They sectioned off the dig with twine and labeled each segment. Nina stood very soberly, concerned. She had dusted the chip off her shoulder. No more defiant Jericho eyes. Broker figured she was calibrating herself. Video cameras were all ready recording the event. CNN was getting ready to tape.
She did not show emotion when the outlines of a human skeleton began to emerge from the sand. A hush fell at a rusty jungle…
Dog tags.
Nor did she wall herself off. She asked appropriate questions. Brief, to the point, about the procedure.
For the last time gold glinted in the pit.
Photographs were taken from all angles. Notes were made. People spoke into tape recorders in two languages. The team passed the cigarette case in gloved hands to Chief Holly who handed it to his Vietnamese counterpart. The Vietnamese carried it to the ramp and turned it over to another older Vietnamese who, walking in step with the American from the diplomatic service, carried it up and presented it to Nina.
There was a discussion among the technical people and they decided to open the cigarette case inside a large plastic bag, shielded from sun and wind. Very slowly, wearing transparent plastic gloves, a technical assistant pried the case open with something that resembled a dental tool.
A dirty lump of smoky gray plastic was folded inside. The tech very carefully peeled it open. The note was faint but legible, bazen tinged:
Over his protest, here noted, I order Major Raymond Pryce to command a helo extraction of materials vital to United States security from the National Bank of Hue. 0200 hours, 30 April, 1975.
Signed,
Cyrus LaPorte, Colonel, commanding
Tape ran. Camera shutters snapped like a piranha feeding frenzy. With a deft sixth sense, Nina Pryce anticipated it and tilted her face from profile to a more flattering three-quarter view that didn’t show her bad ear.
78
September, Devil’s Rock, Minnesota
They were supposed to go fishing. First J.T. called and canceled, then Ed Ryan. Tom Jeffords said some idiot backpacker from the Cities had gone missing, so count him out.
And John Eisenhower couldn’t even claim police work as an excuse. He was giving a speech at a banquet in Stillwater. Broker shook his head. You just couldn’t rely on cops.
A framed letter from the Premier of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam hung on his cabin wall and thanked him for his aid in restoring a National Treasure to the People of Vietnam.
The letter did not mention the seven bars of Imperial gold that he had been quietly awarded for his services. The back channel deal had been arranged by Col. Nguyen Van Trin of the Vietnamese Border Police. Equally quietly, Trin and his wife and their two children were about to become American citizens.
Fatty Naslund had negotiated the sale of the seven Imperial ingots to the Smithsonian Institution. The gold would go on display in the fall. The amount of money that changed hands exceeded the gold’s weight-based market value. Now Fatty was off on his first real-life clandestine mission. He was in Vientiane, Laos, outfitted in a whole Patagonia catalog, to bargain secretly on behalf of a small, discreet group of gold collectors. One of the crates that Trin and Broker had sneaked off had been full of the really old Cham relics.
The stuff of curses.
Broker’s Beach was rebuilding on unlimited credit from Fatty’s bank, retired Det. Phil Broker installed as manager. Mike had moved up from ballpeen hammers. He could carry out the garbage now. Irene was debating giving up painting loons and trying sunsets.
Jimmy Tuna had succumbed to cancer just about the time that Cyrus LaPorte said he had.
Nina…
Broker pushed the taped CNN broadcast in the VCR and watched it again. A dreary Air Force runway pecked by rain, a Pacific mountain range in the background. Color guard. The band playing. The camera zoomed in at a stately pace and focused on the lumbering C-130 that had just landed from Hanoi. The reporter’s voice-over tried for dignity but was breathless. “…Part of the ceremony accepting the return of her father’s remains from Vietnam.” The goddamn media. Ray Pryce was taking second billing at his own funeral.
Broker had been invited. He’d declined. Not really his kind of scene.
Ray finally got his flag. It draped the coffin being rolled from the back of the transport. And then the camera moved in on the color guard and framed Maj. Nina Pryce, reinstated in the army and promoted on a wave of publicity that she had not honored with a single comment. Major Pryce just stood at attention.
Her hair was longer now and the camera stayed on her face, which had filled out in a way that Broker liked, especially the color in her cheeks. But she showed no expression. Dry eyed. The slick under her eyes came from the rain.
Then, slowly, the camera moved off and then roamed up the left front chest portion of her uniform, over the Silver Star and the Purple Heart and jump wings and paused on the blue rectangle with the silver Kentucky rifle and the silver wreath.
Then they showed the film clip of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs pinning the Combat Infantry Badge on her. Under presidential pressure, the secretary of the army, an appointed civilian, had crafted the citation to hurdle over the Army regs. “…retroactive award to an
The Little Dutch Girl had poked her finger through the dike.
Then came the panel of legal experts giving background. Cyrus LaPorte, who had been recalled to active duty for his impending courts-martial, had his own CNN logo and his own theme music.
Next came the clip from the roundtable of talking heads. Cut to the sound bite of a talcum-smooth conservative Republican, a million perfect teeth: “This trick that the president forced down the military’s throat will cost him the election.”
Political commentator Mark Shields bounced up and down, laughing.
Switch to Bob Dole shaking his head.
Then the news anchors came back on and anchor-talked and the female one enunciated like a drama student, “A recent CNN poll conducted among army personnel predicts by a wide margin that men won’t accept this history-making precedent.”
“Some men,” said Broker. Then he yawned and rewound the tape to the shot of Nina that framed her from hips to chest. He noted that her uniform skirt was fitting rather snug around the middle.
“Broker, you sonofabitch,” she had yelled on the phone in an amazed voice when she’d received the results. “Now what?”
