Whistleblower and Never Say Die (15 page)

“After midnight. Guess we forgot about supper. Are you hungry?”

“Not really.”

“Neither am I. Maybe we should just call it a—” He paused. She felt his arm stiffen against hers. “Now what?” he muttered, staring straight ahead.

Willy followed his gaze to the hotel, which had just swung into view. A surreal scene lay ahead: the midnight glare of streetlights, the army of policemen blocking the lobby doors, the gleam of AK-47s held at the ready.

Their driver muttered in Vietnamese. Willy could see his face in the rearview mirror. He was sweating.

The instant they pulled to a stop at the curb, their car was surrounded. A policeman yanked the passenger door open.

“Stay inside,” Guy said. “I’ll take care of this.”

But as he stepped out of the car, a uniformed arm reached inside and dragged her out as well. Groggy with sleep, bewildered by the confusion, she clung to Guy’s arm as voices shouted and men shoved against her.

“Barnard!” It was Dodge Hamilton, struggling down the hotel steps toward them. “What the hell’s going on?”

“Don’t ask me! We just got back to town!”

“Blast, where’s that man Ainh?” said Hamilton, glancing around. “He was here a minute ago….”

“I am here,” came the answer in a shaky voice. Ainh, glasses askew and blinking nervously, stood at the top of the lobby steps. He was swiftly escorted by a policeman through the crowd. Gesturing to a limousine, he said to Guy, “Please. You and Miss Maitland will come with me.”

“Why are we under arrest?” Guy demanded.

“You are not under arrest.”

Guy pulled his arm free of a policeman’s grasp. “Could’ve fooled me.”

“They are here only as a precaution,” said Ainh, ushering them into the car. “Please get in. Quickly.”

It was the ripple of urgency in his voice that told Willy something terrible had happened. “What is it?” she asked Ainh. “What’s wrong?”

Ainh nervously adjusted his glasses. “About two hours ago, we received a call from the police in Cantho.”

“We were just there.”

“So they told us. They also said they’d found a body. Floating in the river…”

Willy stared at him, afraid to ask, yet already knowing. Only when she felt Guy’s hand tighten around her arm did she realize she’d sagged against him.

“Sam Lassiter?” Guy asked flatly.

Ainh nodded. “His throat was cut.”

T
he old man who sat in the carved rosewood chair appeared frail enough to be toppled by a stiff wind. His arms were like two twigs crossed on his lap. His white wisp of a beard trembled in the breath of the ceiling fan. But his eyes were as bright as quicksilver. Through the open windows came the whine of the cicadas in the walled garden. Overhead, the fan spun slowly in the midnight heat.

The old man’s gaze focused on Willy. “Wherever you walk, Miss Maitland,” he said, “it seems you leave a trail of blood.”

“We had nothing to do with Lassiter’s death,” said Guy. “When we left Cantho, he was alive.”

“I think you misunderstand, Mr. Barnard.” The man turned to Guy. “I do not accuse you of anything.”

“Who
are
you accusing?”

“That detail I leave to our people in Cantho.”

“You mean those police agents you had following us?”

Minister Tranh smiled. “You made it a difficult assignment. That boy on the corner—an ingenious move. No, we’re aware that Mr. Lassiter was alive when you left him.”

“And after we left?”

“We know that he sat in the river café for another twenty
minutes. That he drank a total of eight beers. And then he left. Unfortunately, he never arrived home.”

“Weren’t your people keeping tabs on him?”

“Tabs?”

“Surveillance.”

“Mr. Lassiter was a friend. We don’t keep…tabs—is that the word?—on our friends.”

“But you followed
us,
” said Willy.

Minister Tranh’s placid gaze shifted to her. “Are you our friend, Miss Maitland?”

“What do you think?”

“I think it is not easy to tell. I think even you cannot tell your friends from your enemies. It is a dangerous state of affairs. Already it has led to three murders.”

Willy shook her head, puzzled. “Three? Lassiter’s the only one I’ve heard about.”

“Who else has been killed?” Guy asked.

“A Saigon policeman,” said the minister. “Murdered last night on routine surveillance duty.”

“I don’t see the connection.”

“Also last night, another man dead. Again, the throat cut.”

“You can’t blame us for every murder in Saigon!” said Willy. “We don’t even know those other victims—”

“But yesterday you paid one of them a visit. Or have you forgotten?”

Guy stared across the table. “Gerard.”

In the darkness outside, the cicadas’ shrill music rose to a scream. Then, in an instant, the night fell absolutely silent.

Minister Tranh gazed ahead at the far wall, as though divining some message from the mildewed wallpaper. “Are
you familiar with the Vietnamese calendar, Miss Maitland?” he asked quietly.

“Your calendar?” She frowned, puzzled by the new twist of conversation. “It—it’s the same as the Chinese, isn’t it?”

“Last year was the year of the dragon. A lucky year, or so they say. A fine year for babies and marriages. But this year…” He shook his head.

“The snake,” said Guy.

Minister Tranh nodded. “The snake. A dangerous symbol. An omen of disaster. Famine and death. A year of misfortune….” He sighed and his head drooped, as though his fragile neck was suddenly too weak to support it. For a long time he sat in silence, his white hair fluttering in the fan’s breath. Then, slowly, he raised his head. “Go home, Miss Maitland,” he said. “This is not a year for you, a place for you. Go home.”

Willy thought about how easy it would be to climb onto that plane to Bangkok, thought longingly of the simple luxuries that were only a flight away. Perfumed soap and clean water and soft pillows. But then another image blotted out everything else: Sam Lassiter’s face, tired and haunted, against the sky of sunset. And his Vietnamese woman, pleading for his life. All these years Sam Lassiter had lived safe and hidden in a peaceful river town. Now he was dead. Like Valdez. Like Gerard.

It was true, she thought. Wherever she walked, she left a trail of blood. And she didn’t even know why.

“I can’t go home,” she said.

The minister raised an eyebrow. “Cannot? Or will not?”

“They tried to kill me in Bangkok.”

“You’re no safer here. Miss Maitland, we have no wish
to forcibly deport you. But you must understand that you put us in a difficult position. You are a guest in our country. We Vietnamese honor our guests. It is a custom we hold sacred. If you, a guest, were to be found murdered, it would seem…” He paused and added with a quietly whimsical lilt, “Inhospitable.”

“My visa’s still good. I want to stay. I
have
to stay. I was planning to go on to Hanoi.”

“We cannot guarantee your safety.”

“I don’t expect you to.” She added wearily, “No one can guarantee my safety. Anywhere.”

The minister looked at Guy, saw his troubled look. “Mr. Barnard? Surely you will convince her?”

“But she’s right,” said Guy.

Willy looked up and saw in Guy’s eyes the worry, the uncertainty. It frightened her to realize that even he didn’t have the answers.

“If I thought she’d be safer at home, I’d put her on that plane myself,” he said. “But I don’t think she will be safe. Not until she knows what she’s running from.”

“Surely she has friends to turn to.”

“But you yourself said it, Minister Tranh. She can’t tell her friends from her enemies. It’s a dangerous state to be in.”

The minister looked at Willy. “What is it you seek in the North?”

“It’s where my father’s plane went down,” she said. “He could still be alive, in some village. Maybe he’s lost his memory or he’s afraid to come out of the jungle or—”

“Or he is dead.”

She swallowed. “Then that’s where I’ll find his body. In the North.”

Minister Tranh shook his head. “The jungles are full of skeletons. Americans. Vietnamese. You forget, we have our MIAs too, Miss Maitland. Our widows, our orphans. Among all those bones, to find the remains of one particular man…” He let out a heavy breath.

“But I have to try. I have to go to Hanoi.”

Minister Tranh gazed at her, his eyes glowing with a strange black fire. She stared straight back at him. Slowly, a benign smile formed on his lips and she knew that she had won.

“Does nothing frighten you, Miss Maitland?” he asked.

“Many things frighten me.”

“And well they should.” He was still smiling, but his eyes were unfathomable. “I only hope you have the good sense to be frightened now.”

Long after the two Americans had left, Minister Tranh and Mr. Ainh sat smoking cigarettes and listening to the screech of the cicadas in the night.

“You will inform our people in Hanoi,” said the minister.

“But wouldn’t it be easier to cancel her visa?” said Ainh. “Force her to leave the country?”

“Easier, perhaps, but not wiser.” The minister lit another cigarette and inhaled a warm and satisfying breath of smoke. A good American brand. His one weakness. He knew it would only hasten his death, that the cancer now growing in his right lung would feed ravenously on each lethal molecule of smoke. How ironic that the very enemy that had worked so hard to kill him during the war would now claim victory, and all because of his fondness for their cigarettes.

“What if she comes to harm?” Ainh asked. “We would have an international incident.”

“That is why she must be protected.” The minister rose from his chair. The old body, once so spry, had grown stiff with the years. To think this dried-up carcass had fought two savage jungle wars. Now it could barely shuffle around the house.

“We could scare her into going home—arrange an incident to frighten her,” suggested Ainh.

“Like your Die Yankee note?” Minister Tranh laughed as he headed for the door. “No, I do not think she frightens easily, that one. Better to see where she leads us. Perhaps we, too, will learn a few secrets. Or have you lost your curiosity, Comrade?”

Ainh looked miserable. “I think curiosity is a dangerous thing.”

“So we let her make the moves, take the risks.” The minister glanced back, smiling, from the doorway. “After all,” he said. “It is
her
destiny.”

“You don’t have to go to Hanoi,” said Guy, watching Willy pack her suitcase. “You could stay in Saigon. Wait for me.”

“While you do what?”

“While I do the legwork up north. See what I can find.” He glanced out the window at the two police agents loitering in the walkway. “Ainh’s got you covered from all directions. You’ll be safe here.”

“I’ll also go nuts.” She snapped the suitcase shut. “Thanks for offering to stick your neck out for me, but I don’t need a hero.”

“I’m not trying to be a hero.”

“Then why’re you playing the part?”

He shrugged, unable to produce an answer.

“It’s the money, isn’t it? The bounty for Friar Tuck.”

“It’s not the money.”

“Then it’s that skeleton dancing around in your closet.” He didn’t answer. “What are you trying to hide? What’s the Ariel Group got on you, anyway?” He remained silent. She locked her suitcase. “Never mind. I don’t really want to know.”

He sat down on the bed. Looking utterly weary, he propped his head in his hands. “I killed a man,” he said.

She stared at him. Head in his hands, he looked ragged, spent, a man who’d used up his last reserves of strength. She had the unexpected impulse to sit beside him, to take him in her arms and hold him, but she couldn’t seem to move her feet. She was too stunned by his revelation.

“It happened here. In Nam. In 1972.” His laugh was muffled against his hands. “The Fourth of July.”

“There was a war going on. Lots of people got killed.”

“This was different. This wasn’t an act of war, where you shoot a few men and get a medal for your trouble.” He raised his head and looked at her. “The man I killed was American.”

Slowly she went over and sank down beside him on the bed. “Was it…a mistake?”

He shook his head. “No, not a mistake. It was something I did without thinking. Call it reflexes. It just happened.”

She said nothing, waiting for him to go on. She knew he
would
go on; there was no turning back now.

“I was in Da Nang for the day, to pick up supplies,” he said. “Got a little turned around and wound up on some
side street. Just an alley, really, a dirt lane, few old hootches. I got out of the jeep to ask for directions, and I heard this—this screaming….”

He paused, looked down at his hands. “She was just a kid. Fifteen, maybe sixteen. A small girl, not more than ninety pounds. There was no way she could’ve fought him off. I—I just reacted. I didn’t really think about what I was doing, what I was going to do. I dragged him off her, shoved him on the ground. He got up and swung at me. I didn’t have a choice but to fight back. By the time I stopped hitting him, he wasn’t moving. I turned and saw what he’d done to the girl. All the blood…”

Guy rubbed his forehead, as though trying to erase the image. “By then there were other people there. I looked around, saw all these eyes watching me. Vietnamese. One of the women came up, whispered that I should leave, that they’d get rid of the body for me. That’s when I realized the man was dead.”

For a long time they sat side by side, not touching, not speaking. He’d just confessed to killing a man. Yet she couldn’t condemn him; she felt only a sense of sadness about the girl, about all the silent, nameless casualties of war.

“What happened then?” she asked gently.

He shrugged. “I left. I never said a word to anyone. I guess I was scared to. A few days later I heard they’d found a soldier’s body on the other side of town. His death was listed as an assault by unknown locals. And that was the end of it. I thought.”

“How did the Ariel Group find out?”

“I don’t know.” Restless, he rose and went to the window where he looked out at the dimly lit walkway. “There were
half a dozen witnesses, all of them Vietnamese. Word must’ve gotten around. And somehow the Ariel Group got wind of it. What I don’t understand is why they waited this long.”

“Maybe they only just heard about it.”

“Or maybe they were waiting for the right chance to use it.” He turned to look at her. “Doesn’t it bother you, how we got thrown together? That we
happened
to meet in Kistner’s villa? That you
happened
to need a ride into town?”

“And that the man you’ve been asked to find just happens to be my father.”

He nodded.

“They’re using us,” she said. Then, with rising anger she added, “They’re using me.”

“Welcome to the club.”

She looked up. “What do we do about it?”

“In the morning I’ll fly to Hanoi, start asking questions.”

“What about me?”

“You stay where Ainh can watch you.”

“Sounds like a lousy plan.”