Chuck Logan - The Price of Blood

Broker rolled his eyes and yelled back, “The United States doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the Vietnamese government, goddammit. They haven’t even set up an embassy yet. I want Cyrus, Nina; I want him bad. But it has to go down right or he’ll weasel away. We have to check out Tuna’s story first. Locate the stuff. See if the orders are with…the remains.” He swiveled his head to see the road behind. “Is there anybody following us?”

“No. I’ve been watching,” she went on without missing a beat. “There’s an advance team in Hanoi. There’s the U.S. liaison office. I have a number-”

“Slow down.”

Nina grabbed the wheel as Broker overdrove the shoulder and swiped ten yards of weeds growing at the lip of a ditch. “You slow down.” She glanced in the back-seat where the Mini-14 lay, locked and loaded, in plain view. “Isn’t it against the law to drive around with that rifle uncased?”

Broker ignored her and reached across her knees and clawed his cell phone from the glove compartment. The battery was dead. And no spare. They’d left the other one with Tuna. He slowed down to seventy-five when he saw an Amoco station up ahead at a crossroads. He braked precipitously, leaving another smoking swatch of Goodyear products in Wisconsin.

“Jesus,” muttered Nina, bracing.

“Phone,” said Broker.

“What?”

“Tickets. Visas. Phone.” He left the motor running and the door open as he ran for the pay phone. After he picked up the receiver he realized it was a toll call. He still had a wad of hundreds in his pocket from New Orleans. Two dimes and six pennies.

He ran back to the Jeep. “I need quarters.” Nina dug in her purse, handed him two coins. He used one of the quarters to call an operator and place a collect person-to-person call to Don Larson’s office in Stillwater.

A woman answered and told the operator that Don Larson wasn’t in the office, he had taken his daughter to the dentist. Broker ran back for the car, jumped behind the wheel, and suddenly just sat there.

“Now what?” asked Nina, who still bounced with forward momentum.

“What are we doing?” Broker proposed calmly.

“It looks to me like we were running for our lives,” she said.

Broker shook his head. “If there were more of them they would have stormed the cabin. Short of that, they wouldn’t have let Tony come up there after the shooting.”

Nina thought about it.

Broker continued. “LaPorte can’t afford to let anybody in on this. Bevode told me. It’s a small, hand-picked group. The Fret family. Which is now diminished by two.”

“Maybe they don’t care about us. They know where Tuna is.”

“Tuna’s beyond intimidation. No.” Broker shook his head. “If I was LaPorte I’d put my money where it buys more, like in Vietnam. He’s probably paid so much in bribes over there that he’s a majority stockholder in the Communist party.”

“Very funny.”

“I’m serious. He’ll just hook into their diplomatic service and get our visa forms. Air Vietnam is a state-run company, so he’ll probably connect with them too. When we get tickets, he’ll have his hands on a manifest.” Broker leaned back and slid his wallet from his pocket. He dug around, handed Nina a card and then shut his eyes. “He knows where I’m going, anyway.”

“The Century Hotel, Hue City. Who wrote this room information?” she asked.

“Lola LaPorte. Can you decipher psychological traits in handwriting?”

“No.”

“Neither can I. I used to know this very serious FBI lady who could, but she transferred to San Francisco.” Broker grinned. “She told me I was a fugitive from modern psychology.”

Nina sank deeper in her seat and extended her hand. “Give me one of those health food cigarettes.”

Broker opened one eye.

She explained. “I only smoke when I drink too much, which is usually once a year on my birthday. And in special circumstances.” She grimaced.

“Like when you shoot somebody.” Broker handed over his cigarettes and said, “I’m thirsty, what about you?” Nina agreed so he tracked mud into the station and bought a cold six-pack of Mountain Dew. When he came out, Nina said, “Yuk, I never drink that stuff.”

“We’re nodding out. It’s loaded with caffeine and it’s cold.”

They slouched down in the seats like two teenagers sneaking cigarettes and sipped from the green cans.

Broker suggested, “We finish our pop, try to clean up, drive leisurely to Hudson, Wisconsin, and check into a motel-just in case I’m wrong and LaPorte has someone watching my house. Don should be back by then. We find out about our travel plans, go shopping-”

Nina sat up. “You have the map.”

Broker tapped his pocket. “I have the map.”

“Then let’s get going before we fall asleep.”

Broker started the Jeep and pulled back on the road. He was silent for a few minutes and then, keeping his eyes straight ahead, he said, “That was some shooting…”

Her voice came back, a flat conditioned response, “Guys are always surprised. It’s because we don’t bring bad habits or macho posturing to the firing line. And we’re good at taking instruction.”

Broker said it again, “That was some shooting, Pryce .”

“Thank you.”

Broker parked in a secluded rest area and they changed out of their sopping clothes. After cat-washing in the men’s lavatory, he dug in his travel bag and emerged barefoot in his loafers, wearing rumpled cotton slacks and a fresh T-shirt. Nina waited by the Jeep in clean jeans, the ruffled, faded green blouse she’d worn that morning in the hospital, and sandals. They stripped the muddy seat covers and Broker unloaded the rifle, folded down the backseat, and stuck the weapon under it.

When they were back on the road, Nina leaned over and dabbed at a smudge of swamp on Broker’s cheek with her red bandanna. “So you really think LaPorte will be waiting for us at the airport in Hanoi?”

Broker nodded. “Close. I picked up a Vietnam tourist book in New Orleans and read it on the way back. The Hanoi terminal is tiny, on a military airstrip an hour’s drive outside of the city. So it’s probably a pretty secure area. Lots of customs cops for sure. He’ll probably spot us there and follow us. That’s why we need an expediter like Trin. We’ll have to go to ground, fast. We can’t do that on our own. We don’t even speak the language.”

Nina stared out the window. Holstein dairy cows, large and stupid as black-and-white-spotted balloons, bobbled in a pasture. “And you’re definitely against contacting any Americans.”

“We tell nobody nothing until we get a feel for what it’s like over there-”

“Okay, then you better tell me everything you know about Nguyen Van Trin.”

Broker tried to visualize Trin as the green Wisconsin dairy land zipped by. “He’s a guy who always went his own way. He comes from Mandarins. His family owned a cement factory near Hue City. A rich kid. He spent four years at Georgetown getting a degree in business and English lit. So he speaks better English than both of us put together.

“He went home and freaked out his parents by becoming an apprentice monk. In 1966 he was real involved in the Buddhist Uprising in Hue. The Buddhists were crushed. Trin said what the Buddhists needed was more guns. So he joined the Viet Cong.

“He switched sides after the Tet Offensive. That’s when he got involved with your dad. They had this notion they could split the Viet Cong away from Hanoi. It was pretty esoteric stuff. He was a pretty disillusioned guy by the time I met him.”

Nina squinted. “Can we trust him?”

Broker smiled. “He told me something once. ‘When you share an idea it grows another brain and a set of hands and a pair of feet to walk around on. It can get away from you.’”