Never Say Die (13 page)

That's when they'd played their trump card.

Ariel, Ariel. He kept mulling over the name. Something Biblical. Lionlike men. Odd name for a vets organization. If that's what they were.

Ariel wasn't the only group hunting the elusive Friar Tuck. The CIA had a bounty on the man. For all Guy knew, the Vietnamese, the French and the men from Mars were after the pilot, as well.

And at the very eye of the hurricane was naive, stubborn, impossible Willy Maitland.

That she was so damnably attractive only made things worse. She was a maddening combination of toughness and vulnerability, and he'd been torn between using her and protecting her. Did any of that make sense?

The rhythmic thud of disco music drifted up from a lower floor. He considered heading downstairs to find some willing dance partner and trample a few toes. As he took another swallow of beer, a familiar figure passed through his peripheral vision. Turning, he saw Willy head for a table near the railing. He wondered if she'd consider joining him for a drink.

Obviously not, he decided, seeing how determinedly she was ignoring him. She stared off at the night, her back rigid, her gaze fixed somewhere in the distance. A strand of tawny hair slid over her cheek, and she tucked it behind her ear, a tight little gesture that made him think of a school-marm.

He decided to ignore her, too. But the more fiercely he tried to shove all thought of her from his mind, the more her image seemed to burn into his brain. Even as he focused his gaze on the bartender's dwindling bottle of Stolichnaya, he felt her presence, like a crackling fire radiating somewhere behind him.

What the hell. He'd give it one more try.

He shoved to his feet and strode across the rooftop.

Willy sensed his approach but didn't bother to look up, even when he grabbed a chair, sat down and leaned across the table.

"I still think we can work together," he said.

She sniffed. "I doubt it."

"Can't we at least talk about it?"

"I don't have a thing to say to you, Mr. Barnard."

"So it's back to Mr. Barnard."

Her frigid gaze met his across the table. "I could call you something else. I could call you a—"

"Can we skip the sweet talk? Look, I've been to see a friend of mine—"

"You have friends? Amazing."

"Nate was part of the welcome-home team back in '75. Met a lot of returning POWs. Including the men from Tuyen Quan."

Suddenly she looked interested. "He knew Luis Valdez?"

"No. Valdez was routed through classified debriefing. No one got near him. But Valdez had a cellmate in Tuyen Quan, a man named Sam Lassiter. Nate says Lassiter didn't go home."

"He died?"

"He never left the country."

She leaned forward, her whole body suddenly rigid with excitement. "He's still here in Nam?"

"Was a few years ago anyway. In Cantho. It's a river town in the Delta, about a hundred and fifty kilometers southwest of here."

"Not very far," she said, her mind obviously racing. "I could leave tomorrow morning… get there by afternoon…"

"And just how are you going to get there?"

"What do you mean, how? By car, of course."

"You think Mr. Ainh's going to let you waltz off on your own?"

"That's what bribes are for. Some people will do anything for a buck. Won't they?"

He met her hard gaze with one equally unflinching. "Forget the damn money. Don't you see someone's trying to use
both
of us? I want to know why." He leaned forward, his voice soft, coaxing. "I've made arrangements for a driver to Cantho first thing in the morning. We can tell Ainh I've invited you along for the ride. You know, just another tourist visiting the—"

She laughed. "You must think I have the IQ of a turnip. Why should I trust you? Bounty hunter. Opportunist.
Jerk."

"Lovely evening, isn't it?" cut in a cheery voice.

Dodge Hamilton, drink in hand, beamed down at them. He was greeted with dead silence.

"Oh, dear. Am I intruding?"

"Not at all," Willy said with a sigh, pulling a chair out for the ubiquitous Englishman. No doubt he wanted company for his misery, and she would do fine. They could commiserate a little more about his lost story and her lost father.

"No, really, I wouldn't dream of—"

"I insist." Willy tossed a lethal glance at Guy. "Mr. Barnard was just leaving."

Hamilton's gaze shifted from Guy to the offered chair. "Well, if you insist." He settled uneasily into the chair, set his glass down on the table and looked at Willy. "What I wanted to ask you, Miss Maitland, is whether you'd consent to an interview."

"Me? Why on earth?"

"I decided on a new focus for my Saigon story—a daughter's search for her father. Such a touching angle. A sentimental journey into—"

"Bad idea," Guy said, cutting in.

"Why?" asked Hamilton.

"It…has no passion," he improvised. "No romance. No excitement."

"Of course, there's excitement. A missing father—"

"Hamilton." Guy leaned forward. "No."

"He's asking
me,"
Willy said. "After all, it's about my father."

Guy's gaze swung around to her. "Willy," he said quietly, "think."

"I'm thinking a little publicity might open a few doors."

"More likely it'd close doors. The Vietnamese hate to hang out their dirty laundry. What if they know what happened to your father, and it wasn't a nice ending? They're not going to want the details all over the London papers. It'd be much easier to throw you out of the country."

"Believe me," said Hamilton, "I can be discreet."

"A discreet reporter. Right," Guy muttered.

"Not a word would be printed till she's left the country."

"The Vietnamese aren't dumb. They'd find out what you were working on."

"Then I'll give them a cover story. Something to throw them off the track."

"Excuse me…" Willy said politely.

"The matter's touchier than you realize, Hamilton," Guy said.

"I've covered delicate matters before. When I say something's off the record, I keep it off the record."

Willy rose to her feet. "I give up. I'm going to bed."

Guy looked up. "You can't go to bed. We haven't finished talking."

"You and I have definitely finished talking."

"What about tomorrow?"

"What about my story?"

"Hamilton," she said, "if it's dirty laundry you're looking for, why don't you interview
him?"
She pointed to Guy. Then she turned and walked away.

Hamilton looked at Guy. "What dirty laundry do you have?"

Guy merely smiled.

He was still smiling as he crumpled his beer can in his bare hands.

Lord, deliver me fron the jerks of the world,
Willy thought wearily as she stepped into the elevator. The doors slid closed.
Above all, deliver me from Guy Barnard.

Leaning back, she closed her eyes and waited for the elevator to creep down to the fourth floor. It moved at a snail's pace, like everything else in this country. The stale air was rank with the smell of liquor and sweat. Through the creak of the cables she could hear a faint squeaking, high in the elevator shaft. Bats. She'd seen them the night before, flapping over the courtyard. Wonderful. Bats and Guy Barnard. Could a girl ask for anything more?

If only there was some way she could have the benefit of his insider's knowledge without having to put up with
him.
The man was clever and streetwise, and he had those shadowy but all-important connections. Too bad he couldn't be trusted. Still, she couldn't help wondering what it would be like to take him up on his offer. Just the thought of working cheek to cheek with the man made her stomach dance a little pirouette of excitement. An ominous sign. The man was getting to her.

Oh, she'd been in love before; she knew how unreasonable hormones could be, how much havoc they could wreak, cavorting in a deprived female body.

I just won't think about him. It's the wrong time, the wrong place, the wrong situation.

And definitely the wrong man.

The elevator groaned to a halt, and the doors slid open to the deserted outdoor walkway. The night trembled to the distant beat of disco music as she headed through the shadows to her room. The entire fourth floor seemed abandoned this evening, all the windows unlit, the curtains drawn. She whirled around in fright as a chorus of shrieks echoed off the building and spiraled up into the darkness. Beyond the walkway railing, the shadows of bats rose and fluttered like phantoms over the courtyard.

Her hands were still shaking when she reached her door, and it took a moment to find the key. As she rummaged in her purse, a figure glided into her peripheral vision. Some sixth sense—a premonition of danger—made her turn.

At the end of the walkway, a man emerged from the shadows. As he passed beneath the glow of an outdoor lamp, she saw slick black hair and a face so immobile it seemed cast in wax. Then something else drew her gaze. Something in his hand. He was holding a knife.

She dropped her purse and ran.

Just ahead, the walkway turned a corner, past a huge air-conditioning vent. If she kept moving, she would reach the safety of the stairwell.

The man was yards behind. Surely the purse was what he wanted. But as she tore around the corner, she heard his footsteps thudding in pursuit. Oh, God, he wasn't after her money.

He was after her.

The stairwell lay ahead at the far end of the walkway. Just one flight down was the dance hall. She'd find people there. Safety…

With a desperate burst of speed, she sprinted forward. Then, through a fog of panic, she saw that her escape route was cut off.

Another man had appeared. He stood in the shadows at the far end of the walkway. She couldn't see his expression; all she saw was the faint gleam of his face.

She halted, spun around. As she did, something whistled past her cheek and clattered onto the walkway. A knife. Automatically, she snatched it up and wielded it in front of her.

Her gaze shifted first to one man, then the other. They were closing in.

She screamed. Her cry mingled with the dance music, echoed off the buildings and funneled up into the night. A wave of startled bats fluttered up through the darkness.
Can't anyone hear me?
she thought in desperation.

She cast another frantic look around, searching for a way out. In front of her, beyond the railing, lay a four-story drop to the courtyard. Just behind her, sunk into a square expanse of graveled roof, was the enormous air-conditioning vent. Through the rusted grating she saw its giant fan blades spinning like a plane's propeller. The blast of warm air was so powerful it made her skirt billow.

The men moved in for the kill.

Ohe had no choice. She scrambled over the railing and dropped onto the grating. It sagged under her weight, lowering her heart-stoppingly close to the deadly blades. A rusted fragment crumbled off into the fan; the clatter of metal was deafening.

She inched her way over the grate, heading for a safe island of rooftop. It was only a few steps across, but it felt like miles of tightrope suspended over oblivion. Her legs were trembling as she finally stepped off the grate. It was a dead end; beyond lay a sheer drop. And a crumbling expanse of grating was all that separated her from the killers.

The two men glanced around in frustration, searching for a safe way to reach her. There was no other route; they would have to cross the vent. But the grating had barely supported her weight; these men were far heavier. She looked at the deadly whirl of the blades. They wouldn't risk it, she thought.

But to her disbelief, one of the men climbed over the railing and eased himself onto the vent. The mesh sagged but held. He stared at her over the spinning blades, and she saw in his eyes the impassive gaze of a man who'd simply come to do his job.

Trapped,
she thought.
Dear God, I'm trapped!

She screamed again, but her cry of terror was lost in the fan's roar.

He was halfway across, his knife poised. She clutched her knife and backed away to the very edge of the roof. She had two choices: a four-story drop to the pavement below, or hand-to-hand combat with an experienced assassin. Both prospects seemed equally hopeless.

She crouched, knife in trembling hand, to slash, to claw—anything to stay alive. The man took another step. The blade moved closer.

Then gunfire ripped the night.

Willy stared in bewilderment as the killer clutched his belly and looked down at his bloody hand, his face a mask of astonishment. Then, like a puppet whose strings have been cut, he crumpled. As dead weight hit the weakened grating, Willy closed her eyes and cringed.

She never saw his body fall through. But she heard the squeal of metal, felt the wild shuddering of the fan blades. She collapsed to her knees, retching into the darkness below.

When the heaving finally stopped, she forced her head up.

Her other attacker had vanished.

Across the courtyard, on the opposite walkway, something gleamed. The barrel of a gun being lowered. A small face peering at her over the railing. She struggled to make sense of why the boy was there, why he had just saved her life. Stumbling to her feet, she whispered, "Oliver?"

The boy merely put a finger to his lips. Then, like a ghost, he slipped away into the darkness.

Dazed, she heard shouts and the thud of approaching footsteps.

"Willy! Are you all right?"

She turned and saw Guy. And she heard the panic in his voice.

"Don't move! I'll come get you."

"No!" she cried.’‘The grate—it's broken—''

For a moment, he studied the spinning blades. Then, glancing around, he spotted a workman's ladder propped beneath a broken window. He dragged it to the railing, hoisted it over and slid it horizontally across the broken grate. Then he eased himself over the railing, carefully stepped onto a rung and extended his arm to Willy. "I'm right here," he said. "Put your left foot on the ladder and grab my hand. I won't let you fall, I swear it. Come on, sweetheart. Just reach for my hand."

She couldn't look down at the fan blades. She looked across them at Guy's face, tense and gleaming with sweat. At his hand, reaching for her. And in that instant she knew, without a shred of doubt, that he would catch her. That she could trust him with her life.

She took a breath for courage, then took the step forward, over the whirling blades.

Instantly his hand locked over hers. For a split second she teetered. Guy's rigid grasp steadied her. Slowly, jerkily, she lunged forward onto the rung where he balanced.

"I've got you!" he yelled as he swept her into his arms, away from the yawning vent. He swung her easily over the railing onto the walkway, then dropped down beside her. He pulled her into the safety of his arms.

"It's all right," he murmured over and over into her hair. "Everything's all right…"

Only then, as she felt his heart pounding against hers, did she realize how terrified he'd been for her.

She was shaking so hard she could barely stand on her own two legs. It didn't matter. She knew the arms now wrapped around her would never let her fall.

They both stiffened as a harsh command was issued in Vietnamese. The people gathered about them quickly stepped aside to let a policeman through. Willy squinted as a blinding light shone in her eyes. The flashlight's beam shifted and froze on the air-conditioning vent. From the spectators came a collective gasp of horror.

"Dear God," she heard Dodge Hamilton whisper. "What a bloody mess."

Mr. Ainh was sweating. He was also hungry and tired, and he needed badly to use the toilet. But all these conearns would have to wait. He had learned that much from the war: patience.
Victory comes to those who endure.
This was what he kept saying to himself as he sat in his hard chair and stared down at the wooden table.

"We have been careless, Comrade." The minister's voice was soft, no more than a whisper; but then, the voice of power had no need to shout.

Slowly Ainh raised his head. The man sitting across from him had eyes like smooth, sparkling river stones. Though the face was wrinkled and the hair hung in silver wisps as delicate as cobwebs, the eyes were those of a young man—bold and black and brilliant. Ainh felt their gaze slice through him.

"The death of an American tourist would be most embarrassing," said the minister.

Ainh could only nod in meek agreement.

"You are certain Miss Maitland is uninjured?"

Ainh cleared his throat. Nodded again.

The minister's voice, so soft just a moment before, took on a razor's edge. "This Barnard fellow—he prevented an international incident, something our own people seem incapable of."

"But we had no warning, no reason to think this would happen."

"The attack in Bangkok—was that not a warning?"

"A robbery attempt! That's what the report—"

"And reports are never wrong, are they?" The minister's smile was disconcertingly bland. "First Bangkok. Then tonight. I wonder what our little American tourist has gotten herself into."

"The two attacks may not be connected."

"Everything, Comrade, is connected." The minister sat very still, thinking. "And what about Mr. Barnard? Are he and Miss Maitland—" the minister paused delicately "-involved?"

"I think not. She called him a… what is that American expression?
A jerk."

The minister laughed. "Ah. Mr. Barnard has trouble with the ladies!"

There was a knock on the door. An official entered, handed a report to the minister and respectfully withdrew.

"There is progress in the case?" inquired Ainh.

The minister looked up. "Of a sort. They were able to piece together fragments of the dead man's identity card. It seems he was already well-known to the police."

"Then that explains it!" said Ainh. "Some of these thugs will do anything for a few thousand dong."

"This was no robbery." The minister handed the report to Ainh. "He has connections to the old regime."

Ainh scanned the page. "I see mention only of a woman cousin—a factory worker." He paused, then looked up in surprise. "A mixed blood."

The minister nodded. "She is being questioned now. Shall we look in on her?"

Chantal was slouched on a wooden bench, aiming lethal glares at the policeman in charge of questioning.

"I have done nothing!" she spat out. "Why should I want anyone dead? An American bitch, you say? What, do you think I am crazy? I have been home all night! Talk to the old man who lives above me! Ask him who's been playing my radio all night! Ask him why he's been beating on my ceiling, the old crank! Oh, but I could tell you stories about
him."

"You accuse an old man?" said the policeman.
"You
are the counterrevolutionary! You and your cousin!"

"I hardly know my cousin."

"You were working together."

Chantal snorted. "I work in a factory. I have nothing to do with him."

The policeman swung a bag onto the table. He took out the items, placed them in front of her. "Caviar. Champagne. Pate. We found these in your cupboards. How does a factory worker afford these things?"

Chantal's lips tightened, but she said nothing.

The policeman smiled. He gestured to a guard and Chantal, rigidly silent, was led from the room.

The policeman then turned respectfully to the minister, who, along with Ainh, was watching the proceedings. "As you can see, Minister Tranh, she is uncooperative. But give us time. We will think of a way to—"

"Let her go," said the minister.

The policeman looked startled. "I assure you, she can be made to talk."

Minister Tranh smiled. "There are other ways to get information. Release her. Then wait for the fly to drift back to the honeypot."

The policeman left, shaking his head. But, of course, he would do as ordered. After all, Minister Tranh had far more experience in such matters. Hadn't the old fox honed his skills on years of wartime espionage?

For a long time, the minister sat thinking. Then he picked up the champagne bottle and squinted at the label. "Ah. Taittinger." He sighed. "A favorite from my days in Paris." Gently he set the bottle back down and looked at Ainh. "I sense that Miss Maitland has blundered into something dangerous. Perhaps she is asking too many questions. Stirring up dragons from the past."

"You mean her father?" Ainh shook his head. "That is a very old dragon."

To which the minister said softly, "But perhaps not a vanquished one."

A large black cockroach crawled across the table. One of the guards slapped it with a newspaper, brushed the corpse onto the floor and calmly went on writing. Above him, a ceiling fan whirred in the heat, fluttering papers on the desk.

"Once again, Miss Maitland," said the officer in charge. "Tell me what happened."

"I've told you everything."

"I think you have left something out."

"Nothing. I've left nothing out."

"Yes, you have. There was a gunman."

"I saw no gunman."

"We have witnesses. They heard a shot. Who fired the gun?"

"I told you, I didn't see anyone. The grating was weak-he fell through."

"Why are you lying?"

Her chin shot up. "Why do you insist I'm lying?"

"Because we both know you are."

"Lay off her!" Guy cut in. "She's told you everything she knows."

The officer turned, looked at Guy. "You will kindly remain silent, Mr. Barnard."

"And you'll cut out the Gestapo act! You've been questioning her for two hours now. Can't you see she's exhausted?"

"Perhaps it is time you left."

Guy wasn't about to back down. "She's an American. You can't hold her indefinitely!"