Temple of Gold

by A. J. Stewart

  “Perhaps the same as you,” said Kendra. “Getting a beer away from the stuffed shirts.”

  “Alone?” said Lucas. “What is he, Neville no mates?”

  Swinton looked around and then stepped inside the bar. Lucas shrugged and turned his attention back to Alice. “Sorry, you were saying?”

  “What brings you here?”

  “Pomp and ceremony,” said Lucas with a swift shake of his head. “Guard duty, basically. How about you? How long have you been here?”

  “Six months, this time, but I’ve served in Bangkok before,” said Alice, lifting her beer.

  “And you’re a legal attaché?”

  “Not officially. I work out of the LegAtt’s office, but officially that title goes to the permanent ranking officer. I’m on TDY.”

  “What does that mean, exactly?”

  “Temporary duty, which means whatever the Attorney General of the United States wants it to mean. But under Attorney General Smith, I am focused on anti-drug and anti-crime campaigns.”

  “Anti-drug? Hence being in Bangkok.”

  “There are issues here like anywhere.”

  “You’re sounding a little like a politician there, Alice.”

  “And I’m sure if I ask you about your mission, you’ll give me full chapter and verse.”

  Lucas nodded. “Fair enough, fair enough.”

  They drank some more and the owner returned with another round. Lenny looked at Kendra.

  “So what part of Southeast Asia did your guys mess up?”

  “Oh, this part of the world was mainly cocked up by the French, I’m glad to say. We messed up pretty much everywhere else, but Indochina was rather Gaul.”

  “And you guys weren’t in Vietnam, either.”

  “Not officially, no.”

  Lenny grinned. “Do tell.”

  “Oh, nothing to tell. You know how these things are. A bit of quiet assistance here, some training there. It’s all above my pay grade, I’m afraid.”

  “At the British Council,” said Lenny.

  “That’s right,” said Kendra, with a twinkle in her eye. “We’ve taught a thing or two to some people who turned out to be less than wholesome, I’m sure. It’s the nature of this place. I don’t think anyone’s pure here, do you?”

  Lenny said nothing. He just shook his head.

  “So where are you from, Sergeant?” asked Kendra.

  “Grew up in San Diego, California.”

  “A Beach Boy?”

  “More or less.”

  “Marine family?”

  “My dad was in the navy. And you?”

  “My grandfather fought at the Somme.”

  “I mean where are you from.”

  “Hampshire, in the south of England.”

  “That’s funny,” said Alice. “I grew up in New Hampshire.”

  “Really? You don’t have the accent.”

  “I never really did, for some reason, but what little I did have got beat out of me during my school years in Rhode Island and DC and then living so much abroad.”

  “Do you have a house in the States?” Kendra asked.

  “I do,” said Alice. “An apartment in Georgetown. I rent it to visiting faculty at the university since I’m not there much. Do you have a home in Hampshire?”

  “No, I lived mostly in London after school, but I never bought a place. I guess I always had half an eye on this big wide world.”

  “I know the feeling,” said Alice. “What about you Lucas? Whereabouts in Australia did you grow up?”

  Lucas said, “Queensland,” but it came out soft and slowly, as if once again he wasn’t paying attention to Alice. He was frowning at the side entrance to the bar, and again, they all turned to where he was looking.

  The man called Swinton had stepped back outside. He was holding the hand of a small boy, maybe ten years old.

  “Who brings his kid to a place like this?” said Lucas. He didn’t seem to be looking for a response, but Alice replied:

  “His kid?”

  “Yeah,” said Lucas in a whisper.

  “I’m afraid I suspect it’s only his kid for the next few hours,” said Alice with an ashen face.

  Lucas glanced at her, still wearing his frown. Then as the penny dropped, so did the frown, into a look of disgust.

  “You mean that’s not his kid?”

  Alice shook her head softly.

  “So he’s a . . .”

  Alice nodded.

  “He’s a pedo?”

  Alice kept nodding.

  “That’s not right. Why doesn’t anybody do something?”

  “Do what?” asked Kendra. “Call him on it? A foreign diplomat being called out by a diplomat from another country? Then it becomes tit for tat. We’ve all got bad apples in our baskets, Lucas.”

  Lucas put his beer on the table and stood. “That’s not right,” he said. “That’s a kid. A little kid.”

  “What are you doing?” Kendra said. “Lucas?”

  “I’m not a foreign diplomat. He’s one of mine.”

  Lucas stormed away toward the back door of the bar as Swinton and the boy made their way onto the street.

  “Lucas!” called Kendra. Lenny and Alice shot each other a look. Then Lucas returned from inside and looked around, surveying the garden and the scrub and the surrounding buildings. He was holding the bar owner’s BB gun.

  “Lucas, don’t do anything silly,” said Kendra.

  “She’s right, Lucas,” said Alice.

  “What are you going to do?” asked Kendra.

  Lucas looked at her.

  “I’m gonna teach that mongrel a bloody lesson.”

  Chapter Eight

  Lucas took off across the garden.

  “Lucas!” called Kendra. “You’ll get kicked out of the army. You can’t shoot one of your own.”

  Lucas didn’t stop to listen. He jumped a chain-link fence beside the beer garden and moved swiftly and silently to a homemade ladder leaned against the building next door.

  Alice looked at Lenny. Lenny wore a grin like he was enjoying the moment way too much.

  “Lenny,” spat Alice.

  “Yeah?” The smile never wavered.

  “Aren’t you going to do something?”

  Lenny dropped the smile and nodded. “Yeah, sure.”

  He took off after Lucas.

  Lucas was already on the roof of the building, surveying the street below, when Lenny caught up to him.

  “You sure about this?” asked Lenny.

  “You okay with dirty old men taking advantage of little kids?”

  “No.”

  “What would you do if he was one of yours? If he wore the Stars and Stripes?”

  “You’re right. Just don’t kill him.”

  Lucas held up the gun. “You heard the man. It stings but doesn’t even break the skin.”

  They took off across the rooftop, two floors above the street. The diplomat was walking along the road ahead, keeping off the main drag but not exactly in hiding. Lucas reached the roof’s edge and, without breaking stride, leaped across the twenty-foot drop and onto the next roof.

  Lenny smiled as he followed. They kept running and jumping, some of the buildings swaying beneath them, not designed for such a task. Lucas reached a lane where the jump would have been almost too much and decided that was good enough. He dropped to the prone position and loaded a ball bearing into the chamber and then pumped the stock to prime the weapon. Lenny dropped beside him like he was Lucas’s spotter.

  “Twenty yards,” said Lenny, guessing the distance, but sure he was close.

  “Roger that,” said Lucas, aimed the sights on the diplomat. Then he fired.

  The rush of air from the gun was silent from the street, but the result wasn’t. Swinton yelped like he’d been stung by the mother of all bees and tried to rub at the hard-to-reach spot on his right shoulder blade, spinning around and dropping the small boy’s hand.

  Then another sting, on his left bi
cep, and then another on his right thigh. He started swatting the air as if he’d just disturbed a hornet’s nest, flailing and flapping and dancing in the middle of the street. People edged away from him, crossing the street to avoid the crazy drunk.

  Swinton stumbled away, leaving the boy standing in the street, and Lucas stood, took two steps back, and then ran and leaped across the lane, resuming the chase. Lenny followed once more. Lucas reached the next corner, the rooftops rebounding underneath him like trampolines, and then he dropped back down.

  “He’s headed for the hotel’s rear entrance,” said Lenny, lying down beside him.

  “Yep,” said Lucas, firing another volley of shots, causing Swinton to break into dance all over again. Then Lucas stopped firing and looked at Lenny.

  “You want a shot?” he asked.

  “I shouldn’t,” Lenny said. “Like you say, he’s your guy.”

  “Bad egg’s a bad egg.”

  Lenny shrugged and Lucas passed him the gun. He cocked and pumped and then aimed. The sight was plastic, not any kind of accurate, but the Australian hadn’t missed. Lenny didn’t plan on getting shown up. He let the breath out of his body, held it for a moment, and then fired.

  The shot struck Swinton in the right butt cheek. Then the left butt cheek. The diplomat ran along the road with his hands covering his buttocks, and Lenny pumped one last time as the guy reached the rear entrance to his hotel. It was a good hundred yards, almost too far for the rifle to even reach, let alone accurately. He looked down the barrel, Swinton a blur in his distance vision. Then he lowered the weapon.

  “Too far,” he said.

  “Ahh, one last shot,” said Lucas, taking the gun. He aimed as Swinton reached the door and looked back along the street, perhaps wondering why no one else was getting stung. Lucas let out his breath, steadied, and fired.

  Swinton doubled over as the pellet hit him in the groin, and with a yelp, he launched himself inside.

  For a moment, Lenny and Lucas lay in position, watching the street return to normal. The boy that had been with Swinton was gone. Lenny didn’t look at Lucas but he was thinking about him. About how a guy with an old BB gun makes a shot like that, with plastic sights and a light breeze, firing a ball bearing into a target the size of a fist. It was a hell of a shot. Plenty of guys could make a hundred yard shot, with the right weapon and in firing range conditions. Not so many could do it with a BB gun from a rooftop, or with a silenced rifled from a hillside in the Kampuchean jungle. He glanced at Lucas and the Australian winked and then stood. Lenny got up as well, dusting himself off.

  “Not many people could make that shot,” said Lenny. “You’re a hell of a marksman.”

  “You’re not bad, either.”

  “A target the size of a deck of cards,” said Lenny. “Or a latch on the back of a truck bed.”

  Lucas stopped and stared Lenny in the eye. For a second, each man considered the other as if sizing up an opponent at a poker table. Then Lucas smiled.

  “Let’s get a beer.”

  Chapter Nine

  They took the easy route back, hanging off the back of a house, dropping to the ground, and then wandering out into the street. They walked into the beer garden as easy as you like. Kendra saw them first and her expression made Alice spin around. Neither woman said anything. The two men slipped inside with the air rifle and returned with four beers.

  “What’s happening?” asked Lucas. He got two shaking heads in reply.

  They drank their beers and talked about the pros and cons of living so far from home, the sense of adventure but of always being an alien, of not owning more than they could pack in a suitcase but the freedom of being ready to move at a moment’s notice, the feeling of trying to grow an oak tree without putting down roots.

  After the early start, they decided without discussion not to make a night of it, and they walked together back into town. Lenny and Alice and the US delegation were staying at the same hotel as the diplomat Swinton, Lucas and Kendra at the hotel across the street.

  Lucas had a room but he didn’t use it. He removed his shirt and lay on Kendra’s bed. She was scrubbing her face at the wash basin.

  “That Sergeant Cox is an unusual fellow,” she said, wiping under her eyes.

  “Lenny? Yeah, he’s all right, for a Yank.”

  “What do you think they’re up to?”

  “Who?”

  “The Americans. Less than ten years ago they got their backsides handed to them in Vietnam and now they seem awfully keen to start something in Kampuchea.”

  “Isn’t it called Cambodia?”

  “Not according to the group that Her Majesty’s government has chosen as the rightful rulers in exile.”

  “Are they right?”

  “Of course not. No one’s right, not here. But the point is, I’ve heard stories.”

  “What stories?”

  “About the Americans. Flying sorties into Kampuchea. Just like they did in Laos and Vietnam before that all started.”

  Lucas put his hands behind his head on the pillow. “You hear a lot of interesting stuff for a British Council person.”

  “I work in the embassy, darling. It’s like a little village. You hear things.”

  “Well, I don’t know what the Yanks are up to, but I suspect it’s just a bit of mischief-making. I don’t think they’re dumb enough to walk into another guerrilla war they can’t win. I know back in the Oz, there isn’t an appetite for it. People don’t want our boys dying in jungles in countries they can’t even name. I bet it’s the same in America.”

  “That isn’t why you’re here?” she asked, turning from her basin and offering a sideways smile. “A little mischief-making?”

  “I’m always up for that, where it’s due. But unfortunately, my job here is more ornamental. Right now, we can’t afford a war, because a war with anyone means a war with Russia, and they’ve got the bombs. So we all have to let Reagan and Andropov have their little pissing contest, and hope that no one slips and falls on the button.”

  Kendra crossed the room, disrobing as she went. She slipped naked under the sheets beside Lucas, the ceiling fan doing little to abate the humidity.

  “The French just expelled forty-seven Soviet diplomats,” she said.

  “Is that right?”

  “And Reagan is talking up this new ‘Star Wars’ defense system. I’m not sure we’re all going to make it through this craziness.”

  “I saw on TV a couple of weeks ago, that magician guy—David Copperfield—made the Statue of Liberty disappear.”

  Kendra rolled onto her side and looked at Lucas. “What’s your point?”

  Lucas grinned. “He made it come back. So I think we’ll be okay.”

  Kendra smiled. “And I think you should get under these sheets right now, just in case there’s no tomorrow.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  Across the street, Alice Brooks lay in a pool of her and Lenny’s sweat. The sheets were soaked, and the fan turned the hot damp to warm and moist. She knew Lenny had been surprised by her attack. Not the fact that she had jumped his bones—that had happened before—but by the urgency of it. He lay on his back, regaining his breath.

  “Where did that come from?” he asked the ether.

  “You no like?” Alice replied to the ceiling.

  “Oh, I didn’t say that.”

  “I shouldn’t say this, but it turns me on when you go all kickass and macho like that.”

  “Why shouldn’t you say that?”

  “Because I’m a career woman. I can do anything I want.”

  “You just proved that.”

  “I don’t need to be defined by a man’s actions.”

  “Duly noted. I’m just glad I could be around to help out.”

  “And you did.”

  “Good. But I think it’s only fair to point out that I wasn’t really the one who went all macho. I just followed the guy who did.”

  “Did you take a shot with the BB gun?
”

  “Of course.”

  “Then you were macho, too. Besides, I like you more.”

  “Good to know.”

  Lenny slipped off the bed and padded to the basin in the room, where he splashed water over his head. It was stifling, even after the sun went down, and the AC wasn’t worth a damn.

  “He’s an interesting one, that Lucas,” Alice said.

  “Most Aussies are. They’re like us, but very different.”

  “I suspect he’s a whole kind of different, even from his own people.”

  “You might be right about that.”

  “He’s a rule breaker.”

  “I think so. But he’s also a rule follower. You don’t succeed in the military otherwise.”

  “So you’re saying he chooses which rules to follow?”

  “He chooses which rules to bend.”

  “Like someone else I know.”

  Lenny turned from the basin. Moisture shone in his chest hair from the soft lamplight. “What’s your point?”

  She didn’t know what her point was. Or more specifically, she knew, but she couldn’t find the words. Couldn’t or wouldn’t. She couldn’t say that she didn’t want him to go all gung-ho and get himself killed, or even hurt. That she didn’t want him to annoy Ventura to the point that someone in the CIA put a mark against his service jacket and killed his career prospects. She couldn’t tell him that after all this globetrotting adventure was done, maybe they would both settle down somewhere in Virginia and become boring DC bureaucrats together. She couldn’t say any of those things because she couldn’t quite grasp them herself. Lenny was like the wind. She could feel him, but she could neither hold him nor control him. Perhaps that was why she liked him. It deferred any sense of permanence. It made it okay to focus on her career at the expense of the things her parents thought she should prioritize.

  Alice didn’t say anything. She looked Lenny up and down, naked and vulnerable yet completely at ease. His body wasn’t that of a twenty-three-year-old man; it was battered and bruised. There were scars she couldn’t ask about. He had spent fewer years on the planet than she had, but he was older in every other way. He wore the casual confidence of much older men, men who had seen plenty and done plenty and come out with some sort of wisdom, but he still carried the recklessness of youth.