Chuck Logan - The Price of Blood

“Like The Creature from the Black Lagoon ,” giggled Broker.

They both went to the faucet and scrubbed off furiously. Broker returned to the lavatory and snapped a Yale lock on the door.

As they walked to the Jeep, J.T. mused, “Somebody should call one of those bleeding heart liberal anchor- persons on TV and report a case of po-leece brutality.”

“Should call Paul Wellstone,” Broker agreed.

A few minutes later Broker pulled the Jeep to the side of the access road leading into the remote campground. They opened the gate and after Broker drove through, they wrestled the gate shut. Broker turned to J.T. and shook his hand.

“You really going to do it? All the way to Vietnam?” asked J.T.

“I’m going to do it.”

“You gonna have backup?”

“I’m working on it,” said Broker.

Broker sat at the table in his cabin and waited for Ed Ryan to call. He lit a cigarette and made a face. He’d lit the filter end. In a foul mood, he hurled the cigarette across the room.

“What is wrong with you?” said Nina, who sat opposite him counting money. She had withdrawn ten thousand dollars from her savings in Ann Arbor. Now she was dividing crisp hundred-dollar bills into two piles. Two rubbery white security belts curled at her elbow. Their flimsy elastic straps reminded Broker of female undergarments.

“Nothing,” said Broker. He got up, manhandling his chair out of the way. The clatter echoed in the silence.

A lot was wrong. He was beginning to feel like a kid from a small town who’d gone off to see the world and had been turned around by some big leaguers .

Bevode’s warning still echoed in his ears. They’re still using you .

There was one person who definitely hadn’t used him that night, unless he’d masterminded the gold robbery from his cell in a Communist jail .

Broker walked to the table and snatched at the phone.

“I thought we were waiting for Ryan to call,” said Nina.

“I’m calling Trin.” Broker dug in his wallet for the card with the Vietnam number.

“Isn’t that jumping the gun?” said Nina.

Broker took a deep breath to clear away twenty years of cobwebs and punched up an international patch and hit the number. Satellites played tag during an eerie silence. Then, after five rings, a sleepy Vietnamese voice answered.

“English?” asked Broker.

“Okay. Huong Giang Hotel on Le Loi Street.”

“I’m trying to locate Nguyen Van Trin. I was given this number,” said Broker.

“Sure, Trin,” said the voice. “He work this desk sometime.”

“I have to talk to him.”

Pause. “It’s four in the morning here.”

Broker had totally overlooked the time zones. “It’s urgent.”

“I’ll have to wake people up,” said the clerk. He took Broker’s phone number and asked what message he should give to Trin.

“Tell him I’m with Ray Pryce’s daughter and I want my cigarette lighter back.” Broker repeated the message slowly so the clerk could write it down. Broker hung up the phone.

“Feel better now?” said Nina with a lilt of sarcasm. She stuffed the thick wads of hundreds in the security belts.

Broker looked over his shoulder. He had recurring visions of Bevode Fret howling and bounding through the tamarack like a Sasquatch tarred and feathered in turds and clammy wads of toilet paper.

“Trin’s a long shot,” said Nina.

“We need someone we can trust over there. An expediter, to finesse the Vietnamese authorities.”

“Finesse? You haven’t seen this guy in twenty years.”

Broker shook his head. “Trin used to be a real sharp individual.”

“Used to be won’t do it,” said Nina in a slightly testy voice. “I’m starting to think we should keep it American right down the line.”

“The new world order don’t cut shit in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, goddammit. They belong to a small exclusive modern club, people who have won real wars. The Gulf doesn’t count.”

“There’s the U.S. Liaison Office in Hanoi,” she insisted.

“We were both in the army, remember. We both got the royal shaft.” He glared across the table. “What did you talk about with your army buddies while I was in New Orleans?”

Nina recrossed her arms. “I was curious to see if anybody I knew was in or had been in Hanoi on the MIA mission.”

“Well?”

She shook her head.

“Good,” said Broker.

“Why good,” she snapped.

“Because the minute we tell anybody else what we’re doing the whole thing blows up in our faces. They don’t call it ‘gold rush’ for nothing.”

“I presume we’re going to let someone in on it who has some authority, to-you know- arrest them ,” said Nina. Anger turned her freckles slightly purple.

“Look,” fumed Broker. “What I do isn’t a science. It’s not enough to know the peasant wants to steal the goat. You have to catch him stealing the goddamn goat. We have to catch them digging it up and loading it. In the act.”

“Right,” she shot back. “If Tuna turns up. If the gold’s where he says it is. If LaPorte goes for it after you robbed his house. If Trin’s reliable. If we can get the Vietnamese to cooperate…if, if.”

Broker ground his teeth and rubbed his eyes. He was exhausted. His whole body ached from the tussle with Bevode. They were both beat. Getting snarly.

Striving for control, he said, “I’m thinking, we get there and check out Trin. We locate the stuff. Then you approach the MIA mission. I tip LaPorte. The MIA people bring in the Vietnamese and hopefully they don’t screw up dropping the net-”

“I don’t like it,” said Nina.

“What don’t you like?”

“Relying so much on Trin.”

“I know how to do this,” he asserted.

“I’m not so sure.”

“Are you on the rag or something?”

“Hey. Fuck you.” She balled her fists.

Edgy, he shot back a flash of street. “You fuck me your heart’ll give out.”

Nina glowered and stamped from the room, slammed the screen door, and stalked off the porch. Outside, she paced back and forth, arms locked across her chest, trampling pine needles. Broker smoothed his fingers through his new short hair. The pressure was definitely starting to get to them.

Then the phone rang. Broker snatched it up. A calm voice on the other side of the planet announced in impeccable English, “I need some flints for the Zippo. They’re hard to get over here.”

The screen door slammed and Nina stood at his side. “Ryan?”

Broker shook his head and turned to the receiver and wondered aloud, “Trin?”

“It’s me.”

“I’m coming over there,” said Broker.

“I know.”

“What do you mean, you know?”

“It’s all arranged. Jimmy bought you and Nina Pryce a tour. I’m a tour guide. I have hotels reserved in Hanoi and Hue. We’ll take the train from Hanoi. I just need a time and a flight number.”

“Where’s Jimmy, Trin?”

“Don’t you know? He’s in jail. In America.” Trin’s voice sounded confused. The long-distance connection had a delay and a background rush like the inside of an artificial lung. Hard to talk.

“I’ll be in touch as soon as I have a flight,” said Broker. There was an awkward silence. “Long time, Trin,” he said.

“Yes,” said Trin. “Long time.”

He hung up the phone, crossed his arms heavily on the table and lowered his head. What did he expect. Trin had been an intelligence operative. He’d never discuss business on the phone.

He looked at Nina and said in an amazed voice, “He’s expecting us.”