Seventeen

I came upon a grisly, bizarre scene.

Phan Wan was kneeling in a pool of blood. She was jabbing a double-edged Malayan kris repeatedly into the groin of Nho Phu Thone whose bloody, mutilated head hung down, his glassy, staring eyes contemplating his dagger-punctured chest and stomach. The slim Vietnamese girl was alternately shouting and sobbing incoherently, slashing mechanically at the gory crotch between the huge man’s fat thighs. She was crimson-spattered from head to foot and totally withdrawn from conscious awareness of what she was doing.

The three tied-up bodyguards were babbling excitedly; it had been their shouts we had first heard. Martin let out a low moan and went to Phan Wan. I held out my hand to block Willow’s move toward Phan Wan. “Let him handle it,” I said.

There was no point in demanding an explanation how this could have happened. Willow was no more to blame than myself. The worst part was that it introduced another complication I didn’t need.

Willow was visibly shaken. Her hands were trembling. I couldn’t afford to have her fall apart on me now. The best therapy was to have her do something to take her mind off the gruesome sight. “Come upstairs,” I barked, pulling on her arm. “We’ve got lots to do.”

I put her to work making coffee to help calm her down. “Washington has to be advised of our situation,” I said. “Hawk’s last message indicated that French diplomatic communications channels from their embassy here have been cleared for our use. I’d prefer to make the report myself, but under the circumstances, you’ve got to do it. I’m going to have to stick to Martin like a barnacle. It’s anyone’s guess what he’ll do now, that Phan Wan’s got herself and us in big trouble. He might try something very foolish and irrational. We can’t let that happen.”

Willow’s levelheadedness returned. “I realize what we’re up against, and I agree with you. Anything special you want transmitted?”

“Yes, let Hawk know that he should lose no time in activating the recovery mechanism. Try to get rendezvous specifics before you come back. In any event, telephone here if you’re going to be delayed any length of time. And impress Hawk that we’re hotter than a runaway nuclear reactor. He’s got to move fast.” When I let her out the door, I leaned forward and kissed her. “Thanks, Nick, that helps a lot,” she said seriously.

Bu Chen was in the upstairs hallway standing outside Phan Wan’s bedroom. Martin was inside. “Big as he is,” said Bu Chen when I reached his side, “I somehow thought Martin would be larger. Guess that’s the way it is with heroes. But look at him. You wouldn’t think he had a soft side.”

Phan Wan, pale and exhausted, lay quietly in the double bed. Martin sat on its edge, holding one of her hands in both of his. He was talking to her in low, private tones, his words unheard from where I stood. He glanced over his broad shoulder when he heard Bu Chen speak to me. The white holes in his shoe-black mask contained sad, red-rimmed eyes.

I walked into the room. “If she sleeps, she’ll be all right,” I said. “I hope so. The only sedative we’ve got are some morphine syrettes, but I wouldn’t recommend any. She seems fairly calm now, thanks to you. Stay with her.”

“What comes next?” Martin asked.

“Nothing. Not for a while. As soon as I get word, I’ll let you know.”

He placed Phan Wan’s hand under the blanket that covered her and stood up. He measured me, then shook his head. “You don’t really think you’re going to get out of here, do you? Even I realize I’ve been more lucky than smart so far. It can’t last.”

“We’re all going to get out,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “I’ll know how in a short while. I hope you don’t plan on doing anything foolish in the meantime,” I said with a warning tone.

“I could use something to eat,” he admitted. He jerked his head sideways, struck by a sudden thought. “My bicycle! It’s still out there in the ditch between the wall and the street. Someone could stumble over it. I forgot all about it.”

“Bring it in,” I said to Bu Chen. “Be careful, though.”

“Who’s he?” Martin asked after Bu Chen had gone.

I related more detail of the last few days’ events in which Bu Chen had played a part. The account continued on the way to the country-style kitchen. I took a bottle of beer out of the well-supplied refrigerator. Martin helped himself to everything edible on the storage shelves and wolfed it down. He admitted he had been on lean rations for the past two days. Other than that, he kept silent about his amazing activities during the period. I saw no point in pressing him.

Confident that Martin was emotionally and physically drained to the point where he would make no overt moves, I left him. While on the veranda retrieving the automatic weapon I had kicked out of his hand, I peered across the broad lawn toward the front gate.

Clearing skies admitted more moonlight. One of the driveway gates was ajar. To me that meant Bu Chen had gone into the street to locate and bring in Martin’s bicycle. It shouldn’t have taken him this long.

I bent my head, turning to identify the faint street sounds that a slight breeze brought in my direction. The undertones I heard became sharp, gruff voices. I didn’t like what I was hearing. My legs pistoned me across the grass to the shelter of the thick wall. From the other side I heard an angry-sounding debate. Bu Chen’s identifiable voice was pleading and high-pitched.

I moved along the wall to where I could climb up on a garden tool storage bin. By standing on tiptoe, I could see over the wall into the street below. I looked down on a canvas tarpaulin spread over the bows of a military truck. At its back end, two argumentative soldiers, their rifles unslung, were holding Bu Chen at bay while a third loaded a bicycle into the rear of the truck. Bu Chen was forced to follow.

Tough as the little Vietnamese might be, Bu Chen was no match for what he was about to face. He knew what was in store for him: agonizing torture was inherent in North Vietnamese interrogations of suspicious South Vietnamese. Bu Chen might hold out for two, four hours... half the night, but no longer. For a brief moment I had the Lekoyev’s sights trained on the departing army vehicle. It was an easy target and I was sure I would leave no one in the truck alive to tell tales even though it meant sacrificing Bu Chen. As my forefinger tightened within the trigger guard, reason took over. My hasty action would create a mess in the road and buy no more time than I could expect from Bu Chen’s temporary resistance.

I loped back to the villa. Martin stopped chewing, his mouth full, while I blurted out the bad news. The only reaction I saw in his set face was a hardening of his eyes. He was a cool one, all right, and that’s exactly the kind of person who could help me most. He might have been thinking of Phan Wan when he asked: “How long can we stay here?”

Before I could answer, the telephone rang. It couldn’t be Willow, not so soon. It rang again. The peal of the bell in the front entryway carried through the butler’s pantry into the kitchen. On the other hand, I thought, it could be Willow calling from a phone booth enroute to the French Embassy. It rang a third time. I ran to the phone. With my hand only inches from picking up the receiver, I pulled back. I couldn’t pass myself off as a house servant who spoke French. I doubted if any were fluent in any language but their native tongue.

The fourth shrill ring drove me upstairs to Phan Wan. She was no longer in the bed. She was picking up the telephone in the master bedroom suite as it rang a fifth time.

Martin crowded against me in the doorway. We could only guess about the conversation, but from the worried expression on Phan Wan’s face, she was having difficulty being convincing in whatever she was saying to the caller. There was terror in her eyes when she hung up. I was afraid she was going to retreat behind a wall of silence. Martin pushed past me to get to her. Without him, I would never have learned what the call was about.

“I didn’t know,” she sobbed. Her eyes were flooded with tears. “That was Colonel Ho Lin Tsai wanting to talk to Phu Thone on a very urgent matter that was to be settled by midnight tonight. It involves much money that Phu Thone pays for being left alone. Colonel Tsai is Chief of Regional Security, like secret police. He knew I was lying when I told him Phu Thone could not come to the phone. Phu Thone never refuses. He threatens to come immediately to find what is wrong. I am sure that one of the gardeners in his pay reported that I sent them away today. He insists that Phu Thone be ready to receive him when he arrives. He’s going to — find — you know—”

Martin patted her shoulder and pulled her head down on his. He looked up at me sideways. “It’s time we pulled out,” he said. It was stronger than a suggestion. I agreed with him, but I didn’t think the frying pan was quite warm enough. I looked at my watch. Ten minutes before midnight and enough elapsed time for Willow to be showing up. That she had not yet called reinforced my feeling that she would soon return.

I couldn’t abandon her. She would face certain death if we vacated the villa and let her walk into the arms of Colonel Lin Tsai. The clinching argument was that she would bring back vital instructions from Hawk who was too wise and too suspicious to pass them more than once. He’d been stung before when he’d repeated an agent withdrawal plan to an unfriendly foreign power which had wrested the code key from a captured AXE agent minutes before he succumbed under an overdose of highly-effective and lethal truth drugs. AXE not only lost a key agent, but also twelve members of the highly trained extraction team. If anyone was going to have a nit of a chance to clear Hanoi, Willow had to tell us how.

Martin understood the drill. “Whatever you say, Carter. Only you’ve got to understand Phan Wan goes too.”

That would narrow our chances. The odds never were in our favor. Each additional person reduced success by twenty-five percent. Phan Wan was not cut out for this kind of action. Adding in her trauma and instability, she was a definite negative factor.

Martin must have heard the wheels meshing in my head. He came to my side. Keeping his eyes locked solidly to mine with the hard glint of defiance in them, he reached down and relieved me of the machine pistol I still held. I resisted only a moment, then let go. He stood erect. A brief smile crossed his face. “All right, Carter. We’re ready. I’ll do it your way. I mean that. In a deal like this you can’t have shared leadership. You take charge.”

I slung the pack containing our thinned-out survival gear over my shoulder. “It’ll be your job to see that Phan Wan keeps up,” I said, turning away. “We’ve got to move fast.”

I didn’t bother to look back. When I reached the iron gates at the end of the gravel drive, Martin — dragging Phan Wan at arm’s length — was only two steps behind me.

The residential street was empty, but the sound of at least two approaching vehicles echoed down the wall-lined lane. I remembered details of the area from reconnoitering the street when I first scouted the layout of Phu Thone’s estate. “Follow the ditch to the end of the block,” I said rapidly. “Around the corner there’s a concrete culvert. The opening is screened by high weeds. You should be safe if you hole up there. With any luck Willow will return before anyone comes around to investigate. You keep an eye on this road for her, though it’s not likely she’ll come this way. If I—” I corrected myself. “If someone doesn’t come for you in half an hour, it’s up to you to decide to stay longer — or whatever.”

Martin understood my meaning. He nodded, then bustled Phan Wan off down the quiet street.

I trotted in the opposite direction, coming to an intersection after a dozen steps. I turned that corner and hurried to the middle of the block. This was the street Willow would use to return to Phu Thone’s villa. I huddled in a shallow depression next to a rough stucco-finished wall.

Colonel Lin Tsai’s troops arrived first. They swarmed out of two heavy trucks. Without hesitating, they forced the driveway gates to get inside. Room lights come on throughout the huge house. Then the shouting began.

I was so intent on watching what was happening at the corner that Willow almost got by me. I pivoted my head to focus on a shadowy movement in mid-road and saw it was Willow. She had come up noiselessly. When I called out her name, she stopped dead in her tracks.

She didn’t ask me to explain what had brought on the raid by military troops. I ran along beside her as she rode away from the upheaval going on. “Where are the others?” she asked.

I didn’t gloss over the facts. Willow gave an unladylike curse when she heard of the capture of Bu Chen. I explained how we were now circling the block to join up with Martin and Phan Wan. As I jogged along, I asked: “You had no trouble making contact?”

“I’ve got information you wouldn’t believe. The president went Navy on me and flashed a ‘Well Done,’ but Hawk reserves comment until your feet are firmly planted on U.S. soil.”

“You’ve also got a cloth satchel hung over the handlebars of your bike that you didn’t have before,” I said in a suggestive tone.

“It was waiting for me at the French Embassy. The young man who supplied it said he was well paid to get it together. It’s a gift from AXE and contains some hardware Hawk felt we might need.”

“Hold it!” I said, drawing Willow and her bicycle to one side. A motorcycle roared past, a helmeted rider in uniform astride it. Another followed. The walls paralleling the street trapped and amplified the deafening noise of their engines.

The street in front of Phu Thone’s estate was filling with vehicles. Flashing red lights blinked atop ambulances. Clanging fire truck bells added to the racket.

“From here it looks like this is going to develop into a Keystone cops exercise,” I said. “We can’t go near Martin and Phan Wan now. So we’ll lay low. Martin can handle himself. I just hope Phan Wan doesn’t panic.”

“She won’t,” speculated Willow. “Not with Martin beside her to give her strength.”

“You’re an incurable romantic,” I snorted.

We came upon an alley barely discernible in the thin moonlight. Halfway down it, a cat darted away from us, spitting and snarling as it scampered into the shadows. I relieved Willow of the bicycle and leaned it up against a weather-beaten wooden fence. I drew her down to sit with our backs against the rough boards. “What was Hawk’s bottom line?”

“Naturally, he was pleased to know that you had Martin in tow.”

“Naturally.”

“He warned that Martin will have to be watched very carefully.”

“He’s told me that before.”

“Yes, but some new data has been unearthed on our wayward VIP. An on-going crash program involving psychiatrists, ex-POWs who shared confinement with Martin, and others who knew him well, has produced a new profile on Martin. The upshot is fairly well-documented revelations that Martin, besides being interrogated repeatedly, may have been subjected to more than the ordinary brainwashing techniques.”

“Meaning what?” I was getting impatient.

“Well, there were periods when Martin was taken out of the regular camp and placed in the custody of a radical, politically-motivated North Vietnamese faction that had access to prison camps. They were aware of Martin’s brave disregard for danger and ability as a killer. The new evidence turned up strongly suggests that his power-seeking group in Hanoi could have subjected Martin to intense mind-bending pressures that included deep post-hypnotic suggestion. It’s believed they programmed Martin to kill certain North Vietnamese government officials if he should escape from the prisoner-of-war compound.”

“That sounds weird,” I rapped.

“Hawk thought so, too, until he dug deeper and found strong documentation. Martin did make an unusual number of attempts to escape. Some were coordinated with the escape committee, but there were others apparently engineered and aided from the outside. None were totally successful. This seemed to build up frustration and make Martin more determined to try again. The whole process seemed designed to imbue Martin with a burning obsession. The odd thing is that each time Martin was recaptured, he was not shot as he could have been, nor even given extra punishment.”

“That’s wild,” I said. “If it happened, one would think Martin was being primed to have an uncommon drive to carry out implanted instructions while feeling he was invincible and should suffer no punishment for his actions.”

“Something like that.”

“He seems perfectly normal... not like he’s in a trance. Hawk really believes Martin isn’t responsible for his actions?”

“No mention was made of that. They want him back, though. You can understand how anxious they are to delve into Martin’s psyche.”

“Or court-martial him,” I added.

“Neither will happen unless we get a move on. The recovery unit held on alert has now received action orders. Hawk specified it is to be a Lily Pad pickup with the bubble at sixty feet. The starting gate is Haiphong. East sector bearing one-thirty-five. I had to repeat it and wait for a confirmation, which is why I didn’t get here sooner. Does it make sense to you?”

“It certainly does though I’m not pleased with the prospects of having to get to Haiphong. What’s the time frame?”

“On station for two, two hour periods spaced twenty-four hours apart beginning tomorrow night at 0310 hours local time.”

“We can make that,” I said after figuring how long it would take to cover the fifty or so miles between Hanoi and Haiphong under the adverse circumstances we faced. “We’ll start as soon as the hubbub back at the villa fades away so we can collect Martin and Phan Wan.”

“We can’t leave tonight,” Willow said softly.

My rebuttal was halfway up my throat when red lights started flashing in my brain. I pursed my lips to hold back an explosive outburst. I tried to be calm. “Why not? What sort of tightrope has Hawk strung up for me to walk?”

“A unique opportunity never presented before or apt to happen again — those were the words the president used — exists because we are where we are. You know that all efforts to get a full and complete accounting of American POWs from the North Vietnamese has never been successful. It’s a painful post-war issue, both politically and emotionally. Some believe the North Vietnamese are playing blackmail with this issue in order to force the United States to grant billions in war reparations. There are hundreds of MIA wives and families agonizing over the fate of their loved ones. The few times the Hanoi government releases piecemeal information or turns over a few bodies, hopes run high again.”

“In a war that goes on for years, you can expect to end up with some permanently missing dead,” I injected.

“I know, but some of the nearly one thousand missing men yet to be accounted for were known to be alive when captured. Some were photographed safe in prison camps, yet never returned.”

“Does the president want us to bring someone back in addition to Keith Martin?” It was possible.

“No. But the records of American POWs, and quite possibly an account of the MIAs, are on file right here in Hanoi. You’re to bring them back.” Excitement shaded her voice.

I didn’t get churned up with the idea, but if some dissatisfied Commie government employee was enterprising enough to make photostat copies of official records and offer to sell them to the United States, the least I could do was smuggle them out. “How do we go about picking up the package?” I sighed wearily.

Willow unfastened her peasant coat. She reached down between her lovely breasts and drew out a packet of folded papers. My eyes lit up. “You already have the lists?” I said admiringly.

“No. These are building plans. I don’t have a photographic mind like you, Nick. I had to bring them.”

I unfolded the papers. There were four sheets. Despite the feeble moonlight, I saw that three were architectural drawings. The top two were renderings of floor plans of a large building. Underneath them was a schematic of electrical circuits. The last, a long teletype message, gave detailed instructions on how the hardware in the satchel given to Willow was to be used in conjunction with the other three.

“No!” I blurted out as I realized what Hawk meant for me to do. “What does he think I am... some superhuman comic book character?”

My agonizing growl of protest was drowned by a passing ambulance’s wailing siren. The flashing red roof light laid a crimson screen over Willow’s grave face. “Just think what it would mean, Nick. If all America knew... once and for all—”

“You can stop waving the flag,” I muttered. I folded the plans together and tucked them inside my jacket. “A second-story job in one place can’t be any tougher than in another. There are a couple of things I don’t like about this. There’s not enough time to plan it properly, and I can’t possibly do it alone.”

“I’m here, Nick,” Willow said assuredly.

I looked down into her large brown eyes. “I could use two like you.” I meant it, “Guess I’ll have to settle for the next best thing. Let’s go collect Martin and Phan Wan so we can get this sneak thief operation underway.”

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