The Price of Blood Part 37

A woman answered and told the operator that Don Larson wasn't in the office, he had taken his daughter to the dentist. Broker ran back for the car, jumped behind the wheel, and suddenly just sat there.

"Now what?" asked Nina, who still bounced with forward momentum.

"What are we doing?" Broker proposed calmly.

"It looks to me like we were running for our lives," she said.

Broker shook his head. "If there were more of them they would have stormed the cabin. Short of that, they wouldn't have let Tony come up there after the shooting."

Nina thought about it.

Broker continued. "LaPorte can't afford to let anybody in on this. Bevode told me. It's a small, hand-picked group. The Fret family. Which is now diminished by two."

"Maybe they don't care about us. They know where Tuna is."

"Tuna's beyond intimidation. No." Broker shook his head. "If I was LaPorte I'd put my money where it buys more, like in Vietnam. He's probably paid so much in bribes over there that he's a majority stockholder in the Communist party."

"Very funny."

"I'm serious. He'll just hook into their diplomatic service and get our visa forms. Air Vietnam is a state-run company, so he'll probably connect with them too. When we get tickets, he'll have his hands on a manifest." Broker leaned back and slid his wallet from his pocket. He dug around, handed Nina a card and then shut his eyes. "He knows where I'm going, anyway."

"The Century Hotel, Hue City. Who wrote this room information?" she asked.

"Lola LaPorte. Can you decipher psychological traits in handwriting?"

"No."

"Neither can I. I used to know this very serious FBI lady who could, but she transferred to San Francisco." Broker grinned. "She told me I was a fugitive from modern psychology."

Nina sank deeper in her seat and extended her hand. "Give me one of those health food cigarettes."

Broker opened one eye.

She explained. "I only smoke when I drink too much, which is usually once a year on my birthday. And in special circ.u.mstances." She grimaced.

"Like when you shoot somebody." Broker handed over his cigarettes and said, "I'm thirsty, what about you?" Nina agreed so he tracked mud into the station and bought a cold six-pack of Mountain Dew. When he came out, Nina said, "Yuk, I never drink that stuff."

"We're nodding out. It's loaded with caffeine and it's cold."

They slouched down in the seats like two teenagers sneaking cigarettes and sipped from the green cans.

Broker suggested, "We finish our pop, try to clean up, drive leisurely to Hudson, Wisconsin, and check into a motel-just in case I'm wrong and LaPorte has someone watching my house. Don should be back by then. We find out about our travel plans, go shopping-"

Nina sat up. "You have the map."

Broker tapped his pocket. "I have the map."

"Then let's get going before we fall asleep."

Broker started the Jeep and pulled back on the road. He was silent for a few minutes and then, keeping his eyes straight ahead, he said, "That was some shooting..."

Her voice came back, a flat conditioned response, "Guys are always surprised. It's because we don't bring bad habits or macho posturing to the firing line. And we're good at taking instruction."

Broker said it again, "That was some shooting, Pryce."

"Thank you."

Broker parked in a secluded rest area and they changed out of their sopping clothes. After cat-washing in the men's lavatory, he dug in his travel bag and emerged barefoot in his loafers, wearing rumpled cotton slacks and a fresh T-shirt. Nina waited by the Jeep in clean jeans, the ruffled, faded green blouse she'd worn that morning in the hospital, and sandals. They stripped the muddy seat covers and Broker unloaded the rifle, folded down the backseat, and stuck the weapon under it.

When they were back on the road, Nina leaned over and dabbed at a smudge of swamp on Broker's cheek with her red bandanna. "So you really think LaPorte will be waiting for us at the airport in Hanoi?"

Broker nodded. "Close. I picked up a Vietnam tourist book in New Orleans and read it on the way back. The Hanoi terminal is tiny, on a military airstrip an hour's drive outside of the city. So it's probably a pretty secure area. Lots of customs cops for sure. He'll probably spot us there and follow us. That's why we need an expediter like Trin. We'll have to go to ground, fast. We can't do that on our own. We don't even speak the language."

Nina stared out the window. Holstein dairy cows, large and stupid as black-and-white-spotted balloons, bobbled in a pasture. "And you're definitely against contacting any Americans."

"We tell n.o.body nothing until we get a feel for what it's like over there-"

"Okay, then you better tell me everything you know about Nguyen Van Trin."

Broker tried to visualize Trin as the green Wisconsin dairy land zipped by. "He's a guy who always went his own way. He comes from Mandarins. His family owned a cement factory near Hue City. A rich kid. He spent four years at Georgetown getting a degree in business and English lit. So he speaks better English than both of us put together.

"He went home and freaked out his parents by becoming an apprentice monk. In 1966 he was real involved in the Buddhist Uprising in Hue. The Buddhists were crushed. Trin said what the Buddhists needed was more guns. So he joined the Viet Cong.

"He switched sides after the Tet Offensive. That's when he got involved with your dad. They had this notion they could split the Viet Cong away from Hanoi. It was pretty esoteric stuff. He was a pretty disillusioned guy by the time I met him."

Nina squinted. "Can we trust him?"

Broker smiled. "He told me something once. 'When you share an idea it grows another brain and a set of hands and a pair of feet to walk around on. It can get away from you.'"

"That's what Jimmy meant when he said 'Trin's rules,' huh? Sounds like another disillusioned young man took them to heart," said Nina, poking him in the arm.

Broker shrugged. "Trin said it was a dilemma. To work a good plan you can't trust anyone. But what can you accomplish all alone? He said he wouldn't be a robot or a puppet. That's what he called the Communists, robots. Just disciplined hands and feet, no brains. He saw the Saigon government as puppets of the West. So, he was screwed in the middle."

"Sounds like a real upbeat guy."

"Yeah, but Cyrus LaPorte, standing on Jimmy Tuna's shoulders, wouldn't come up to Trin, and he's about five four." Broker turned to her. "Your dad said Trin could run an army or a government."

"Dad trusted him?"

"You got it. That's all we've really got to go on. Their friendship. Twenty years ago. Nina, I didn't know these guys. Not even your dad. Not really. I was a young dumb stud. I risked my neck just to get a nod from them. LaPorte, Ray, Trin, even Tuna-they were-are, well, smarter than I am."

"I don't know about that," said Nina. "I do know that when it really mattered you ran right at a forty-four mag to draw fire away from me."

Broker clicked his teeth. "Not real smart."

Nina perused him. "Dad had rules too; he used to say: 'The map is not the terrain.' There are all these brilliant people and they think up these boffo schemes and when the plans all fall apart-because they always do-someone like you holds things together."

"So f.u.c.k a bunch of office guys," said Broker with a broad grin.

"Absolutely."

Broker stepped on the gas and whisked down a ramp onto Interstate 94 and exceeded the speed limit to Hudson, Wisconsin.

"Where the h.e.l.l have you been?" said Don Larson on the phone.

"Shopping," said Broker, looking at a plastic bag from an outdoor store they'd found in a mall near the Best Western motel in Hudson. Nina stood in the bathroom doorway, sleek and bright in a towel and a wreath of steam.

"I've got your visas and your pa.s.sports. I expedited them so it costs extra. But to schedule a flight it would help if I knew when you want to leave."

"How about tonight? It's real urgent, Don." They read him the number off Nina's credit card.

Larson groaned. "So I eat at my desk tonight. Okay. Twin Cities to Seattle..." Broker heard the patter of a computer keyboard as Larson talked. "Connect to...Hong Kong or Bangkok?" he asked.

"Whatever opens up first."

"Then Air Vietnam to Hanoi. Give me a number where I can reach you and stay close to the phone. If something pops up you'll have to jump on it." He paused. "You get your shots?"

"No."

"Take two hours, go to Ramsey. It's serious malaria country where you're going. Then stay at a number where I can reach you."

Broker gave him the room extension and hung up the phone.

"So?" asked Nina, fluffing her hair with a towel.

"So," said Broker, "tell me, when's the last time you wore your hair long?"

"Don't do this to me, Broker." But he caught an edge of a smile as she spun away.

Four hours pa.s.sed in a whirlwind. They'd used his badge to speed getting a full round of inoculations for Vietnam at the Ramsey Travel Clinic in St. Paul. Nina submitted to the shots and filed the prescriptions reluctantly, explaining how she had refused to take the experimental biological and nerve agent antidotes in the Gulf. She'd put her faith in her gas mask. "See," she said, "no rashes or night sweats-"

"Just a three-foot-wide stripe of purple ambition down your back," Broker commented.

They went back to the motel and called Larson. He had them on an evening flight to Seattle but was having trouble with the Hong Kong connection. They ate takeout and watched the phone and packed. They were traveling light, one carry-on apiece. Broker studied himself in a mirror in his baggy new tropical shirt with lots of pockets and armpit vents. He cut the brand name off it with fingernail clippers and had just pried the piece of bone off the tiger tooth when Larson called. They were through to Hong Kong after a six-hour layover in Seattle. They'd have to scramble from there but it shouldn't be a problem if their paperwork was in order. Air Vietnam's line in Hong Kong was down but Northwest reservations told him that the airline always had empty seats.

They left the motor running at the travel agency, thanked Don Larson profusely, grabbed their pa.s.sports and visas and tickets and drove like h.e.l.l.

Two hours later the Jeep was tucked away in the long-term parking ramp at Minneapolis-St. Paul International. Broker felt the empty place in the small of his back where his Beretta used to live. They'd left the guns in the car.

They buckled their seatbelts. Broker glanced around and maybe it was fatigue-induced hallucinations or maybe it was clarity but it looked like the 747 was crammed with all of Rodney the arms dealer's rude, over-weight dumbed-down extended American family off on a mission to sink Seattle with cellulite.

After takeoff, Broker unfolded himself from the cramped economy seat and got up. "My feet hurt," he explained to Nina. Which was true. From kicking Bevode and swamp walking. But he also wanted to check out the pa.s.sengers to see if anyone resembling the Fret family was...o...b..ard. He saw a lot of physiognomy that suggested latent serial killers and depressed gene pools but none of them with the long jacka.s.s bone structure of the Frets.

He returned, restacked himself in the Procrustean seat and fell asleep and didn't wake up until the flaps cranked down as the jet made its landing approach. Nina, still fast asleep, snuggled on his shoulder with her hand warm where her fingers curled around a dead tiger's gold-tipped fang against his chest.

After they landed in Seattle they took a bus into town and ate at a restaurant with so many ferns that it felt like jungle survival training in Panama all over again. At four in the morning, Seattle time, so slap-happy they were making stale Dorothy and Toto jokes, they remembered that they hadn't called Trin. They left their incomplete flight information with the hotel desk clerk at the number in Hue. They'd arrive in Hanoi on the first open flight from Hong Kong. Trin would have to fill in the Air Vietnam blanks. In the background, Broker could hear the alien bells and growls of Vietnamese afternoon traffic. Then they showed their pa.s.sports and boarded their flight.

53.

THE PLANE IS FULL OF PEOPLE WITH BLACK HAIR AND those wraparound brown eyes. No idea what they're talking about. Everything is backward and upside down. Sleep has slipped between the cracks of a dozen time zones. Nina is coping better. She snoozes on his shoulder. No-smoking flight. His mouth and his nerves ache for a cigarette.

He stares at the Northwest Far East magazine he finds in the seat pocket. The centerfold is a brightly colored map of the world. Like a Rorschach. The Asian continent is a spotted beast rearing out of the crouched leg of Africa with Europe in its hip pocket. North America is an afterthought cropped and running off the page left and right.

Marginal.

No calling 911 where he's going.

The flaps jerked, their ears swelled and popped, and Hong Kong emerged from a layer of dirty clouds. Cement high-rises streaked by like smoke, window lights for sparks. They banked sharply and the pilot kicked the big 747 through a fighter-jet turn, pa.s.sing-it seemed to Broker-right between the tall buildings.

Cramped and numb they lumbered out the door and the clouds were burning tires and the air was rancid dishwater that stuck to Broker's cheeks. China was a fractured sensation. His first steamy look at the oldest engine in the world.

Customs queues, immigration, and a six-hour wait for the Air Vietnam desk to open for business. The terminal was a racket of Chinese. They hired a cab and escaped into the neon constellations of Kowloon and Mercedes gridlock on the streets. The working-cla.s.s sections zipped by like the sets for Blade Runner. Across the bay, Hong Kong nestled against the mountains like a silver money clip. They found a glittering gla.s.s and chrome restaurant. Outside the air smelled like a vat of stewing sweat and dirt and blood. Like money. Inside, they found the cleanest, most well-dressed people in the world. Hydroponics mannequins. Scientifically bred in posh display windows until they'd grown into their perfect tailoring.

After the most expensive meal of their lives they took another cab back to the airport. Beyond conversation, too nerved up to sleep, they paced and drank coffee and smoked cigarettes and waited.

A smiling young woman in a blue blazer happily took their money and stamped their tickets for Hanoi. After another round of customs and immigration, an airport bus ferried them out to a smaller white jet with a blue flying crane logo on the tail section.

A slender Air Vietnam hostess in a flowing blue au dai and filmy white trousers checked their boarding pa.s.ses. Broker remembered the subtle magic of the garment that covered and revealed. He marked the panty line on her flank, the slip of bare midriff. They boarded the plane.

Vietnamese voices flowed like forgotten poems. The plane became a miniature time machine and it wasn't just in his imagination. He c.o.c.ked his head and heard-impossibly-an Elvis Presley tune from the sixties piped in on the intercom. He couldn't stop his youth from shinnying up and peeking from the corners of his eyes.

Doing it on purpose. Like they know.

Gritty, exhausted, Nina hugged his arm and laughed.

The exuberance didn't last long. A hulking Caucasian giant barred their path. Six four, dressed in flip flops, and an ensemble of blue shorts and a T-shirt that looked like underwear or pajamas. He exhaled a nightmare breath of booze.

The upright pig-giant had twinkling gimlet eyes and spoke an accented dialect of the English language known only to his drunken tribe of one. He could have been Bevode Fret's libido unchained and walking around...

But he was an Aussie, stoned on nitrous oxide maybe.

He chirped, leering at Nina.

"f.u.c.k off, mate." Broker stabbed a sharp finger into his bloated midsection. The pig-giant fluttered his left hand in an inebriated incantation and backed off and rolled deeper into the plane, a blue hazard that the Vietnamese hostesses steered adroitly to a berth.

Nina and Broker flopped to their seats. The frantic tempo of Hong Kong dissipated on Air Vietnam. Only half the seats were filled. A hostess handed Broker a steamed perfumed towel with a forceps.

He wiped the grime from his face and felt time slow down. It's going to be different now...

Australian voices. Broker glanced back and saw them crowd the aisle. A tour. He gathered that the snoring piggiant was one of their number. He dozed for a while. Woke with a start and wondered if he had dreamed the episode with Jimmy Tuna. They were served a meal. Broker drank a cup of coffee and studied a map of Vietnam in a glossy Air Vietnam magazine.

The country was shaped like an S hook hanging off the belly of China, wrapped around Laos and Kampuchea: fat on the ends, thin in the middle. They'd land in Hanoi, near the top of the S and then head for the skinny panhandle in the center. To Hue City on the Perfume River. And in Hue there would be a police station.