Double Impact: Never Say Die\No Way Back (12 page)

To which Guy answered flatly, “Or so it seems.”

 

“I
DON'T GET IT
. First they run you through the wringer. Then they hand you the keys to the country. It doesn't make sense.”

Willy stared out the taxi window as the streets of Saigon
glided past. Here and there, a lantern flickered in the darkness. A noodle vendor huddled on the sidewalk beside his steaming cart. In an open doorway, a beaded curtain shuddered, and in the dim room beyond, sleeping children could be seen, curled up like kittens on their mats.

“Nothing makes sense,” she whispered. “Not this country. Or the people. Or anything that's happened….”

She was trembling. The horror of everything that had happened that night suddenly burst through the numbing dam of exhaustion. Even Guy's arm, which had magically materialized around her shoulders, couldn't keep away the unnamed terrors of the night.

He pulled her against his chest, and only when she inhaled that comfortable smell of fatigue, felt the slow and steady beat of his heart, did her trembling finally stop. He kept whispering, “It's all right, Willy. I won't let anything happen to you.” She felt his kiss, gentle as rain, on her forehead.

When the driver stopped in front of the hotel, Guy had to coax her out of the car. He led her through the nightmarish glare of the lobby. He was the pillar that supported her in the elevator. And it was his arm that guided her down the shadowed walkway and past the air-conditioning vent, now ominously silent. He didn't even ask her if she wanted his company for the night; he simply opened the door to his room, led her inside and sat her down on his bed. Then he locked the door and slid a chair in front of it.

In the bathroom, he soaked a washcloth with warm water. Then he came back out, sat down beside her on the bed and gently wiped her smudged face. Her cheeks were pale. He had the insane urge to kiss her, to breathe some semblance of life back into her body. He knew she wouldn't fight him; she didn't have the strength. But it
wouldn't be right, and he wasn't the kind of man who'd take advantage of the situation, of her.

“There,” he murmured, brushing back her hair. “All better.”

She stirred and gazed up at him with wide, stunned eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“For what?”

“For…” She paused, searching for the right words. “For being here.”

He touched her face. “I'll be here all night. I won't leave you alone. If that's what you want.”

She nodded. It hurt him to see her look so tired, so defeated.
She's getting to me,
he thought.
This isn't supposed to happen. This isn't what I expected.

He could see, from the brightness of her eyes, that she was trying not to cry. He slid his arm around her shoulders.

“You'll be safe, Willy,” he whispered into the softness of her hair. “You'll be going home in the morning. Even if I have to strap you into that plane myself, you'll be going home.”

She shook her head. “I can't.”

“What do you mean, you can't?”

“My father…”

“Forget him. It isn't worth it.”

“I made a promise….”

“All you promised your mother was an answer. Not a body. Not some official report, stamped and certified. Just a simple answer. So give her one. Tell her he's dead, tell her he died in the crash. It's probably the truth.”

“I can't lie to her.”

“You have to.” He took her by the shoulders, forcing her to look at him. “Willy, someone's trying to kill you. They've flubbed it twice. But what happens the third time? The fourth?”

She shook her head. “I'm not worth killing. I don't know anything!”

“Maybe it's not what you know. It's what you might find out.”

Sniffling, she looked up in bewilderment. “That my father's dead? Or alive? What
difference
does it make to anyone?”

He sighed, a sound of overwhelming weariness. “I don't know. If we could talk to Oliver, find out who he works for—”

“He's just a kid!”

“Obviously not. He could be sixteen, seventeen. Old enough to be an agent.”

“For the Vietnamese?”

“No. If he was one of theirs, why'd he vanish? Why did the police keep hounding you about him?”

She huddled on the bed, her confusion deepening. “He saved my life. And I don't even know why.”

There it was again, that raw edge of vulnerability, shimmering in her eyes. She might be Wild Bill Maitland's brat, but she was also a woman, and Guy was having a hard time concentrating on the problem at hand. Why was someone trying to kill her?

He was too tired to think. It was late, she was so near, and there was the bed, just waiting.

He reached up and gently stroked her face. She seemed to sense immediately what was about to happen. Even though her whole body remained stiff, she didn't fight him. The instant their lips met, he felt a shock leap through her, through him, as though they'd both been hit by some glorious bolt of lightning.
My God,
he thought in surprise.
You wanted this as much as I did….

He heard her murmur, “No,” against his mouth, but he knew she didn't mean it, so he went on kissing her until
he knew that if he didn't stop right then and there, he'd do something he really didn't want to do.

Oh, yes I do,
he thought with sudden abandon.
I want her more than I've wanted any other woman.

She put her hand against his chest and murmured another “No,” this one fainter. He would have ignored it, too, had it not been for the look in her eyes. They were wide and confused, the eyes of a woman pushed to the brink by fear and exhaustion. This wasn't the way he wanted her. Maddening as she could be, he wanted the living, breathing,
real
Willy Maitland in his arms.

He released her. They sat on the bed, not speaking for a while, just looking at each other with a shared sense of quiet astonishment.

“Why—why did you do that?” she asked weakly.

“You looked like you needed a kiss.”

“Not from you.”

“From someone, then. It's been a while since you've been kissed. Hasn't it?”

She didn't answer, and he knew he'd guessed the truth.
Hell, what a waste,
he thought, his gaze dropping briefly to that perfect little mouth. He managed a disinterested laugh. “That's what I thought.”

Willy stared at his grinning face and wondered,
Is it so obvious?
Not only hadn't she been kissed in a long time, she hadn't
ever
been kissed like
that.
He knew exactly how to do it; he'd probably had years of practice with other women. For some insane reason, she found herself wondering how she compared, found herself hating every woman he'd ever kissed before her, hating even more every woman he'd kiss after her.

She flung herself down on the bed and turned her back on him. “Oh, leave me alone!” she cried. “I can't deal
with this! I can't deal with you. I'm tired. I just want to sleep.”

He didn't say anything. She felt him smooth her hair. It was nothing more than a brush of his fingers, but somehow, that one touch told her that he wouldn't leave, that he'd be there all night, watching over her. He rose from the bed and switched off the lamp. She lay very still in the darkness, listening to him move around the room. She heard him check the windows, then the door, testing how firmly the chair was wedged against it. Then, apparently satisfied, he went into the bathroom, and she heard water running in the sink.

She was still awake when he came back to bed and stretched out beside her. She lay there, worrying that he'd kiss her again and hoping desperately that he would.

“Guy?” she whispered.

“Yes?”

“I'm scared.”

He reached for her through the darkness. Willingly, she let him pull her against his bare chest. He smelled of soap and safety. Yes, that's what it was. Safety.

“It's okay to be scared,” he whispered. “Even if you are Wild Bill Maitland's kid.”

As if she had a choice, she thought as she lay in his arms. The sad part was, she'd never wanted to be the daughter of a legend. What she'd wanted from Wild Bill wasn't valor or daring or the reflected glory of a hero.

What she'd wanted most of all was a father.

 

S
IANG CROUCHED MOTIONLESS
in a stinking mud puddle and stared up the road at Chantal's building. Two hours had passed and the man was still there by the curb. Siang could see his vague form huddled in the darkness. A police agent, no doubt, and not a very good one. Was that a snore
rumbling in the night? Yes, Siang thought, definitely a snore. How fortunate that surveillance was always relegated to those least able to withstand its monotony.

Siang decided to make his move.

He withdrew his knife. Noiselessly he edged out of the alley and circled around, slipping from shadow to shadow along the row of hootches. Barely five yards from his goal, he froze as the man's snores shuddered and stopped. The shadow's head lifted, shaking off sleep.

Siang closed in, yanked the man's head up by the hair and slit the throat.

There was no cry, only a gurgle, and then the hiss of a last breath escaping the dead man's lungs. Siang dragged the body around to the back of the building and rolled it into a drainage ditch. Then he slipped through an open window into Chantal's flat.

He found her asleep. She awakened instantly as he clapped his hand over her mouth.

“You!” she ground out through his fingers. “Damn you, you got me in trouble!”

“What did you tell the police?”

“Get away from me!”

“What did you tell them?”

She batted away his hand. “I didn't tell them anything!”

“You're lying.”

“You think I'm stupid? You think I'd tell them I have friends in the CIA?”

He released her. As she sat up, the silky heat of her breast brushed against his arm. So the old whore still slept naked, he thought with an automatic stirring of desire.

She rose from the bed and pulled on a robe.

“Don't turn on the lights,” he said.

“There was a man outside—a police agent. What did you do with him?”

“I took care of him.”

“And the body?”

“In the ditch out back.”

“Oh, nice, Siang. Very nice. Now they'll blame me for that, too.” She struck a match and lit a cigarette. By the flame's brief glow, he could see her face framed by a tangle of black hair. In the semidarkness she still looked tempting, young and soft and succulent.

The match went out. He asked, “What happened at the police station?”

She let out a slow breath. The smell of exhaled smoke filled the darkness. “They asked about my cousin. They say he's dead. Is that true?”

“What do they know about me?”

“Is Winn really dead?”

Siang paused. “It couldn't be helped.”

Chantal laughed. Softly at first, then with wild abandon. “
She
did that, did she? The American bitch? You cannot finish off even a woman? Oh, Siang, you must be slipping!”

He felt like hitting her, but he controlled the urge. Chantal was right. He must be slipping.

She began to pace the room, her movements as sure as a cat's in the darkness. “The police are interested. Very interested. And I saw others there—Party members, I think—watching the interrogation. What have you gotten me into, Siang?”

He shrugged. “Give me a cigarette.”

She whirled on him in rage. “Get your own cigarettes! You think I have money to waste on
you?
”

“You'll get the money. All you want.”

“You don't know how much I want.”

“I still need a gun. You promised me you'd get one. Plus twenty rounds, minimum.”

She let out a harsh breath of smoke. “Ammunition is hard to come by.”

“I can't wait any longer. This has to be—”

They both froze as the door creaked open.
The police,
thought Siang, automatically reaching for his knife.

“You're so right, Mr. Siang,” said a voice in the darkness. Perfect English. “It has to be done. But not quite yet.”

The intruder moved lazily into the room, struck a match and calmly lit a kerosene lamp on the table.

Chantal's eyes were wide with astonishment. And fear. “It's you,” she whispered. “You've come back….”

The intruder smiled. He laid a pistol and a box of .38-caliber ammunition on the table. Then he looked at Siang. “There's been a slight change of plans.”

S
HE WAS FLYING
.
High, high above the clouds, where the sky was so cold and clear, it felt as if her plane were floating in a crystalline sea. She could hear the wings cut the air like knives through silk. Someone said, “Higher, baby. You have to climb higher if you want to reach the stars.”

She turned. It was her father sitting in the copilot's seat, quicksilver smoke dancing around him. He looked the way she'd always remembered him, his cap tilted at a jaunty angle, his eyes twinkling. Just the way he used to look when she'd loved him. When he'd been the biggest, boldest Daddy in the world.

She said, “But I don't want to climb higher.”

“Yes, you do. You want to reach the stars.”

“I'm afraid, Daddy. Don't make me….”

But he took the joystick. He sent the plane upward, upward, into the blue bowl of sky. He kept saying, “This is what it's all about. Yessir, baby, this is what it's all about.” Only his voice had changed. She saw that it was no longer her father sitting in the copilot's seat; it was Guy Barnard, pushing them into oblivion. “I'll take us to the stars!”

Then it was her father again, gleefully gripping the joystick. She tried to wrench the plane out of the climb, but the joystick broke off in her hand.

The sky turned upside down, righted. She looked at the
copilot's seat. Guy was sitting there, laughing. They went higher. Her father laughed.

“Who
are
you?” she screamed.

The phantom smiled. “Don't you know me?”

She woke up, still reaching desperately for that stump of a joystick.

“It's me,” the voice said.

She stared up wildly. “Daddy!”

The man looking down at her smiled, a kind smile. “Not quite.”

She blinked, focused on Guy's face, his rumpled hair, unshaven jaw. Sweat gleamed on his bare shoulders. Through the curtains behind him, daylight shimmered.

“Nightmare?” he asked.

Groaning, she sat up and shoved back a handful of tangled hair. “I don't usually have them. Nightmares.”

“After last night, I'd be surprised if you didn't have one.”

Last night.
She looked down and saw she was still wearing the same blood-spattered dress, now damp and clinging to her back.

“Power's out,” said Guy, giving the silent air conditioner a slap. He padded over to the window and nudged open the curtain. Sunlight blazed in, so piercing, it hurt Willy's eyes. “Gonna be a hell of a scorcher.”

“Already is.”

“Are you feeling okay?” He stood silhouetted against the window, his unbelted trousers slung low over his hips. Once again she saw the scar, noticed how it rippled its way down his abdomen before vanishing beneath the waistband.

“I'm hot,” she said. “And filthy. And I probably don't smell so good.”

“I hadn't noticed.” He paused and added ruefully, “Probably because I smell even worse.”

They laughed, a short, uneasy laugh that was instantly cut off when someone knocked on the door. Guy called out, “Who's there?”

“Mr. Barnard? It is eight o'clock. The car is ready.”

“It's my driver,” Guy said, and he unbolted the door.

A smiling Vietnamese man stood outside. “Good morning! Do you still wish to go to Cantho this morning?”

“I don't think so,” said Guy, discreetly stepping outside to talk in private. Willy heard him murmur, “I want to get Ms. Maitland to the airport this afternoon. Maybe we can…”

Cantho. Willy sat on the bed, listening to the buzz of conversation, trying to remember why that name was so important. Oh, yes. There was a man there, someone she needed to talk to. A man who might have the answers. She closed her eyes against the window's glare, and the dream came back to her, the grinning face of her father, the sickening climb of a doomed plane. She thought of her mother, lying near death at home. Heard her mother ask, “Are you sure, Willy? Do you know for certain he's dead?” Heard herself tell another lie, all the time hating herself, hating her own cowardice, hating the fact that she could never live up to her father's name. Or his courage.

“So stick around the hotel,” Guy said to the driver. “Her plane takes off at four, so we should leave around—”

“I'm going to Cantho,” said Willy.

Guy glanced around at her. “What?”

“I said I'm going to Cantho. You said you'd take me.”

He shook his head. “Things have changed.”

“Nothing's changed.”

“The stakes have.”

“But not the questions. They haven't gone away. They'll never go away.”

Guy turned to the driver. “Excuse me while I talk some sense into the lady….”

But Willy had already risen to her feet. “Don't bother. You can't talk sense into me.” She went into the bathroom and shut the door. “I'm Wild Bill Maitland's kid, remember?” she yelled.

The driver looked sympathetically at Guy. “I will get the car.”

 

T
HE ROAD OUT OF
S
AIGON
was jammed with trucks, most of them ancient and spewing clouds of black exhaust. Through the open windows of their car came the smells of smoke and sun-baked pavement and rotting fruit. Laborers trudged along the roadside, a bobbing column of conical hats against the bright green of the rice paddies.

Five hours and two ferry crossings later, Guy and Willy stood on a Cantho pier and watched a multitude of boats glide across the muddy Mekong. River women dipped and swayed as they rowed, a strange and graceful dance at the oars. And on the riverbank swirled the noise and confusion of a thriving market town. Schoolgirls, braided hair gleaming in the sunshine, whisked past on bicycles. Stevedores heaved sacks of rice and crates of melons and pineapples onto sampans.

Overwhelmed by the chaos, Willy asked bleakly, “How are we ever going to find him?”

Guy's answer didn't inspire much confidence. He simply shrugged and said, “How hard can it be?”

Very hard, it turned out. All their inquiries brought the same response. “A tall man?” people would say. “And blond?” Invariably their answer would be a shake of the head.

It was Guy's inspired hunch that finally sent them into a series of tailor shops. “Maybe Lassiter's no longer blond,” he said. “He could have dyed his hair or gone bald. But there's one feature a man can't disguise—his height. And in this country, a six-foot-four man is going to need specially tailored clothes.”

The first three tailors they visited turned up nothing. It was with a growing sense of futility that they entered the fourth shop, wedged in an alley of tin-roofed hootches. In the cavelike gloom within, an elderly seamstress sat hunched over a mound of imitation silk. She didn't seem to understand Guy's questions. In frustration, Guy took out a pen and jotted a few words in Vietnamese on a scrap of newspaper. Then, to illustrate his point, he sketched in the figure of a tall man.

The woman squinted down at the drawing. For a long time, she sat there, her fingers knotted tightly around the shimmering fabric. Then she looked up at Guy. No words were exchanged, just that silent, mournful gaze.

Guy gave a nod that he understood. He reached into his pocket and lay a twenty-dollar bill on the table in front of her. She stared at it in wonder. American dollars. For her, it was a fortune.

At last she took up Guy's pen and, with painful precision, began to write. The instant she'd finished, Guy swept up the scrap of paper and jammed it into his pocket. “Let's go,” he whispered to Willy.

“What does it say?” Willy whispered as they headed back along the row of hootches.

Guy didn't answer; he only quickened his pace. In the silence of the alley, Willy suddenly became aware of eyes, everywhere, watching them from the windows and doorways.

Willy tugged on Guy's arm. “Guy…”

“It's an address. Near the marketplace.”

“Lassiter's?”

“Don't talk. Just keep moving. We're being followed.”

“What?”

He grabbed her arm before she could turn to look. “Come on, keep your head. Pretend he's not there.”

She fought to keep her eyes focused straight ahead, but the sense of being stalked made every muscle in her body strain to run.
How does he stay so calm?
she wondered, glancing at Guy. He was actually whistling now, a tuneless song that scraped her nerves raw. They reached the end of the alley, and a maze of streets lay before them. To her surprise, Guy stopped and struck up a cheerful conversation with a boy selling cigarettes at the corner. Their chatter seemed to go on forever.

“What are you doing?” Willy ground out. “Can't we get out of here?”

“Trust me.” Guy bought a pack of Winstons, for which he paid two American dollars. The boy beamed and sketched a childish salute.

Guy took Willy's hand. “Get ready.”

“Ready for what?”

The words were barely out of her mouth when Guy wrenched her around the corner and up another alley. They made a sharp left, then a right, past a row of tin-roofed shacks, and ducked into an open doorway.

Inside, it was too murky to make sense of their surroundings. For an eternity they huddled together, listening for footsteps. They could hear, in the distance, children laughing and a car horn honking incessantly. But just outside, in the alley, there was silence.

“Looks like the kid did his job,” whispered Guy.

“You mean that cigarette boy?”

Guy sidled over to the doorway and peered out. “Looks clear. Come on, let's get out of here.”

They slipped into the alley and doubled back. Even before they saw the marketplace, they could hear it: the shouts of merchants, the frantic squeals of pigs. Hurrying along the outskirts, they scanned the street names and finally turned into what was scarcely more than an alley jammed between crumbling apartment buildings. The address numbers were barely decipherable.

At last, at a faded green building, they stopped. Guy squinted at the number over the doorway and nodded. “This is it.” He knocked.

The door opened. A single eye, iris so black, the pupil was invisible, peered at them through the crack. That was all they saw, that one glimpse of a woman's face, but it was enough to tell them she was afraid. Guy spoke to her in Vietnamese. The woman shook her head and tried to close the door. He put his hand out to stop it and spoke again, this time saying the man's name, “Sam Lassiter.”

Panicking, the woman turned and screamed something in Vietnamese.

Somewhere in the house, footsteps thudded away, followed by the shattering of glass.

“Lassiter!” Guy yelled. Shoving past the woman, he raced through the apartment, Willy at his heels. In a back room, they found a broken window. Outside in the alley, a man was sprinting away. Guy scrambled out, dropped down among the glass shards and took off after the fugitive.

Willy was about to follow him out the window when the Vietnamese woman, frantic, grasped her arm.

“Please! No hurt him!” she cried. “Please!”

Willy, trying to pull free, found her fingers linked for
an instant with the other woman's. Their eyes met. “We won't hurt him,” Willy said, gently disengaging her arm.

Then she pulled herself up onto the windowsill and dropped into the alley.

 

G
UY WAS PULLING CLOSER
. He could see his quarry loping toward the marketplace. It had to be Lassiter. Though his hair was a lank, dirty brown, there was no disguising his height; he towered above the crowd. He ducked beneath the marketplace canopy and vanished into shadow.

Damn,
thought Guy, struggling to move through the crowd.
I'm going to lose him.

He shoved into the central market tent. The sun's glare abruptly gave way to a close, hot gloom. He stumbled blindly, his eyes adjusting slowly to the change in light. He made out the cramped aisles, the counters overflowing with fruit and vegetables, the gay sparkle of pinwheels spinning on a toy vendor's cart. A tall silhouette suddenly bobbed off to the side. Guy spun around and saw Lassiter duck behind a gleaming stack of cookware.

Guy scrambled after him. The man leapt up and sprinted away. Pots and pans went flying, a dozen cymbals crashing together.

Guy's quarry darted into the produce section. Guy made a sharp left, leapt over a crate of mangoes and dashed up a parallel aisle. “Lassiter!” he yelled. “I want to talk! That's all, just talk!”

The man spun right, shoved over a fruit stand and stumbled away. Watermelons slammed to the ground, exploding in a brilliant rain of flesh. Guy almost slipped in the muck. “Lassiter!” he shouted.

They headed into the meat section. Lassiter, desperate, shoved a crate of ducks into Guy's path, sending up a cloud of feathers as the birds, freed from their prison,
flapped loose. Guy dodged the crate, leapt over a fugitive duck and kept running. Ahead lay the butcher counters, stacked high with slabs of meat. A vendor was hosing down the concrete floor, sending a stream of bloody water into the gutter. Lassiter, moving full tilt, suddenly slid and fell to his knees in the offal. At once he tried to scramble back to his feet, but by then Guy had snagged his shirt collar.

“Just—just talk,” Guy managed to gasp between breaths. “That's all—talk—”

Lassiter thrashed, struggling to pull free.

“Gimme a chance!” Guy yelled, dragging him back down.

Lassiter rammed his shoulders at Guy's knees, sending Guy sprawling. In an instant, Lassiter had leapt to his feet. But as he turned to flee, Guy grabbed his ankle, and Lassiter toppled forward and splashed, headfirst, into a vat of squirming eels.

The water seemed to boil with slippery bodies, writhing in panic. Guy dragged the man's head out of the vat. They both collapsed, gasping on the slick concrete.

“Don't!” Lassiter sobbed. “Please…”