All right, she’d had too much to drink. And, yes, she’d been feeling homesick and lonely and mopey, like everyone else that night. Still, she shouldn’t have let him...devour her. She shouldn’t have arched into him when he’d dug his hands into her bottom to cant her hips to his. Dammit, she shouldn’t have gasped when her blood raced and heat streaked like molten fire into her lower belly.
He’d heard her gasp. Exulted in it! When he’d raised his head, his blue eyes had glittered with the knowledge that she wanted him every bit as much as he wanted her.
She’d shoved him away. She’d possessed that much pride, at least. She’d shoved him aside and stalked out the latrine door, only to find Claire standing a few feet from the entrance.
Julia had stopped in her tracks, shocked by the raw jealousy that ripped through her at the thought of Claire taking up where she'd left off with Gabe. In that moment, with the soaring strains of Silent Night filling her ears, Julia had known that one taste wasn’t enough. She wanted more. She craved more.
She couldn’t deny the humiliating reality any longer. Not after that kiss. But she could damn well lock it away inside her.
It was easy enough to maintain the distance she’d always put between herself and Gabe during the first weeks of the new year. Iron Man Endicott’s blood flowed in her veins. His rigid code of ethics had shaped her values and underscored her own concepts of right and wrong. She wasn’t the kind of woman to engage in grunt and grope sessions with her best friend’s lover, and she knew Gabe Hunter wasn’t interested in anything else.
What was more, she didn’t have time to dwell on Gabe’s unrelenting hold over her. Her job heated up with the anticipation of another Tet offensive, as did everyone else’s.
Thinking back to those turbulent times, Julia rested her head against the leather seat back. She could recall the events of that terrible spring with such blinding clarity.
January of 1972 passed in a strangely schizoid way. While she prepared and released reports that detailed the decreasing number of U.S. personnel in-country, Claire fretted over the increasing evidence of enemy presence in the South. North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops engaged in more and more attacks against military and civilian targets, mounting some thirty-four separate attacks in one twenty-four hour period. Infiltrators entered the U.S. air base at Bien Hoa, fifteen miles northeast of Saigon, and blew up a stockpile of small arms ammunition. Eighteen Americans were injured when mortar rounds hit a fire support base some twenty miles from the capital. All U.S. personnel were confined to their bases in anticipation of the long-awaited offensive
Then, almost overnight, the escalating tension eased. Tet passed without the expected attack. President Nixon visited China amid much pomp and ceremony. Hopes for peace soared with this new rapprochement.
Early March saw more North Vietnamese attacks, more South Vietnamese counterattacks, and more U.S. air strikes over enemy troop concentrations. Yet the widespread consensus was that the President’s Vietnamization policy was working. If and when the offensive ever came, ARVN forces supplemented by U.S. air support could counter it. The order confining Americans to their bases was lifted, and Julia attended a dinner hosted by the CBS bureau chief at the Continental Palace Hotel’s famed terrace restaurant.
She lifted her head and tried to wash away the memories with whiskey. They wouldn’t wash. Coughing, she slammed the tumbler down on the table beside the sofa. Liquid splashed onto her hand and the table’s burled wood surface.
“Dammit!”
A low, deep-throated rumble from the far side of the room warned her that she wasn’t alone. Twisting around, she returned the cat’s unblinking stare.
“What’s the matter? Are you seeing ghosts, too?”
The cat’s yellowish-green eyes didn’t blink.
Julia had no idea what the animal’s problem was. She and the creature coexisted in the same house, but on entirely separate planes. The tough, independent feline had long ago made it plain that Julia’s sole value was as a food source. He found his own companionship, which didn’t include her.
Tonight, though, she wouldn’t have minded a little companionship. Just a brush of fur against her leg. A warm, heavy weight in her lap. Maybe the feel of another living being could help her exorcise the ghosts. She patted the cushion beside her.
“Here, cat. Come here.”
In answer, the feline flicked his tail and marched out of the living room.
“Screw you,” she muttered.
Too tired to get up and retrieve some napkins from the bar, she sopped up the spilled whiskey with her sleeve. Then she reached up with both hands and pulled out the clip that held her hair in place. The heavy mass cascaded down her shoulders and provided a measure of relief.
She’d have to exorcise her own ghosts. And she knew they had to be vanquished before she met with Special Agent Marsh again in a few hours.
Deliberately, she let her mind drift back once more. To March, 1972. To the sudden, giddy relaxation of tension. To the invitation to dinner at the Continental.
She’d accepted that invitation with a grim determination. She intended to enjoy herself. She planned to revel in what sybaritic luxury Saigon still had to offer. The events of the preceding weeks had left her tired and wound tight and in no mood to listen to Claire’s raptures about Gabe Hunter.
Julia wanted off the Tan Son Nhut compound. She wanted to wear her a mini-skirt instead of a uniform for a change. For one night, she wanted to experience the Saigon of Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene. Maugham had supposedly stayed at the Continental. Greene had written about its terrace where, in bygone days, French planters sipped cooling drinks on hot afternoons.
Julia couldn’t know, of course, that she’d step through the hotel’s massive double doors and forge the final link in the chain that would bind her to Gabe Hunter forever.
Chapter Seven
Saigon, Vietnam
March, 1972
Julia climbed out of the dented blue Citroën, relic of the pre-war era, and handed the taxi driver a wad of piasters.
He counted the bills, then flashed her a black-toothed grin. “You number one fine lady.”
Even after five months in Vietnam, the black teeth and gums that so many of the older men and women displayed when they smiled could still startle her. The discoloration came not from poor dental hygiene, Julia had learned, but from chewing beetle nuts, which supposedly produced some kind of a narcotic effect. The black stains aside, the Vietnamese were a beautiful people in her opinion, and so unfailingly polite, even in the midst of war.
She returned the driver’s smile and steeled herself to walk the gauntlet of beggars squatting on the steps of the Continental Palace. She’d discovered soon after her arrival that she couldn’t answer the plea in every pair of dark eyes or fill every thin, outstretched hand. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to brush past the maimed soldiers in tattered uniform remnants or the gaunt, pajama-clad women who’d lost fathers and husbands and sons.
Her supply of piasters gave out long before she reached the white-uniformed doorman perched on a stool at the top of the steps. Since the massive hotel doors remained open during daylight hours to allow air to circulate, his duties appeared to consist primarily of smiling at the guests coming in and keeping the beggars out. He greeted Julia graciously and ushered her inside.
The Continental’s lobby was solidly Victorian, an island of shabby, faded elegance in an otherwise bustling city. Ceiling fans lazily stirred the hot air. Four clerks in white shirts and black ties scribbled in thick ledgers behind the tall reception desk. An elevator boy in a white coat with a red sash smiled shyly at Julia from his post beside the old-fashioned brass cage.
Bypassing the elevator, she made her way to the terrace made so famous by Graham Greene. On her first visit to the Continental, Julia had expected a broad patio surrounded by lush bougainvillea and sweet-scented jasmine, open to the sun and the stars. Somewhat to her disappointment, she’d found the terr
ace tucked in a corner, right under the bulk of the hotel. Once the watering hole of the French elite, it now catered primarily to foreign correspondents...and to the slender, dark-haired women who in turn catered to the correspondents.
Most of the women wore traditional high-necked ao dai’s over black silk trousers. A few sported tight skirts cut a good deal higher than Julia’s. In contrast, the scattering of female correspondents present wore baggy pants or divided skirts and the ubiquitous, utilitarian bush jackets. With its copious pockets that could carry everything from notebooks and extra film to a change of underwear, the cream-colored linen jackets had become a standard uniform for journalists covering the war in Vietnam.
The number of media employees accredited in Vietnam had declined from a high of more than six hundred a few years ago to just a little over two hundred now. Many of those were local nationals...typists and interpreters. Consequently, Julia knew most of the foreign correspondents present by sight and many by first name. Some, she might have counted as her friends if they hadn’t been on the opposite sides of the grim statistics her office released each month.
Snaring a glass of tepid green tea from a white-jacketed waiter, she returned the greetings that came at her from all sides and edged toward a stubby, bald-headed figure on the far side of the terrace.
“Hello, Arnie.”
The UPI reporter greeted her with exaggerated relief. “Endicott! Thank God! I thought I was going to have to listen to these network assholes expounding their theory of the thirty-minute war all night.”
Julia took a sip of tea to hide her smile. A veteran correspondent, Arnie Townsend had slogged through Europe alongside the GI’s during World War II and covered the Korean War for the now defunct Atlanta News Journal. Currently a reporter for UPI, he made no bones about his disgust over television’s profound impact on the way the public was fed the news. In his opinion, which he offered to anyone who asked and a good many who didn’t, the United States had degenerated from a nation of literate, reading thinkers to a population of armchair viewers whose exposure to the world outside their living rooms came through fifteen-second sound bites.
“What the hell are you drinking?” he demanded, peering myopically at her glass.
“Tea.”
“Good God!”
Julia grinned at his aghast expression. “I can’t handle alcohol in this heat.”
It was as good an excuse as any. She wasn’t about to admit that she hadn’t had either the time or the inclination for alcohol since Christmas Eve. Her mindless response to Gabe’s kiss had left her shaken and determined not to lose control like that again.
“Well, I can’t handle anything else in this heat,” the reporter muttered. He emptied his glass in one long gulp and shoved it at a passing waiter. "Another, scoosh scoosh."
Rocking back on his heels, he favored her with a piercing stare from under gray, tufted brows. “So what’s this dumb-shit policy MACV has just put out?”
“Which dumb-shit policy are you referring to?”
His mouth twitched at her bland reply. “The one requiring colonel-level approval for reporters to hitch rides on military aircraft.”
Julia fought to keep her expression neutral. She’d argued fiercely with her boss against the proposed policy. Relations between the military and the media were bad enough without exacerbating them further. Why not let correspondents hitch rides on transports or supply helicopters if there was space on the aircraft? Old hands like Arnie were going to get where they wanted to go, with or without the military’s assistance.
Her boss had been burned once too often, though. He wasn’t going to answer for another damned story about drug abuse among U.S. personnel or the increase in fragging incidents. He couldn’t restrict reporters’ access to the troops in the field, but he sure as hell agreed with any proposed policy that made it more difficult for them to get there.
If reporters couldn’t get to the troops, Julia had countered doggedly, they couldn’t witness the day-to-day courage of the thousands of men and women who didn’t take drugs or roll grenades under the tents of their officers and noncoms. Her boss had curtly dismissed her from his office. He was too short to argue the issue. She wasn’t short, however, and she didn’t resent any members of the press who tried to chronicle the human aspect of the war, even if they questioned its legitimacy.
“Come see me,” she told Arnie quietly. “I’ll get you whatever authorization you need.”
Townsend grunted. “That’s what I like about you, Endicott. You don’t buy this crap about the war being over any more than I do. There’s still a story here.”
“I think so, too.”
The low comment came from just behind Julia. Turning, she searched for a name to go with the handsome face at her shoulder and came up blank. She couldn’t recall ever meeting the tall, sandy-haired individual before. Nor could Arnie, evidently. The correspondent blinked at the newcomer a couple of times before asking bluntly, “Who the hell are you?”
“Dean Lassiter.”
The newcomer held out his hand first to Arnie, then to Julia. His gaze skimmed down her legs before hitting her face.
“Been in-country long, Lassiter?” Arnie asked in his direct way.
“I got here this morning.”
“What’s your background?”
Lassiter didn’t appear to take offense at the grilling. “I graduated from the Columbia School of Journalism a couple of years ago and now free-lance for the Register.”
“London or San Francisco?”
“Greenville, North Carolina.”
Arnie grunted. “North Carolina, huh? Well, we all had to start somewhere.”
While the older reporter shared a few succinct tips with Lassiter on ways to acclimate himself to the heat, the water, and the sorry excuse for an international telephone exchange that was the bane of the Saigon correspondents’ existence, Julia studied the newcomer. He stood a head taller than the stubby Townsend and carried himself with an easy self-assurance. He hadn’t been tested yet. She suspected his spotless linen jacket and his self-confidence would both suffer the first time he had to dive for cover in a benjo ditch, as a number of reporters had.
He was anxious to acquire the patina of a war correspondent, she soon discovered. Very anxious. When Arnie drifted away in search of another drink, Lassiter zeroed in on Julia.
“I overheard what you said to Townsend about getting him authorization to travel aboard military aircraft. Can you do the same for me and my photographer?”
“It depends.”
“On what?”
“On where you want to go and what you want to write about once you get there.”
A corner of his mouth curled in a faint sneer. “What is this, Lieutenant? Your own personal form of censorship? You only help those who write the kind of story you want written?”
Julia slanted him a cool look. She’d been in-country too long and was too much her father’s daughter to take any crap from this newcomer. In her opinion, he constituted the press corps’ equivalent of a snot-nosed lieutenant.
“I don’t know you, Lassiter. Even more important, I don’t know the quality of your work. You haven’t even been in Vietnam long enough to get your credentials approved. Come see me when you have, and we’ll talk about whether or not I’ll help you.”
“I will.”
Setting her empty glass on a linen-draped table, Julia nodded and walked away.
To her considerable surprise, Dean Lassiter showed up at her office late the following afternoon with a photographer in tow and a freshly signed Press Accreditation Card. He dropped the card on her desk, along with the plastic coated ID that gave members of the media access to the military PX’s.
The Italian born photographer, as dark and tough-looking as the American was fair and smoothly handsome, prowled the office. Lassiter grabbed a chair from one of the sergeant’s desks and planted himself in front of Julia’s.
“Just out of curiosity,” she asked idl
y, “how much did it cost to get your credentials reviewed and approved so quickly?”
He scooped up the forms and dropped them into his pocket with a careless shrug. “More than the price of dinner at a three-star restaurant in New York but less than what I paid for my ticket over here.”
“You paid your own way?”
“The Register’s budget didn’t stretch to an on-scene war correspondent,” he replied, grinning. “In fact, it’ll barely stretch to cover the costs of sending my copy back over the wires.”
Interesting, Julia thought. A Columbia grad who frequented three-star restaurants and paid his own way to the war. Lassiter was obviously one of that rare breed -- a journalist with an independent source of income.
“The Register’s a mom and pop paper,” he acknowledged. “Strictly weddings and funerals and the occasional visit from Aunt Helen, but it got me credentialed. That and the fact that I sold a few pieces while I was still in grad school.” He patted his pocket. “These babies are my ticket to the Times.”
“The New York Times?”
“The one and only.”
“You believe in aiming high, don't you?”
“You bet. Last year, the Times ran over six hundred lines written by stringers about the war. I figure this year, with so many of the free-lancers going home, some of those lines could be mine.”
Lassiter had obviously done his homework. If the neophyte didn’t step on too many toes and managed, somehow, to avoid the fierce rivalry that affected so many of the journalists, he just might make the contacts he needed to feed his stories into the prestigious daily.
“Are you paying for your photographer, too?” she asked curiously.
He nodded. “I’m inexperienced, Lieutenant, but not without intelligence. I know very well I can’t write about an event if I see it only through the lens of a Nikon. Besides, I’ve heard that traveling alone can be a little dangerous in this part of the world.”
Duty and Dishonor Page 8