She had nothing to say to that, but later, when the lights were off and we were lying side by side, she said, “You’re still wrong, you know. It’s all the thinking about it. Sometimes you have to take care of the needs first and let the analysis sort itself out later. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to find someone to love and taking a chance. You have to take the chance.”
“I know it, April,” I said. I found her hand and held it in the dark. “But there are chances and there are chances. Look at what you stand to lose as well as what you stand to gain. And you have to know how much damage you can do, how much you can hurt the other person.” We fell asleep holding hands and in the morning Pete Number Two followed us to Baguio.
Roxas was right. There were some pieces worth looking at in Baguio. We spent the next day visiting small shops and sightseeing. No one made contact, but I had the uneasy feeling there were more eyes than Pete’s following us. We ate and retired early.
The following day, I bought April a small gold monkey on a chain. She didn’t like it as much as I did, but she liked the idea that I had found it and bought it for her. She liked that enough to wear it to bed. She pressed the monkey into my chest and asked me if I really thought she was trying to find something she couldn’t lose, if I thought that was the only reason she slept with me.
“You tell me,” I said.
“Suppose you’re right. Do I have a chance?”
“No. You lose everything. We all do. Your only chance is to find something that lasts for a while. And I’m too old to last as long as you’d need me.”
“You don’t know how long I might need you,” she said. “You don’t even know why I need you.”
“Then tell me.”
“You’re the mathematician. Figure it out for yourself,” she challenged me.
I held her close and thought about it without getting anywhere. Her breasts, her belly pressed against me, her breath warm on my neck, the way she wrapped her legs about mine, all were too distracting.
“Tell me what you need,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Every night, we lie together like this.” She ground her pelvis against mine. “You’re so hard, like a rock. It must be driving you crazy. But every night you hold me and you don’t do anything about it. You just hold me. There must be a reason. What is it? You don’t think I’m a virgin, do you?”
“No.”
“Then what is the reason? You know you could have me just by moving a little bit. But you won’t do it. Why? Is it because you knew my mother? Or because you’ve got me all mixed up with that stupid war?”
“Figure it out for yourself,” I told her.
The next day was more sightseeing and by the following morning, I was ready to give up. April persuaded me to give Roxas one more day. We spent it driving along the coast, stopping in a couple villages and talking to the people. They were cautious but friendly. That night we had dinner and sat outside for a while, tossing around motives for Toker’s killing. We didn’t get anywhere.
A quiet knock woke me after midnight. I pulled on a pair of pants and answered the door. A boy, about fifteen, slipped into the room. “You come,” he said.
At last.
He waited while we dressed, then led us down the hall. The lights had been dimmed and there was no sound from any of the rooms we passed. We followed him past the elevator to the stairwell and down to the street level, then out through the kitchen.
An old van was waiting around the corner from the lobby entrance. I stopped when I saw it, but the boy grabbed my arm and pulled me along. “You come,” he said. “Hurry.”
“You should wait here,” I told April.
“You wish,” she said, and hurried ahead.
The side door of the van slid open. There were two men inside, sitting well back. Each had an AK47 pointed at April.
“You get in, please,” the boy said. He flashed a quick smile. “In back, please.”
April crawled in first. I followed her. The men kept the weapons trained on us, but they said nothing. The boy walked around to the front and climbed behind the wheel. The van jerked forward. April fell against me and I rolled off balance. One of the two men, the shorter one, jabbed the barrel of his weapon into my neck. I cursed and regained my balance, then sat on the metal floor with my back against the wall. April was beside me, between me and the back doors.
The bigger man turned a flashlight on us. There were dirty rags on the floor, but the van was otherwise empty. I noticed that the back doors where chained together. The man who had jabbed me pushed his weapon carefully toward the front of the van. The other sat on it while he wired our wrists together. He didn’t twist the wire too tight; it was just tight enough that I couldn’t move without cutting off circulation. When that was done, he carefully retrieved his rifle.
The only way out was past the men. They watched us carefully. Their weapons were not on safety. The van rocked back and forth. April and I leaned against each other for balance.
I didn’t like the situation at all. The thing I didn’t like most about it was that we hadn’t been blindfolded. Either we weren’t coming back or we were going to have to pass some sort of test before we did.
April didn’t say anything, but she was breathing heavily and sweating. An hour passed. We got cooler and then began to warm up again. I thought we had climbed over some mountains, perhaps a low range, and then dropped back to a lower altitude. I gestured toward the shorter man’s weapon. “AK47. Good.”
He glanced down at it, then back at me. He nodded. “Good.” His friend said nothing.
The Philippines are warm, tropical islands. Very humid. It was stifling in the van. I could smell the two men.
April whimpered softly and I became aware of how she was sitting. I cleared my throat so I wouldn’t startle anyone. “Stop,” I said.
They lifted their weapons threateningly. The boy called back, “You be quiet, please.”
I said, “Stop the van.”
He pulled the van to a crawl. “What’s the matter,” he said.
“You stop.”
“Why stop?”
“Piss,” I told him. “Piss stop.”
He stopped, jumped out, ran around the van, and opened the side door. “Okay,” he said. “You be fast, okay?”
The two guards got out first and held the flashlight as April and I crawled out behind them. My legs wouldn’t work right. I had to help April. I noticed that her wrists were bleeding from the wire. I tried to help her pull down her pants. She shook her head. “They’re watching,” she said.
“They’re going to watch, April,” I told her. “It can’t be helped. They’re grown men. They’ve probably seen a woman take a leak before. Just do what you have to.”
She bit her lips, then turned away from them, and squatted. I took care of business too. I thought I heard an engine, very faint, a long way behind us. I started talking to April, telling her that we were going to be all right. She was shaking when I helped her straighten up and get back in the van.
When we were moving again, I took her wrists and held them where the guards could see the blood. They glanced at each other. The short one put away his weapon and loosened the wire. April tried to smile at them and said thank you.
Another hour passed before the driver slowed the van to a crawl and turned off the road. We bumped along a path for a few miles, then stopped. We all got out of the van and stood while the cramps in our legs passed. Then the boy walked into the forest. A faint path led downhill.
The trees around us were mostly palms. I thought I could hear the surf a long way off. The moon was up, somewhere above the trees, but very little light penetrated to the path.
If my sense of direction was right, we had come almost due north up the central valley of the island. If I had really heard the ocean, we were somewhere near the point on the northwestern coast of Luzon where I had been ambushed the last time I’d visited the island. I didn’t know if that was a good th
ing or not. It hadn’t been such a good thing the last time. But tonight it might indicate we were about to meet someone else who had good cause to remember the place.
The driver signaled a stop. April was breathing heavily. She had had no experience walking in the dark with armed men. Fear makes exercise easier for some and harder for others. It made it harder for her. She was barely keeping up.
We stood in silence while April caught her breath. The absence of noise suddenly caught my attention. No bird calls. No insects. I sensed that there were more than three men around us.
The boy spoke. “You go, Mr. Stephenson. Miss Holly wait here. We take care of her.”
April gave a low cry. “No!”
I raised my arms and dropped the loop they made around her. “I have to go, Holly.” I told her. “You have to wait.”
“But you promised. Please don’t leave me.”
“I’ll come back,” I promised. I kissed her.
Someone jabbed me with the muzzle of a rifle. I had to let her go. As we walked down the path, I heard her sobbing. The sound carried a long way before I couldn’t hear it.
We marched in silence. Shadows joined our procession. Soon there were at least five men around me. Two preceded me and three brought up the rear. The path was heavily overgrown. Every few minutes a palm frond slapped my face.
Suddenly it was lighter. We stepped out onto a beach. It was not as deep as I remembered it, only about thirty feet from the tree line to the surf. The sand was white in the moonlight. I stopped and looked around. I remembered the long spit that pushed into the sea to the west of me. This was almost exactly the spot where we’d beached the boats twenty years earlier. The attackers had fired from up in the forest where April was now hidden.
One of the three men behind me shoved my back. I growled, spun, and dug an elbow into his solar plexus. He fell back on the sand, gasping. The others stepped away from us and raised their weapons.
A man had been waiting on the beach. He said, loudly, “Wait!” and walked up to me. He stood in front of me, staring at my face for a long time. I returned the look. He was a short man, thin, with a narrow face, lightly pockmarked.
“Hello, Freddy,” I said.
“I thought it might be you,” he said. “None of the others would have had the balls.”
“They were just busy tonight,” I told him.
He stepped back and barked an order in Filipino. The man I had elbowed twisted the wire from around my wrists. I waited, rubbing the circulation back into my hands. Freddy squatted on the sand. I sat beside him.
“You remember this place?” he asked.
“Very well,” I told him. “Why are we here? It is a long way from the hotel.”
“It was a favor for the lawyer.” He lit a cigarette. “His brother was one of the men who died here that night. He thought that if you were not the man you claimed to be, this would be a fitting place for you to die.”
I reached into his pocket and took a cigarette. I figured I wouldn’t have to tell April about it. “But I am the man,” I said.
“You are the man,” he nodded. “And you have come a long way to ask questions. Why didn’t you ask the others, the Americans.”
“I couldn’t believe them.”
He grunted and we smoked for a time.
“What are the questions?”
“First, what happened to the payment on the last delivery?”
He looked surprised. “It was paid. The man called Roy took it away in the boat with him.”
It was my turn for surprise. “But he didn’t get in the boat. I left him here on the beach, with you and the one who died.”
“The one who died?” he asked.
“His name was Sissy. He took one of the first bullets when the shooting started.”
“What are you talking about, my friend?” The moon was harsh on his face. “There was no shooting on the last delivery. It went smoothly. It was a few miles west of here.”
“What?” I was completely confused. “The last delivery, here, on this beach, when the men were killed?”
“That was in July. The last delivery was in December. Payment was made in full. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. To Roy.” He looked at me for a long time. “I think maybe it is good that you came.”
“How was it set up?” I asked softly.
“Not the same as the others. It was arranged before, but Roy changed the place and time before he left to meet you. After the fighting.”
“I didn’t know about this. Was this the time he stayed behind to bury Sissy?”
He was shaking his head. “No American was buried here, except for the ones who died in the woods. The ones who shot each other, and the ones you killed with your knife. On our side, only the lawyer’s brother and another man, a friend, died here.”
I didn’t know what to say. Nothing I had believed for the last twenty years was true. “Only the two died?” I felt stupid.
“Only the two.”
“And the American who was shot? Sissy?”
“He took his bullet in the leg, here.” He touched my leg on the outside, high up, just below my hip. “It was broken, but he was not bleeding heavily. The one called Roy carried him away to Manila. I have seen many such wounds. He would not have died if he could get to a doctor.”
I nodded. I had seen such wounds too. They were not usually fatal.
“One other thing,” I said. “Sissy was carrying a small sack, about so big,” I held my hands up. “Did you see this sack?”
He shook his head.
I had a decision to make. I asked him, “About the girl with me, Holly…”
“She is well. My men are keeping her where we buried the CIA Americans.”
“They were CIA? You are sure?”
“CIA or Army Intelligence. Who knows. I know only that they were dead.”
That made it easier. “We had to stop on the way up here,” I told him. “I heard a truck behind us.”
That galvanized him. “A truck?”
Some of the others had at least a little English. They stood and ran back to the tree line. Freddy and I ran with them. We dropped to the sand just inside the shadows.
“You are sure?” he asked.
I nodded. “Didn’t Roxas tell you about the policeman who was following us?”
“That is why we met like this, my friend.”
“I don’t like it,” I told him.
“This is an unlucky beach.”
“I have to get to Holly,” I said.
He called the others over and spoke to them. “We will try to lead them away,” he said. “The girl is with my son and the two guards. They are straight up the path, maybe six hundred yards.”
“I’ll find them.” I turned to the circle of men and shook hands all around. I said, “Good Luck,” to each man. I could wish them good luck without wishing them victory.
There was a short burst of automatic weapons fire up the mountain followed by a pause and then a longer burst.
Freddy moaned. “My son…”
“I need a weapon,” I said.
He gestured and one of the men unslung an M16 and tossed it to me. It felt good in my hands. Freddy handed me a knife. “I think you used to be good with this,” he said. “If you see my son…”
I nodded and crawled into the forest.
The firing had been well ahead of me. If the shooters were coming down in a skirmish line, I had at least five hundred yards before I could expect to see them. I charged up the path for about three hundred yards, then took cover and waited, listening.
The silence was complete for a few minutes. I moved up cautiously until I heard men walking, whispering to each other as they moved downhill. At least they weren’t speaking English this time.
It was very dark, but I saw their shadows as they passed me. There was a burst of firing and several rounds cut through the palms overhead. I fired a short burst into the back of the group that had just passed and then hit the dirt and rolle
d away.
One of them screamed. The others began shooting wildly. Below them, Freddy’s men started firing. I crawled left, along the slope, trying to get out of the line of fire. After a few minutes of that, I stood and began making my way uphill again.
The shooting, sporadic now, was to my right and downhill. A couple of rounds snapped into the trees near me. I was scared silly, but at the same time I could feel my face twisting into the old rictus, half terror and half delight. I kept moving uphill. After I’d climbed another hundred yards, I dropped to my hands and knees and started moving to my right and up. The firing continued, but it seemed to be moving away from me. I came to a clearing. There were two darker shapes lying in the faint moonlight.
I made my way around the edge of the clearing, straining my ears, but I could hear nothing near me. The shapes resolved themselves. The shorter guard, the one who liked to jab me. And the boy, the driver.
There was nothing I could do. I continued up the hill, parallel to the path and about six yards from it. After ten minutes, I heard a faint crying. April. With a small group of men, no more than three. I made my way slowly toward them.
She was moving awkwardly in the dark, stumbling often, and making a lot of noise. I took a chance and ran ahead of them. I sounded like a herd of water buffalo, at least in my own ears, but they were preoccupied.
I took a position a yard to the left of the path, under a large fern. My eyes were fairly well adjusted to the dark. I could see them approach from fifteen yards away. The lead man had a flashlight pointed at the ground in front of him. I smiled, checked my safety, and waited.
Pete Number Two was walking point. The girl was two yards behind him, closely followed by two men. They carried their weapons at port arms and walked clumsily. The shadows from the flashlight were confusing them. When April was even with me, I took out both the men following her with one long burst and then screamed, “Holly!” I jumped against her, knocking her off her feet and off the path. I rolled once and came up in firing position.
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