The Price of Blood Part 47

Trin and Broker started down the ramp. A rangy sixfoot-two redneck in an absurd Save the Whales T-shirt got out from the sliding side door of the van. He could have been the tourist who had s.n.a.t.c.hed Nina in Hanoi. With the help of another guy inside he held Nina Pryce up in the door. A white dot of tape marked her left ear. She was dressed in the same jeans and white blouse she'd worn in Hanoi. Save the Whales had to brace her shoulders to keep her upright. Cadaver pale in the bright sunlight, she stared ahead unblinking. Her hair was wet-cat damp and stuck to her temples, like someone had run a clumsy comb through it.

"A look," cautioned Save the Whales. He had turpentine eyes under a painter's cap, flat muscles, and the golden hair on his corded forearms looked like wood shavings. He raised a hand.

"She's drugged." Broker started to come closer.

"Better'n tying her up. She's feisty, this one."

Nina swooned on rubbery legs and tried to open her mouth. Broker wondered if she recognized him. Save the Whales eased her back in the van, got in himself, and closed the door. The van backed up, lurched, and accelerated. A chalky arm poked from the driver's side, middle finger extended. f.u.c.kin' Virgil.

The pa.s.senger door on the Mercedes swung open. One smooth beige fashion model leg swung out, then the other. Lola popped from the gleaming German metal. An American Beauty thorn.

Okay. Bevode Fret was nowhere in sight.

"Remember Madame Nhu? That's her big sister," Broker said. "They'll sell out anybody, including each other. A real happy couple."

They exchanged grim smiles. All they had was sheer bluff. It all depended on Lola. The main thing was Nina was still alive. "You go off with Cyrus and talk business. Get me alone with her," said Trin.

Broker didn't like it. Trin strutted the Imperial grounds as though he was planning to ride an elephant into Champa. But it was happening.

Lola looked cool and poolside in her long dark hair and a white cotton skirt, blouse, and a broad straw sun-hat. Sungla.s.ses hid her eyes. She raised a big shopping bag in her left hand. Cyrus, tanned to perfection and wearing a blue yachting cap, a desert shirt and a rakish red bandanna around his throat, emerged from behind the wheel.

They came up the ramp. Matching black sungla.s.ses gave their smiling faces a shiny praying mantis warmth.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n, Trin. How you been, boy?" Cyrus, always smooth, extended a leathery hand.

"Watch your step, Cyrus." Trin sniffed, pointing to the side of the walkway. "Don't step in the s.h.i.t." So much for old home week.

"Same old Trin, suckled by a tarantula. Lola, honey, this is the famous Nguyen Van Trin I've told you so much about." Trin and Lola merely stared at each other. "How you doing, partner?" Cyrus aimed his hand at Broker.

"I told you not to come," said Broker, refusing the handshake.

Cyrus withdrew the hand and c.o.c.ked his head. "Be a realist. We knew you'd find it for us. Now it can only end one way..."

Broker's bloodshot eyes snapped on Lola.

"Let's hear it, Broker," she said, tipping her sungla.s.ses down on her nose and revealing her champagne eyes. "This is turning out to be...exhausting."

Broker hefted the heavy bag in his right hand and said, "Let's walk." He turned and led then up the limestone ramp and stopped at a parapet that overlooked a strip of gra.s.s, the moat, a gra.s.sy park, and the street along the river. Some kids kicked a soccer ball directly below them.

"If I remember right, the Nguyen emperors used to stage exhibition fights in that paG.o.da," said Cyrus, leaning his heavy forearms on the parapet. "Tigers against elephants. Fixed fights. They declawed the tigers." He grinned. "How about we put you and Bevode in there." He turned to his wife. "You'd probably get off on that."

"I don't particularly like to see men fight, but then, I've never really seen them do anything else," she replied in a bored voice.

Broker reached into his bag, withdrew the ingot, and slapped it, blazing in the sun, down on the parapet wall.

"Holy G.o.d, son, not out here." Cyrus covered the bar with his hands and stirred nervously, looking around. The shadow of the huge flag rippled his arid features.

"Why not? It came from here," said Broker as he slid the bar back in the bag.

Cyrus cleared his throat and wrung his hands. "Ah, Lola, why don't you and Trin take a little walk and let me and Phil talk some business."

Trin smiled his exquisite smile. With a cynical dapper bow that was in extreme contrast to his shabby clothing, he extended his hand, guiding the way. Lola grinned and they sauntered off down the wall. Smiles all around. A convention of pirate flags.

Cyrus wheeled and grabbed Broker by the arm. "I don't know, son. Trin on the play."

"Jimmy found him."

"I wouldn't trust the f.u.c.ker." Cyrus squinted. "He has a history of changing sides."

Broker roughly removed Cyrus's hand. "I'll worry about Trin."

"Do that," said Cyrus. "So, talk."

"You give us Nina. Nina stays with Trin, out of the way. I take you to the gold. We get a tenth. Finder's fee."

"The girl will talk," said Cyrus, shaking his head.

"Best I can do. Take it or leave it."

"How long's your visa good for, Phil?"

"What?"

"Twenty days, thirty at most. Then they'll throw you out of the country. I'll still be here." Cyrus smiled. "And so will Trin."

Broker needed some kind of edge. And fast. He leaned over the rampart and called down to the kids playing below, "Hey!"

They skidded on the gra.s.s and looked up. Broker's hand came out of the sack and heaved the ingot over their heads. It glittered, turning end over end and went slurp in the moat. Bull's-eye in a puddle of lotus and lily pads.

"Jesus," LaPorte gasped.

Broker stepped in close and s.n.a.t.c.hed Cyrus LaPorte's left earlobe and twisted. "Jimmy told me in great detail all about that night. Nina's the only thing keeping you alive, old man." He released his hold. LaPorte staggered back, ma.s.saging his ear.

"Think about it," admonished Broker as he brought the piece of ammo box lid out of his bag and slapped it into Cyrus's stomach with a loud whack. "Meet me again. Tonight. Cafard's still there, on the river. Seven o'clock." He grinned. "For old times' sake."

Then he swept up the shopping bag Lola had left and walked away, motioning to Trin to join him.

"How did it go?" Trin asked.

"I played crazy. I'm meeting him at Cafard's at seven for another round. It don't look good." As they descended the ramp he opened Lola's bag. It contained a gray T-shirt with the slogan GOOD MORNING, VIETNAM printed across a red Communist flag.

"Nice touch," said Trin, inspecting the shirt. "She's... big." He sighed thoughtfully. "s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g an American woman must be like separating a pile of bacon that's been left out in the sun." He curdled his lips. "Sticky."

"You must have had a great conversation."

Trin nodded. "I told her about my life-long ambition to open a big combination liquor and video store in Los Angeles."

"What'd she say?"

"She knows where Nina is. She asked, if she helps us free Nina and runs from Cyrus, will we take care of her. I told her yes. She left a note in the bag on the shirt receipt."

"Keep walking," said Broker.

66.

"IT'S A TRAP," SAID BROKER.

"Of course it's a trap, but what kind of trap?" said Trin, who had once been a connoisseur of traps and was now a guzzler of Huda beer. He tapped the hurried, scrawled note: "My Thong Kiet Villa, 21 My Thong. Rm 102. I take her a meal, 8 or 9. Try to get guards to break for supper. Get me out of here. When Bevode back. We're all dead."

"We're" was underlined.

"I know that street. It's secluded."

The note lay on the cramped table between Broker's tonic water and Trin's beer. They'd stopped near the Citadel Gate to eat in a restaurant that looked like a garage with the door pulled up. A tiny fan was screwed to the wall and moved the heat around like a toy airplane propeller.

A cat so emaciated that it had to be HIV positive dragged a huge, fat, dead rat across the dirty floor. Broker sat up. He had seen that cat and that rat before. Their great, great grandfathers...

He looked around. "This is the pancake place. We used to come here in seventy-two," he said.

Trin smiled. "The same. Still the best banh khoai in Hue." Broker ate four of the pleasure cakes with rice, chili peppers, garlic, and raw vegetables, some of which he could identify. The peanut sauce he did remember. He pushed his plate away and felt stronger.

Trin's second beer arrived and he said, "Since we could both be dead tonight it's time to tell me everything." He leaned across the table. "Nina is after more than just having the militia arrest Cyrus for stealing antiquities, correct?"

Broker nodded. "Remember that cigarette case Ray had? Jimmy says Ray made Cyrus put the order to go after the gold and ditch us in writing. And sign it. Ray put it in the case. Ray's under the pallet with the orders that can implicate Cyrus. Cyrus still thinks Ray is on the bottom of the ocean."

"What fate would Nina like for Cyrus?" Trin asked solemnly.

The beer talking. Pumping up his grandiose bent. Broker exhaled. "She wants him tried by the U.S. military for murdering her father."

"More likely he'll wind up in a Vietnamese prison."

"I think she has her heart set on Leavenworth Penitentiary. Or a firing squad."

"That makes it harder. She's very demanding." Trin nodded profoundly and his dark eyes were merry with alcohol and mystery. "I like the way this woman thinks. She must be saved."

Back on the street the motorscooters darted, edgy in the fierce afternoon heat. Broker looked longingly at a husky, sober traffic cop, neatly turned out in his crisp uniform and whistle. He turned to Trin.

"Why don't we go to your place, I'd like to see it."

Trin shook his head and stared straight ahead. "It's nothing, not worth your time."

Broker leaned back, uneasy. Translation: There was no apartment in Hue.

They cruised the back streets and found the address on My Thong Street. It was perfect. Like Lola's hair. And her offer of help.

The villa was screened by a six-foot hedge that continued out on either side of the driveway. Peeking up the drive they could see the blue van parked in the yard. The lot next to the villa was under construction and there was room for a vehicle to slip in and hide between the walls of the new building and the hedge.

"A government-run tourist villa," said Trin. "Probably one housekeeper on duty. I doubt there are any other guests. Cyrus has probably taken all four rooms."

"If there's a guard, and he's armed, we have a problem."

Trin protested. "A gunshot in Hue? There would suddenly be so many police...No, I think if there's a guard he's a sacrificial offering. Expendable."

Trin seemed to know a whole lot all of a sudden. Since his chat with Lola. Broker ran the possibilities. Trin and Lola against the world. Trin, Lola, and Cyrus against him. "What if it's Bevode Fret?"

"That man has no finesse. Cyrus wants to bring off something smooth. That man would ruin everything."

They drove the streets to eat up time. They paused at the ViaCom Bank and inspected the cement ap.r.o.n in the back where the pallet of gold had sat from March 19, when the Communists took the city, until Jimmy Tuna and Ray Pryce choppered in on April 30, 1975.

The former MACV compound, where Trin had been held prisoner, was two blocks away. Painted smartly in government brown it was now a military hotel. Back on Le Loi, they stopped so Broker could confirm the location of the new La Cafard. Now La Cafard floated, two brightly lit donuts connected by planks and gangways. Sampans docked next to it.

They returned to the guest house and walked out on the broad veranda that overlooked the Perfume River. Trin swung his beer and pointed below them. "This used to be corps headquarters. That's the tennis court where General Troung used to play with Westmoreland."

Broker was now seriously worried about Trin's alcohol intake as well as his reliability. His face had reddened to a permanent pepper flush a few shades hotter than the huge Communist flag that tossed in the breeze across the river. The flag kept time to a disco on Le Loi Street that blared "Hotel California" in the foundry heat. Trin grinned and toasted him with his beer can.

What if Trin was dying to stir his crank in a pile of round-eyed bacon grease? Or maybe he wanted to get all the concerned Americans in one place and then let the militia shoot them all on the beach. It was possible that he really wanted to open a liquor store in California...

Broker's head hurt. "It's a trap," he repeated.

"For sure. That's given. They know we're at the same game," Trin said jovially. "We're in Vietnam, where traps were invented." He waved the beer can dramatically. "The question is what kind of a trap and is it better than our trap."

"They could jump us when we go for Nina-"

"That would still leave the messy business of getting us to talk. We might stand up under torture," Trin said in a detached voice. "Or die under it. That's not a lock. Cyrus used to like things sewn up. No. Lola is the key. If she helps us get Nina out and wants to come with us...We could show her the gold in grat.i.tude. Then use her to signal them in. If she wants to go with us, then we'll know!" Trin jabbed his index finger oratorically in the air. "Better for us. It saves us the trouble of having to reestablish contact after we get Nina."

"I forgot what a devious guy you are," said Broker.

Trin collapsed back on a lawn chair and took a long swig of beer. "You have no idea," he sighed.

"Cool it on the booze."

"It's just beer. I know what I'm doing."

"Yeah, but I'm not sure I know what you're doing."

"Trin's laugh was intricate with fascination. "Imagine that we're all jumping off a balcony over a swimming pool. We all have ropes around our necks. All the ropes are different lengths. Some of us will splash harmlessly into the water. Some of us will hang. We won't know until we take the dive." Trin smiled and drained his beer.

Broker wished he had Ed Ryan, J.T. Merryweather, and an ATF entry team.

But he didn't.

He had Trin.