The Vulcan Disaster

Chapter Three

Someone was calling me outside.

I looked up from the body of the later Herr Meyer and let my glance run quickly around the room. The fire was beginning to spread slowly along the rug toward me, I started to get up; then the pain in my ribs hit me again, and I let myself have a second’s rest before trying again.

This time I made it and I shook my head to clear it, feeling a little dizzy. Maybe the smoke was beginning to get to me; the best of gas masks only get part of the fumes, and mine was strictly emergency stuff. I pushed the door aside and went out into the other room. It wasn’t much better there.

“Mr. Carter! Mr. Carter, are you there?”

I looked at the hall door and there she was, her hand over her nose and mouth, blinking through the smoke at me, coughing a little as she called. And all of a sudden the big bold brassy Mata Hari mask fell away completely. She didn’t like the Dragon Lady bit any more. She was frightened, and was feeling like a defenseless little kid again.

“Okay,” I said, making for the door, trying not to jar the ribs too much. “Get back in the hall.” She saw me, looked up, dropped the hand that covered mouth and nose, and backed away out of sight. I gave the apartment one more glance and went out, Wilhelmina ready in one hand.

I closed the door behind me. The smoke wasn’t so thick out here. I peeled off the gas mask and stuffed it in a pocket. Even in the windowless hall you could hear the sporadic small-arms fire outside now. A lot of last-minute bills were being paid, I supposed, before the Cong and the North took over and canceled all accounts.

Helene — no, make that Phuong for good now; she’d be Vietnamese to the marrow from here on — was standing leaning back against the wall, looking at me. Her hands were behind her, spread against the wallpaper. There was stark terror in her eyes.

“What the devil are you doing here?” I said. “You should have split the minute I got out of sight. Now how are you going to run that gauntlet downstairs? How are you going to disappear into the crowd?”

“I...” She swallowed hard, and when she recovered, her face was the face of a teen-ager, vulnerable and full of unanswerable questions. “Oh, Mr. Carter, take me with you. Please. I couldn’t... couldn’t pass for the sort of person I should have to pass for, out in the city. Look at my hands. I... they will look for calluses, for signs of physical labor. Can I show them these? Can I...?” But a sob broke into her words. The eyes were large and plaintive, the voice broken and totally empty of self-confidence. She didn’t even sound as if she believed I’d listen to her.

“Jesus,” I said. I leaned against the wall myself, looking at her. There wasn’t much left of the poised, self-reliant beauty who’d done that little striptease act for me to divert my attention (and, I remembered now, to give Walter Corbin time to escape — or to kill me). She looked about thirteen. The small-boned hands and feet that poked out of the black pajamas were like a child’s.

There was another burst of fire again outside. Closer this time. M-16 fire. The dregs of the ARVN were still down there in the streets, and I’d have a hell of a time getting past them by myself, particularly with the built-in gimp those busted ribs had given me. Trying to make it with a girl beside me — and one who’d be instantly pegged as a pro-American (or pro-European) collaborator would be... well, I thought, it might take a little doing.

I could hear voices in the east stairwell. Boots were pounding. They’d spotted what was left of Corbin. A door opened and slammed one flight down. I looked down the hall in the opposite direction. There was another door marked EXIT past Meyer’s room. I sighed. Then I nodded to her. “Come along,” I said.

I went down the first flight on tiptoe. She was still barefoot and I could hardly tell whether she was behind me or not. As we passed the second-story door I paused and listened for a moment to the loud voices. Nobody seemed to be coming our way. There were two guys in the hall, and they were arguing about something. “Hey,” I said to her in a soft whisper, close to her ear, “What are they saying?”

“Oh,” she said. “I... one of them... one of them wants to set the place on fire. The other... he is saying they should search the rooms first... ah, to see if anyone left any valuables behind...”

Great, I thought. In a matter of hours they’d have a hell of a time finding a fence for stolen goods. Everything would belong to Uncle Ho’s boys all of a sudden, and heaven help anybody who had other ideas about the redistribution of wealth. “Come on,” I said and she grabbed my hand in that eager little kid’s grip of hers. I shook her loose, slipping her a reassuring wink; I’d need both hands if any trouble turned up...

Saigon wasn’t a place I knew well — not the way I knew Washington, or Amsterdam, or Rome, or Tel Aviv. This was a quarter I’d never spent much time in before. But I didn’t need to know much: only the way to the Embassy. And that way cut across the grid of streets in an irregular pattern.

“Where are we going, Mr. Carter?” she said. The voice was small, but it was firm again.

“The Embassy,” I said. “If it hasn’t been burned down by t our loyal allies yet. Why? What do you...”

“This way,” she said. “There are a couple of places where we can cut through buildings and save ourselves a block or so along the way. I...” But then she stopped. Her eyes were full of fear again. They focused on something past my right shoulder. I whirled. There was a kid in an ARVN jacket pointing an M-16 at me. My hand twitched once; I wanted to reach for Wilhelmina, but the kid’s face was dark and earnest and his eyes were full of icy glints. He said something I couldn’t make out. His finger was nervously flexing and unflexing on that damned hair trigger.

The girl said something. Loud.

His eyes widened; he turned to aim as she raced across the street. The gunsight went to his eye. His right hand tightened on the grip...

I shot him down without a qualm. The slug caught him in the temple; if he felt anything at all it wasn’t for long. He fell like a rag doll. “Phuong!” I shouted. But she’d stopped, hand over her mouth again, watching me, holding out her hand. We set out down the street again, my ribs hurting like hell no matter how gently I moved. I started to chew her out once when she jerked my arm hard and pulled me suddenly into an alley; then the weapons carrier went past, full of hard-faced teen-agers armed to the teeth and looking for fun, and I gave her hand a grateful squeeze.

The alley, it appeared, was part of her short cut. We set out down it at something like a drunkard’s jog. I kept Wilhelmina out; it was, by now, highly unlikely that anyone we ran into would have our best interests at heart. I didn’t want to answer any questions for anybody. I just wanted to get the hell out of there, in virtually any direction but due north.

The cobbles underfoot were slick and greasy. I tripped and fell full-length, and the pain took my breath away. She helped me up — to my knees, anyhow — and was trying to get me to rise when I spotted it: a big black Rolls-Royce, bearing down on us from the other end of the block.

“Mr. Carter!” she said. “Get up, please!” She pulled harder at my arm. Shooting pains went through my chest I tried to rise, watching the black car gain speed and bear down on me. I was in the middle of the alley. He could hardly miss me. I got up to one knee, gasping; then the knee buckled and I fell forward, landing on my hands. Wilhelmina went flying into a puddle. My head was dizzy; someone was pulling at me, and it hurt worse every time they did it; someone called my name, in a loud clear high-pitched voice. Then I heard a screeching sound and that was it.

I awoke in pitch darkness. I was lying on some sort of improvised mattress on a hard uneven surface. A metal surface, one that shook and vibrated beneath me. A truck? A train? No. An airplane with twin engines — props at that. The floor underneath was — I felt with one hand — metal mesh over metal girders or something. A DC-3. I’d felt that feeling before, a few times, going back a few years. The old bird was still the workhorse of the world’s airlines, and for a lot of good reasons.

I tried to sit up and then remembered what had happened to me. I lay back again, catching my breath, and let it all run through my head again, right up to the car and the alley. Well, I hadn’t been run over, or even hit. And somebody — the people in the car, perhaps? Phuong? — had picked me up and loaded me in this plane going wherever on earth I had no way of knowing.

I shook my head. I hoped it wasn’t north, but even as I entertained the thought I knew that that was the direction we were heading. Hanoi? Haiphong? Who could tell? And don’t ask me how I knew; I just knew.

“Damn it,” I mumbled, and tried to sit up again. It hurt, but not as badly as before. Someone had bandaged me up a bit, and fairly expertly, too. And unless I was totally insensitive to that sort of thing, they’d shot me full of painkiller. I couldn’t feel the painkiller; I could just feel the lack of pain. And I’d had ribs busted before. I knew how bad I ought to be feeling just then.

I took inventory of my personal effects. Wilhelmina was gone. Pierre, my little gas bomb, was still in place, as was Hugo, the pencil-thin stiletto stashed in a chamois case up my sleeve. Good enough, I thought. I’m not going to be helpless when someone comes in. Maybe I could take one or two of them with me.

I was looking aft when the door opened behind me — a quick flash of light, then darkness, only with the distinct feeling that now I wasn’t alone. I eased Hugo into my hand and slipped soundlessly to one side, away from the more or less central position in which I’d been left I couldn’t hear a thing because of the steady roar of those engines. I poised, knife in hand, ready to lunge.

“Mr. Carter,” a voice said.

“Phuong?”

“Yes. Oh, here... I was worried about you...” She slipped down beside me; took one of my hands in hers; felt the knife; shuddered. Then she pressed my hand again.

“Phuong,” I said. “What happened? Where are we going?”

“Oh,” she said. “The car... when it stopped, a man got out. A... a man I had known once. A man high in the government of the... of what we called the Republic of Viet Nam.” Both her hands closed on mine. She crept forward on her knees and nestled her head on my shoulder. I sat down, holding her with one hand, the knife still at the ready in the other. She swallowed hard and went on. “I... we don’t have much time, Mr. Carter. I will leave you no more illusions. I... I had been this man’s mistress. I had... I had left him for Walter. He was still... very much taken with me, I think. I... I am afraid I made him promises — anything, anything — if he would help me... help us... escape. I said you were an important State Department employee... a man who could ease his way once he had... made his way out of the Saigon area and had established his base of operations elsewhere. He...”

“Base of operations?” I said. “I don’t understand. And how am I going to help him?”

“He is going... somewhere... oh, I might as well tell you. He is going north to Hong Kong. There he will arrange for transfer of credit and set himself up. Then, once he is secure in Hong Kong, the next stop is, of course, the United States. Only there can he continue in the line of work he has chosen for himself. Only there can be...”

“Line of work?” I said.

“Oh, God,” she said. I could feel her sigh in despair. “He was one of the largest dealers in Long Pot heroin in the Republic. But no matter. Mr. Carter... Nick... I...” She burrowed her little face into my shoulder again. Patting her cheek with my free hand I could feel her face, wet with tears.

“Go on,” I said. “His name?”

I could feel her fingers dig into my arm again. She didn’t answer at first. Then her voice quivering, she named a name.

I whistled. A man high in the government, she’d said. Well, that hadn’t been any overstatement.

I thought of something. “Hey,” I said. “You said you’d made this guy some promises. What promises?”

Her fingers dug into my arm, harder. She tried to speak once, dissolved into a sob, and tried again. “I... I would... simply be... available.” She sighed, long and deep. “He will need... means... of persuading people in high places, first in Hong Kong, then in the United States if he gets there... means of persuading them that they should do whatever it is that he needs at any given time. He will... he will have need of girls like me...” She stopped there, though, and hung on to me like a barnacle.

This was getting complicated. And I had the feeling that those complications, if I responded to them, would only lead me farther and farther away from whatever goal it was that I was supposed to be pursuing.

One thing I did know. Whatever it was that had caused David Hawk to send me halfway around the world, it wasn’t the heroin traffic. It wasn’t that Hawk, and AXE, weren’t concerned about it. It was just that that wasn’t usually our slice of the pie.

But in the meantime, what was I to do about Phuong? Obviously the main thing, once we’d landed, would be to give her associates the slip. That was okay. I could make my way home from Hong Kong easily enough and perhaps look into the affairs of Mr. Meyer, the import-export man from Nathan Road in Kowloon, while the trail was still relatively warm. Perhaps I’d be able to pick up some sort of lead on the guys who had killed him.

Of course, I’d have to dump her and leave her to whatever sort of bargain she’d made with her old flame. And what bothered me was the fact that whatever bargain she’d made, it had probably saved my life. The gentleman in question wasn’t known for his generosity of spirit, or for his weak stomach. Before he’d moved from military to government status, he’d had a hand in a couple of massacres in the mountains. He wouldn’t have hesitated a moment over putting a bullet in me, passed out in the street. And could I just drop her back into his nasty operation and forget her?

My arm must have tightened around her just then. Just a reaction to what I was thinking. But at my touch she melted into my arms; her hands went around my body, pulled me to her. Then they went to my face and guided it to hers. I felt soft, hungry lips on mine, again and again. The little hands forced me down, pushing gently at my chest just above the bandage. Her hands were busy about her body in the dark and when I reached for her as she knelt there above me, I felt only skin — soft, velvety, exquisitely smooth skin. The beautiful body she’d shown me before, almost in contempt of me, she now wanted me to feel, there in the dark, with the roar of the great engines blotting out everything but the sound of her hoarse breathing, just above my face. Her hands guided mine up that slim, flat little belly of hers, to the delicious softly rounded breasts, tipped with rock-hard little nipples, fully aroused now. She guided my hands across these, pressed them to her hard, then moved my palms up to her neck. She shuddered in some private ecstasy of her own; then she climbed over me and slipped me — ready and willing — inside. Instantly another great shudder went through her body; her back arched; she ground her pelvis into mine; her body convulsed once more; she rode me pressing my not unwilling hands to her body all the while, moaning helplessly. And somehow, busted ribs and all. I found myself getting into the spirit of things. I took over the reins myself. She moaned again in that strange hoarse voice of hers; her body shook uncontrollably.

Outside the wind howled. The big engines roared and spat fire. Far behind us was a world in the last phases of a war decisively lost after thirty years’ bloodshed. I hadn’t any idea what lay ahead, and in the meantime, the present was wonderful.