“It must have hurt terribly when you got it.”
“I don’t remember.” At her puzzled look, he added, “I mean, not on any sort of conscious level. It’s funny, though, how well I remember what happened just before the plane went down. Toby, sitting next to me, telling jokes. Something about the pilot looking like an old buddy of his from Alcoholics Anonymous. He’d heard in flight school that the best military pilots were always the drunks; a sober man wouldn’t dream of flying the sort of junk heap we were in. I remember laughing as we taxied down the runway. Then—” He shook his head. “They say I pulled him out of the wreckage. That I unbuckled him and dragged him out just before the whole thing blew. They even called me a hero.” He uncapped the water bottle, took a sip. “What a laugh.”
“Sounds like you earned the label,” she said.
“Sounds more like I was knocked in the head and didn’t know what the hell I was doing.”
“The best heroes in the world are the reluctant ones. Courage isn’t fearlessness—it’s acting in the face of fear.”
“Yeah?” He laughed. “Then that makes me the best of the best.” He stiffened as the truck suddenly slowed, halted. A voice barked orders in the distance. They stared at each other in alarm.
“What is it?” she whispered. “What’re they saying?”
“Something about a roadblock…soldiers are stopping everyone. Some sort of inspection….”
“My God. What do we—”
He put a finger to his lips. “Sounds like a lot of traffic in front. Could take a while before they get to us.”
“Can we back up? Turn around?”
He scrambled to the back of the truck and glanced through a slit in the canvas. “No chance. We’re socked in tight. Trucks on both sides.”
Willy frantically surveyed the gloom, searching for empty burlap bags, a crate, anything large enough in which to hide.
The soldiers’ voices moved closer.
We have to make a run for it, thought Willy. Guy had already risen to a crouch. But a glance outside told them they were surrounded by shallow rice paddies. Without cover, their flight would be spotted immediately.
But they won’t hurt us, she thought. They wouldn’t dare. We’re Americans.
As if, in this crazy world, an eagle on one’s passport bought any sort of protection.
The soldiers were right outside—two men by the sound of the voices. The truck driver was trying to cajole his way out of the inspection, laughing, offering cigarettes. The man had to have nerves of steel; not a single note of apprehension slipped into his voice.
His attempts at bribery failed. Footsteps continued along the graveled roadside, heading for the back of the truck.
Guy instinctively shoved Willy against the rice sacks, shielding her behind him. He’d be the one they’d see first, the one they’d confront. He turned to face the inevitable.
A hand poked through, gripping the canvas flap….
And paused. In the distance, a car horn was blaring. Tires screeched, followed by the thud of metal, the angry shouts of drivers.
The hand gripping the canvas pulled away. The flap slid shut. There were a few terse words exchanged between the soldiers, then footsteps moved away, crunching up the gravel road.
It took only seconds for their driver to scramble back into the front seat and hit the gas. The truck lurched forward, throwing Guy off his feet. He toppled, landing right next to Willy on the rice sacks. As their truck roared full speed around the traffic and down the road, they sprawled together, too stunned by their narrow escape to say a word. Suddenly they were both laughing, rolling around on the sacks, giddy with relief.
Guy hauled her into his arms and kissed her hard on the mouth.
“What was that for?” she demanded, pulling back in surprise.
“That,” he whispered, “was pure instinct.”
“Do you always follow your instincts?”
“Whenever I can get away with it.”
“And you really think I’ll let you get away with it?”
In answer, he gripped her hair, trapping her head against the sacks, and kissed her again, longer, deeper. Pleasure leapt through her, a desire so sudden, so fierce, it left her voiceless.
“I think,” he murmured, “you want it as much as I do.”
With a gasp of outrage, she shoved him onto his back and climbed on top of him, pinning him beneath her. “Guy Barnard, you miserable jerk, I’m going to give you what you deserve.”
He laughed. “Are you now?”
“Yes, I am.”
“And what, exactly, do I deserve?”
For a moment she stared at him through the dust and gloom. Then, slowly, she lowered her face to his. “This,” she said softly.
The kiss was different this time. Warmer. Hungrier. She was a full and willing partner; he knew it and he responded. She didn’t need to be warned that she was playing a dangerous game, that they were both hurtling toward the point of no return. She could already feel him swelling beneath her, could feel her own body aching to accommodate that new hardness. And the whole time she was kissing him, the whole time their bodies were pressed together, she was thinking, I’m going to regret this. As sure as I breathe, I’m going to pay for this. But it feels so right….
She pulled away, fighting to catch her breath.
“Well!” said Guy, grinning up at her. “Miss Willy Maitland, I am surprised.”
She sat up, nervously shoving her hair back into place. “I never meant to do that.”
“Yes, you did.”
“It was a stupid thing to do.”
“Then why did you?”
“It was…” She looked him in the eye. “Pure instinct.”
He laughed. In fact, he fell backward laughing, rolling around on the sacks of rice. The truck hit a pothole, bouncing her up and down so hard, she collapsed onto the floor beside him.
And still he was laughing.
“You’re a crazy man,” she said.
He threw an arm around her neck and pulled her warmly against him. “Only about you.”
In a black limousine with tinted windows, Siang sat gripping the steering wheel and cursing the wretched highway—or what this country called a highway. He had never understood why communism and decent roads had to be mutually exclusive. And then there was the traffic, added to the annoyance of that government vehicle inspection. It had given him a moment’s apprehension, the sight of the armed soldiers standing at the roadside. But it took only a few smooth words from the man in the back seat, the wave of a Soviet diplomatic passport, and they were allowed to move on without incident.
They continued west; a road sign confirmed it was the highway to Dien Bien Phu. A strange omen, Siang thought, that they should be headed for the town where the French had met defeat, where East had triumphed over West. Centuries before, an Asian scribe had written a prophetic statement.
To the south lie the mountains,
The land of the Viets.
He who marches against them
Is surely doomed to failure.
Siang glanced in the rearview mirror, at the man in the backseat. He wouldn’t be thinking in terms of East versus West. He cared nothing about nations or motherlands or patriotism. Real power, he’d once told Siang, lay in the hands of individuals, special people who knew how to use it, to keep it, and he was going to keep it.
Siang had no doubt he would.
He remembered the day they’d first met in Happy Valley, at an American base the GIs had whimsically dubbed “the Golf Course.” It was 1967. Siang had a different name then. He was a slender boy of thirteen, barefoot, scratching out a hungry existence among all the other orphans. When he’d first seen the American, his initial impression was of hugeness. An enormous fleshy face, alarmingly red in the heat; boots made for a giant; hands that looked strong enough to snap a child’s arm in two. The day was hot, and Siang was selling soft drinks. The man bought a Coca Cola, drank it down in a few gulps and handed t
he empty bottle back. As Siang took it, he felt the man’s gaze studying him, measuring him. Then the man walked away.
The next day, and every day for a week, the American emerged from the GI compound to buy a Coca Cola. Though a dozen other children clamored for his business, each waving soft drinks, the man bought only from Siang.
At the end of the week, the man presented Siang with a brand-new shirt, three tins of corned beef and an astonishing amount of cash. He said he was leaving the valley early the next morning, and he asked the boy to hire the prettiest girl he could find and bring her to him for the night.
It was only a test, as Siang found out later. He passed it. In fact, the American seemed surprised when Siang appeared at the compound gate that evening with an extraordinarily beautiful girl. Obviously, the man had expected Siang to take the money and vanish.
To Siang’s astonishment, the man sent the girl away without even touching her. Instead, he asked the boy to stay—not as a lover, as Siang at first feared, but as an assistant. “I need someone I can trust,” the man said. “Someone I can train….”
Even now, after all these years, Siang still felt that young boy’s sense of awe whenever he looked at the American. He glanced at the rearview mirror, at the face that had changed so little since that day they’d met in Happy Valley. The cheeks might be thicker and ruddier, but the eyes were the same, sharp and all-knowing. Just like the mind. Those eyes almost frightened him.
Siang turned his attention back to the road. The man in the back seat was humming a tune: “Yankee Doodle.” A whimsical choice, considering the Soviet passport he was carrying. Siang smiled at the irony of it all.
Nothing about the man was ever quite what it seemed.
Chapter Eleven
It was late in the day when the truck at last pulled to a halt. Willy, half-asleep among the rice sacks, rolled drowsily onto her back and struggled to clear her head. The signals her body was sending gave new meaning to the word misery. Every muscle ached; every bone felt shattered. The truck engine cut off. In the new silence, mosquitoes buzzed in the gloom, a gloom so thick she could scarcely breathe.
“Are you awake?” came a whisper. Guy’s face, gleaming with sweat, appeared above her.
“What time is it?”
“Late afternoon. Five or so. My watch stopped.”
She sat up and her head swam in the heat. “Where are we?”
“Can’t be sure. Near the border, I’d guess…” Guy stiffened as footsteps tramped toward them. Men’s voices, speaking Vietnamese, moved closer.
The canvas flap was thrown open. Against the sudden glare of daylight, the faces of the two men staring in were black and featureless.
One of the men gestured for them to climb out. “You follow,” he ordered. “Say nothing.”
Willy at once scrambled out and dropped onto the spongy jungle floor. Guy followed her. They swayed for a moment, blinking dazedly, gulping in their first fresh air in hours. Chips of afternoon sunlight dappled the ground at their feet. In the branches above, an invisible bird screeched out a warning.
The Vietnamese man motioned to them to move. They had just started into the woods when an engine roared to life. Willy turned in alarm to see the truck rattle away without them. She glanced at Guy and saw in his eyes the same thought that had crossed her mind, There’s no turning back now.
“No stop. Go, go!” said the Vietnamese.
They moved on into the forest.
The man obviously knew where he was going. Without a trail to guide him, he led them through a tangle of vines and trees to an isolated hut. A tattered U.S. Army blanket hung over the doorway. Inside, straw matting covered the earthen floor and a mosquito net, filmy as lace, draped a sleeping pallet. On a low table was set a modest meal of bananas, cracked coconuts and cold tea.
“You wait here,” said the man. “Long time, maybe.”
“Who are we waiting for?” asked Guy.
The man didn’t answer; perhaps he didn’t understand the question. He turned and, like a ghost, slipped into the forest.
For a long time, Willy and Guy lingered in the doorway, waiting, listening to the whispers of the jungle. They heard only the clattering of palms in the wind, the lonely cry of a bird.
How long would they wait? Willy wondered. Hours? Days? She stared up through the dense canopy at the last sunlight sparkling on the wet leaves. It would be dark soon. “I’m hungry,” she said, and she turned back into the gloom of the hut.
Together they devoured every banana, gnawed every sliver of coconut from its husk, drank down every drop of tea. In all her life, Willy had never tasted any meal quite so splendid! At last, their stomachs full, their legs trembling with exhaustion, they crawled under the mosquito netting and, side by side, they fell asleep.
At dusk, it began to rain. It was a glorious downpour, monsoonlike in its ferocity, but it brought no relief from the heat. Willy, awake in the darkness, lay with her clothes steeped in sweat. In the shadows above, the mosquito net billowed and fell like a hovering ghost.
She clawed her way free of the netting. If she didn’t get some air, she was going to smother.
She left Guy asleep on the pallet and went to the doorway, where she gulped in breaths of rain-drenched air. The swirl of cool mist was irresistible; she stepped out into the downpour.
All around her, the jungle clattered like a thousand cymbals. She shivered in the thunderous darkness as the water streamed down her face.
“What the hell are you doing?” called a sleepy voice. She turned and saw Guy in the doorway.
She laughed. “I’m taking a shower!”
“With your clothes on?”
“It’s lovely out here! Come on, before it stops!”
He hesitated, then plunged outside after her.
“Doesn’t it feel wonderful?” she cried, throwing her arms out to welcome the raindrops. “I couldn’t take the heat any longer. God, I couldn’t even stand the smell of my own clothes.”
“You think that’s bad? Just wait till the mildew sets in.” Turning his face to the sky, he let out a satisfied growl. “Now this is the way we were meant to take a shower. The way the kids do it. When I was here during the war, I used to get a kick out of seeing ’em run around without their clothes on. Nothing cuter than all those little brown bodies dancing in the rain. No shame, no embarrassment.”
“The way it should be.”
“That’s right,” he said. Softly he added, “The way it should be.”
All at once, Willy felt him watching her. She turned and stared back. The palms clattered, and the rain beat its tattoo on the leaves. Without a word, he came toward her, stood so close to her, she could feel the heat rippling between them. Yet she didn’t move, didn’t speak. The rain streaming down her face was as warm as teardrops.
“So what are we doing with our clothes on?” he murmured.
She shook her head. “This isn’t supposed to happen.”
“Maybe it is.”
“A one-night stand—that’s all it’d be—”
“Better once than never.”
“And then you’ll be gone.”
“You don’t know that. I don’t know that.”
“I do know it. You’ll be gone….”
She started to turn away, but he pulled her back, twisted her around to face him. At the first meeting of their lips, she knew it was over, the battle lost.
Better once than never, she thought as her last shred of resistance fell away. Better to have you once and lose you than to always wonder how it might have been. Reaching up, she threw her arms around his neck and met his kiss with her own, just as hungry, just as fierce. Their bodies pressed together so tightly, their fever heat mingled through the damp clothes.
He was already fumbling for the buttons of her blouse. She trembled as the fabric slid away and rain trickled down her bare shoulders. Then the warmth of his hand closed around her breast, and she was shivering not with cold but with desire.
To
gether they stumbled into the darkness of the hut. They were tugging desperately at each other’s clothes now, flinging the wet garments into oblivion. When at last they faced each other with no barriers, no defenses, he pulled her face up and gently pressed his lips to hers. No kiss had ever pierced so true to her soul. The darkness swam around her; the earth gave way. She let him lower her to the pallet and felt the mosquito net whisper down around them.
Making love in the clouds, she thought as the whiteness billowed above. Then she closed her eyes and lost all sense of where she was. There was only the pounding of the rain and the magical touch of Guy’s hands, his mouth. It had been so long since a man had made love to her, so long since she’d bared herself to the pleasure. The pain. And there would be pain after it was over, after he was gone from her life. With a man like Guy, the ending was inevitable.
She ignored those whispers of warning; she had drifted beyond all reach of salvation. She pulled him down against her, and whispered, “Now. Please.”
He was already struggling against his own needs, his own urgencies. Her quiet plea slashed away his last thread of control.
“I give up,” he groaned. Seizing her hands, he pinned her arms above her head, trapping her, his willing captive, beneath him.
His hardness filled her so completely, it made her catch her breath in astonishment. But her surprise quickly melted into pleasure. She was moving against him now, and he against her, both of them driving that blessed ache to new heights of agony.
The world fell away; the night seemed to swirl with mist and magic. They brought each other to the very edge, and there they lingered, between pleasure and torment, unwilling to surrender to the inevitable. Then the jungle sounds of beating rain, of groaning trees were joined by their cries as they plummeted over the brink.
Even when she fell back to earth, she was still floating. In the darkness above, the netting billowed like parachute silk falling through the emptiness of space.
There was no need to speak; it was enough just to lie together, limbs entwined, and listen to the rhythms of the night.