“What room?”
“My room at the Caravelle. I was leaving the next morning and I wanted to thank Gabe and Julia and the others who’d helped me. I threw a party of sorts. Everyone came, even the mouse. Claire. It started out small, but reporters were pouring back into Saigon now that the war had heated up again. People kept showing up at the door. The place was wall to wall flesh, yet everyone there felt the heat that sizzled between Julia Endicott and Gabe Hunter.” He smiled. “We all envied him, you know.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“We envied Gabe, and lusted after Julia. Hell, the reporters used to talk about her at the bar, even the old Saigon hands with their pretty little Vietnamese mistresses. Julia stood out like a beacon. She had the kind of cool, hands-off looks that makes men want to do just the opposite, if you know what I mean?”
Ted knew exactly what Lassiter meant.
Even with all his years as an investigator, Marsh had slipped out of the impartial, impassive questioner’s role more than once during his interviews with Julia Endicott. Her looks weren’t what fascinated him, though. Well, not entirely. The intelligence in her eyes pulled at him far more than their fathomless emerald hue. He also admired her sheer guts in facing her inquisitors alone to this point. He’d almost regret closing this case.
Almost.
“Even Claire must have noticed the attraction,” Lassiter continued. “I remember that she got a little green around the gills and left early. Julia and Gabe left later. When Hunter walked out the door with her, we all felt it, right where it hurt. He’d claimed the prize, and we got stuck with the leftovers. The party fell apart soon after that.”
“Did you see Lieutenant Endicott again before you left Saigon?”
Lassiter shook himself out of his reverie. “No, not before I left. I saw her a few weeks later, when I made a swing back through Saigon on my way home.”
“And Captain Hunter?”
“Gabe? The last time I saw Gabe Hunter was when he strolled out of my room at the Caravelle with Julia.”
Chapter Eleven
Saigon, Vietnam
May, 1972
Julia picked up her hairbrush and attacked her just washed hair. Dean Lassiter’s invitation to a farewell bash at the Caravelle this evening couldn’t have come at a better time.
She hadn’t been out of uniform in a month and a half. She’d only left the base a half dozen times, mostly to make the Joint PAO briefings at the Embassy. She couldn’t remember when she’d felt so tired, or so grimly proud of the men and women she served with.
After weeks of intensive battle, South Vietnamese forces aided by massive U.S. air strikes had thrown back the enemy on every front. Fierce fighting still raged around An Loc, seventy miles north of Saigon. Government forces hadn’t yet reclaimed Quang Tri City, which had fallen to the communists, but they were close, so close.
What’s more, President Nixon’s decision to resume B-52 bombing of Hanoi and mine Haiphong Harbor for the first time had brought the North Vietnamese back to the Paris talks. After the most massive military campaign of the war, peace shimmered on the horizon.
Julia was in a mood to celebrate tonight. She wanted to forget the grim statistics she’d been gathering and releasing these past weeks. She wanted to share in Dean’s excitement over his new assignment covering the communist drive toward Phenom Penh for the Times. She wanted to wear civilian clothes and laugh and act like a woman instead of a lieutenant for a few hours.
She gave her hair a dozen vigorous strokes, noting that the pale blonde ends now drifted past her shoulders. She’d have to get the thick mass cut soon, or start wearing it up with her uniform. She’d worry about that tomorrow, though. Tonight, the slant edged hairstyle Barbara Streisand had made so popular perfectly complemented her bell-bottomed slacks and midriff-baring crocheted vest. In her considered opinion, she looked thoroughly with it.
Although...
She surveyed herself in the small mirror attached to the wall. Those dog tags had to go. They didn’t do a thing for the V-necked vest and hip-huggers. Slipping the embossed discs over her head, she dropped them into the side pocket of her purse. The St. Christopher medal Claire had given her brushed the slopes of her breasts. Its delicate silver chain was the only accessory she needed.
“Jules? Are you ready?”
“Almost,” she called out. “Come on in.”
Claire pushed open the door. “Wow, you look great!”
Julia stretched the truth a bit. “You do, too.”
At least the brunette had traded her baggy fatigues for civvies. Unfortunately, the shapeless trapeze dress was a chartreuse-y shade of yellow green that gave her skin a sallow cast. The dark circles under her eyes didn’t help, either. Like everyone else, the Intel officer had worked fourteen and sixteen hour shifts, seven days a week, since the start of the offensive. Her rich fall of chestnut hair had a luster all its own, though, and her smile was genuine Claire.
“Hurry up, slowpoke. Gabe and his new hootch mate are waiting.”
Julia’s hand froze on the latch to her locker. “I thought Gabe had to fly tonight.”
“His missions got scrubbed.” Claire’s smile wavered at the stubborn look on her friend’s face. “Please, Jules. I haven’t seen him in weeks. I need to be with him. Let’s just go to the party at the Caravalle and relax and have fun together.”
Julia hadn’t seen Gabe Hunter in weeks, either, but she knew darn well she wouldn’t relax in his company. Their hours together at DaNang had only intensified the confused mélange of feelings the man roused in her. She hated his cocky arrogance, and admired the gritty. His mocking grin irritated the hell out of her. The careless, affectionate smiles he bestowed on Claire had almost the same effect. Julia steadfastly refused to respond to his heavy-handed sexual innuendoes, and he refused to play the game by any rules but his own.
“Please, Jules.”
“Okay, okay. Just let me dig out my platforms. I refuse to wear boots or granny shoes tonight.”
She yanked open her locker, grimacing at the musty odor of mildew that had come with the start of the monsoon season. Rain poured down now at least twice a day, interspersed with bursts of hot, humid sunshine. Every piece of clothing Julia owned carried a rusty, disused scent. She’d long since abandoned panty hose because of the uncomfortable feminine itching their trapped heat caused.
Using a nail file, she scraped the green mold off her wooden-soled clogs, then slipped into the three-inch platforms. The wood felt damp and slick against her bare feet. She’d have to watch her step tonight. She’d almost forgotten how to walk in these things. Grabbing her purse, she shooed Claire out the door.
“Okay, Simmons, let’s go party.”
Dark thunderclouds rumbled overhead as they made their way along the balcony to the wooden stairs. The first, fat splatters hit the tin roof a few seconds later. Holding her tasseled knit bag over her head, Claire dashed from the entrance to the women’s compound to a covered Jeep. Laughing, she tumbled into the front seat.
Hard hands reached out to help Julia clamber into the back, and she landed with a whoosh beside a grinning stranger.
“Endicott, this is Weems,” Gabe tossed over his shoulder. “Weems, Endicott carries a loaded .357 with her at all times.”
“I’ll remember that.”
Gabe spun the wheel and cut away from the barracks, raising a wall of water from the runnel on the side of the road. Claire shrieked as the rainwater splashed over her legs, then laughed again and clutched at Gabe’s arm. Deliberately, Julia turned her attention to the man at her side.
Having arrived in-country all of three days ago, Phil Weems was full of news that hadn’t penetrated her absorption with the war for the past month and a half. Julia felt a sharp sense of disorientation as she listened to his account of student takeovers of administration buildings at Harvard and Cornell to protest Gulf Oil’s operations in Angola. Angola, apparently, was the new campus cause célèbre. Vietnam had taken a
back seat.
Strange, she’d almost forgotten that another world existed outside of Vietnam. She hadn’t forgotten the schizoidian sense of combating a war in the midst of a continuing troop drawdown, though. Like all replacements who’d arrived in Vietnam in recent years, Phil Weems expected to turn around and head home within a few weeks. Julia didn’t have the heart to tell him that the peace process seemed to have lasted longer than the war.
Gabe pulled up at the entrance to the ten-story Caravelle with a whine of tires on the slick road and a splash that added to the misery of the beggars hunched on the steps. With the fall of Quang Tri in the north a few weeks ago, more than a quarter of a million refugees had fled south. The camps thrown up hastily throughout South Vietnam couldn’t handle the flood of displaced persons. The few hours Julia hadn’t worked at MACV these past weeks she’d spent at the Red Cross operated orphanage a few miles outside Tan Son Nhut’s north gate. The children wrung her heart, as did these quietly beseeching beggars.
Claire and Julia had both emptied their wallets of piasters by the time they made it into the crowded lobby. They left Gabe and Phil Weems still negotiating with a gang of street boys to guard the Jeep and took the elevator to the sixth floor. As soon as the doors clanked open, they saw that Lassiter’s party had spilled out of his room into the hallway. The rest of the doors on either side of the dim hall stood open, and the crowd flowed freely from room to room.
Claire opted to wait near the elevator for Gabe, but Julia spotted short, stubby Arnie Townsend and joined him. Her determination to forget her military occupation for a few hours didn’t survive the first five moments of conversation with the UPI stringer. Everyone here shared Julia’s small, intense universe. Angola was two continents away. Vietnam was here and now.
Four hours later, she sat cross-legged on the floor amid a group of old Indochina hands. Her skin was damp from the humidity and her hip-huggers dipped low in the back as she leaned forward to listen intently.
“It’s all over now but the shouting,” the Reuters bureau chief insisted. “ARVN forces are within five miles of An Loc. They’ll retake it within a week.”
“The next big one’s going to be in Cambodia,” a thin, ginger-haired correspondent for the BBC predicted. “The guerrillas are almost knocking at the door to Lon Nol’s palace.”
“A chosen few among us will be there when he answers the knock,” Lassiter put in smugly from behind.
A chorus of hoots and good-natured insults greeted this sally from the newest star in their midst. Dean had reason to act smug, Julia thought with a smile. He’d convinced a small town, family-operated newspaper to provide him with a thin set of credentials. He’d paid his own way to a war everyone thought was over. A week after his arrival, he’d covered the first twenty-four hours of the ‘72 offensive through the eyes of the DaNang-based aircrews, when most of the press corps had been stuck in Saigon.
His stories had captured the international interest. Time and Newsweek magazines were both courting him with tantalizing offers. The broadcast bureau chiefs were even courting him to do some on-scene reporting. Now, apparently, he was heading for Phenom Phen with the prestige press behind him.
As icing on his cake, Dean had just received word that a respected, senior editor considered his story about the rocket attack at DaNang worthy of nomination for a Pulitzer. As the editor had phrased it, the story movingly highlighted the tragic ambiguity of the war and stirred everyone who read it to press for a swifter conclusion.
The reporter was flying high. Deservedly so. Julia had no doubt he was destined to soar higher yet.
“Have you seen Gabe?” he asked, hunkering down beside her.
“No, I haven’t.”
“Damn, I need to talk to him. He promised to give me the names of some of his buddies flying for Air America in Cambodia.”
“Look for Claire,” Julia replied casually. “When you find her, you’ll find Hunter.”
“She left over an hour ago. Said the noise and the heat were making her sick.”
“Sick?” Julia scrambled up, remembering Claire’s wan face and tired eyes. She must have really been feeling ill to leave the party. “She didn’t go back to the base by herself, did she?”
“Gabe’s friend, whatever his name is, had to go into crew rest and shared a taxi with her.” Lassiter frowned, searching the room again. “Where the hell did Hunter go to?”
From the corner of one eye, Julia caught a glimpse of a gaudy tropical shirt. Gabe’s favorite party garb drew her eye...and everyone else’s in the room.
“There he is,” she drawled.
Julia was too honest with herself to deny the frisson of electricity that lifted the fine hairs on her arms, and too intelligent to ascribe it to sexual attraction. Gabe Hunter didn’t attract her. She disliked too much about him to feel attracted to him. He...affected her.
Dean promptly deserted her and made his way to Gabe’s side. Julia drifted over to the impromptu bar that occupied the dresser, two nightstands, three straight chairs, and a plastic suitcase. Each guest, invited or otherwise, had contributed to the bar stock. She plucked a bottle of champagne from its nest in the ice-filled plastic suitcase. She had little knowledge of or experience with fine wines, but this one was good. Very good. Bubbles tickled her nostrils, and the pale gold liquid slid down her throat with seductive ease.
Intending to rejoin her group, she turned. A flash of purple drew her gaze. Gabe leaned against the far wall, Lassiter and another journalist close at hand. He didn’t even pretend an interest in their conversation. His eyes stayed on Julia. Only Julia. On her face. The V-neck of her crocheted vest. The stretch of bare midriff above her low-slung hip-huggers.
Her stomach muscles contracted, low and swift and hard.
All right! Okay! He affected her. He affected Claire, too, and who knew how many other women on base and off. She was damned if she was going to hurt Claire or become part of Hunter’s harem.
Her chin went up, and she gave him a slightly more refined version of his own mocking grin.
His mustache lifted in response, and his blue eyes glinted. He lifted his glass in a small, private salute before downing the contents in a single swallow. From the flush that darkened his tanned skin, Julia guessed it wasn’t his first drink of the night.
Lassiter shifted, following his line of sight to where she stood. Belatedly, she realized that others in the room were watching the little by-play between her and Hunter, as well. Disgusted with herself for giving them all a cheap show, she turned her back and joined the closest group. She’d managed to put Hunter out of her mind completely when his voice rumbled at her ear.
“Ready to go? We’ll have to hustle to beat the curfew.”
She stiffened involuntarily. He hadn’t touched her, hadn’t done anything more than warm the tip of ear with his breath. But that hot wash...affected her. Dammit, it was time to end this silly cat and mouse game between them once and for all.
“Yes, I’m ready.”
She deposited her glass on the dresser and retrieved her purse from the corner where she’d stashed it. She turned to wave a final farewell to Dean, forgetting about her three-inch platform heels. Gabe’s hand encircled her upper arm and saved her from toppling over.
“Thanks,” she muttered, pulling free.
The back of his hand brushed her breast before dropping to his side. “My pleasure, Goldilocks.”
It was time, Julia decided grimly. Past time.
She waited just inside the open doors to the lobby until Gabe reclaimed the Jeep. The pelting rain had ceased, but a fine, warm drizzle hung over the street like a shimmering curtain.
With the approach of the eleven o’clock curfew, most of the beggars had disappeared. Street women who hadn’t yet found an all-night trick cruised past the hotel, perched sideways on the backs of the scooters operated by their fathers or brothers or boyfriends. Gabe fielded a half dozen offers from eager salesmen while he finalized negotiations with the boys w
ho’d guarded the Jeep. One persistent entrepreneur put-putted alongside Gabe as he pulled up to the front entrance, lowering the price for the slender woman behind him several times.
“No, thanks,” Gabe replied. “She’s number one fine Honda-girl, but I’ve got my own girl tonight.”
Not hardly, Julia thought as she crossed the rain-slick pavement. The cowboy flicked a quick, dismissive glance her way.
“She no do for you what this one do.”
Gabe cut off his detailed description of the woman’s varied services. “Not tonight.”
“I give you special deal. Eight dollars.”
Julia swung into the Jeep and deposited her heavy purse between the seats to keep it from being snatched by one of the gangs of motorcycle thieves who roamed the streets. Gabe shifted into gear and cut into the traffic. The Honda swerved, then pulled up on the passenger side.
“Six dollars.”
Julia’s glance slid from the driver to the woman clinging to his waist. She wore black silk trousers and the finely embroidered silk ao dai favored by the upper classes. She was obviously a new refugee, Julia thought with a painful contraction of her heart. A former office worker, perhaps, or a college student. She had a bright, plastic smile fixed on her face, but her eyes looked right though the Jeep. Black, hollowed, flat, they saw images Julia couldn’t begin to imagine.
Her hand shaking, she fumbled for her wallet, and reached out to offer the girl a wad of dollars. The driver snatched the bills from Julia’s hand and roared off. The girl’s expression never altered.
Her brittle smile haunted Julia throughout the short ride to the base. She knew she wasn’t to blame for the war that had ripped that girl’s world apart. The seeds of the current conflict had been sown long before either one of them had been born. Yet that vacant stare condemned Julia and everyone else involved.
Hugging her arms, she sank down in the Jeep’s seat. The front gate went by in a blur. Buildings loomed in the mist, then dropped away as Gabe took the perimeter road to the USAF side of the base. Lost in her thoughts, she didn’t realize that he’d slowed until he pulled the Jeep to the side of the road and shoved it into neutral. A twist of the key silenced the engine.
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