Chuck Logan - The Price of Blood

Broker studied her. She was so close and eager to take her shot. Like David, she had the guts to cool it in Goliath’s shadow and the murderous concentration to bet it all on one throw.

But she was young and the petticoats of her ambition were showing-as was her need to control events. She wanted to be identified officially with the project from the start; she wanted it documented.

Nina Pryce, mentioned in dispatches.

Yeah, he was probably in love with her and she was a goddamned careerist. She’d be gone the second this thing was over.

“Okay,” she said reluctantly. “We’ll play it by ear with Mister Trin. But if he gets funny, we head for the liaison office. Agreed?”

“Deal,” said Broker.

“You have the map,” she worried suddenly.

“Right here.” Broker tapped his waist.

“Didn’t think I’d be this jumpy,” she said. “We haven’t even left the hotel yet.”

“We’ll do better once we’re in the countryside.”

“Broker, I just had this really terrible image: Bevode Fret in Hanoi.”

Broker grimaced. He hadn’t thought about Fret for a whole continent. “Look, are you hungry or anything?”

She shook her head. “I’m clogged with airplane food. I need some sleep. About fourteen hours.”

“We both do. I’ll check on Trin and be right back. I’m sleeping here.”

She squinted at him. “I’m not in a mood for fooling around.”

“Sleep,” said Broker. He left her room and unlocked his door. Trin had taken off his shoes and sprawled, slack-jawed, passed out on the bed. Broker took the smoldering cigarette from his fingers and turned off the TV.

He returned to Nina’s room with his toothbrush. She was already under the covers. He pulled the blinds against the late afternoon light and showered quickly, brushed his teeth, and slid in beside her. He dimmed the lights with a knob on the console beside the bed.

“Can you believe it,” said Nina. “I’m in Vietnam and I’m freezing to death.”

“I can turn down the AC.”

“No, just…spoon with me.”

He snuggled up to her back. In bed, bare skin touching, she unbuckled some of her armor.

“You two aren’t planning to ditch me? Go after the gold alone?” she mused.

“No.”

Her toe dug into his leg. “Get me lost somewhere?”

“No, goddammit.”

“Men lie,” she purred.

“Some men,” said Broker.

In the morning Trin was gone.

Broker fingered the scrawled note he found laying in an oval impression in the bedding. “I’ll be back. T.” Yeah, maybe, and after doing what? Despite his protestations to the contrary, he was less certain about the conflicted character of Nguyen Van Trin in the morning than he’d been the night before. He muttered through a shower and shave and, still grumbling, went next door, informed Nina, and showed her the note.

“Why am I not surprised?” she said. But she smiled gamely and put on the silver earrings with the little jade half moons. Like a token of peace.

They went down and checked at the desk. No message. They also discovered that Trin had reserved their rooms for only one night. After they’d settled up and had their passports back, a smiling hostess seated them in the restaurant that took up one end of the lobby. Warily, they bent over their croissants and coffee. The hotel was their small fort of broken English and indecipherable smiles. Beyond the plate glass windows Hanoi looked increasingly hostile. Gray clouds hung like crepe.

Nina allowed Broker to have one cup of thick, not quite hot coffee. Then she started.

“I’m calling the MIA people. You agree?”

“Give it half an hour.”

“C’mon, Broker, he was expecting something-maybe a payoff from Jimmy. When he didn’t get it he made conversation, drank all the booze in sight, and passed out. Now he’s bugged on us.” She aimed a pointed stare. “We shouldn’t have confided in him. Every bartender in Hanoi probably knows our story.”

“Wrong,” said Broker, gesturing toward the hotel entrance with his coffee cup.

Trin marched through the lobby carrying a shoulder bag and a small plastic attache case. He stopped at the desk and was directed toward the restaurant by the receptionist. He had changed his black T-shirt for an ugly patterned shirt that reminded Broker of the road-killed couch in his Stillwater house. His face was scrubbed, his hair was combed, and he wore sunglasses above a brilliant Stevie Wonder smile.

Trin sat down, officiously opened his briefcase, and ordered a glass of hot tea. Nina folded her arms. Trin grinned. “I had to get my clothes and do some things,” he said.

“I’ll bet,” said Nina.

Trin smiled. With zany enthusiasm, he countered, “But we are agreed. We all jump over the cliff together.” He zipped open his case and pulled out a pile of papers. “Our itinerary, so we look official.”

Broker went to the buffet and refilled his coffee. Trin and Nina leaned forward, heads and shoulders over the tablecloth, and discreetly rehashed their MIA office debate.

Broker resumed his seat and watched the intersection in front of the hotel with the professional interest of a patrol copper. Bicycles, cyclos, motor scooters, motorcycles, handcarts, left-over Russian Jeeps, military trucks, occasional cars, and even one old mamasan with ocher betel nut-stained teeth, shiny black pantaloons, and bare splayed feet carrying poles heavy with vegetables slung over her shoulder-they all convened in front of his eyes. No stop light. No stop signs. No right of way, no white lines on the pavement. A heavy volume of traffic.

Everyone in that street aimed dead center at the middle of the intersection. Even inside the air-conditioned lobby he could hear the cacophony of horns and bells. They carried a tonal range as varied as the five potential accents that could mark each vowel in the Vietnamese language.

Jesus-a Honda with a kid, maybe four years old, planted between the driver’s arms, with a wife, infant in arms on the back. Headed straight into a three-way crunch with a minivan and a cyclo. The minivan leaned on its horn, the cyclo and the Honda adjusted slightly, and miraculously all three passed through the bull’s-eye unscathed. The flow did not pause.

Amazing.

Nina said, “I’ll just check them out. I’ll be vague.”

“No, no, not yet,” protested Trin. “You’ll be on a police list in five minutes.” They resumed their argument. Broker continued to study traffic.

He was beginning to sense an underlying pattern to the rolling mayhem. Just had to knock his American road sense a little cockeyed, recalibrate his vision a few degrees…

An American would create instant carnage on the street. An American would want to know the rules so he could then measure himself against them, either obey or break them. At least test them. These people moved instinctively like water, all part of the same stream. Connected.

Nina said, “How do I know you and Broker won’t dig it up and load it on the fishing boat and leave me stranded?”

Trin protested, “It’s not much of a boat. The fact is, it’s a lousy boat. We’d have to hire a bigger seaworthy boat and men to crew it; my people couldn’t do it. The minute we let anyone else in on the secret, that’s when our throats get cut. The same problem that Cyrus has.” Exasperated, Trin waved his hands. “Where would we take it? I’m no sailor.”

Broker glanced at his watch. “Ten minutes,” he said. “Probably two thousand people on a thousand assorted means of transport went through this intersection-no light, no signs, in constant motion and not one pile-up. Now I know why we lost the war.”

“Bullshit,” said Trin dryly, “accidents are common.”