Never Say Die (6 page)

"Anything concrete?''

"Would you call an eyewitness concrete?"

"Depends on the eyewitness."

"A Lao villager."

"He saw your father?"

"No, that's the whole point—he didn't."

"I'm confused."

"Right after the plane went down," she explained, "Dad's buddies printed up leaflets advertising a reward of two kilos of gold to anyone who brought in proof of the crash. The leaflets were dropped along the border and all over Pathet Lao territory. A few weeks later a villager came out of the jungle to claim the reward. He said he'd found the wreckage of a plane, that it had crashed just inside the "Vietnam border. He described it right down to the number on the tail. And he swore there were only two bodies on board, one in the cargo hold, another in the cockpit. The plane had a crew of
three."

''
What did the investigators say about that?''

"We didn't hear this from them. We learned about it only after the classified report got stuffed into our mailbox, with a note scribbled 'From a friend.' I think one of Dad's old Air America buddies got wind of a cover-up and decided to let the family know about it."

Guy was standing absolutely still, like a cat in the shadows. When he spoke, she could tell by his voice that he was very, very interested.

"What did your mother do then?" he asked.

"She pursued it, of course. She wouldn't give up. She hounded the CIA. Air America. She got nothing out of them. But she did get a few anonymous phone calls telling her to shut up."

"Or?"

"Or she'd learn things about Dad she didn't want to know. Embarrassing things."

"Other women? What?"

This was the part that made Willy angry. She could barely bring herself to talk about it. "They implied—" She let out a breath. "They implied he was working for the other side. That he was a traitor."

There was a pause. "And you don't believe it," he said softly.

Her chin shot up. "Hell, no, I don't believe it! Not a word. It was just their way to scare us off. To keep us from digging up the truth. It wasn't the only stunt they pulled. When we kept asking questions, they stopped release of Dad's back pay, which by then was somewhere in the tens of thousands. Anyway, we floundered around for a while, trying to get information. Then the war ended, and we thought we'd finally hear the answers. We watched the POWs come back. It was tough on Mom, seeing all those reunions on TV. Hearing Nixon talk about our brave men finally coming home. Because hers didn't. But we were surprised to hear of one man who did make it home—one of the crew members on Dad's plane.''

Guy straightened in surprise. "Then there
was
a survivor?"

"Luis Valdez, the cargo kicker. He bailed out as the plane was going down. He was captured almost as soon as he hit the ground. Spent the next five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp."

"Doesn't that explain the missing body? If Valdez bailed out-"

"There's more. The very day Valdez flew back to the States, he called us. I answered the phone. I could hear he was scared. He'd been warned by Intelligence not to talk to anyone. But he thought he owed it to Dad to let us know what had happened. He told us there was a passenger on that flight, a Lao who was already dead when the plane went down. And that the body in the cockpit was probably Kozlowski, the copilot. That still leaves a missing body."

"Your father."

She nodded. "We went back to the CIA with this information. And you know what? They denied there was any passenger on that plane, Lao or otherwise. They said it carried only a shipment of aircraft parts."

"What did Air America say?"

"They claim there's no record of any passenger."

"But you had Valdez's testimony."

She shook her head. "The day after he called, the day he was supposed to come see us, he shot himself in the head. Suicide. Or so the police report said."

She could tell by his long silence that Guy was shocked. "How convenient," he murmured.

"For the first time in my life, I saw my mother scared. Not for herself, but for me. She was afraid of what might happen, what they might do. So she let the matter drop. Until…" Willy paused.

"There was something else?''

She nodded. "About a year after Valdez died—I guess it was around '76—a funny thing happened to my mother's bank account. It picked up an extra fifteen thousand dollars. All the bank could tell her was that the deposit had been made in Bangkok. A year later, it happened again, this time, around ten thousand."

"All that money, and she never found out where it came from?"

"No. All these years she's been trying to figure it out. Wondering if one of Dad's buddies, or maybe Dad himself—" Willy shook her head and sighed. "Anyway, a few months ago, she found out she had cancer. And suddenly it seemed very important to learn the truth. She's too sick to make this trip herself, so she asked me to come. And I'm hitting the same brick wall she hit twenty years ago."

"Maybe you haven't gone to the right people."

"Who
are
the right people?"

Quietly, Guy shifted toward her. "I have connections," he said softly. "I could find out for you."

Their hands brushed on the railing; Willy felt a delicious shock race through her whole arm. She pulled her hand away.

"What sort of connections?"

"Friends in the business."

"Exactly what is your business?"

"Body counts. Dog tags. I'm with the Army ID Lab."

"I see. You're in the military."

He laughed and leaned sideways against the railing. "No way. I bailed out after Nam. Went back to college, got a master's in stones and bones. That's physical anthropology, emphasis on Southeast Asia. Anyway, I worked a while in a museum, then found out the army paid better. So I hired on as a civilian contractor. I'm still sorting bones, only these have names, ranks and serial numbers."

"And that's why you're going to Vietnam?"

He nodded. "There are new sets of remains to pick up in Saigon and Hanoi."

Remains.
Such a clinical word for what was once a human being.

"I know a few people,'' he said.'' I might be able to help you."

"Why?"

"You've made me curious."

"Is that all it is? Curiosity?"

His next move startled her. He reached out and brushed back her short, tumbled hair. The brief contact of his fingers seemed to leave her whole neck sizzling. She froze, unable to react to this unexpectedly intimate contact.

"Maybe I'm just a nice guy," he whispered.

Oh, hell, he's going to kiss me,
she thought.
He's going to kiss me and I'm going to let him, and what happens next is anyone's guess
—

She batted his hand away and took a panicked step back. "I don't believe in nice guys."

"Afraid of men?"

"I'm not afraid of men. But I don't trust them, either."

"Still," he said with an obvious note of laughter in his voice, "you let me into your room."

"Maybe it's time to let you out." She stalked across the room and yanked open the door. "Or are you going to be difficult?"

"Me?" To her surprise, he followed her to the door. "I'm never difficult."

"I'll bet."

"Besides, I can't hang around tonight. I've got more important business."

"Really."

"Really." He glanced at the lock on her door. "I see you've got a heavy-duty dead bolt. Use it. And take my advice—don't go out on the town tonight."

"Darn! That was next on my agenda."

"Oh, and in case you need me—" he turned and grinned at her from the doorway "—I'm staying at the Liberty Hotel. Call anytime."

She started to snap,
Don't hold your breath.
But before she could get out the words, he'd left.

She was staring at a closed door.

Tobias Wolff swiveled his wheelchair around from the liquor cabinet and faced his old friend. "If I were you, Guy, I'd stay the hell out of it."

It had been five years since they'd last seen each other. Toby still looked as muscular as ever—at least from the waist up. Fifteen years' confinement to a wheelchair had bulked out those shoulders and arms. Still, the years had taken their inevitable toll. Toby was close to fifty now, and he looked it. His bushy hair, cut Beethoven style, was almost entirely gray. His face was puffy and sweating in the tropical heat. But the dark eyes were as sharp as ever.

"Take some advice from an old Company man," he said, handing Guy a glass of Scotch. "There's no such thing as a coincidental meeting. There are only planned encounters."

"Coincidence or not," said Guy, "Willy Maitland could be the break I've been waiting for."

"Or she could be nothing but trouble."

"What've I got to lose?"

"Your life?"

"Come on, Toby! You're the only one I can trust to give me a straight answer."

"It was a long time ago. I wasn't directly connected to the case."

"But you were in Vientiane when it happened. You must remember something about the Maitland file."

"Only what I heard in passing, none of it confirmed. Hell, it was like the Wild West out there. Rumors flying thicker 'n the mosquitoes."

"But not as thick as you covert-action boys."

Toby shrugged. "We had a job to do. We did it."

"You remember who handled the Maitland case?"

"Had to be Mike Micklewait. I know he was the case officer who debriefed that villager—the one who came in for the reward."

"Did Micklewait think the man was on the level?"

"Probably not. I know the villager never got the reward."

"Why wasn't Maitland's family told about all this?"

"Hey, Maitland wasn't some poor dumb draftee. He was working for Air America. In other words, CIA. That's a job you don't talk about. Maitland knew the risks."

"The family deserved to hear about any new evidence." Guy thought about the surreptitious way Willy and her mother
had
learned of it.

Toby laughed. "There was a secret war going on, remember? We weren't even supposed to be in Laos. Keeping families informed was at the bottom of anyone's priority list."

"Was there some other reason it was hushed up? Something to do with the passenger?''

Toby's eyebrows shot up. "Where did you hear that rumor?"

"Willy Maitland. She heard there was a Lao on board. Everyone's denying his existence, so my guess is he was a very important person. Who was he?"

"I don't know." Toby wheeled around and looked out the open window of his apartment. From the darkness came the sounds and smells of the Bangkok streets. Meat sizzling on an open-air grill. Women laughing. The rumble of a
tuk-tuk.
"There was a hell of a lot going on back then. Things we never talked about. Things we were even ashamed to talk about. What with all the agents and counteragents and generals and soldiers of fortune, you could never really be sure who was running the place. Everyone was pulling strings, trying to get rich quick. I couldn't wait to get the hell out." He slapped the wheelchair in anger. "And this is where I end up. Great retirement." Sighing, he leaned back and stared out at the night. "Let it be, Guy," he said softly. "If you're right—if someone's out to hit Maitland's kid—then this is too hot to handle."