Chuck Logan - The Price of Blood

Trin smiled back. “I’ve been working this thing for years, since Jimmy sent Kevin Eichleay. Waiting to see who would come. But I didn’t really know what we had until we dug it up. Now they’ll get the credit.”

Broker grinned. “That whole story about the reeducation camps?”

“All true. I ate frogs, little goddamn birds,” Trin protested ruefully. “But…things changed. When the door opened to the West I was resurrected in slow stages. I had the language skills and the background to fit in with the tourist trade. And antiquities are being looted.” He shrugged. “And I was lucky. I had a sponsor in the party.”

“With a big letter A on her license plate,” said Broker.

Trin sighed and inclined his head. “She kept a lid on the operation. She kept them at arm’s length in Hanoi. She took charge of bringing in the force on the beach last night. Without her…” he shook his head, “catastrophe.”

Mai Linh stood in the crowd of dignitaries, at ease now in a tailored gray Hanoi power suit and sunglasses. With her arms folded, she chatted with Nina, who also had her arms folded across her chest. Broker recalled seeing female executives taking up those defensive stances talking to each other in American offices. Despite Nina’s bandages, she and Mai Linh shook hands. Nina resumed talking to the guys from State.

Mai Linh turned her head, lowered one lens of her sunglasses with a crooked finger, and winked at Trin. They exchanged curt sentences in Vietnamese. Then she walked away. “Great,” said Trin. “She has to go to Hanoi.”

Broker grinned. “I think you can afford the fare.”

“Shhh,” said Trin. “Let’s, ah, take a walk on the beach.”

They wandered away from the crowd around the helicopters and the pit. “Just checking,” said Broker. “Am I going to get arrested for stealing antiquities too?”

“I have a feeling my wife and I will need a sponsor in America in the near future,” said Trin from the side of his mouth. “If I don’t get killed by my own border guards sneaking thirteen crates of rare gold across the mountains into Laos. I don’t know exactly how to exchange it yet, but I’ll figure it out. Half and half.”

“Okay,” said Broker.

They started back toward the gathering. Nina came out, alone, to meet them. “Excuse me, Trin. Phil, would you walk with me?”

They went down the beach, away from the pit and the crates of gold and the blood drying under the sand.

“You know what happens now, what I get back there,” she said. He nodded. She took a deep breath. “I can’t cry,” she said. “Audie fucking Murphy wouldn’t cry.”

“Forget Audie fucking Murphy. You’re Nina fucking Pryce.”

“Aw shoot.” She threw her arms, bandaged hands and all, around his neck and burst into tears.

“Hey, knock it off, Jesus-hey, here, I have something that belongs to you,” he protested.

She sniffed and wiped her nose on her baggy sleeve. “Okay. I’m better now. What?”

Broker carefully worked the small glass bottle from his hip pocket with his taped hands. Somehow he had kept it intact during the ordeal in the pit. She stared at her earlobe and earring, an exotic sea creature swimming in rice whiskey.

“It’s how we ghouls profess our love,” he said, proud of the line, which he had rehearsed for an hour.

She closed her adhesive-plastered knuckles around it and backed away, uncertain. “Thanks,” she said, lowering her eyes. She turned and ran back down the beach to where they were all waiting for her.

And Broker figured what the hell-they could travel side by side for a little longer, but they were in different lanes and pretty soon she’d turn off toward the big time, where she’d been headed all along.

Trin joined him and they wandered back to the crowd. Another helicopter was landing. “That’s not a Russian,” said Broker.

“No, commercial. French make, I think.”

Wide-eyed Westerners with electronic gear piled out. Boxes, wires, cables. A television camera with letters on it. The TV crew literally slipped on their own drool when they saw the pile of gold ingots glittering in the sun.

“Oh good.” Trin laughed. “CNN is here.”

Broker watched the black American approach Nina and introduce himself. “Chief Warrant Officer Holly, Mam.” He lowered his voice and recited stiffly, “Ah, for the record, I think you got a raw deal in the Gulf.”

“Thank you, chief,” said Nina diplomatically.

“Now,” said Chief Holly, “if you’ll step over here, we’re about to get started excavating this site.”

It became very quiet on the beach as the recovery team made their measurements and took their pictures and very slowly began to remove buckets of sand and wood fragments from the bottom of the pit. The buckets were shifted through screened boxes. Artifacts were carefully set aside and labeled.

They sectioned off the dig with twine and labeled each segment. Nina stood very soberly, concerned. She had dusted the chip off her shoulder. No more defiant Jericho eyes. Broker figured she was calibrating herself. Video cameras were all ready recording the event. CNN was getting ready to tape.

She did not show emotion when the outlines of a human skeleton began to emerge from the sand. A hush fell at a rusty jungle…

Dog tags.

Nor did she wall herself off. She asked appropriate questions. Brief, to the point, about the procedure.

For the last time gold glinted in the pit.

Photographs were taken from all angles. Notes were made. People spoke into tape recorders in two languages. The team passed the cigarette case in gloved hands to Chief Holly who handed it to his Vietnamese counterpart. The Vietnamese carried it to the ramp and turned it over to another older Vietnamese who, walking in step with the American from the diplomatic service, carried it up and presented it to Nina.

There was a discussion among the technical people and they decided to open the cigarette case inside a large plastic bag, shielded from sun and wind. Very slowly, wearing transparent plastic gloves, a technical assistant pried the case open with something that resembled a dental tool.

A dirty lump of smoky gray plastic was folded inside. The tech very carefully peeled it open. The note was faint but legible, bazen tinged:

Over his protest, here noted, I order Major Raymond Pryce to command a helo extraction of materials vital to United States security from the National Bank of Hue. 0200 hours, 30 April, 1975.

Signed,

Cyrus LaPorte, Colonel, commanding

Tape ran. Camera shutters snapped like a piranha feeding frenzy. With a deft sixth sense, Nina Pryce anticipated it and tilted her face from profile to a more flattering three-quarter view that didn’t show her bad ear.

September, Devil’s Rock, Minnesota

They were supposed to go fishing. First J.T. called and canceled, then Ed Ryan. Tom Jeffords said some idiot backpacker from the Cities had gone missing, so count him out.

And John Eisenhower couldn’t even claim police work as an excuse. He was giving a speech at a banquet in Stillwater. Broker shook his head. You just couldn’t rely on cops.

A framed letter from the Premier of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam hung on his cabin wall and thanked him for his aid in restoring a National Treasure to the People of Vietnam.

The letter did not mention the seven bars of Imperial gold that he had been quietly awarded for his services. The back channel deal had been arranged by Col. Nguyen Van Trin of the Vietnamese Border Police. Equally quietly, Trin and his wife and their two children were about to become American citizens.

Fatty Naslund had negotiated the sale of the seven Imperial ingots to the Smithsonian Institution. The gold would go on display in the fall. The amount of money that changed hands exceeded the gold’s weight-based market value. Now Fatty was off on his first real-life clandestine mission. He was in Vientiane, Laos, outfitted in a whole Patagonia catalog, to bargain secretly on behalf of a small, discreet group of gold collectors. One of the crates that Trin and Broker had sneaked off had been full of the really old Cham relics.