Reidy returned his identification wallet to the inside pocket of his coat and resumed his inspection of Eddie.
“You know, you remind me of somebody.”
Oh, Christ. Not now.
“Yeah, you look a lot like—”
Eddie held up his right hand, palm out.
“Sure. And that’s Julia Roberts outside doing the typing.”
He smiled, but no one else did.
“We’re investigating a situation, Mr. Dare,” Headlights said in a voice so toneless that it sounded synthesized. “We think you can help us.”
Eddie tried to look her in the eye, struggling hard to avoid the obvious alternative.
“That’s an interesting word,” he said.
Reidy and the woman glanced at each other.
“What word is that, Mr. Dare?” Headlights asked, shifting her gaze back to Eddie.
“Situation.”
“What do you find interesting about it?”
Eddie saw this was going nowhere good, so he worked his face into a blandly pleasant expression, shut his mouth, and waited for developments.
Another glance between the two agents, then Reidy took over again.
“Is it because you already know why we’re here, Mr. Dare?”
Teasing Headlights was one thing, Eddie quickly decided, but Reidy was another matter entirely.
“Maybe we could start over.” Eddie accompanied the mea culpa with his most sincere smile. Still, nobody smiled back.
“No, I don’t know why you’re here,” Eddie went on anyway. “I assume you’re going to hassle me about one of my clients. After that I’ll probably tell you some stuff you already know about the lawyer-client privilege, toss in a little speech about the Constitution, and then wish you a nice day.”
Reidy’s eyes tightened and he leaned forward slightly.
“You seem to be real good at talking. How are you at listening, Mr. Dare? You listen as good as you talk?”
“Yeah, I can listen.”
“That’s good.” Reidy nodded seriously. “Maybe I can hold your interest for a few minutes here then, Eddie.”
Apparently he was no longer Mr. Dare. That was not, in his experience, a good sign when you were talking to cops.
“I’m all ears.”
“You mean as opposed to all mouth, which I gather you usually are.”
Reidy grinned around at the other agents as if he had said something funny and they all grinned back right on cue. Eddie could have sworn he even saw the headlights blink, but he might have been mistaken.
Reidy shifted his full attention back to Eddie. “You were in the marines, weren’t you?”
“You going to tell me what this is all about?”
Eddie had been rousted plenty of times before, but these jokers weren’t playing by the rules.
“Were you in Vietnam in April, 1975?”
Eddie looked at Reidy without answering, determined to wait him out.
“Yes, you were in Vietnam in April, 1975. You were in Saigon. We know that.”
“Then why did you ask me?”
“What was your assignment?”
“Do you already know that, too?”
“Do you?”
To hell with this. “I took pap smears from bargirls.”
Eddie was sure this time. The headlights definitely blinked.
Reidy just kept on rolling. “You were a tech sergeant in Company A, Fifth Battalion. You were assigned to assist with the evacuation of the American Embassy in Saigon and you went out on one of the last choppers from the compound.”
Eddie’s irritation was suddenly swept away by a swiftly rising tide of anxiety. First the two pictures of the group of marines with the red circles on them, then the clipping out of the DEA file about Harry Austin’s death, and now this.
“What do you remember about Operation Voltaire, Eddie?”
Eddie almost laughed out loud. “Operation what?”
“That was your last assignment before you were evacuated from Saigon, wasn’t it?”
“I never heard of Operation Voltaire. I was never involved in anything that sounded remotely that intelligent.”
Reidy made a dismissive gesture.
“You were assigned to Operation Voltaire all right, Eddie. But just to refresh your memory, that was the exercise to rescue the Bank of Vietnam’s currency and gold reserves before the North Vietnamese took over. You were in charge of the guard detail for Operation Voltaire, weren’t you?”
What in God’s name is this guy talking about?
“We secured the perimeter of the embassy compound and protected the evacuation,” Eddie answered carefully. He was hearing alarm bells going off all around him, but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what they meant. “That’s all I remember.”
Reidy obviously didn’t really care what answers Eddie gave him. He couldn’t have been stopped with a howitzer.
“All the Bank of Vietnam’s reserves disappeared during the evacuation. We’re looking for them.”
That was interesting, Eddie reflected through his wariness, even if he still couldn’t work out what it had to do with him.
“How much is missing?” he asked.
“Using today’s values?”
“By all means, use today’s values.”
“A little over $400,000,000.”
Eddie started to laugh, but then he noticed that none of his visitors looked even slightly amused.
Christ on a goddamned crutch! Are these people serious?
Eddie’s mind raced, trying to remember anything that might connect to what Reidy was talking about. “You’re telling me that someone just got around to noticing all that money was missing?”
“It was always assumed the money had been abandoned in the panic and that the North Vietnamese eventually got it,” Reidy answered with a half smile that Eddie found somehow unsettling. “When diplomatic relations were restored last year, we discovered the Vietnamese didn’t have it. A task force was formed at Treasury to account for it.”
“Well, if you’re looking for $400,000,000 around here…” Eddie gestured at his modest office, “you’re shit out of luck.”
“Maybe not.” Reidy leaned forward very slowly and rested his forearms on Eddie’s desk. “Pentagon records say that on April 27, 1975, you were the ranking NCO in a squad assigned by Captain Harry Austin to secure a warehouse about two blocks from the American Embassy in Saigon. That was where Austin had stored the Bank of Vietnam’s money, all crated up and ready to be flown out of the country.”
Reidy had leaned so close to his face that Eddie could smell the peppermint tic-tac he must have popped before he came into the office.
“You and your squad were the last people we know of who had that money,” he said.
Eddie was still drawing a complete blank when Reidy suddenly reared all the way back in his chair, spread his arms, and smiled broadly.
“We just want you to tell us what you did with it, Eddie.”
Six
WINNEBAGO sucked hard on the butt of his Camel then without breaking stride flicked it across the sidewalk into a dark green garbage bin. “So what did you tell them?” he asked Eddie as they crossed Union Street against the light.
“The truth. I told them they had bad information. We were on the embassy walls kicking people down until we lifted out, not guarding crates full of money.”
“Did they believe you?”
“Of course not.”
Eddie and Winnebago were walking down Columbus into North Beach, the fiercely Italian quarter of the city that surrounded Washington Square.
“But it’s true, Eddie. We weren’t guarding any damned money.”
“You sure of that?”
“Of course I’m sure. I know what money looks like.”
“Somebody sure as hell thinks we know something about it.”
“Yeah, so?”
Eddie shoved his hands deeper into the pockets of his leather jacket as they cross
ed the square toward the wedding-cake towers of St. Peter and Paul Cathedral.
“Maybe they’re right, Winnebago.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I’m just saying that maybe we do know something about it. Sometimes you know things you don’t know you know.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake. That doesn’t make sense even to me.”
Eddie watched a few tentacles of fog licking at the foot of Columbus where it ended at Fisherman’s Wharf. Out in the middle of the bay, Alcatraz was already lost in a cotton-candy swirl. In another hour or two, Eddie suspected, a lumpy flood would submerge the city’s hills, leaving only the tops of buildings poking out here and there, buoys posting the hazards in a diaphanous sea of white.
Eddie had always thought that its famous fogs suited San Francisco perfectly. The city was a wispy, fragile place, a watercolor world where everything was always slightly out of focus. When Eddie looked at it that way, he figured San Francisco was exactly the right place for those damned photographs to turn up.
“We were only grunts, Winnebago. Half the time we didn’t know where we were and the other half we didn’t know what we were doing there.”
When Eddie continued, he lowered his voice. He felt silly doing it, but he just couldn’t help it.
“Maybe we were around that money without knowing it.”
Winnebago started to say something, but Eddie waved him off.
“Think about it. First somebody sends me those two pictures. Then, a couple of days later, the Secret Service shows up in my office and asks me what we did with the $400,000,000 we were guarding when Saigon collapsed. That can’t just be a coincidence. It’s all got to be connected somehow, and if it is…” Eddie reached across with his forefinger and tapped Winnebago on the shoulder, “then somebody other than the Secret Service thinks we know something about that money, too.”
They reached the other side of the square and Eddie led the way to an empty bench facing the cathedral. They sat in silence for a while, but then Winnebago scratched the back of his neck and cleared his throat.
“Maybe that wasn’t really the Secret Service. Maybe those guys were the same people who sent the pictures,” he said.
“Yeah, I wondered about that at first, too. But what sense would it make?” Eddie looked at his watch. “Anyway, Wuntz can probably find out. He said he’d be here by nine.”
“Are you sure you want to tell him about this, Eddie?”
Eddie glanced over at Winnebago. “When did you develop such a suspicious streak?”
“The minute I saw that red circle around my head.”
Eddie thought back to what he had seen in Wuntz’s face when he talked about his son. He never thought much before about how far he would be willing to trust Wuntz if he ever had to, but now he knew. He just couldn’t work out how to explain it to Winnebago.
“Don’t worry about Wuntz,” Eddie said. “He’s okay.”
Eddie fell silent again, not sure he had said enough yet not knowing what else to say, but Winnebago didn’t seem to mind.
“You think that maybe it’s all just bullshit?” Winnebago asked after a while. “How could that much money just disappear anyway? It would have to weigh a ton.”
“More like ten.”
“Ten tons? Of money?”
Eddie nodded and Winnebago gave a low whistle under his breath.
“It’s a real shame about the captain,” Winnebago went on after a respectful pause. “He could have straightened all this out, I’ll bet.”
Eddie had been trying not to think too much about Austin, but the picture of his caved-in skull and broken body dumped in a Bangkok mud-hole kept coming back to him with unhappy clarity.
“Say, Eddie, you don’t think the captain might’ve been killed because…”
Eddie turned his head very slowly and gave Winnebago a dead-eyed stare.
“Oh, man, like I really want to hear that kind of shit,” Winnebago mumbled, looking away.
A dirty, brown Ford pulled into a handicapped parking slot a little off to their left and Wuntz blinked his lights at them. He got out, ambled slowly over to the bench, and sat down.
“You’re not handicapped,” Eddie observed.
“Sure I am,” Wuntz replied, smiling pleasantly. “I’m psychotic.”
Eddie looked thoughtful and Wuntz jabbed a thumb toward Winnebago. “Who’s he?”
“He’s the guy who was circled in the second picture.”
Winnebago leaned around Eddie and offered Wuntz his hand. “I’m Winnebago Jones.”
“You a half Chinaman or something?” Wuntz asked as they shook.
“I’m a Native American,” Winnebago replied, and Eddie gave him a long look.
“So let’s have whatever this hot news is,” Wuntz said as he leaned back and laced his fingers together behind his head. “The night’s passing and I’ve got hookers to harass.”
While they all pondered the twin towers of St. Peter and Paul’s, glistening so whitely in their bath of powerful floodlights that they seemed achromatic, Eddie told Wuntz the story his visitors had told him.
“No fucking shit,” Wuntz said when Eddie finished.
“Do you think you could find out if these guys were kosher, Wuntz?”
“Didn’t their ID look real?”
“Sure they did, but so does that Russian passport I bought in Hong Kong last year.”
“You sure you don’t know anything about the money they were asking about?”
“I’ve never lied to you before, Wuntz.”
“No, but we’ve never talked about $400,000,000 before either.”
“We’re not talking about $400,000,000 now. We’re talking about some people who claim they’re the Secret Service and who think I know where $400,000,000 might be. Which I don’t.”
Wuntz looked hard at Eddie, but he didn’t say anything. After a moment he pulled a telephone from the inside pocket of his jacket, pushed himself to his feet, and walked across the square out of earshot while he dialed.
Winnebago lit a Camel and smoked silently. Eddie slouched down on the bench, stretched out his legs, and crossed his ankles. Neither spoke while they waited for Wuntz. Winnebago finished his first cigarette and was most of the way through another before Wuntz came back.
“It’s illegal to smoke almost everywhere in San Francisco these days,” he said as he settled back onto the bench and returned his phone to his pocket.
“Then naturally I’ll put this out right away,” Winnebago replied as he offered Wuntz a cigarette.
Wuntz took it and bent forward so Winnebago could give him a light with his old Zippo. Inhaling deeply and savoring the taste, Wuntz gave out with a deep sigh that seemed to chase the smoke away.
“Your visitors were legit. This guy Reidy is in charge of some kind of task force at the Treasury Department that no one seems to know much about. They gave it a really weird name though. Why would they name a federal task force after an old Dean Martin song?”
Eddie looked puzzled. “What are you talking about, Wuntz?”
“Volare, it’s called. Task Force Volare. You know…”
Wuntz tilted his head back, and to Eddie’s complete astonishment began to sing in a remarkably rich and vibrant baritone.
Volare …oh oh
E contare…oh oh oh oh
No wonder my happy heart sings
Your love has…
An elderly Chinese woman shuffling past swivelled her head to stare at Wuntz and he slid into a chastened silence.
“It’s Voltaire, Wuntz,” Eddie said quietly.
“No, man. I’ve heard the song a thousand times. It’s Volare.”
“Not the song. The name of the task force. It’s called Voltaire.”
Wuntz looked baffled. “What’s a Voltaire?”
“Jesus,” Winnebago grunted, “don’t cops read anything but comic books? Voltaire was a French writer noted for his satire who was the soul of the eighteenth-century French enlig
htenment.”
Wuntz looked hurt. “Myself, I don’t think the French are all that enlightened now. Christ knows what they must have been like in the eighteenth century.”
Winnebago tried to catch Eddie’s eye, but Eddie was chewing his lip and looking off into the night.
“Anyway,” Wuntz went on, clearing his throat,”what’s Voltaire or Volare or whatever the fuck it is supposed to mean?” He addressed the question to Eddie, conspicuously ignoring Winnebago.
“Reidy said the plan to get the money out of Vietnam before the North Vietnamese took over was called Operation Voltaire.”
“It was, huh?” Wuntz thought about that for a moment. “And who was doing this planning?”
“A marine captain.”
“Not—”
“Yeah, him.”
Wuntz was silent for a moment and then he asked a question Eddie had already asked himself a couple of times. “Voltaire doesn’t sound like the name of a military operation to me. What’s it mean?”
“No idea,” Eddie said.
Winnebago leaned across Eddie, getting as close to Wuntz as he could. “Voltaire wrote Candide in 1759, one of the masterpieces of—”
“Shut the fuck up,” Wuntz snarled.
“Can you ask your DEA guy if he knows anything about Reidy’s task force?” Eddie asked Wuntz.
“I think I’ve squeezed all the juice I’m going to get out of that little fruit. So to speak.”
“I was almost hoping the feds would turn out to be phonies. If they’re real, the pictures must have come from somebody else.”
“Yeah, that’s the way I figure it, too,” Wuntz said, bobbing his head around a little. “I’d say it’s pretty much a sure thing that you’ve got someone else on your ass about the same deal.”
“Like who?” Winnebago demanded, stubbing out his cigarette.
“You want to get something to eat?” Wuntz asked Eddie, still ignoring Winnebago. He scratched himself and sniffed the air. “Fuck, that pizza smell down here in North Beach always drives me crazy.”
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