Victoria Mathias managed a smile, but just barely. Yes, she was feeling better. Less pain in her chest, but maybe that was the morphine. But what had he found out about the baby? Moon said nothing really definite, and that caused Victoria Mathias to give him a long, silent look.
“Malcolm,” she said, “I’m a big girl. That means the baby hasn’t arrived in Manila, doesn’t it? Does it also mean that Mr. Castenada doesn’t know where she is?”
“That’s what it seems to mean.”
“And that must mean she’s still in Vietnam,” she said.
“Or still en route,” Moon said. “Castenada seemed to believe whoever was supposed to send her off in Saigon was having trouble getting her on a flight.”
His mother studied him. “What did you think of Castenada?”
Moon shrugged. “Hard to tell over the telephone.”
“He doesn’t instill much confidence, I’m afraid.”
“No. He doesn’t.”
She made a feeble effort to move her hand across the sheet toward him. Let it fall. Moon reached out and took it.
“Malcolm,” she said, “I’m afraid you’re going to have to go to Manila and take care of this.”
“I will,” Moon said. “But first we have to get you well.”
“I don’t think there’s time for that. I was watching the television news out at the airport before this happened. Things seem to be going to hell in that part of the world.” -
“I can’t just go off and leave you.”
“Son,” she said, “there’s nothing you can do for me here. It’s up to the doctor. You just have to go and get our granddaughter.”
And so Moon went.
SAIGON, South Vietnam, April 16 (AP)- Communist rockets last night detonated an ammunition dump at Bien Hoa thirty miles north of here. The blast shook the capital and reinforced reports that the Bien Hoa air base, largest in Vietnam, had come under artillery fire.
The Fifty Day
THE JET DESCENDED THROUGH RAIN to the Manila airport. Out the water-streaked window beside his seat, Moon could see nothing but the bleak inside of solid cloud cover, then a lush green landscape blurred by the falling water, then puddled runways lined with weeds. His impression of the terminal was of roaring, clamorous confusion. A prematurely old building with flaking paint, cracks in too many floor tiles, and too much dirt. The air conditioner worked too well, making the humid air unpleasantly sticky.
Moon felt smothered, exhausted, uneasy. His mother’s purse with eighty hundred-dollar bills in it was in his suitcase. What was the rule about bringing cash into the Philippines? Moon had a vague recollection of currency restrictions, but that probably concerned taking money out, not bringing it in.
The immigration agent was a skinny middle-aged man wearing what looked like a military uniform. He glanced at Moon’s passport and at Moon and said, “How long in the Philippines?” in oddly accented English.
“Just a couple of days,” Moon said, “maybe less.” But the agent was already looking past him at the pretty girl next in line.
Customs was equally cursory. Moon handed over the declaration sheet he’d filled out on the plane and stood, shoulders slumping, while the agent read it.
“Nothing to declare?” the agent asked, without looking up.
“Just clothing,” Moon said.
He opened Moon’s dented old American Tourister, glanced in, closed it. Then he patted Victoria Mathias’s briefcase.
“This?”
“Business papers,” Moon said. “Letters, personal correspondence, things like that.”
“Urn,” the clerk said. He motioned Moon to pick up his luggage and move along.
The door marked exit to public transportation was guarded by two teenagers in dark glasses, with the khaki uniforms and caps that Moon assumed were Philippine Army uniforms. Soldiers, surely, because they both held the same model M16 automatic rifles that Moon had trained with at Fort Benning. They lounged against the wall looking sinister in their glasses. He carried his bags past them, wondering if they were watching him. They didn’t seem to be watching anyone.
Victoria Mathias’s travel agent had made reservations for her at the Hotel Maynila, a shiny edifice of tropical- modern architecture. Moon explained to the desk clerk why Malcolm Mathias was claiming a room reserved for Victoria Morick. The clerk looked bored, said, “Ah, yes,” expressed sympathy, and handed Moon the key.
It hit Moon, finally, as he stood waiting for the elevator. Jet lag, he guessed. Too many hours without untroubled sleep. He leaned against the wall, eyes closed, surprised by the sound of the elevator doors sliding open. At the door of his eleventh-floor room he had trouble making the key work. He slumped on the bed while trying to dial Castenada’s office and screwed up the number twice before getting a busy signal. When he lay back on the pillow waiting to try again, sleep overwhelmed him.
He came awake slowly, conscious at first of the strangeness of the pillow against his face. Then he was jarringly aware of being on an alien bed. With his clothes on, even his shoes tied. Aware he was in a strange room, with no notion of where he was, or when it was, or why he was here. For Moon it was all too familiar, a skip back into the past of his last year in college and his time in the army. Drinking had become his hobby. Awakening in the wrong bed in a strange room with his head buzzing with hungover confusion had been a regular Sunday morning experience. But that had ended years ago. The last time he had suffered such an awakening had been the worst of all-a nightmare that had ended boozing for him forever.
He’d been aware at first of the bandages, of the pain in his head, of the tubes connecting his arm to something, that his left wrist and hand were encased in a cast. Hearing the breathing of the man asleep in an adjoining bed, the sound of a telephone ringing somewhere: hospital paraphernalia. And then a nurse was there. How did he feel? Was he well enough to talk to the policeman? The woman left while he searched for an answer. The Military Police captain replacing her beside his bed told him he had a right to call a lawyer if he wanted one.
Moon didn’t want to be remembering that. He rolled off the bed. In the bathroom he washed his face and glanced at his wristwatch. But it told him only the Los Angeles time. Here it seemed to be morning. The digital clock beside his bed said nine twenty-two, but not whether it was A.M. or P.M. The sunlight filtering through high thin clouds over Manila Bay seemed to be morning light, and the traffic on the boulevard below-cars headed mostly toward downtown Manila -must be going-to-work traffic.
This morning the telephone in the office of Castenada, Blake and Associates rang only once. A woman’s voice said, “Law offices”; the same words in the same tone one heard in Durance or Denver or-most likely- Karachi. But then Castenada’s voice, with its exotic accent.
“Mi,” Castenada said. “Mr. Mathias. Am I correct that you are in Manila?”
“Yes,” Moon said. “As I told you. I came to pick up Ricky’s child.”
“Yes,” Castenada said. Hesitation. “Can you come down to the office?”
“Of course,” Moon said, puzzled by the tone of this. Of course he would have to come to the office. There would be papers to be signed, fees to be paid, expenses to be covered, arrangements to be explained. “The child,” he said. “She has arrived safely?”
“Mi,” Castenada said. “Not yet. You are at the Hotel Maynila, I think? Where your mother had made reservations. That is about fifteen minutes from here by taxi. Would it be convenient for you to come now?”
The cabbie looked surprised when Moon told him the address, and Moon was surprised at the direction it led them. They turned away from the bay and the towering buildings he’d seen from his hotel window and into narrow old streets where ramshackle apartment buildings were crowded between auto repair shops, mattress factories,
