Tess Gerritsen - Double Impact

“Are you with the Swedish mission?”

“No, I work for the U.N.” Andersen’s impassive gaze wandered to Willy, who was self-consciously struggling into her damp clothes. “We provide medical care in the villages. Humanitarian aid. Malaria, typhoid, it’s all here. Probably always will be.” He began to unwrap the bundle he’d set on the table. “I assume you have not eaten. This isn’t much but it’s the best I could do. It’s been a bad year for crops, and protein is scarce.” Inside the bundle was a bamboo box filled with cold rice, pickled vegetables and microscopic flecks of pork congealed in gravy.

Guy at once sat down. “After bananas and coconuts, this looks like a feast to me.”

Dr. Andersen glanced at Willy, who was still lingering in the corner, watching suspiciously. “Are you not hungry, Miss Maitland?”

“I’m starved.”

“Then why don’t you eat?”

“First I want to know who you are.”

“I have told you my name.”

“Your name doesn’t mean a thing to me. What’s your connection to Nora? To my father?”

Dr. Andersen’s eyes were as transparent as water. “You’ve waited twenty years for an answer. You can surely wait a few minutes longer.”

Guy said, “Willy, you need to eat. Come, sit down.”

Hunger finally pulled her to the table. Dr. Andersen had brought no utensils. Willy and Guy used their fingers to scoop up the rice. All the time she was eating, she felt the Swede’s eyes watching her.

“I see you do not trust me,” he said.

“I don’t trust anyone anymore.”

He nodded and smiled. “Then you have learned, in a few shorts days, what took me months to learn.”

“Mistrust?”

“Doubt. Fear.” He looked around the hut, at the shadows dancing on the walls. “What I call the creeping uneasiness. A sense that things are not right in this place. That, just under the surface, lies some…secret, something…terrible.”

The lantern light flickered, almost died. He glanced up as the rain pounded the roof. A puff of wind swept through the doorway, dank with the smells of the jungle.

“You sense it, too,” he said.

“All I know is, there’ve been too many coincidences,” said Guy. “Too many tidy little acts of fate. As though paths have been laid out for us and we’re just following the trail.”

Andersen nodded. “We all have roads laid out for us. We usually choose the path of least resistance. It’s when we wander off that path that things become dangerous.” He smiled. “You know, at this very minute, I could be sitting in my house in Stockholm, sipping coffee, growing fat on cakes and cookies. But I chose to stay here.”

“And has life become dangerous?” asked Willy.

“It’s not my life I worry about now. It was a risk bringing you here. But Nora felt the time was right.”

“Then it was her decision?”

He nodded. “She thought it might be your last chance for a reunion.”

Willy froze, staring at him. “Did you-did you say reunion?”

Dr. Andersen met her gaze. Slowly, he nodded.

She tried to speak but found her voice was gone. The significance of that one word reduced her to numb silence.

Her father was alive.

It was Guy who finally spoke. “Where is he?”

“A village northwest of here.”

“A prisoner?”

“No, no. A guest. A friend.”

“He’s not being held against his will?”

“Not since the war.” Andersen looked at Willy, who had not yet found her voice. “It may be hard for you to accept, Miss Maitland, but there are Americans who find happiness in this country.”

She looked at him in bewilderment. “I don’t understand. All these years he’s been alive…he could have come home…”

“Many men didn’t return.”

“He had the choice!”

“He also had his reasons.”

“Reasons? He had every reason to come home!”

Her anguished cry seemed to hang in the room. For a moment neither man spoke. Then Andersen rose to his feet. “Your father must speak for himself…” he said, and he started for the door.

“Then why isn’t he here?”

“There are arrangements to be made. A time, a place-”

“When will I see him?”

The doctor hesitated. “That depends.”

“On what?”

He looked back from the doorway. “On whether your father wants to see you.”

LONG AFTER ANDERSEN HAD left, Willy stood in the doorway, staring out at the curtain of rain.

“Why wouldn’t he want to see me?” she cried into the darkness.

Quietly Guy came to stand behind her. His arms came around her shoulders, pulled her into the tight circle of his embrace.

“Why wouldn’t he?”

“Willy, stop.”

She turned and pressed her face into his chest. “Do you think it was so terrible?” she sobbed. “Being my father?”

“Of course not.”

“It must have been. I must have made him miserable.”

“You were just a kid, Willy! You can’t blame yourself! Sometimes men…change. Sometimes they need-”

“Why?” she cried.

“Hey, not all men walk out. Some of us, we hang around, for better or for worse.”

Gently, he led her back to the sleeping pallet. Beneath the silvery mosquito net, she let him hold her, an embrace not of passion, but of comfort. The arms of a friend. It felt right, the way their making love earlier that evening had felt right. But she couldn’t help wondering, even as she lay in his arms, when this, too, would change, when he would change.

It hurt beyond all measure, the thought that he, too, would someday leave her, that this was but a momentary mingling of limbs and warmth and souls. It was hurt she expected, but one she’d never, ever be ready for.

Outside, the leaves clattered in the downpour.

It rained all night.

AT DAWN THE JEEP APPEARED.

“I take only the woman,” insisted the Vietnamese driver, planting himself in Guy’s path. The man gestured toward the hut. “You stay, GI.”

“She’s not going without me,” said Guy.

“They tell me only the woman.”

“Then she’s not going.”

The two men faced each other, challenge mirrored in their eyes. The driver shrugged and turned for the jeep. “Then I don’t take anybody.”

“Guy, please,” said Willy. “Just wait here for me. I’ll be okay.”

“I don’t like it.”

She glanced at the driver, who’d already climbed behind the wheel and started the engine. “I don’t have a choice,” she said, and she stepped into the jeep.

The driver released the brake and spun the jeep around. As they rolled away, Willy glanced back and saw Guy standing alone among the trees. She thought he called out something-her name, perhaps-but then the jungle swallowed him from view.

She turned her attention to the road-or what served as a road. In truth, it was scarcely more than a muddy track through the forest. Branches slashed the windshield; water flew from the leaves and splattered their faces.

“How far is it?” she asked. The driver didn’t answer. “Where are we going?” she asked. Again, no answer. She sat back and waited to see what would happen next.

A few miles into the forest the mud track petered out, and they halted before a solid wall of jungle. The driver cut the engine. A few rays of sunlight shone dimly through the canopy of leaves. Only the cry of a single bird sliced through the silence.

The driver climbed out and walked around to the rear. Willy watched as he rooted around under a camouflage tarp covering the back seat. Then she saw the blade slide out from beneath the tarp. He was holding a machete.

He turned to face her. For a few heartbeats they stared at each other, gazes meeting over the gleam of razor-sharp steel. Then she saw amusement flash in his eyes.