“That’s about what he was to me, too,” she muttered. “Nothing but a legend.”
There was a pause in their exchange, and she wondered if Guy Barnard was shocked by the bitterness in her last statement. If so, he didn’t show it.
“I never actually met your old man,” he said. “But I saw him once, on the Da Nang airstrip. I was working ground crew.”
“With Air America?”
“No. Army Air Cav.” He sketched a careless salute. “Private First Class Barnard. You know, the real scum of the earth.”
“I see you’ve come up in the world.”
“Yeah.” He laughed. “Anyway, your old man brought in a C-46, engine smoking, fuel zilch, fuselage so shot up you could almost see right through her. He sets her down on the tarmac, pretty as you please. Then he climbs out and checks out all the bullet holes. Any other pilot would’ve been down on his knees kissing the ground. But your dad, he just shrugs, goes over to a tree and takes a nap.” Guy shook his head. “Your old man was something else.”
“So everyone tells me.” Willy shoved a hank of windblown hair off her face and wished he’d stop talking about her father. That’s how it’d been, as far back as she could remember. When she was a child in Vientiane, at every dinner party, every cocktail gathering, the pilots would invariably trot out another Wild Bill story. They’d raise toasts to his nerves, his daring, his crazy humor, until she was ready to scream. All those stories only emphasized how unimportant she and her mother were in the scheme of her father’s life.
Maybe that’s why Guy Barnard was starting to annoy her.
But it was more than just his talk about Bill Maitland. In some odd, indefinable way, Guy reminded her too much of her father.
The tuk-tuk suddenly hit a bump in the road, throwing her against Guy’s shoulder. Pain sliced through her arm and her whole body seemed to clench in a spasm.
He glanced at her, alarmed. “Are you all right?”
“I’m—” She bit her lip, fighting back tears. “It’s really starting to hurt.”
He yelled at the driver to slow down. Then he took Willy’s hand and held it tightly. “Just a little while longer. We’re almost there….”
It was a long ride to the hotel.
Up in her room, Guy sat her down on the bed and gently stroked the hair off her face. “Do you have any pain killers?”
“There’s—there’s some aspirin in the bathroom.” She started to rise to her feet. “I can get it.”
“No. You stay right where you are.” He went into the bathroom, came back out with a glass of water and the bottle of aspirin. Even through her cloud of pain, she was intensely aware of him watching her, studying her as she swallowed the tablets. Yet she found his nearness strangely reassuring. When he turned and crossed the room, the sudden distance between them left her feeling abandoned.
She watched him rummage around in the tiny refrigerator. “What are you looking for?”
“Found it.” He came back with a cocktail bottle of whiskey, which he uncapped and handed to her. “Liquid anesthesia. It’s an old-fashioned remedy, but it works.”
“I don’t like whiskey.”
“You don’t have to like it. By definition, medicine’s not supposed to taste good.”
She managed a gulp. It burned all the way down her throat. “Thanks,” she muttered. “I think.”
He began to walk a slow circle, surveying the plush furnishings, the expansive view. Sliding glass doors opened onto a balcony. From the Chaophya River flowing just below came the growl of motorboats plying the waters. He wandered over to the nightstand, picked up a rambutan from the complimentary fruit basket and peeled off the prickly shell. “Nice room,” he said, thoughtfully chewing the fruit. “Sure beats my dive—the Liberty Hotel. What do you do for a living, anyway?”
She took another sip of whiskey and coughed. “I’m a pilot.”
“Just like your old man?”
“Not exactly. I fly for the paycheck, not the excitement. Not that the pay’s great. No money in flying cargo.”
“Can’t be too bad if you’re staying here.”
“I’m not paying for this.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Who is?”
“My mother.”
“Generous of her.”
His note of cynicism irritated her. What right did he have to insult her? Here he was, this battered vagabond, eating her fruit, enjoying her view. The tuk-tuk ride had tossed his hair in all directions, and his bruised eye was swollen practically shut. Why was she even putting up with this jerk?
He was watching her with curiosity. “So what else is Mama paying for?” he asked.
She looked him hard in the eye. “Her own funeral arrangements,” she said, and was satisfied to see his smirk instantly vanish.
“What do you mean? Is your mother dead?”
“No, but she’s dying.” Willy gazed out the window at the lantern lights along the river’s edge. For a moment they seemed to dance like fireflies in a watery haze. She swallowed; the lights came back into focus. “God,” she sighed, wearily running her fingers through her hair. “What the hell am I doing here?”
“I take it this isn’t a vacation.”
“You got that right.”
“What is it, then?”
“A wild-goose chase.” She swallowed the rest of the whiskey and set the tiny bottle down on the nightstand. “But it’s Mom’s last wish. And you’re always supposed to grant people their dying wish.” She looked at Guy. “Aren’t you?”
He sank into a chair, his gaze locked on her face. “You told me before that you were here on family business. Does it have to do with your father?”
She nodded.
“And that’s why you saw Kistner today?”
“We were hoping—I was hoping—that he’d be able to fill us in about what happened to Dad.”
“Why go to Kistner? Casualty resolution isn’t his job.”
“But Military Intelligence is. In 1970, Kistner was stationed in Laos. He was the one who commissioned my father’s last flight. And after the plane went down, he directed the search. What there was of a search.”
“And did Kistner tell you anything new?”
“Only what I expected to hear. That after twenty years, there’s no point pursuing the matter. That my father’s dead. And there’s no way to recover his remains.”
“It must’ve been tough hearing that. Knowing you’ve come all this way for nothing.”
“It’ll be hard on my mother.”
“And not on you?”
“Not really.” She rose from the bed and wandered out onto the balcony, where she stared down at the water. “You see, I don’t give a damn about my father.”
The night was heavy with the smells of the river. She knew Guy was watching her; she could feel his gaze on her back, could imagine the shocked expression on his face. Of course, he would be shocked; it was appalling, what she’d just said. But it was also the truth.
She sensed, more than heard, his approach. He came up beside her and leaned against the railing. The glow of the river lanterns threw his face into shadow.
She stared down at the shimmering water. “You don’t know what it’s like to be the daughter of a legend. All my life, people have told me how brave he was, what a hero he was. God, he must have loved the glory.”
“A lot of men do.”
“And a lot of women suffer for it.”
“Did your mother suffer?”
She looked up at the sky. “My mother…” She shook her head and laughed. “Let me tell you about my mother. She was a nightclub singer. All the best New York clubs. I went through her scrapbook, and I remember some reviewer wrote, ‘Her voice spins a web that will trap any audience in its magic.’ She was headed for the moon. Then she got married. She went from star billing to a—a footnote in some man’s life. We lived in Vientiane for a few years. I remember what a trouper she was. She wanted so badly to go home, but there she was, scraping the stor
e shelves for decent groceries. Laughing off the hand grenades. Dad got the glory. But she’s the one who raised me.” Willy looked at Guy. “That’s how the world works. Isn’t it?”
He didn’t answer.
She turned her gaze back to the river. “After Dad’s contract ended with Air America, we tried it for a while in San Francisco. He worked for a commuter airline. And Mom and I, well, we just enjoyed living in a town without mortars and grenades going off. But…” She sighed. “It didn’t last. Dad got bored. I guess he missed the old adrenaline high. And the glory. So he went back.”
“They got divorced?”
“He never asked for one. And Mom wouldn’t hear of it anyway. She loved him.” Willy’s voice dropped. “She still loves him.”
“He went back to Laos alone, huh?”
“Signed up for another two years. Guess he preferred the company of danger junkies. They were all like that, those A.A. pilots—all volunteers, not draftees—all of ’em laughing death in the face. I think flying was the only thing that gave them a rush, made them feel alive. Must’ve been the ultimate high for Dad. Dying.”
“And here you are, over twenty years later.”
“That’s right. Here I am.”
“Looking for a man you don’t give a damn about. Why?”
“It’s not me asking the questions. It’s my mother. She’s never wanted much. Not from me, not from anyone. But this was something she had to know.”
“A dying wish.”
Willy nodded. “That’s the one nice thing about cancer. You get some time to tie up the loose ends. And my father is one hell of a big loose end.”
“Kistner gave you the official verdict—your father’s dead. Doesn’t that tie things up?”
“Not after all the lies we’ve been told.”
“Who’s lied to you?”
She laughed. “Who hasn’t? Believe me, we’ve made the rounds. We’ve talked to the Joint Casualty Resolution Committee. Defense Intelligence. The CIA. They all had the same advice—drop it.”
“Maybe they have a point.”
“Maybe they’re hiding the truth.”
“Which is?”
“That Dad survived the crash.”
“What’s your evidence?”
She studied Guy for a moment, wondering how much to tell him. Wondering why she’d already told him as much as she had. She knew nothing about him except that he had fast reflexes and a sense of humor. That his eyes were brown, and his grin distinctly crooked. And that, in his own rumpled way, he was the most attractive man she’d ever met.
That last thought was as jolting as a bolt of lightning on a clear summer’s day. But he was attractive. There was nothing she could specifically point to that made him that way. Maybe it was his self-assurance, the confident way he carried himself. Or maybe it’s the damn whiskey, she thought. That’s why she was feeling so warm inside, why her knees felt as if they were about to buckle.
She gripped the steel railing. “My mother and I, we’ve had, well, hints that secrets have been kept from us.”
“Anything concrete?”
“Would you call an eyewitness concrete?”
“Depends on the eyewitness.”
“A Lao villager.”
“He saw your father?”
“No, that’s the whole point—he didn’t.”
“I’m confused.”
“Right after the plane went down,” she explained, “Dad’s buddies printed up leaflets advertising a reward of two kilos of gold to anyone who brought in proof of the crash. The leaflets were dropped along the border and all over Pathet Lao territory. A few weeks later a villager came out of the jungle to claim the reward. He said he’d found the wreckage of a plane, that it had crashed just inside the Vietnam border. He described it right down to the number on the tail. And he swore there were only two bodies on board, one in the cargo hold, another in the cockpit. The plane had a crew of three.”
“What did the investigators say about that?”
“We didn’t hear this from them. We learned about it only after the classified report got stuffed into our mailbox, with a note scribbled ‘From a friend.’ I think one of Dad’s old Air America buddies got wind of a cover-up and decided to let the family know about it.”
Guy was standing absolutely still, like a cat in the shadows. When he spoke, she could tell by his voice that he was very, very interested.
“What did your mother do then?” he asked.
“She pursued it, of course. She wouldn’t give up. She hounded the CIA. Air America. She got nothing out of them. But she did get a few anonymous phone calls telling her to shut up.”
“Or?”
“Or she’d learn things about Dad she didn’t want to know. Embarrassing things.”
“Other women? What?”
This was the part that made Willy angry. She could barely bring herself to talk about it. “They implied—” She let out a breath. “They implied he was working for the other side. That he was a traitor.”
There was a pause. “And you don’t believe it,” he said softly.
Her chin shot up. “Hell, no, I don’t believe it! Not a word. It was just their way to scare us off. To keep us from digging up the truth. It wasn’t the only stunt they pulled. When we kept asking questions, they stopped release of Dad’s back pay, which by then was somewhere in the tens of thousands. Anyway, we floundered around for a while, trying to get information. Then the war ended, and we thought we’d finally hear the answers. We watched the POWs come back. It was tough on Mom, seeing all those reunions on TV. Hearing Nixon talk about our brave men finally coming home. Because hers didn’t. But we were surprised to hear of one man who did make it home—one of the crew members on Dad’s plane.”
Guy straightened in surprise. “Then there was a survivor?”
“Luis Valdez, the cargo kicker. He bailed out as the plane was going down. He was captured almost as soon as he hit the ground. Spent the next five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp.”
“Doesn’t that explain the missing body? If Valdez bailed out—”
“There’s more. The very day Valdez flew back to the States, he called us. I answered the phone. I could hear he was scared. He’d been warned by Intelligence not to talk to anyone. But he thought he owed it to Dad to let us know what had happened. He told us there was a passenger on that flight, a Lao who was already dead when the plane went down. And that the body in the cockpit was probably Kozlowski, the copilot. That still leaves a missing body.”
“Your father.”
She nodded. “We went back to the CIA with this information. And you know what? They denied there was any passenger on that plane, Lao or otherwise. They said it carried only a shipment of aircraft parts.”
“What did Air America say?”
“They claim there’s no record of any passenger.”
“But you had Valdez’s testimony.”
She shook her head. “The day after he called, the day he was supposed to come see us, he shot himself in the head. Suicide. Or so the police report said.”
She could tell by his long silence that Guy was shocked. “How convenient,” he murmured.
“For the first time in my life, I saw my mother scared. Not for herself, but for me. She was afraid of what might happen, what they might do. So she let the matter drop. Until…” Willy paused.
“There was something else?”
She nodded. “About a year after Valdez died—I guess it was around ’76—a funny thing happened to my mother’s bank account. It picked up an extra fifteen thousand dollars. All the bank could tell her was that the deposit had been made in Bangkok. A year later, it happened again, this time, around ten thousand.”
“All that money, and she never found out where it came from?”
“No. All these years she’s been trying to figure it out. Wondering if one of Dad’s buddies, or maybe Dad himself—” Willy shook her head and sighed. “Anyway, a few months ago, she found out she had
cancer. And suddenly it seemed very important to learn the truth. She’s too sick to make this trip herself, so she asked me to come. And I’m hitting the same brick wall she hit twenty years ago.”
“Maybe you haven’t gone to the right people.”
“Who are the right people?”
Quietly, Guy shifted toward her. “I have connections,” he said softly. “I could find out for you.”
Their hands brushed on the railing; Willy felt a delicious shock race through her whole arm. She pulled her hand away.
“What sort of connections?”
“Friends in the business.”
“Exactly what is your business?”
“Body counts. Dog tags. I’m with the Army ID Lab.”
“I see. You’re in the military.”
He laughed and leaned sideways against the railing. “No way. I bailed out after Nam. Went back to college, got a master’s in stones and bones. That’s physical anthropology, emphasis on Southeast Asia. Anyway, I worked a while in a museum, then found out the army paid better. So I hired on as a civilian contractor. I’m still sorting bones, only these have names, ranks and serial numbers.”
“And that’s why you’re going to Vietnam?”
He nodded. “There are new sets of remains to pick up in Saigon and Hanoi.”
Remains. Such a clinical word for what was once a human being.
“I know a few people,” he said. “I might be able to help you.”
“Why?”
“You’ve made me curious.”
“Is that all it is? Curiosity?”
His next move startled her. He reached out and brushed back her short, tumbled hair. The brief contact of his fingers seemed to leave her whole neck sizzling. She froze, unable to react to this unexpectedly intimate contact.
“Maybe I’m just a nice guy,” he whispered.
Oh, hell, he’s going to kiss me, she thought. He’s going to kiss me and I’m going to let him, and what happens next is anyone’s guess….
She batted his hand away and took a panicked step back. “I don’t believe in nice guys.”
“Afraid of men?”
“I’m not afraid of men. But I don’t trust them, either.”
“Still,” he said with an obvious note of laughter in his voice, “you let me into your room.”