“This flying you do sounds tough. I guess you can’t afford to make mistakes.”
“Every pilot makes mistakes. In fact, there’s no such thing as a perfect flight. You make a lot of mistakes. Some you correct, and some you can’t. You just can’t make the mistake that will kill you. That’s where the confidence comes in. You have to know you’ll never make that fatal slip.”
They came down from the Peak on a tram that was not full. The late-afternoon breeze was cool and Callie huddled next to him. They had hardly spoken since boarding the tram.
“A plugged nickel for your thoughts?” said Callie.
“They’re worth more than that. I was thinking about you.”
“I’m flattered.”
“I have to leave tomorrow morning.”
“I know. I’ve been thinking about it too.”
“I sure as hell don’t want to leave you. I wish I had more time here.”
“I wish you had a lot more time here. But let’s not get gloomy. The night is young, and I’m so hungry I could eat half a horse.”
“Half a horse?”
“I’ve never been hungry enough to eat a whole horse.”
With a laugh, Jake said, “I’m hungry enough to eat a team. But what I could really go for instead is a good steak.”
They took a cab to Jimmy’s Kitchen, a Western-style restaurant that Callie said was a favorite with the consulate crowd. They were shown to a table in the corner of the dark, wood-paneled restaurant by a waiter with bushy eyebrows. Jake was amazed at his resemblance to Chou En-Lai, whose picture he had seen in news magazines.
“I thought you only drank beer,” said Callie, dipping a shrimp into cocktail sauce.
“I like scotch, too.” Jake took another swig. He buttered a roll and ate it in three bites. When the waiter brought their salads, Jake ordered another scotch on the rocks.
Callie sipped her gin and tonic. Then she said casually, “I’m still not sure what you believe in besides Jake Grafton.”
Jake watched the candlelight flickering in her eyes. When he answered he said, “There’s something else I believe in. I believe in keeping the faith with the guys I fly with. You try not to let each other down.”
“Does everybody keep the faith, the men you fly with?”
“Yeah, for the most part.” Jake put down his drink and examined it. Then he spoke without looking up. “It has to be that way. Especially with your bombardier. Jake raised his head. “You have to depend on him an he has to depend on you. If either of you seriously screws up, you can both die. There has to be the feeling between you of great trust. But it’s not anything you talk about. If it’s there, you know it. If it’s not, you know that, too.”
Then he spoke with mock seriousness emphasizing each word with a jab of his finger. “Never fly with a man you don’t trust.”
“I don’t go anywhere with a man I don’t trust,” Callie countered.
She took a bite of salad and chewed meditatively. “So, not everybody keeps the faith.”
“Some do a better job of it than others.”
“I know you do a good job of it. I can tell.”
Jake took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I’d like to think so. But sometimes I’m not sure.”
“What do you mean?” she asked with surprise in her voice.
He hadn’t planned to tell her about Morgan. when he started out he wondered why he was telling her. But in the end he told her everything about his last flight with Morgan, including what the cockpit looked like when it was over. The dreams, though, he didn’t tell her about.
“Surely you don’t blame yourself?” Callie said. “It doesn’t make sense to do that.”
“I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t make sense. But I feel some responsibility. Like Chiang does for his brother.”
“You did what you could do,” said Callie.
“You can’t do more than that. You kept the faith.” Chou En-Lai’s double was supervising the flaming production of two chateaubriands when Callie returned from the restroom. A waiter Jake had not seen before whisked away the glass in which he had been rattling his ice. Callie put her bag on the corner of the table. “I hope you’re still plenty hungry.
“They look huge.”
“I could scarf them both.”
“You just keep your mitts off mine, Jake. I’m starving. The waiter put a glass of red wine in front of Callie. Looking at Jake’s fresh scotch, she said, “Another one?”
Jake shrugged. “I didn’t order it.”
“Oh.”
With a smile and a flourish, the waiter presented her with a chateaubriand that sizzled in its plate. Callie thanked him in Cantonese. She waited until Jake had been served before cutting her meat.
Callie said, “Fantastic.”
His mouth full, Jake nodded enthusiastically. They said little until the steaks were nearly gone.
‘You picked a great place,” he said.
“I’ve been thinking,” said Callie. “Thinking about you. “Not much profit in that.”
“I think you’re a good man, Jake.” She reached across the table and put her hand on his. “I’m glad you told me about Morgan. I’m glad you felt comfortable enough with me to do that.”
“It’s not a nice story.” Jake shoved two french fries around his plate with his fork. “I just wish I was sure what Morgan died for.”
Removing her hand, Callie said, “You don’t think we ought to be in Vietnam?”
“That’s not what I mean,” said Jake. “I mean that I worry that Morgan died for nothing because the bastards in Washington won’t let us win the war.
They’re afraid to do the things we need to do to win. We could win the war, you know, if they’d let us.”
“Then maybe we shouldn’t be in Vietnam at all.”
Jake tossed off the last of his scotch. He was uneasy. “It was probably a mistake that we got involved in the first place. Hindsight and all. Especially when you consider that there’s hardly any support for the war at home. But that’s water over the dam. The fact is, we are there, and I don’t think we can just cut and run.”
“Are you saying that we should stay there only to save face?”
“No, I’m not saying that, that we should stay for that reason only. Look at it this way. What kind of credibility would the U.S. have, what kind of respect would we have, if we ran from a fight for freedom? Leader of the free world? We’d make a mockery of that.” Jake paused and traced a circle with his fingertip on the white linen tablecloth. “And there are other reasons.”
“I’d like to hear one that makes sense.”
Jake felt his face flush. He tried to speak calmly. “Okay. I’ll give you one real good reason. Right now there’re over a thousand guys in prison camps in Vietnam-nobody knows for sure how many. Those men are being starved, tortured, humiliated. Our POWs are going through hell while long-haired creeps in the States are burning their draft cards or hiding in graduate schools and trying to convince themselves the war is immoral because they know, deep down, that they don’t have the guts to fight.” Jake coughed, and went on in a lower voice. “We have to get our POWs out. If we don’t they’ll rot to death in the prison camps. We’ve either got to win the war or put enough pressure on the commies to make them return the POWs and account for our M I A - We’ve got to keep faith with those guys.”
“I understand what you’re saying, Jake. I’d like very much to see those men released, too. But hundreds of people are dying in the war every day. Think of the many thousands of lives that would be saved if we could end the war now.”
“End the war now? Cut and run? If we abandon the POWs, if we break faith with them, where will we get men to fight the next war?” He picked up his glass and looked into it. “All we have is each other.”
He put the glass down and met her eyes. “Let’s be realistic, Callie. For you, the war might as well be on the far side of the moon.”
“Well it isn’t,” Callie said softly. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you. Theron, my brother,
