by Larry Bond
“Very good, Peter. I’m counting on you.”
29
Hanoi
Zeus woke with a start.
He was in Anna’s apartment, in her room, in her bed. It was nighttime. She wasn’t there.
He got up slowly, body stiff from his ankles to his neck. He turned his head against a knot in his neck, teasing against the pain.
His first step was a stumble, feet moving awkwardly. Zeus pushed his arms back, gathering himself. He was in a fog, his mind in cotton, distant from his body.
Where was Anna?
Zeus stooped down and picked up his clothes from the floor. He dressed awkwardly, off-balance. With each piece of clothing, he regained more of his equilibrium, became more of himself. By the time he buttoned his shirt, all of his senses had returned. He was a soldier again, at least most of him was… Some part remained with her, with Anna, resting in a dream.
Zeus walked into the kitchen. A single candle on the stove provided light. She wasn’t there.
“Damn,” he said to himself. He rubbed his eyes, then the top of his head.
What should he do? He had to get back —
Just then, there was a sound at the door: a key placed into the lock. The door opened; Anna came in with a bag of food. She pushed the door closed behind her, slipping in quietly without looking, so that when she finally turned back and found him staring at her across the kitchen she was startled.
“I got some things,” she said, her voice a soft whisper.
“Good,” said Zeus.
He took a half step to hug her, but she was in motion, moving around the kitchen. Zeus retreated to a nearby chair, pulling it out to sit on and watching as she lit the burner.
Anna put the tea kettle on the burner, then lit another candle, putting it on the table. Zeus caught her hand as she placed it down. She turned and gave him a look of such sadness that he felt as if his heart had been stabbed.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She managed a smile, then slipped her hand away. She got out two cups, and retrieved a small bottle from her bag.
“I found you coffee,” she told him, holding up a jar of instant. “Good?”
“Thanks.”
She put the groceries away.
“What time is it?” Zeus asked, though he had a watch.
“Eight.”
“God, I slept all that time.”
“You are very tired.”
Anna poured the water, then sat. She blew gently on her tea.
“Are you hungry?” she asked.
“No,” said Zeus. “Are you?1”
She shook her head.
“My legs feel restless,” Zeus told her. The aroma of the coffee reminded him of soggy cardboard. He hated instant, but he treated the liquid as if it were the most precious in the world, nursing the cup in both hands, the steam rising against his face. “Do you think we could go for a walk?”
She answered with a question. “When do you have to be back?”
“Eventually.” He took a tentative sip. The liquid was still very hot. “What happened in there?” he asked. “At the hospital. Who was the man who was shot?”
She looked straight down at her tea. Her features seemed to harden, the soft frown she’d worn turning into a grimace.
“Can you tell me?” Zeus asked gently
“He was a Chinese pilot. A bandit. The director’s family had been killed by a bomb two days before.”
“Who was the officer who shot him?”
She shook her head.
“I’m sorry,” said Zeus. “Bad things happen in wars.”
“My grandfather was killed by bombs in the American war. And two of his brothers.”
She stared at him for a moment, then sipped her tea in silence.
“Let’s try that walk,” he told her finally. “Come on.”
* * *
There had been no attacks on Hanoi that day, no bombings. But the quiet only increased the tension. Smoke curled in the far distance, the remnants of fires that the emergency crews had not yet succeeded in putting out. Zeus felt torn — his place was at the battlefield, but he wanted to be with Anna as well.
“I saw the bombs fall the first night,” she told him. “I was standing at my window. There was a floodlight in the sky. Sticks fell through it. I thought there was something wrong with my eyes.”
Distance grew between them as they walked shoulder to shoulder, her arm occasionally jostling against his. The closeness that he’d felt in bed, making love, sleeping next to her, dissipated. His mind pulled toward duty. It was like gravity.
She stiffened when he took her hand.
“I want to see you again,” he said.
“In Vietnam, it is not usual to hold hands in public,” she said in a voice so faint that he barely heard.
“It’s dark. The streets are deserted.” He squeezed her fingers, looking down into her face. “Okay? You’ll see me again?”
“Yes.”
He leaned down and kissed her softly, gently, on the lips. She hesitated but then surrendered, her lips meeting his. It was a tantalizing shadow of what he had felt earlier, being pulled into bed.
But just a shadow.
* * *
When they turned the block on the way back to Anna’s house, Zeus saw a Honda Accord sitting in front of her building. He kept walking, hoping it wasn’t waiting for him.
But of course it was.
“Where the hell have you been?” demanded Christian, opening the door and getting out as he approached.
“Taking a walk,” said Zeus.
“All night?”
“Major Christian, this is Anna Anway,” said Zeus. Anna stiffened. She held her arms close to her body, as if she were trying to present as tiny a front to the world as possible.
“Hi.” Christian nodded, then frowned as he turned back to Zeus. “We gotta go. Perry’s going to have a cow.”
“He told me to get some rest.”
“Yeah, well, he thought you disappeared. You weren’t answering your phone.”
Zeus had left it upstairs. Christian had used the GPS tracking function to find him.
“I knocked on every door,” Christian told him. “Nobody answered.”
Upstairs, after he retrieved his phone, Zeus told Anna gently, “I’ll see you as soon as I can.” She gazed into his face, then took both of his hands and squeezed.
Their bodies were about a foot apart, an immense distance.
“Will you be at work tomorrow?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“I’ll get there. Somehow.”
She nodded, then closed her eyes as he kissed her.
* * *
“She’s a dish,” said Christian as they drove away. He was sitting in the front seat, next to a driver hired by the embassy. Zeus sat in the back. “What a babe.”
Ordinarily, Zeus would have been angered by the comments, but he felt immune to them now. Immune to Christian.
“You know Perry was trying to get A-10 Warthogs here?” asked Christian.
“Huh?”
“There was a wing in Korea, already on the way. Some sort of political deal crushed it. Now we’re on our own.” Christian’s voice had a note of disgust in it as he continued. “I talked to these commanders yesterday. Pep talks? What a waste of time.”
“What’s the military situation?” asked Zeus.
“Chinese consolidated around Tien Yen during the day. Some of the Vietnamese armor’s engaging them outside the city. Thinking is they move farther south tonight. Probably already started by now.”
“Any action near Lang Son?”
“Lang Son?” asked Christian.
“The place on the border I showed you.”
“Nothing going on there that I heard,” said Christian.
The driver took them to Trung’s bunker. The general was in a conference with his commanders, but he smiled when Zeus came in. Perry was sitting in the corner, grave-faced.
; “Our American friends have arrived,” said Trung. “Just in time to hear of the bad weather.”
The others smiled, as if this was some sort of inside joke. And perhaps it was; Zeus still felt a little off balance.
“A typhoon is approaching,” explained Major Chaū, the senior translator who had led Christian around on his tour of the Vietnamese troops. “The estimate is that it will strike the coast in less than twelve hours. The path is unpredictable, but it is highly likely to make landfall.”
Zeus looked over at Perry. “I didn’t think this was typhoon season.”
Perry nodded as the translator explained that while typhoons were rare in February, they were not entirely unknown, averaging one every other third year prior to 2005. Over the past few years, the frequency had increased, possibly, though not definitively, as a result of global climate change.
This was a reasonably strong storm, with winds up to 125 knots projected. Rain was falling at over two inches per hour near the center. Total rainfall in the path of the storm would depend on its route, but could be anywhere from a “scant” ten inches to fifty and beyond.
Zeus realized the implications immediately.
“We can use it to stop the Chinese advance in the east,” he said. “As long as we can keep them near the coast. Once they get west, they’ll be free.”
Trung nodded. The situation was somewhat more complicated than that, not least of all because the typhoon would affect the Vietnamese as well as the Chinese. Still, it was an extremely fortunate development, one that could be capitalized on. The generals had been examining topographical maps in the area of the Chinese advance. The area in the vicinity of Dam Tron would be flooded early during the storm.
The only problem was that the lead elements of the Chinese advance were only a few miles north of it.
“It’s better if it floods behind them,” said Zeus. “We let the lead elements get beyond it, then cut them off.”
The battle materialized in his mind as he looked at the map. He pictured the area he had seen the other day from the plane — long fields of rice, which would be easily washed over.
“We keep them close to the coast,” said Zeus. “We mine the roads to the west, and ambush the forces that reinforce the spearhead. At some point with the rains, they start to bog down. We attack them during the storm.”
“The major has never experienced a typhoon,” said one of Trung’s generals dryly, using English.
* * *
Besides the ferocity of the weather, the strategy to slow the Chinese advance along the coast faced numerous obstacles, not least of which was the disorganization of the Vietnamese forces. The armored brigade that had approached from Route 4B was now engaged outside Tien Yen. Entered into combat piecemeal as Zeus had feared, the T-55 and T-54 tanks had been outgunned by a handful of Chinese main battle tanks and infantry manning the outer defenses. To the east, the battered remnants of General Tri’s infantry division had failed to reorganize themselves. Some were fighting on the city’s outskirts. A few had gone south along Highway 18. Still others were in Ha Duong and the other small port villages nearby.
General Tri had offered his resignation, but Trung had refused it. There was no sense in changing commanders in midbattle, especially given that he had no suitable replacement.
The Vietnamese asked if Zeus could help formulate the defense plan. Perry, who said little during the session, agreed.
When the meeting ended, Trung asked if Zeus could come with him to his office for a moment.
“I apologize again for the other day,” Trung told Zeus. “You will not be treated as you were. Your advice will be followed.”
“Okay.”
“You look more rested,” added Trung, his tone lighter. It was almost fatherly.
“I got a little sleep.”
“Sleep is an important ally.”
“I’ll help with the plans, General,” said Zeus. “But I have to say that the situation is not a very positive one. Your forces are very much outnumbered.”
“We have always done much with little,” said Trung. “It is our way.”
30
Washington, D.C.
The hot water came full force out of the showerhead, a fire hose compared to what Mara had been used to in Asia. She turned her back to the flow, letting it pound into her skin, soaking her muscles in warmth. She bent slightly, letting the water massage her lower back and then her thighs and calves. It splashed against her side and then her breasts; she arched backward and let it hit her stomach, the front of her legs.
God, it felt good. But she had to get to work. She was already late.
The only shampoo in the apartment was a supermarket special, a rip-off of a boutique brand that Nara had never heard of. It glopped into her hand like granulated maple syrup. Glancing at it dubiously, she ran it through her hair cautiously, not entirely trusting that it wouldn’t leave her bald.
Her hair felt short — short and thin. Long hair was a pain in the field, but if she was going to be in the States for a while, then she was going to let it grow past the shoulder length she had it at now.
In the States for a while. Send that idea away, she told herself. She was getting the hell out of here as soon as possible.
Dressed, she checked her phone.
Still no call from Josh.
Downstairs, she hunted through the kitchen cabinets for coffee. She found two choices: Maxwell House and New England. Neither particularly appealed to her, but she needed caffeine.
She had to use a paper towel for a filter. Mara flipped the TV on while she waited for the coffee to brew. The cable news anchors were talking about the latest charges from China that the American CIA had helped Vietnam stage the photos and incident. Josh MacArthur, said a reporter on a remote in front of the capitol, had gone into hiding.
Draw your own conclusions.
Mara flipped the television off.
* * *
Grease was waiting for Mara when she came in. He took her downstairs and explained that the Vietnamese needed Russian weapons, that the conduit was to be the same as she had used in Malaysia, and things had to move as quickly as possible.
“And it’s been authorized on the highest level,” Grease added.
“Peter signed off?” said Mara, meaning Peter Lucas.
“Much higher than that,” said Grease. “Make it as long an arm’s length as you can.”
* * *
The key to the arrangement was a man named Sergei, whom Mara knew and loathed from her days in Malaysia. Sergei traveled extensively, and Mara never really knew where he might be. She had only met him twice, both times in Paris. The last had been in an after-hours sex club, an experience imprinted on neurons she’d never use again.
She left Langley and bought a cell phone specifically for the purpose of contacting him, using an agency-supplied ID and credit card. She found a coffee shop and placed the call. Not surprisingly, she remembered the number by heart.
An answering machine picked up on the second ring.
“Leave a message,” said a mechanical voice.
“This is Turpentine.” Mara winced at the ridiculous code name he’d picked for her when they’d started. “There are some new arrangements. I need to work quickly. Call this number.”
She hung up. Sergei’s system would have this number, so there was no need to leave it.
He called back ten minutes later, before she’d even finished her coffee.
“This is Mara.”
“You have a Washington number. Is that to be trusted?”
“I doubt it’s to be trusted,” Mara said. “But if you mean, am I in D.C., the answer is yes.”
“Then for lunch, Union Station. There is a bar there. I like the fries.” Sergei hung up before she could ask what time to be there. With nothing better to do, she headed into the city.
* * *
Mara killed time in the bookstore and some of the other tiny shops before going over to the restaurant, which opened at
eleven. She nursed a light beer for forty-five minutes before ordering a second. She was halfway through that one when Sergei showed up.
“The beautiful but volatile Miss Turpentine,” said Sergei, far too loudly as he pulled a chair away from the table to sit down.
Intentionally or not, Sergei projected the image of a Russian fat cat, complete with the macho assumption that every woman he met was cast instantly under his spell. This might actually have been true when he was younger — there was a certain twinkle in his eyes, and his face was not unpleasant to look at. But he was past fifty now, and not aging particularly well, with a full paunch and a rather odd balding pattern on the top of his head. The leather jacket he wore looked almost comical. But at least he didn’t smell of cologne.
“So, it is a pleasure to be working with you again, Turpentine,” he said brightly as the waiter approached. “Such a pleasure.”
The restaurant was located in the center of the station, which didn’t bother Mara as much as Sergei’s booming voice. She’d taken a table off to the side, with no one else around. Still, a modicum of discretion was in order.
But discretion wasn’t Sergei’s style.
“I will have a vodka gimlet,” he told the waiter. “You will use Standard.”
The waiter nodded.
Sergei looked at Mara. “You are wondering why Standard? It is the best.”
“I was wondering if your voice had a lower volume,” said Mara.
“But if I am too quiet, your microphones can’t hear me.”
“I’m not miked.”
Sergei smiled and gave a little knowing laugh. Mara caught a glimpse of a nondescript, middle-aged man taking a seat not too far away.
One of his bodyguards, she guessed.
“So. You have wishes, yes?” asked Sergei.
“Yes.”
Mara saw the waiter heading toward their table. They ordered — she asked for a Caesar salad with grilled tuna, Sergei a burger with cheese and bacon, along with a double order of fries.
“And, I will take beer,” said Sergei. “You have this Boston Ale.”
“Pint or glass?” asked the waiter.
“The pint.”