Never Say Die / Whistleblower

“Whose?”

  “Hell if I know.”

  A rolled up newspaper whacked the table. Willy looked over and saw the guard flick away another dead roach. She shuddered.

  It was midnight.

  At 1:00 a.m., Mr. Ainh appeared, looking as sallow as an old bed sheet. Willy was too numb to move from the bench. She simply sat there, propped against Guy’s shoulder, and let the two men do the talking.

  “We are very sorry for the inconvenience,” said Ainh, sounding genuinely contrite. “But you must understand—”

  “Inconvenience?” Guy snapped. “Ms. Maitland was nearly killed earlier tonight, and she’s been kept here for three hours now. What the hell’s going on?”

  “The situation is…unusual. A robbery attempt—on a foreigner, no less—well…” He shrugged helplessly.

  Guy was incredulous. “You’re calling this an attempted robbery?”

  “What would you call it?”

  “A cover-up.”

  Ainh shuffled uneasily. Turning, he exchanged a few words in Vietnamese with the guard. Then he gave Willy a polite bow. “The police say you are free to leave, Miss Maitland. On behalf of the Vietnamese government, I apologize for your most unfortunate experience. What happened does not in any way reflect on our high regard and warm feelings for the American people. We hope this will not spoil the remainder of your visit.”

  Guy couldn’t help a laugh. “Why should it? It was just a little murder attempt.”

  “In the morning,” Ainh went on quickly, “you are free to continue your tour.”

  “Subject to what restrictions?” Guy asked.

  “No restrictions.” Ainh cleared his throat and made a feeble attempt to smile. “Contrary to your government propaganda, Mr. Barnard, we are a reasonable people. We have nothing to hide.”

  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.

  Siang 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.”

  Chapter Seven

  She 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.