Ian Slater: Asian Front

“I’m sorry for the intrusion, Mr. La Roche, but I just wondered if I could get a few comments on the—”

The kid’s fervent earnestness was all too familiar to La Roche. Everybody thought that when you were rich you knew some secret. Whenever you farted they took it to be a prediction of the market. He’d offer the kid a twenty, but he knew the kid wouldn’t take it. Full of integrity and all the other loser philosophy.

“Later, kid. All right? Come around in the morning— about—”

“You remember Congressman Hailey, Mr. La Roche?”

“What?”

“A Congressman Hailey. You know, the one you said you’d show all those pictures of with other men — if he didn’t try and transfer a pilot to—”

“Hey!” Jay said. “Don’t you come around here—”

“I’m his son.”

The bullet from the silencer passed straight through the would-be newspaper reporter’s notebook into La Roche’s mouth, flinging him hard against the door, coming out high up on his neck. La Roche, eyes bulging, jawbone quivering violently, staggered forward, his mouth full of blood, pouring down over his robe, turning the gold dragons red. As he slumped to the hallway carpet, James Hailey, Jr., shot La Roche again, point-blank in the face. Then he put the gun to La Roche’s temple, pulled the trigger again, and, unhurriedly pocketing the firearm, walked quickly back down the fire escape stairwell, and down by Dutch Harbor.

After wiping all prints from the gun grip, he tossed it far out into the frigid black water, called a cab, and told the driver he had to catch a plane in half an hour from Dutch Harbor to Juneau and then on to the lower forty-eight.

Fifteen minutes later a shoe salesman, after checking into Davy’s, found Jay La Roche lying across the hallway.

Noting the time, and after taking a blood sample from Mrs. La Roche as she lay unconscious on the bed, the police could quickly ascertain that she had been completely out of it at the time of the murder, the high concentration of chloral hydrate showing up in her blood sample. Besides which, there wasn’t a weapon.

“Did Mr. La Roche have any enemies?” the Dutch Harbor police chief asked La Roche’s lawyer.

The lawyer said, “Let me count the ways,” and his gut began jiggling like jelly.

“What d’you mean?” the police chief asked.

“Shall we say, Sheriff, that Mr. La Roche had many competitors and, in a big business like his — a man makes enemies on the way up. People think they were badly done by.”

“Then he won’t be missed,” the police chief proffered.

The lawyer had tears in his eyes — he couldn’t hold in the laughter.

Frank Shirer became a household word, his name splashed all over the British, European, and American press, including La Roche’s tabloids, as ace extraordinaire. It wasn’t that Harriers hadn’t already proved themselves — they’d shot down much faster planes, Mirages, than themselves during the Falklands War — but this was the first time a Harrier had downed a Fulcrum. After the terrible losses of all nine B-52s on the successful raid over Turpan, the Harriers’ victory was welcome news.

Even so, Lana was more interested in talking to Frank in her long distance call to Peshawar about when they should have the wedding. She would have preferred it to be in June, but the feeling of so many young couples was that America was locked into a war with China whether she liked it or not. It was more common than not to hear the cease-fire General Cheng had successfully gained from Washington being described cynically as another “Yugoslavian” agreement that Chairman Nie and General Cheng had cooked up merely to buy time. Support for this view was fueled by rumors that thousands of troops were being rushed from the southern provinces across the Yangtze, on anything that would float, to Beijing military district. And there was a powerful feeling within the United States itself, with its Emergency Powers Act still on the books, that Freeman, whether Washington agreed or not, would soon be in the biggest battle so far.

If Shirer got publicity for his victory over the Fulcrum, it was nothing compared to the lavish praise of Freeman and his Second Army and, in particular, the SAS/D commandos, whose praises were sung by the once-terrified CBN newsman. The press, particularly those reporters who were camp followers and too lazy to go find their own stories, were only too happy to feed off the CBN reporter’s eyewitness account of the great tank battle. One of the camp followers from the press asked Aussie Lewis how the CBN reporter had fared under fire.

“He was great!” Aussie said. “He just — hung on in there.”

The La Roche tabloids ran four-inch headlines — FREEMAN ROUTS REDS — and now the CBN reporter, name Frederick F. Nelson II, was booked for months ahead on every TV talk show from Larry King to Rush Limbaugh, and now, during any presidential press conferences, was sure to get his question attended to.

But of all the reports of the war — or at least the war so far — one of the most intriguing was CNN’s report on the sudden appearance in Istanbul, Turkey, of what the CNN reporter called “a gunner Murphy,” apparently the only survivor of the B-52 raid on Turpan. He had a lot to say about the raid, and created the distinct impression that he’d shot down half the Chinese air force before he was so unobligingly shot down himself. But what people were more interested in was his vouched-for rescue by fierce, though sympathetic, Kurdish rebels who as well as getting the American to Turkey had performed an operation on his shot-up nose that was an old procedure and well known in the region but, like acupuncture, was as yet unknown in the West.

The rebels, in an ancient surgical practice, had drugged the American, then, using a tree leaf known for its resiliency, had placed the leaf over the bridge of me remaining part of the nose, using this as a support over which skin from the man’s leg had been placed and stitched down into the skin on either side of the nose. By the time the leaf had decayed, the skin had grafted — two small openings being made to serve as nostrils. It wasn’t something that would enthrall the New England Journal of Medicine, but as Gunner Murphy had said, “It’ll do till I get back to the States.”

It was a story that was told again and again among the families of the lost B-52 crewmen, for it was their only tangible link, an act of mercy, that had been shown to one of their own, and from this they took what comfort they could.

When Alexsandra Malof invited Aussie Lewis to her home in the old Jewish autonomous region near Khabarovsk, she introduced him as an Australian soldier who, as Australians often did, fought next to his American friends.

“You’ll be here long?” her father asked him.

“Depends, mate,” Aussie said.

When he got back to camp, Choir asked him about wedding bells.

“Never know, do you?” he said, shocking them.

“Little beaver for the winter eh, Aus?” Sal joshed.

“Hey, hey!” Aussie said. “Enough of that talk, sport.”

“You’re not serious,” Sal said. “Jeez, you couldn’t go a week without cussing.”

“That a bet?” Aussie said, sitting down on his bunk.

“What — yeah. Yeah,” Sal said. “That’s a bet.”

“I’m in,” Choir said.

Aussie lowered himself down gingerly on the bunk, the shoulder still hurting. “David, how about you? Ah, sorry, forgot your cheek’s so puffed up you can’t talk. Thumb up for ten bucks.”

David put up two thumbs.

“Oh, all right,” Aussie said. “Ten bucks for Bullfrog Face.” He looked over at Choir and Sal. “You guys wouldn’t be in on a setup here would you?”