“Thirty minutes.”
“Jesus. Where?”
“Right under that big red flag across the river. Bring Nina. And bring a shopping bag. We’ll do a switch.” Broker hung up the phone. He didn’t like not knowing where Bevode Fret was.
“Now…” said Trin, intently inspecting the pop top in his beer can.
“It all depends on Lola LaPorte. If she won’t give up Nina, we’re screwed. Cyrus’ll probably try an approach, to feel us out,” said Broker.
“Try and split us up.”
“Yeah,” Broker squinted, “try to get you to betray me.”
Trin smiled. He looked like a Vietnamese Dead End Kid with a partially washed face. But it was still an exquisite Vietnamese smile that masked Vietnamese thoughts and it didn’t reassure Broker one bit.
The Imperial Citadel was overrun with foreign devils. French, Germans, Aussies, Kiwis, Americans, Canadians: unloading from vans like retarded, wrinkled children in Bermuda shorts and herded by tour guide terriers. Mostly they headed through the gate to the Forbidden City. The direction Broker and Trin took smelled like shit. Someone had taken a dump next to the paved ramp that led to the flag tower. A squalor of pop cans and paper wrappers fouled the patchy grass. Trin handed him a blue baseball cap with Hue Tours printed on the crown and pointed to the sun. A fresh wave of sweat streaked the dirt on Broker’s arms. They’d done a poor job cleaning up. How many other things had they overlooked in their condition?
What was probably the only rental Mercedes in Hue City screeched to a halt perpendicular to the ramp. A blue van almost rear-ended it.
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 snatched 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. Fuckin’ Virgil.
The passenger 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
Lola looked cool and poolside in her long dark hair and a white cotton skirt, blouse, and a broad straw sun- hat. Sunglasses 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 sunglasses gave their smiling faces a shiny praying mantis warmth.
“Goddamn, 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 shit.” 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 cocked 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 sunglasses 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 grass, the moat, a grassy 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 pagoda,” 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 God, 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 fucker.” 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 grass 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 snatched 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, massaging his ear.
