He turned his attention to the two men trailing a short distance behind. Police agents, he assumed, on protective surveillance. They made things more difficult, but Siang could work around them. Sooner or later, an opportunity would arise.
Assassination would be so easy, as simple as a curtain left open to a well-aimed bullet. What a pity that was no longer the plan.
The Americans returned to their car. Siang rose, stamped the blood back into his legs and climbed onto his bicycle. It was a beggarly form of transportation, but it was practical and inconspicuous. Who would notice, among the thousands crowding the streets of Hanoi, one more shabbily dressed cyclist?
Siang followed the car back to the hotel. One block farther, he dismounted and discreetly observed the two Americans enter the lobby. Seconds later, a black Mercedes pulled up. The two agents climbed out and followed the Americans into the hotel.
It was time to set up shop.
Siang took a cloth-wrapped bundle from his bicycle basket, chose a shady spot on the sidewalk and spread out a meager collection of wares: cigarettes, soap and greeting cards. Then, like all the other itinerant merchants lining the road, he squatted down on his straw mat and beckoned to passersby.
Over the next two hours he managed to sell only a single bar of soap, but it scarcely mattered. He was there simply to watch. And to wait.
Like any good hunter, Siang knew how to wait.
Chapter 10
Guy and Willy slept in separate beds that night. At least, Guy slept. Willy lay awake, tossing on the sheets, thinking about her father, about the last time she had seen him alive.
He had been packing. She’d stood beside the bed, watching him toss clothes into a suitcase. She knew by the items he’d packed that he was returning to the lovely insanity of war. She saw the flak jacket, the Laotian-English dictionary, the heavy gold chains—a handy form of ransom with which a downed pilot could bargain for his life. There was also the Government-issue blood chit, printed on cloth and swiped from a U.S. Air Force pilot.
I am a citizen of the United States of America. I do not speak your language. Misfortune forces me to seek your assistance in obtaining food, shelter and protection. Please take me to someone who will provide for my safety and see that I am returned to my people.
It was written in thirteen languages.
The last item he packed was his .45, the trigger seat filed to a feather release. Willy had stood by the bed and stared at the gun, struck in that instant by its terrible significance.
“Why are you going back?” she’d asked.
“Because it’s my job, baby,” he’d said, slipping the pistol in among his clothes. “Because I’m good at it, and because we need the paycheck.”
“We don’t need the paycheck. We need you.”
He closed the suitcase. “Your mom’s been talking to you again, has she?”
“No, this is me talking, Daddy. Me.”
“Sure, baby.” He laughed and mussed her hair, his old way of making her feel like his little girl. He set the suitcase down on the floor and grinned at her, the same grin he always used on her mother, the same grin that always got him what he wanted. “Tell you what. How ’bout I bring back a little surprise? Something nice from Vientiane. Maybe a ruby? Or a sapphire? Bet you’d love a sapphire.”
She shrugged. “Why bother?”
“What do you mean, ‘why bother’? You’re my baby, aren’t you?”
“Your baby?” She looked at the ceiling and laughed. “When was I ever your baby?”
His grin vanished. “I don’t care for your tone of voice, young lady.”
“You don’t care about anything, do you? Except flying your stupid planes in your stupid war.” Before he could answer, she’d pushed past him and left the room.
As she fled down the hall she heard him yell, “You’re just a kid. One of these days you’ll understand! Grow up a little! Then you’ll understand....”
One of these days. One of these days.
“I still don’t understand,” she whispered to the night.
From the street below came the whine of a passing car. She sat up in bed and, running a hand through her damp hair, gazed around the room. The curtains fluttered like gossamer in the moonlit window. In the next bed, Guy lay asleep, the covers kicked aside, his bare back gleaming in the darkness.
She rose and went to the window. On the corner below, three pedicab drivers, dressed in rags, squatted together in the dim glow of a street lamp. They didn’t say a word; they simply huddled there in a midnight tableau of weariness. She wondered how many others, just as weary, just as silent, wandered in the night.
And to think they won the war.
A groan and the creak of bedsprings made her turn. Guy was lying on his back now, the covers kicked to the floor. By some strange fascination, she was drawn to his side. She stood in the shadows, studying his rumpled hair, the rise and fall of his chest. Even in his sleep he wore a half smile, as though some private joke were echoing in his dreams. She started to smooth back his hair, then thought better of it. Her hand lingered over him as she struggled against the longing to touch him, to be held by him. It had been so long since she’d felt this way about a man, and it frightened her; it was the first sign of surrender, of the offering up of her soul.
She couldn’t let it happen. Not with this man.
She turned and went back to her own bed and threw herself onto the sheets. There she lay, thinking of all the ways he was wrong for her, all the ways they were wrong for each other.
The way her mother and father had been wrong for each other.
It was something Ann Maitland had never recognized, that basic incompatibility. It had been painfully obvious to her daughter. Bill Maitland was the wild card, the unpredictable joker in life’s game of chance. Ann cheerfully accepted whatever surprises she was dealt because he was her husband, because she loved him.
But Willy didn’t need that kind of love. She didn’t need a younger version of Wild Bill Maitland.
Though, God knew, she wanted him. And he was right in the next bed.
She closed her eyes. Restless, sweating, she counted the hours until morning.
“A most curious turn of events.” Minister Tranh, recently off the plane from Saigon, settled into his hard-backed chair and gazed at the tea leaves drifting in his cup. “You say they are behaving like mere tourists?”
“Typical capitalist tourists,” said Miss Hu in disgust. She opened her notebook, in which she’d dutifully recorded every detail, and began her report. “This morning at nine-forty-five, they visited the tomb of our beloved leader but offered no comment. At 12:17, they were served lunch at the hotel, a menu which included fried fish, stewed river turtle, steamed vegetables and custard. This afternoon, they were escorted to the Museum of War, then the Museum of Revolution—”
“This is hardly the itinerary of capitalist tourists.”
“And then—” she flipped the page “—they went shopping.” Triumphantly, she snapped the notebook closed.
“But Comrade Hu, even the most dedicated Party member must, on occasion, shop.”
“For antiques?”
“Ah. They value tradition.”
Miss Hu bent forward. “Here is the part that raises my suspicions, Minister Tranh. It is the leopard revealing its stripes.”
“Spots,” corrected the minister with a smile. The fervent Comrade Hu had been studying her American idioms again. What a shame she had absorbed so little of their humor. “What, exactly, did they do?”
“This afternoon, after the antique shop, they spent two hours at the Australian embassy—the cocktail lounge, to be precise—where they conversed in private with various suspect foreigners.”
Minister Tranh found it of only passing interest that the Americans would retreat to a Western embassy. Like anyone in a strange country, they
probably missed the company of their own type of people. Decades ago in Paris, Tranh had felt just such a longing. Even as he’d sipped coffee in the West Bank cafés, even as he’d reveled in the joys of Bohemian life, at times, he had ached for the sight of jet black hair, for the gentle twang of his own language. Still, how he had loved Paris....
“So you see, the Americans are well monitored,” said Miss Hu. “Rest assured, Minister Tranh. Nothing will go wrong.”
“Assuming they continue to cooperate with us.”
“Cooperate?” Miss Hu’s chin came up in a gesture of injured pride. “They are not aware we’re following them.”
What a shame the politically correct Miss Hu was so lacking in vision and insight. Minister Tranh hadn’t the energy to contradict her. Long ago, he had learned that zealots were seldom swayed by reason.
He looked down at his tea leaves and sighed. “But, of course, you are right, Comrade,” he said.
* * *
“It’s been a day now. Why hasn’t anyone contacted us?” Willy whispered across the oilcloth-covered table.
“Maybe they can’t get close enough,” Guy said. “Or maybe they’re still looking us over.”
The way everyone else was looking them over, Willy thought as her gaze swept the noisy café. In one glance she took in the tables cluttered with coffee cups and soup bowls, the diners veiled in a vapor of cooking grease and cigarette smoke, the waiters ferrying trays of steaming food. They’re all watching us, she thought. In a far corner, the two police agents sat flicking ashes into a saucer. And through the dirty street windows, small faces peered in, children straining for a rare glimpse of Americans.
Their waiter, gaunt and silent, set two bowls of noodle soup on their table and vanished through a pair of swinging doors. In the kitchen, pots clanged and voices chattered over a cleaver’s staccato. The swinging doors kept slapping open and shut as waiters pushed through, bent under the weight of their trays.
The police agents were staring.
Willy, by now brittle with tension, reached for her chopsticks and automatically began to eat. It was modest fare, noodles and peppery broth and paper-thin slices of what looked like beef. Water buffalo, Guy told her. Tasty but tough. Head bent, ignoring the stares, she ate in silence. Only when she inadvertently bit into a chili pepper and had to make a lunge for her glass of lemonade did she finally put her chopsticks down.
“I don’t know if I can take this idle-tourist act much longer.” She sighed. “Just how long are we supposed to wait?”
“As long as it takes. That’s one thing you learn in this country. Patience. Waiting for the right time. The right situation.”
“Twenty years is a long time to wait.”
“You know,” he said, frowning, “that’s the part that bothers me. That it’s been twenty years. Why would the Company still be mucking around in what should be a dead issue?”
“Maybe they’re not interested. Maybe Toby Wolff’s wrong.”
“Toby’s never wrong.” He looked around at the crowded room, his gaze troubled. “And something else still bothers me. Has from the very beginning. Our so-called accidental meeting in Bangkok. Both of us looking for the same answers, the same man.” He paused. “In addition to mild paranoia, however, I get also this sense of...”
“Coincidence?”
“Fate.”
Willy shook her head. “I don’t believe in fate.”
“You will.” He stared up at the haze of cigarette smoke swirling about the ceiling fan. “It’s this country. It changes you, strips away your sense of reality, your sense of control. You begin to think that events are meant to happen, that they will happen, no matter how you fight it. As if our lives are all written out for us and it’s impossible to revise the book.”
Their gazes met across the table. “I don’t believe in fate, Guy,” she said softly. “I never have.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“I don’t believe you and I were meant to be together. It just happened.”
“But something—luck, fate, conspiracy, whatever you want to call it—has thrown us together.” He leaned forward, his gaze never leaving her face. “Of all the crazy places in the world, here we are, at the same table, in the same dirty Vietnamese café. And...” He paused, his brown eyes warm, his crooked smile a fleeting glimmer in his seriousness. “I’m beginning to think it’s time we gave in and followed this crazy script. Time we followed our instincts.”
They stared at each other through the veil of smoke. And she thought, I’d like nothing better than to follow my instincts, which are to go back to our hotel and make love with you. I know I’ll regret it. But that’s what I want. Maybe that’s what I’ve wanted since the day I met you.
He reached across the table; their hands met. And as their fingers linked, it seemed as if some magical circuit had just been completed, as if this had always been meant to be, that this was where fate—good, bad or indifferent—had meant to lead them. Not apart, but together, to the same embrace, the same bed.
“Let’s go back to the room,” he whispered.
She nodded. A smile slid between them, one of knowing, full of promise. Already the images were drifting through her head: shirts slowly unbuttoned, belts unbuckled. Sweat glistening on backs and shoulders. Slowly she pushed her chair back from the table.
But as they rose to their feet, a voice, shockingly familiar, called to them from across the room.
Dodge Hamilton lumbered toward them through the maze of tables. Pale and sweating, he sank into a chair beside them.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Guy asked in astonishment.
“I’m bloody lucky to be here at all,” said Hamilton, wiping a handkerchief across his brow. “One of our engines trailed smoke all the way from Da Nang. I tell you, I didn’t fancy myself splattered all over some mountaintop.”
“But I thought you were staying in Saigon,” said Willy.
Hamilton stuffed the handkerchief back in his pocket. “Wish I had. But yesterday I got a telex from the finance minister’s office. He’s finally agreed to an interview—something I’ve been working at for months. So I squeezed onto the last flight out of Saigon.” He shook his head. “Just about my last flight, period. Lord, I need a drink.” He pointed to Willy’s glass. “What’s that you’ve got there?”
“Lemonade.”
Hamilton turned and called to the waiter. “Hello, there! Could I have one of these—these lemon things?”
Willy took a sip, watching Hamilton thoughtfully over the rim of her glass. “How did you find us?”
“What? Oh, that was no trick. The hotel clerk directed me here.”
“How did he know?”
Guy sighed. “Obviously we can’t take a step without everyone knowing about it.”
Hamilton frowned dubiously as the waiter set a napkin and another glass of lemonade on the table. “Probably carries some fatal bacteria.” He lifted the glass and sighed. “Might as well live dangerously. Well, here’s to the trusty Ilyushins of the sky! May they never crash. Not with me aboard, anyway.”
Guy raised his glass in a wholehearted toast. “Amen. From now on, I say we all stick to boats.”
“Or pedicabs,” said Hamilton. “Just think, Barnard, we could be pedaled across China!”
“I think you’d be safer in a plane,” Willy said, and reached for her glass. As she lifted it, she noticed a dark stain bleeding from the wet napkin onto the tablecloth. It took her a few seconds to realize what it was, that tiny trickle of blue. Ink. There was something written on the other side of her napkin....
“It all depends on the plane,” said Hamilton. “After today, no more Russian rigs for me. Pardon the pun, but I’ve been thoroughly dis-Ilyushined.”
It was Guy’s burst of laughter that pulled Willy out of her feverish speculation. She looked up and found H
amilton frowning at her. Dodge Hamilton, she thought. He was always around. Always watching.
She crumpled the napkin in her fist. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go back to the hotel.”
“Is something wrong?” Guy asked.
“I’m tired.” She rose, still clutching the napkin. “And a little queasy.”
Hamilton at once shoved aside his glass of lemonade. “I knew I should have stuck to whiskey. Can I fetch you anything? Bananas, maybe? That’s the cure, you know.”
“She’ll be fine,” said Guy, helping Willy to her feet. “I’ll look after her.”
Outside, the heat and chaos of the street were overwhelming. Willy clung to Guy’s arm, afraid to talk, afraid to voice her suspicions. But he’d already sensed her agitation. He pulled her through the crowd toward the hotel.
Back in their room, Guy locked the door and drew the curtains. Willy unfolded the napkin. By the light of a bedside lamp, they struggled to decipher the smudgy message.
“0200. Alley behind hotel. Watch your back.”
Willy looked at him. “What do you think?”
He didn’t answer. She watched him pace the room, thinking, weighing the risks. Then he took the napkin, tore it to shreds and vanished into the bathroom. She heard the toilet flush and knew the evidence had been disposed of. When he came out of the bathroom, his expression was flat and unreadable.
“Why don’t you lie down,” he said. “There’s nothing like a good night’s sleep to settle an upset stomach.” He turned off the lamp. By the glow of her watch, she saw it was just after seven-thirty. It would be a long wait.
They scarcely slept that night.
In the darkness of their room, they waited for the hours to pass. Outside, the noises of the street, the voices, the tinkle of pedicab bells faded to silence. They didn’t undress; they lay tensed in their beds, not daring to exchange a word.
It must have been after midnight when Willy at last slipped into a dreamless sleep. It seemed only moments had passed when she felt herself being nudged awake. Guy’s lips brushed her forehead, then she heard him whisper, “Time to move.”
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