Temple of Gold

by A. J. Stewart

  They were on a tarmac that fell away into a ramp down into the Gulf of Thailand. The water lapped at the shore, rhythmic and tranquil. Across a grass lawn, a squat building was lit up inside despite the early hour.

  They found Alice Brooks waiting at the tarmac’s edge. She was leaning on one leg, hands in her pockets.

  “Welcome to Thailand,” she said.

  “Is that what this is?” asked Lucas.

  “Trat Naval Base.”

  The Pilot spun around. “Where are the ships?”

  “They’re more like boats,” said Alice. “You could call it more of a coast guard outpost, if you were so inclined.”

  “Where is everyone?” asked Lenny.

  “Inside,” said Alice. She nudged her head and directed them toward the building, and they fell into a line, four across.

  “We already choppered a few to Bangkok, but everyone else is inside. Most are sleeping.”

  They walked inside, and Alice introduced them to the Thai base commander, a short man with a serious face. Alice showed them what appeared to be a mess hall, the tables and chairs pushed to the side, temporary cots and camp mats strewn across the linoleum floor, the organic murmur of people sleeping and breathing matching the hum of a corner vending machine.

  Jarani sat against the wall beside the door. She looked up at them, and Alice nodded and smiled. Jarani nodded but didn’t return the smile. Perhaps she couldn’t, or perhaps she was just too exhausted. It had been a long night, a long few days, a long eight years.

  Lucas stepped inside and stood before her.

  “May I?” he whispered, pointing at the space beside her.

  Jarani nodded and he sat down, pressed up against the wall. He said nothing more, and she asked nothing of him. She closed her eyes and leaned her head against Lucas’s shoulder. Alice waved Lenny and the Pilot into the corridor, and then closed the door.

  “I need a beer and a kip,” said the Pilot, and he returned outside and wandered in the direction of his helicopter. Alice stepped out after him and sat at a picnic table in front of the building, just within the glow of the lights from inside.

  Lenny sat next to her. He imagined the water view was spectacular during the day, but right now he just rubbed his face and exhaled loudly.

  Alice ran her fingers through his hair.

  “Are you okay? Really?”

  “Tired.”

  “You did good,” she said.

  He let out a deep breath. “What happens now?”

  “To these folks? Some are already in the hospital in Bangkok, and the rest we’ll reevaluate tomorrow. We’ll bus them up, and then the Red Cross will take some on. I’ve called a friend there. They’ll help. Then we’ll see.”

  “That’s good. Some of those folks need a good hospital.”

  “Yeah,” she said, with a good dose of melancholy.

  “What is it?”

  “Most of the adults don’t need hospitalization. They need hospice care.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I brought a friend from the embassy with me. She’s a navy medic. She’s gone back with the sickest ones.”

  “So?”

  “So, she said that a lot of them are beyond fixing. If it’s radiation poisoning, there’s not much that can be done.”

  “It’s not radiation,” said Lenny. “It’s probably lung cancer.”

  “How do you know?”

  “We met someone who knows. It’s a long story for another day.”

  Alice put her hand on his.

  “I don’t think that necessarily improves the outlook.”

  “No,” said Lenny.

  “We’ll do what we can, Len. We’ll make them as comfortable as we can.”

  “What about the kids?”

  “There’s no hurry, but if they want to stay in Thailand, we’ll help them do that. If they want asylum in the US, we have a program for that, too.”

  “They don’t have people in the US.”

  “Yes, they do. We’ve been offering asylum to refugees from Kampuchea for years.”

  “No, I mean they don’t have people. Family.”

  “It’s not a perfect solution, I know. But there are adoption programs. There are things we can do.”

  Lenny nodded and stared at the table.

  “I know that no one can know,” she said, “but you did good work here.”

  “It doesn’t feel like a win,” he said.

  “I think you’ll find that all of the people in this building disagree. They’ve been through hell, and we can’t change that. But you got them out. That counts for something.”

  Lenny nodded and Alice pulled him in close and put her forehead against his ear.

  “I take that back,” she whispered. “It doesn’t count for something. It counts for everything.”

  Alice slept on a sofa in the commander’s office. Lenny sat on the floor, back against the sofa, holding her hand. He didn’t sleep. He needed to, he knew that, but sleep wouldn’t come. He had slept in hundreds of different beds across the planet, and he had slept in shacks and barns and in foxholes. Sleep was something that he took whenever the opportunity arose. But tonight it evaded him, hiding in the corners of his mind. So he sat on the office floor and saw the image of a soldier burning down a village and then wandering off into the jungle to find a family that wasn’t there to be found.

  A tour bus arrived in the morning. Two Red Cross workers checked over the people in the mess hall, Lucas included, and then offered a breakfast of steamed rice and water and fruit. The Pilot ate some rice and then told Lucas he had forgotten something in the chopper. They wandered across the tarmac and the Pilot pointed at the chest on the floor.

  Lucas pulled it to the edge of the fuselage and then opened it, taking out two vials. He tossed them to the Pilot.

  “For your trouble,” he said.

  The Pilot slipped the vials into his pocket as easy as if Lucas had just handed him a bank check.

  “Thanks, mate. Happy to help.”

  The two men shook hands and then the Pilot hopped up into his cockpit.

  “Say hooroo for me,” he said, and Lucas offered him a nod. As the Pilot started up his Huey, Lucas lifted the chest and carried it across the tarmac to where the coach was parked. The driver had opened the luggage bay under the bus, but it was empty. His passengers today had only the threadbare clothing on their backs.

  And a chest full of gold, Lucas thought to himself as he dumped the chest into the hold. He stood and brushed off his hands and found Alice Brooks approaching.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  He thought about telling her a tale, spinning her a yarn. He generally didn’t trust lawyers or bureaucrats, but Alice was different. She was one of the good guys, he reckoned. And Lenny trusted her, and Lucas was coming to the opinion that anyone who Lenny trusted was worthy of it. He bent down and opened the chest and tossed a vial to Alice.

  She caught it and looked at it with a frown, studying it, and then her mouth dropped open.

  “Is this gold?” she whispered.

  “Yep.”

  “Tan’s gold?”

  Lucas shrugged. “I’m inclined to think it belongs to the people in there eating breakfast.”

  “So he was mining gold.”

  “Among other things, yep.”

  She looked at the vial again and then at Lucas.

  “What will you do with it?”

  “I’m giving it to you,” he said.

  “You can’t give it to me,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I work for the United States Government. If you give it to me I’ll have to turn it over.”

  “Why on earth would you do that?”

  “Because that’s how these things are done.”

  “And then what would happen?”

  “It would go into the Treasury.”

  “You mean Uncle Sam would keep it.”

  “Yes.”

  “And spen
d it wisely, I’m sure,” said Lucas.

  Alice raised her eyebrows.

  “Bugger that,” said Lucas. “Here, give it back.” He held out his hand and Alice gave him the vial. He dropped it back with the others and closed the chest.

  “What will you do?” whispered Alice.

  “I know a bloke who knows a bloke. I’ll get it changed into cash. Jarani will make sure these guys get it when they need it.”

  Alice nodded and then looked around as if checking to make sure they were not overheard.

  “You should keep a little. You deserve it.”

  Lucas shook his head. “I’m in the Australian Army. They clothe me, they feed me, and they give me a cot to sleep on. What the hell do I need gold for? I’m golden already.”

  He gave her a wide smile and walked away, and she watched him go.

  “You are golden,” she said, to no one.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Ventura was fuming. He paced his office, hands flailing, at times ranting and at other times just breathing heavily, wanting to say more but struggling to find the words. Lenny had to work hard to keep the smile from his lips. He leaned back in his chair and sipped cold water and watched the river traffic float by.

  “It’s a disaster—a disaster!” spat Ventura.

  Lenny said nothing.

  “Tan’s gone, fled or dead, I don’t know,” said Ventura. “The whole camp is destroyed. And you know how I find out about this? Not our satellites, not the Aussie flyovers—although they’re supposed to share what they get. I find out from that pompous son of a gun British intelligence guy. Percival,” sneered Ventura, in a bad attempt at a plummy English accent.

  “How did he know?” asked Lenny.

  “Good question,” said Ventura. “How did he know? The Aussies, that’s how. He had one of their damned flyover pics. How the hell did he get that?”

  “Maybe they gave it to him.”

  Ventura stopped pacing and glared at Lenny. “You think so? Seriously, Cox, I don’t think you’re cut out for this business.”

  Lenny didn’t disagree. “The Australians are part of the Commonwealth.”

  “I don’t give a damn about ancient history, Cox. They’re supposed to be our allies.”

  “Aren’t we allies with the British, too?”

  Ventura shook his head. “You have a lot to learn.”

  “Clearly,” said Lenny. “So what now?”

  “Now, we get the hell out of Dodge. You’re going back to wherever it is you guys go. Langley’s killed the operation, recalled us all back to the States. They’re packing boxes downstairs right now.”

  “Over one guy?”

  “It’s a mess up from head to toe. The Brits are telling the State Department that Tan was mining uranium—uranium, for crying out loud—and selling it to the Chinese. And they’re saying if we were funding it, then it’s going to kill Reagan’s negotiating position with the Russians. As if we were funding it.”

  “We were funding it, weren’t we?” said Lenny, fighting back the smile.

  “No, Cox. We were providing assistance to freedom fighters, not funding a uranium mine.”

  “What if someone finds all the stuff you gave them?”

  “That’s one saving grace. It looks like the entire place blew up. Our stuff with it. We can dismiss the odd gun here and there as remnants from Vietnam.”

  “So it was a mining accident, then?”

  “Who knows?” Ventura flopped down into his chair and rubbed his face. “The images look like there was some kind of explosion, possibly poorly stored chemicals. I’d send in a chopper for a look but Langley doesn’t want us within a thousand miles of it.”

  “So you’re going back to Virginia?”

  “For now.”

  Lenny could see the pain in Ventura’s face. A blown op like this was a black mark on a spook’s career. He tried to feel bad for Ventura, but it was like eating Brussels sprouts. He just couldn’t do it, no matter how hard he tried.

  Lenny left the import–export office and walked back to his billet. The humidity clung to him like a second skin and he stopped by the street vendor near his room, where he had gotten his first Hawaiian shirt.

  “What do you have for me?” he asked the vendor.

  “Very good one for you,” the vendor said, rifling through a box of shirts under his table. He pulled one out with a flourish, like a magician revealing his trick, and held it up for Lenny to look at.

  It was orange. Not just orange, but bright orange, like a sunset had mated with a traffic cone. The design featured trees that offered even more orange, in the form of the fruit. The trees repeated in a pattern all across the shirt, and underneath each tree was a word, written in large script.

  “Florida?” Lenny said with a frown.

  “Yes, sir,” said the vendor.

  “I’ve never been to Florida.”

  “Florida come to you!” he beamed.

  Lenny shrugged and took the shirt. He figured he wouldn’t be by any time soon, so asked the vendor for a few more and the man proudly gave him a selection of equally loud shirts. Lenny handed over some cash and left the shirt he had been wearing with the vendor.

  He got back to his billet and tossed his few belongings in a duffel. His uniforms were at Alice’s apartment. That would be his next stop. Then he was due to catch a commercial flight to LA, and then on to North Carolina. Because his detachment to the CIA wasn’t formally over until he reported to Camp Lejeune, he wouldn’t travel in his service uniform. The Florida shirt and a pair of shorts were more comfortable, anyway.

  Lenny took one last look around the room. It wasn’t for sentiment—it was purely practical. He didn’t want to leave anything behind. There was a chance that he would come through Bangkok again someday, but it might be years from now, and anything he left today would be gone tomorrow.

  Lenny caught a tuk-tuk to Alice’s apartment. He wouldn’t have minded the walk, but the duffel was awkward to carry long distances and he preferred not to arrive in a sweating heap.

  He knocked on the door and opened it. The apartment smelled different—a hint of cinnamon—and he noticed incense burning by the window. Lenny dropped his duffel by the breakfast bar as Alice entered the living room from the bedroom. She was in her embassy “uniform,” white blouse, blue skirt, all buttoned up and squared away.

  She looked at him with a quizzical grin.

  “Nice shirt.”

  He looked at himself and then back at her. “It’s new.”

  “It’s orange.”

  “Too much?”

  “Really goes with your hair.”

  Lenny didn’t know if that was good or bad. “My tailor thought it was me.”

  “Your tailor?”

  “Yeah. Little street vendor near my billet. Nice guy.”

  “You’re not traveling in uniform?”

  “I’m not technically on deployment. Not with the Marines, anyway. I get the impression that everyone concerned would like it to stay below the radar. I’ll get changed before I hit the front gate at the base.”

  Alice stepped over to him and put her hands on his chest.

  “Florida,” she said with a smile.

  “Yeah. Ever been?”

  “No,” she said.

  “I hear they’ve got good beaches,” said Lenny.

  “I hear Miami is the cocaine capital of the world.”

  “I’m not sure the two are related.”

  She dropped the smile but left her hands where they were. “Where are you going?”

  “Camp Lejeune. Someone or other wants a debrief.”

  “Will the CIA let you talk?”

  “As the officer asking the questions has clearance, the CIA doesn’t get to decide. I’m a Marine. I do what I’m told.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Usually.”

  Alice let out a sigh, and then she turned and walked back into the bedroom. When she came out she was carrying a garment bag.

&n
bsp; “Uniform’s pressed and ready to go.”

  “I appreciate that. You didn’t need to.”

  “Oh, I didn’t. But I have staff, and they know the best places to get this stuff done.”

  “Thanks anyway.”

  She handed him the bag and he took it by the hangar and threw it over his shoulder.

  “You stateside anytime soon?” he asked.

  “In a month or two. I’ll probably rotate out of Bangkok in a few. Back to DC for a while, and then off to wherever the next great emergency is.”

  “Look after yourself, kid,” said Lenny.

  “What are you, Humphrey Bogart now? You’re the kid here, remember.”

  “Yeah, I remember. Just look after yourself.”

  Alice put her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek, and he put his free arm around her for a moment.

  “You, too,” she said.

  Then she stepped back. “I have to get to the embassy. Apparently, there was some kind of explosion in western Kampuchea. Noses are out of joint, that sort of thing.”

  Lenny nodded. He picked up his duffel and walked to the door. Alice grabbed her bag and together they went down to the street. The sun beat down hard, the heat stifling.

  “I’ll see you around,” Alice said, and she headed away toward the embassy.

  Lenny turned and walked the other way. He was going to the airport, so he needed a cab, and he was going to find one on the street where he stood as easily as anywhere else, but for right now, he felt the need to walk away. He wanted to turn around, to watch her walk away from him, but something kept him from doing so.

  He didn’t know what was holding him back, and it didn’t make sense, so he decided to hell with it, and he stopped and turned.

  Alice was at the other end of the block. She had stopped and was watching him. He nodded and she gave a little wave, and then she turned and walked around the corner, and she was gone.

  Don Muang International Airport was like a barnyard. People, luggage, animals, cars, tuk-tuks, and taxis headed in every possible direction. As Lenny got out of his cab, he was hit by the smell of gasoline and chicken manure. There were check-in lines that snaked around, joined with other lines, and then separated again. Lenny didn’t bother with the mental gymnastics required to figure out which line he was supposed to be in. He just walked up to a Pan Am desk and handed over his military ID. He got a smile and a boarding pass, and his duffel disappeared on a conveyor belt. He heard some grumbling from the line behind him, so he offered them a salute as he walked away.