closed the door.

  The average woman’s purse is a wonder of both utility and chaos. How Savannah ever located anything in her bag, crammed as it always was with everything from lipstick to pepper spray, was always beyond me. Once when she’d insisted on taking me shopping because she said my shabby but comfortable wardrobe embarrassed her, she reached into her purse to get out a credit card and I saw two pairs of pliers in there along with a pair of yellow dishwashing gloves. Mai’s bag was different.

  Everything was neatly arranged, compartmentalized, in its place. Her passport, issued to Mai Kwan Choi, had her photo. In her wallet was a driver’s license issued in her name by the Singapore Traffic Police Department. There were also Kia Motors Corporation business cards with a Singapore address that said, “M.K. Choi, vice president, sales and marketing, Southeast Asia Division.” Either my suspicions about the woman I’d just slept with were misplaced, or her handlers had done a masterful job in establishing her cover.

  “What are you doing?”

  I looked up in the mirror over the sink. Mai was standing behind me in a white terry cloth robe.

  “I asked you a question,” she said, folding her arms. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Regretting that I didn’t lock the bathroom door.”

  She stood there with her mouth open.

  “Who do you work for, Mai?”

  “Please leave.”

  “Colonel Tan Sang? Is that who you answer to?”

  “I’m asking you nicely to leave. If you don’t get out of my room immediately, I will call the authorities and I will have you arrested for theft.”

  “I didn’t steal anything, Mai.”

  “My trust. You stole that.”

  I handed her the bag, threw on my pants, and gathered up the rest of my clothes. She stood aside as I opened the door.

  “I thought we had something,” she said. “I was wrong.”

  The door slammed behind me.

  A real Buddhist believes that all people are inherently trustworthy and good. I was a long way from that. I’d just ruined what could have been a very good thing. Part of me wanted to kick myself. But another part was patting me on the back, that part where you wall off your heart from the vulnerability that comes with trusting anyone. As pleasurable as my brief time with Mai had been, the fact was, I didn’t need her. I didn’t need anyone. That’s just how things go when you choose this line of work, or it chooses you.

  I got dressed in the hallway and decided to take a walk down to the lake where Mr. Wonderful had met his end. The sun was coming up as I left the hotel. Almost immediately, I noticed I was being followed—the same postcard vendor who’d tailed me two nights earlier, when Mai and I had gone to eat Mexican food.

  I turned and strode straight at him.

  “What’s going on, chief?”

  Caught off guard, he tried to ignore me at first, acting like he was rearranging his tray of postcards. When he realized confrontation was inevitable, he pivoted to face me, his stance defensive.

  “How much for one postcard?” I said, digging out the wad of dong in my front pocket.

  Mr. Postcards looked at me blankly.

  “I want to buy a postcard. How much?”

  “Twenty.”

  “Thousand?”

  He responded with a nervous nod.

  “You speak English?”

  He held his thumb and finger a half-inch apart. A little.

  “You got any postcards showing the lake?”

  He thumbed through the selection like it was the first time he’d seen them himself.

  I picked one out and unfolded a 500,000 dong note. He stared at the bill like a heroin addict in need of a fix.

  “Do you have a wife?”

  He nodded, still staring at the money.

  “Good-looking young dude like you, I’m sure she’s a knockout. Listen, why don’t you take her out for a nice breakfast, just the two of you? That way, I can take a little stroll by myself and enjoy a little early morning solitude without you shagging after me everywhere. Deal?”

  He glanced around to see if anyone was watching us, then snatched the bill out of my hand, stuffed it quickly in his pocket, and hurried away. Money may not buy everything, it’s true, but not, apparently, in Hanoi. He disappeared around the corner. It would be awhile before I saw him again.

  V

  With the sun came rising humidity. People around the lake were getting their daily exercise in early. A roller-blading teenager with spiked hair dyed purple zipped past me going backward, carrying an honest-to-god boom box and rocking out to what sounded like the singer, Rihanna. The lyrics were in English, something about how love is like checking into drug rehab. Not exactly Donnie and Marie Osmond material.

  My acquaintance, the bearded fisherman, was casting out near where I’d seen him the first morning I’d visited the lake. I watched him reel what looked like a perch. Gently, he unhooked the wriggling fish, knelt at the water’s edge, and released it.

  “Any trout in this lake?”

  He glanced over his shoulder, seemed to recognize me, and turned away, saying nothing.

  “We catch trout where I come from. Rainbows, mostly. A few browns and cutthroats. You can always tell the native fish from the stockers. They’re smarter, harder to catch. Plus, their meat’s a lot firmer.”

  He cast without looking at me. His demeanor, the vibe he gave off, told me he wasn’t merely being shy or standoffish. He knew something, had seen something relevant to the murder of Mr. Wonderful, something he wasn’t telling.

  “Trout have more bones than perch, but they’re worth it,” I said. “Better fighters, and better eating.”

  No response.

  Rapport is the key to interrogation. No matter their cultural backgrounds, people are almost always more willing to give up the information you’re looking for if you gently cajole them rather than by, say, removing their fingernails one by one. The name of the game is finding common interests that you can discuss without conflict.

  “I bet there’s some pretty good saltwater fishing in Vietnam. I wouldn’t mind doing some while I’m here. Know anybody I could talk to about that?”

  More silence. He appeared to have zero interest in talking to me. So much for my expert, rapport-building techniques.

  “Well, anyway, I hope you catch the big one.”

  I was starting to get hungry for breakfast. I turned to go when he said,
“You are American?”

  “Yes.”

  “Other American. He come. Like you. He talk to me.”

  “About what?”

  The fisherman pointed to the water, then made a stabbing motion toward his stomach.

  “About the man they found in the lake?”

  He nodded.

  “When was this?”

  He held up one finger, then another. I told him I didn’t understand what he was trying to tell me. He pointed once more to the water, again pantomimed a stabbing motion to his own stomach, this time more animatedly, then pointed to his wristwatch.

  “One or two hours?”

  He nodded.

  “You’re saying this American, he talked to you one or two hours after they found the man in the lake?”

  “No.” The fisherman gestured sharply, his hand like a flat blade across his throat. “He not talk to me. He say no talk.”

  “He told you not to tell anyone about the man in the lake?”

  The fisherman nodded.

  “Why? What did you see?”

  “Him.”

  “Him?”

  The fisherman nodded.

  “You mean, the man, the American? He didn’t want you telling anybody you’d seen him?”

  “Yes.”

  “This American, what did he look like?”

  The fisherman stroked his chin, mulling the question. “Family,” he said, “very hungry.”

  He wanted to be paid for his information. I peeled off 500,000 dong from the cash roll in my pocket.

  He shook his head and indicated he wanted a million.

  “Seven hundred and fifty thousand,” I said. “That’s as high as I’m prepared to go.”

  Granted, it wasn’t my money. It was the taxpayers’. But it’s been my experience over the years that if a man knows you’re prepared to drive a hard bargain, even in the middle of a crisis, he’s also inclined to realize that the information he gives you better be worth the money, or you’ll come find him later.

  The fisherman considered my counteroffer, then responded with a quick, single nod of his head.

  Seven hundred and fifty thousand dong. About thirty–seven dollars.