Conspiracy

“Well I’m going to register,” said Lia.

“Come back when you do.”

Lia left the room and walked back to the atrium, where she took out her sat phone, pretending to use it while she spoke to Telach.

“You want me to flash the credentials and ask if I can look at the computers?” Lia asked. “Or should I just rent a room?”

“Rent a room,” said Telach.

“Sorry,” said the desk clerk when Lia got there. “We’re booked solid. It’s a busy week. Two weddings, and the biker festival. You here for the Harleys?”

“Just looking after a friend,” said Lia.

“Maybe at one of our sister hotels.”

“But my mom really wants me to register here,” said Lia.

“Right, Mom?”

The clerk gave Lia an odd look.

“Sometimes I talk to my mom in my head,” Lia explained.

“Tell her to check the central reservations system now,” said Telach. “Looks like one of the bikers just got a flat tire.”

43

Dean woke up in the middle of the night, not knowing where he was. He stared at the ceiling, waiting for his memory to come back. It took only a few seconds, and yet those few seconds seemed enormously long. He sank into them, unsettled, his disorientation extending.

Finally he realized he was in Vietnam. Dean remained on his back, still staring into the gray light above him.

How strange was it to come around in a circle?

It wasn’t as if Vietnam or the things he did here haunted him. From time to time he’d remember things, missions as a sniper, old buddies, songs that he’d first heard here, but Vietnam never obsessed him, never burned viciously in his brain the way it did for many others. Vietnam to Charlie Dean was a place and time in the past, not the present. Its demons had been real enough, but they had no afterlife to haunt him.

Except for Phuc Dinh.

Dean sat upright in the bed, then slipped his feet over the side to the floor, one by one.

He had made that kill. He’d taken a photograph to prove it.

So why wasn’t it in the file?

There were a million possible reasons, starting with the fact that what he’d seen at Crypto City wasn’t the file, just a copy of some things that were in it.

Or might have been. He had no real idea. He didn’t know what happened behind the scenes or above him. He knew only what the CIA people and the Marines who dealt with them wanted him to know.

* * *

After he’d killed the last VC guerilla on the trail, Dean had gone back to his friend’s body. There was no way Dean was leaving Longbow behind. Dean hoisted Longbow onto his back and began trekking up the trail into the jungle. He couldn’t have expressed the emotions he was feeling. Grief and anger, guilt — everything was tangled together.

The original plan called for Dean and Longbow to either hook up with the unit they had swung into the area with, or, missing them, trek about twenty miles southeast to a small observation post held by another Marine unit.

Twenty miles in the Vietnamese heat was a good, long hike, even if you weren’t carry ing a body. Dean didn’t think about the distance at first, trudging slowly but steadily, using the path for long stretches before tucking into the jungle and making sure he wasn’t followed. Twice, he lost his way and found himself almost back where he started. By nightfall, he reckoned his destination was still fifteen miles away.

Dean knew he was going no farther with Longbow’s body. What had once been his friend was now a decrepit bag of gases and ill-smelling remains. And Dean himself was so exhausted he could barely carry himself. His only option was to leave Longbow where he could find him and come back with help.

Dean had no shovel. The best he could do for his friend was hide him in the brush. Dean marked several trees, and in the morning took two mea sure ments to the trail so he could be certain of the location. Tears streamed down his face as he headed in the direction of the Marine camp. It was the first and last time he ever cried in Vietnam, and one of the very few times he was moved to tears in his life. They were tears of shame, for in his heart he felt that he had failed his friend by abandoning his remains.

Four or five hours later, too exhausted to go on, Dean stopped for the rest of the night. He crawled under a large tree about a hundred yards from the trail and slept fitfully.

An hour before dawn, he woke and began walking again.

When he reached a road about a mile and a half later, he collapsed by its side.

Within a few minutes, he heard American voices nearby.

Dean shook his head and feet, rocked back and forth, made sure he was awake. The voices continued.

“Hey,” he said finally. “Hey, are you guys Marines?” The silence that followed convinced him he’d imagined the voices.

“Damn,” he muttered.

“Where are you?” came a voice back.

Dean got to his knees. “Are you Marines?”

“Who are you?”

“Dean. I’m a sniper. What unit are you in?” It turned out to be the company they’d come up with. The men were waiting for a he li cop ter, due any minute.

Dean told the commander where he’d left Longbow’s body. Four Marines were sent up the trail immediately —

Dean was too wasted, though they had to hold him back — but couldn’t find him.

“We’ll be back to get him,” said the captain. “I’ll bring a platoon — I’ll bring the damn division if I have to.” That captain was as good as his word, rallying a sizeable search force, but Longbow’s body was never found.

* * *

Dean rose and began pacing back and forth in the large hotel room.

If he didn’t shoot Phuc Dinh, who had he killed?

And if Phuc Dinh was alive, was Longbow?

They were both dead. Dean was sure of it. Sure of Longbow, and sure of Phuc Dinh. But in the gray stillness of the hotel room, Dean wondered if he was the shadow and they were the ones living and breathing.

44

The Art Room didn’t turn up anything interesting on the other computers. Though it was already after three, Lia decided she would go over to Pine Plains and see if she could talk to the police chief there. His dispatcher said he would be in the office until five and after that would be available at home.

“It’s jess around the corner,” the dispatcher added. “You can walk.”

Forty-five minutes later, Lia drove down the main street of the small town, gazing at the one-and two-story clapboard buildings as she searched for the police station. The town reminded her a great deal of the Connecticut village where she’d grown up. A sleepy farming community for most of its existence, it had recently been overrun with weekenders from New York City, who found the two-and-a-half-hour drive a worthwhile trade-off for relatively cheap real estate and the illusion of a simpler life, so long as that simpler life included Starbucks and a pricey dress