Garden of Lies (46 page)

Brian lifted the chain over his head, and handed the medal to the boy, smiling to show he

meant it as a gift, a peace offering. The toughness dropped away from the boy’s sallow face, and

he smiled.

Maybe it’s going to be okay,
Brian thought.

Relief swept over him. His legs buckled when he tried to stand, and he faltered twice before

finally he managed to bring himself to his feet.

Brian spoke quickly, without turning around, directing his words to Nguyen. “Tell him I must

get through to the hospital. There’s a doctor ... a lady doctor ... we need her for ... for a priest in

Da Nang who is very sick. Tell him this priest will die if we don’t take her back with us.”

[272] Nguyen translated in rapid, high-pitched Vietnamese.

Five minutes later, their jeep was climbing the steep mountain road into Tien Sung, with the

pajama-clad boy riding shotgun on the running board, looking delighted and proud of his

important new role.

Dan turned to Brian, his monkey face creased in an incredulous grin. “Jesus Christ. You’ve one

hell of a nerve. That was the best bloody performance since the Last Supper.”

Brian grinned. “At the Last Supper they didn’t serve wedding cake.”

Rachel locked the med cabinet, then turned toward the stairs leading to the second floor,

balancing a tray of fresh syringes and four ampules each of morphine and penicillin. She glanced

at the Vietnamese guard leaning against the wall at the other end of the corridor, holding a rifle

across his chest and watching her carefully. He no longer frightened her. She almost wished he

would shoot her, and put an end to her ordeal.

She hadn’t slept in three days. She was on the verge of collapse. If it hadn’t been for Kay,

where would she be? Kay, who also looked like death, but who seemed to be drawing strength

from some deep reserve. Yet Kay, too, had her limits. Earlier today, Rachel had seen her stumble

with fatigue, nearly dropping a load of fresh bandages she was carrying.

If only they could get away ...

I’m like someone who’s starving, whose body starts eating its own flesh,
she thought.
But it’s

my mind, craving sleep, craving an end to all this, that must be consuming itself.

Her thoughts circled once again around the same beaten path.

Brian, oh my love. If only we could have loved one another openly, even for an hour, how

much better than this.

She accepted Rose. Reading Brian’s journal she had come to understand his and Rose’s

relationship better than if he had tried to explain it. Yes, it was right that he go back to her. They

would marry, have the big family Brian wanted, the children
she
probably could never give him.

As it should be. But understanding still hurt. Accepting did not take away the cold emptiness in

her heart.

[273] The floor seemed to be moving, shimmering like heat rising off baking asphalt. Her head

swam. At the end of the hallway now there were two guards. Engaged in some kind of furious

discourse. A third Vietnamese man, unarmed, sauntered over, smiling, speaking in a friendly

mariner. She caught the word “cigarettes.” Then all three disappeared through the door that led

out onto the courtyard.

The guards had become more relaxed over the past day or two. With the arrival last night of

two Russian doctors, they had even allowed Ian MacDougal leave yesterday to accompany a two-

year-old Vietnamese boy in need of complicated surgery Ian could perform only at the hospital in

Da Nang. But still, where did that leave her? Lately, she’d noticed one of the guards looking at

her a certain way that turned her blood cold, and made her think he had worse things in mind than

merely killing her.

Now two other men were coming in through the door, walking forward. The light was dim. All

she could see was their shadowy outlines. One tall and thin, the other short and wiry.

The tall one stepped forward. A priest. What was a priest doing here?

Then she saw his face. Gaunt, hollowed by sickness, but still the most beautiful face she had

ever seen. At first she didn’t believe it. It had to be a dream.

“Brian,” she gasped.

There was a crash. She looked down at the splintered glass at her feet. She had dropped her

tray.

Then she began to run toward him.

As in dreams, her legs were heavy, clumsy, as if she were running through deep sand, each step

pulling her down. She flung out her arms ... and now she was being lifted like a kite ... wind

roaring in her ears ... bearing her forward. ...

Then he was holding her, embracing her. She felt herself being squeezed, so hard she knew it

wasn’t a dream. These were Brian’s hands, face, body. He’d come back to her. Brian, who had

made her feel worthwhile, important, blessed, who had made her glow with love. And now, a true

miracle, he’d come to rescue her.

“Brian, oh Brian.” She clung to him, burying her face in the stiff black folds of his shirt,

weeping. She didn’t care why he was dressed in a priest’s collar, only that he’d come for her.

[274] “Rachel,” he murmured into her hair, his voice choked. “Rachel, thank God. Oh thank

God.”

He kissed her, filthy hands cupping her face, his cheek rough with stubble, but oh, how

wonderful. ...

An explosion of light printed red stars on the insides of her closed eyelids.

She blinked her eyes open, startled to see a little monkey of a man standing a few feet away,

brandishing a camera, and grinning as if he’d just been handed a bronze trophy.

“Well done, mate,” he crowed. “That kiss will be seen around the bleeding world!”

Chapter 16

Their jeep lurched over a small ditch where the choked jungle lane forked onto the main road.

Branches squealed along the hood and sides, then suddenly, miraculously it seemed, there were

clouds, sky, space. Now they were bumping over a two-lane asphalt highway, cracked and

studded with potholes, but here there were people, a village ... and relative safety. Rachel spotted

the tail end of an army transport truck cresting a hill off in the distance. She felt like cheering.

They had made it. All of them—she and Brian, and his funny little Australian. Kay, too, thank

God. Somehow, Lord only knew how, they’d all made it.

Rachel felt Brian’s arm tighten about her shoulders as they hit a bone-jolting rut and wings of

muddy water spumed out from the jeep’s wheels.
Yes, Brian, hold me,
she thought,
hold on to

me, please, or I might fly right out of this dream. ...

It was dusk, and they’d been crawling for an eternity on that barely marked track through the

jungle. But now their driver was braking for oxen, dogs and children, and wizened mama-sans

bent under enormous bundles they carried on their heads, as they began passing through the

suburbs of Da Nang. Bamboo huts and rice paddies giving way to shantytowns of corrugated tin,

ditches flooded with foul water, cooking fires lighting up the dusk like fireflies.

Safe, she thought. Safe from snipers, ambushes, land mines. She felt her tension ebb. This

place was so dismal, so appallingly filthy, yet she rejoiced in the cacophony of sounds and voices,

the bellowing of oxen. She wanted to embrace every person she saw.

Free, she was free. And Brian, dear God, he had come back. [276] For her. He loved her

enough to risk getting himself killed for her.

Taking in his profile, his stubbled jaw streaked with mud, the strong jutting bones, she felt such

love it hurt her, an ache in her belly spreading up through her chest, clutching at her throat.

“A shower,” Kay, beside her, grunted. “That’s gonna be the first thing. God, I stink worse than

a goat. No wonder those VC let me go with you. They probably were praying I’d clear out.”

Dan Petrie turned back toward them over the front seat, his blue eyes peering out from a mask

of red dust, and tipped Kay a wink. “Bloody hell they were. If it hadn’t been for Father Brian

here, we’d all be checking into the Hanoi Hilton. But I got to hand it to you, lady—” he patted the

camera case in his lap, “that shot of you flipping Charlie the bird will go down in history.”

“My
yenta
temper. Good thing he didn’t know what it meant. The way he was smiling, he

probably thought it meant good luck or something.” Kay’s face, round as a Buddha’s, split into a

wide grin as she lifted her hand high over her head, middle finger raised. “Well, here’s luck to us

all!”

And now Brian was holding Rachel with both arms, and then kissing her, kissing her fiercely.

He felt and smelled like the twenty miles of bad road they’d just come over, his face and hands

gritty with dried mud, his black priest’s shirt soaked with sweat, but she had never known

anything so sweet. She felt his hand tightly cupping the curve of her skull where her neck arched

back. He was trembling.

“Marry me,” he murmured, clutching her even tighter.

But had he said that, or had she just imagined it? Hell, it didn’t matter. He didn’t have to say it

out loud. She knew what he was feeling, just as he knew what her heart was saying to him.

“When?” she asked.

Brian drew back with a laugh, but his eyes—those incredible slate-colored eyes that had

somehow captivated her before he ever had spoken a word to her—were serious.

“Now. As soon as we get to Da Nang. Petrie knows a chaplain, a
real
chaplain,” he said and

laughed. “He says this guy owes him one. Though knowing Petrie, I’d hate to think what for.”

Rachel, her emotions reeling, felt something quiet, calm, deep inside her. Yes, this was right,

this was meant to be. A force even stronger than their love for each other had somehow decided

this.

[277] “Yes,” she told him. “Yes,” she said again, loud enough for Kay and Petrie to hear, and

for the whole world. “Yes, I’ll marry you!” She was crying now, “I’ll marry you in Da Nang ... or

New York ... or Disneyland ... anywhere you want me!”

Brian, I feel so different than I ever have, like I’m in another country, your country; I’ve

crossed over some magic frontier, and I don’t ever want to go back.

Everything up until now, David ... the abortion ... all those dead and dying soldiers ... the VC ...

it had happened in another world, to another Rachel.

Petrie held up two fingers in a victory sign.

Kay didn’t say a word, just grabbed Rachel’s hand and squeezed it hard. Her brown eyes,

behind the dusty lenses of her spectacles, shone with tears.

“Looks like you get stuck being my maid of honor,” Rachel told her.

“Just one question,” Kay said. “Do I get to take a shower first?”

Father Rourke was drunk as a skunk, but ambulatory ... just barely.

Rachel, standing with Brian before the chaplain in his rumpled khakis, felt a little faint. His

breath reeked of alcohol, and he was swaying on his feet, his hands shaking as he fumbled with

the pages of his prayer book. She lifted her eyes, and stared at the road map of broken veins

spread across his nose and cheeks. A man probably no more than thirty, who looked more like

sixty-five.

She had to engrave every detail in her memory, the ugly along with the beautiful. Someday, an

old married couple, curled together in the cozy warmth of their bed, in their own solid house

somewhere, they would laugh about Father Rourke and this whole scene, and it would draw them

even closer to each another.

She looked around. This tiny mah-jongg den behind the bar where Petrie finally—after visiting

a dozen other bars—had tracked down the chaplain, was straight out of a Charlie Chan movie.

Beaded curtains, orange paper lanterns, a jangle of music and singsong voices in the background.

She etched it all in her mind. She would come back to this place again and again in her memory.

[278] She looked back up at Brian, and he smiled, sharing her amusement. Then she thought of

Mason Gold’s wedding, how weird she’d thought it.
If Mason could only see this!

Brian, in a tuxedo jacket rented from a rapacious supply sergeant. It was a good four inches too

short in the arms. Brian’s knobby wrists stuck out so far he was keeping his hands shoved into his

pockets. Kay had pinned a scarlet hibiscus blossom to his lapel a few minutes ago, and Rachel

saw now to her horror that it was crawling with ants.

But, oh, his dear face, the way his head cocked a little to one side as he smiled down at her, his

dark curls springing loose from the wet comb tracks. She wouldn’t have traded him, no, not for

anyone.

“Do you ... Rachel ... ah ... ah ... Rosenthal ... take this man to be your ... ah ... lawful wuh-

wedded husband? To ...”

“I do,” she answered, too impatient to hear out the rest of it.

“And do you, Brian ...”

Off to her right, Rachel could hear Kay honk softly into a tissue.

Bless you, dear Kay,
she thought. Kay had even found her this white silk tunic split up the

sides, with matching trousers—traditional Vietnamese garb. Kay herself was wearing one of red

cotton, which clung to her plump curves, making Rachel think of an elf in a union suit.

“... for richer or poorer, in suh-suh-sickness ... or huh-health ... ah ... do you take ... no, I