Shadows of War

into a half roll of freshly baked French bread.

The meat looked like chicken but tasted gamy, overwhelming the jamlike sweet sauce spread like mayonnaise around it. Maybe it hadn’t been her pronunciation that bothered the vendor, but her choice of food.

Mara walked halfway down the block, then dumped the meat into the gutter. Then she began looking for a taxi.

“Airport?” she asked when she finally flagged one down.

The man looked puzzled.

“San bay,“ she said in Vietnamese. “I need to go to the airport.”

“Yes, airport. I understand,” said the man, speaking in English. “But- bags?”

“I have business there,” she told him, getting in.

As they drove, Mara opened her pocketbook and took out one of the “clean” SIM cards she’d brought. She pried it into her cell phone and tried calling the scientist again. Once again she got his voice mail.

The UN agency that had sponsored the expedition was located in Brussels. Mara called the liaison officer there, claiming to be a relative trying to get in touch with the scientist. The man who answered had heard nothing from the expedition for more than two weeks. This wasn’t unusual, and he gave her the name and number of a Vietnamese government official who was supposed to be in contact with the scientists.

It was still two hours before the government offices would officially open, and though she tried the number, Mara wasn’t surprised when the official didn’t answer his phone. He didn’t have voice mail.

If Fleming was simply a day behind schedule, he’d expect to meet her at the restaurant tonight. In the meantime, she was going to go look for him — and see what was going on up near the Chinese border.

Assuming she could find a way to get up there. Driving would take too long. The distance itself wasn’t that far — roughly three hundred kilometers as the bird flew — but the roads were winding and notoriously bad; even with a skilled driver leaving at first light it could easily take all day just to go one way.

Flying was a much better option, but it was bound to be difficult. While Vietnam was no longer the strictly run authoritarian state it had once been, renting a plane or helicopter was still not an easy task. The first problem was language. Generally, this could be overcome by enough money, but while Mara practically cleared out an ATM inside the airport terminal, the thick wad of bills she flashed in front of the man inside the office of Pearl Air Surveying seemed only to confuse him.

“I’m looking for a scientific expedition,” she told him, speaking as slowly and as clearly as she could. “They may be in trouble. No one has heard from them. They’re west of Sapa.”

The man shook his head. “No fly.”

“Why?” she asked.

He shrugged instead of answering. If he’d been ordered not to by the Vietnamese, this would be an important piece of information — a possible confirmation of the Chinese charges.

“Please,” said Mara, pressing. “They may in great trouble. I need to get there. Isn’t this enough money?”

The man shrugged.

“Do you speak French?” she asked. “Parlez-vous francais?”

Her own French wasn’t that good, and she felt almost relieved when he didn’t react to the words.

“Maybe Chinese?” Mara suggested.

“The problem isn’t the language.”

Mara turned around. A short, dark-skinned man dressed in mechanic’s coveralls leaned against the wall near the door, arms folded. “What’s the problem then?” she asked.

“Too far for a helicopter. At least any of the helicopters you could get here.”

“It’s only three hundred kilometers.”

“You have to factor in the altitude. And the linger time.”

“Can’t it refuel?”

“Not out there. There’s also the red tape.”

He pushed off from the wall and started speaking in Vietnamese to the man behind the desk. The other man responded in a quick, almost nervous voice, speaking so quickly that Mara had no chance to decipher what he said. She watched the mechanic talk — clearly he had some sort of solution in mind.

But he wasn’t going to share it in front of the other man.

“No,” he told her finally. “It’s not possible with these helicopters. The range is too far.”

“Where can I go to find one that has the proper range?” she asked. “You can’t.”

“I need to find them,” she insisted.

“How badly?”

“Badly.”

Their eyes met.

“Twenty thousand, U.S.”

Mara laughed. “Not that badly.”

The mechanic folded his arms.

“Five hundred dollars,” she said.

“Five hundred won’t even pay for the fuel.”

“It will pay for the aircraft as well as the fuel.”

“In your dreams. All you Americans think we’re stupid. The Vietnamese are poor, so they must be stupid.” The man’s English had a slightly British accent. Mara guessed it originated in Hong Kong.

“I don’t think that. But not all Americans are rich, as many Vietnamese seem to think,” she told him. “I can pay you five hundred. Plus fuel. With a card.”

“A thousand in cash. With fuel. Plus the landing fee and lunch.”

“And lunch. If we’re back in time.”

“We buy it and eat in the plane.”

* * *

The man’s name was Ky Kieu, and though he was Vietnamese, his grandfather had been an American soldier who abandoned his child — or probably never even knew he had one — after the war. Kieu’s father had grown up on the streets, but had managed to save enough money — Kieu didn’t say how — to send his son to Hong Kong and Australia, where he learned to fix airplanes.

Most important as far as Mara was concerned, he was a pilot and owned an aircraft — though not the type Mara thought.

“That’s not a helicopter,” she said when he led her out to the parking area beyond the passenger hangars.

“I explained that a helicopter hasn’t the range.”

“It’s a biplane.”

“So?”

“A biplane?”

“It can do just about anything you would want a helicopter to do, except hover. The fact that it’s a biplane makes it maneuverable. I can land on a road if I want. If you want to pick up your party, they’ll fit. And you’re unlikely to find another private aircraft in Hanoi. Your CIA friends generally have to travel to Saigon to lease one.”

Mara’s expression must have remained doubtful, since he added that there was no other way to get where she wanted to go except by truck.

“It’s sturdier than it looks,” he said, pounding his fist against the side of the aircraft. “It’s been around.”

The plane was a Chinese-made Yunshuji-5, a license-made copy of the Russian PZL Mielec An-2 Colt older than its owner. A fat engine sat at its nose, fronting a two-level, fully enclosed cabin. A dozen people could crowd into the passenger space, and the plane could carry roughly five thousand pounds, not quite in the range of a small, two-engined, commercial turboprop, but close.

The cockpit looked as if it hadn’t been altered since the day it rolled off the line. The black paint on the metal control panel had been worn down to steel gray in all but a few spots.

“How old is this plane?” Mara asked as she sat in the copilot’s seat.