South China Sea

Pierre LaSalle laughed. Was it a response to a joke or the truth?

“You want to embarrass Freeman — that it?”

“Oh,” he said with a Gallic shrug. “Don’t be silly. It’s nothing personal. You’re a good journalist. You know ‘ow it is. We get what we can.”

This time she put her hand over the tulip glass.

“Ah,” he said. “You think I’m up to no good. Yes?”

“Yes.”

Suddenly his whole tone, comportment, changed. “I want you, Marte. That is what I want.”

“So why didn’t you say so?”

He moved closer to her. “We French are more subtle than that.”

“So I noticed,” she said, “when you first came in the tent. Looked like you had a bazooka in your pants.”

“Marte!” He sat up, genuinely shocked.

“Well, didn’t you? Or did you just want to dance?”

“No — I mean yes, I was aroused.”

There was a pause as she let her hand trail along his thigh. “So was I,” she said.

“Oh, Marte!” He had his hand under her shirt, exploring, gently squeezing her breasts. “Oh, Marte!”

“You can’t go in me,” she said.

“I have a con—”

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll let you lie on me if you like, but no—”

“All right, all right,” he murmured, almost incoherently, unzipping her slacks, pulling them down.

“Mon Dieu!” She was wearing skintight scarlet lace panties. “Mon Dieu!” Still gazing at the panties, he took off her bra.

As they began to move together, his weight between her legs, his elbows propped to keep his weight moving on her there and nowhere else, she could feel him sliding against her with more and more ease. She joined him in the rhythm of it. There was an idiotic smile on LaSalle’s face, as if he was genuinely surprised, enjoying it more than he thought possible.

Soon her hair began to whip from side to side as the excitement in her mounted and he could feel her growing abandonment beneath him. His fingers started to pull down her panties. “No!” she gasped. “No,” pushing his hand away.

“All right, all right,” he said quickly, sensing mat if he tried the same move again, she’d stop. “All right,” he said. “Oh, Marte—”

He heard her whimper, felt himself going and, her back arching suddenly, they climaxed together, now as one, now as two separate beings, each enjoying the fishtail arching of their bodies, each in its own orgasm.

“My God,” he gasped. “That was wonderful. I never believed—” His mouth was too dry to speak. He watched her, eyes closed, her body still moving against him until finally she gasped, utterly exhausted, utterly spent, her eyes closed in a sleep of reverie.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

In Dalat, Ray Baker had been awakened by yet another noise, again outside his door. He quietly got out of bed to check, his feet crunching the dead cockroaches that had fallen victim to the protective line of boric acid he’d put around the bed, and opened his door. A small fleeting shadow was going down the exit stairwell at the far end of the hall — a huge, gray rat, one of the hundreds that staked out the moderate- to low-income hotels.

It wasn’t till Baker stepped back into the room that he saw the piece of paper, some kind of note written on the back of a can label. Even those who could afford it couldn’t easily get their hands on writing paper, one of the casualties of the Vietnam War and Agent Orange having created enormous deforestation of parts of the country. The note said, “MIA — come market.”

It told Baker that the ever-vigilant Dalat police force must still be at work regarding MIAs, that someone dare contact him only in this way, that despite all the officialese about more mutual understanding and more economic aid since the U.S. had lifted the postwar blockade, there was still reluctance among the lower regions of the Communist bureaucracy to aid Americans, or at least a reluctance to be seen aiding Americans seeking MIAs and those who some Americans thought might still be POWs hidden in the jungles of ‘Nam.

No one who wanted to help, it seemed — for a price, of course — would be seen lingering around hotels to make contact. It had probably been considered a great risk by the note writer just to try to get the message to Baker’s room. Baker slapped himself on the forehead. “Stupid!” He wasn’t properly awake. It wouldn’t have been the man who made contact who left the note, but a runner — a kid — one of those thousands left homeless by the war with those who had been their enemies and were now their allies.

* * *

Baker collected his expired passport from the front desk and went out in search of a good coffee and pastry, one of the better legacies of the French colonial era. He found what he wanted at a sidewalk cafe. He sat first enjoying his trai quit juice. He had no intention of squandering the U.S. taxpayers’ money, but damned if he was going to hurry. He’d been chasing shadows for years and hadn’t found one of the more than two thousand MIAs or POWs.

At the same time, because of his lack of success, his search to find at least one MIA or, less likely, a POW to justify all his efforts had now become an obsession. He ate the pastry, which was filled with fruit, and lingered over the remains of his coffee, watching the new Vietnam roll by.

At a glance nothing much had changed — the ever-present fish sauce smell, more scooters, more noise, only now the sound, instead of coming from jukeboxes, came from a jungle of video games emitting horrible screams of victory or defeat. So absorbed was he by the hustle and bustle of Dalat that it took Baker a couple of minutes to realize he was being watched intently by a boy of about twelve, in dirty T-shirt and ragged blue shorts, who even at this age appeared to be addicted to betelnut, now and then spitting out arcs of bloodred saliva on the sidewalk.

Whether it was the good weather, the pastry, or the rich, dark coffee he had lingered over, Baker was in no mood for a complicated day. He made a writing gesture to the waiter and at the same time with a dollar note he signaled the boy to come over to his table.

“You speak English?” he asked the boy.

“Sure.”

“Who are you watching me for?”

The boy either didn’t understand or didn’t want to answer. Instead he looked covertly at the dollar bill Baker was holding like a lure. “Who sent you?”

“A man.”

“Really,” Baker said. “Listen, boyo, tell me or no money.”

“Two dollars, okay?” the boy interjected.

Baker nodded.

“A man in the—” The boy couldn’t think of the word in English. “Cho.”

“Market?” Baker said. “There are a thousand people in the market. I want you to point him out to me.”

“Okay,” the boy said, holding out his hand.

“Khong,” Baker replied. No. “Not until you show me who.”

“One dollar now,” the boy said, spitting out another jet of saliva and betel juice, his smile a brownish gash, his teeth already stained by his addiction.

“Okay,” Baker said, and gave him a dollar. For any Vietnamese, it was good money — for a boy, a small fortune. As they walked past the Red Tulip restaurant toward the Mai Building, Baker wondered if they were being followed by either the police and/or the person who had hired the boy, who perhaps wanted to make sure that he, Baker, wasn’t being followed by someone else. As Baker followed the betel-spitting boy toward the market, he had no chance to double back or stop to see whether or not someone was following him. Just before they reached the market the boy glanced back at Baker, made eye contact, spat, and walked toward one of the stalls selling every kind of fruit from green dragon fruit, lychee, jujubes, and Chinese dates, to water apple. The boy leaned across the