“If you should find a woman,” I told him, “may the gods grant you enjoyment. But do not dally too long with her and come back to me when time permits.”

I watched him head on down the road, a machete in either hand, a canteen slung over one shoulder. He did not cut a particularly heroic figure, that little man bobbing along, lost in the immensity of the Laotian landscape. His own self-confidence was at that moment the only confidence he inspired. I had a terrible feeling that I was dispatching him to certain doom, my own doom to follow shortly when he told the Laotian Communists where to find me.

I made myself reasonably comfortable in a clump of brush some twenty yards from the side of the road. I popped a chunk of betel nut into my mouth and chewed and spat and chewed and spat. It was quite possible, I thought, that Tuppence and the four musicians were being held prisoner within Tao Dan itself. From the long-range view I’d had of the city, it seemed likely to be the largest town in the immediate area. If the rumors I had sifted added up as I had added them, the five had been kidnapped by Laotians and taken into Laos. They would probably have wound up on this very road and thus would have passed through Tao Dan. They might well be there now.

If that were the case, the whole village would be aware of their presence. Dhang would learn where they were being kept. He would return before long, and under cover of darkness the two of us would sneak into the city. While Tao Dan slept we would find where Tuppence and the others were being held prisoner. Perhaps there would be a guard or two to overpower. Once that was done, we would liberate the prisoners and escape.

I thought the thing through about that far and then let go of it. The details to follow – just how we would escape and just where we would go and so on – I did not want to think about for the time being. It was simpler by far to sit back comfortably and chew the betel nut.

And then, after a long time of sitting and chewing and spitting, I heard the jeep.

It was just a low rumble at first, like the droning of a persistent insect. Then it came closer, and I recognized the sound as a car of some sort. I had been a long time in the wilderness, and this was the first mechanized vehicle I had heard since the guerrillas had halted my Land Rover. I peered through the underbrush and watched as a U.S. army jeep came into sight at the crest of a hill. For a hysterical moment I thought that I was being rescued by a detachment of Green Berets. Then reality intruded – evidently the vehicle was one that had been captured by the Pathet Lao’s troops during the fighting in the Plain of Jars.

The jeep passed me and headed on toward Tao Dan. There were two uniformed soldiers in the front seat and a third in the back. I watched the jeep disappear over the next rise in the road, then listened as the sound of its engine faded and died in the still afternoon air.

I shifted the hunk of betel nut from one side of my mouth to the other. I chewed like a cow munching its cud, then arced a stream of red juice off to the left. I told myself quietly that I should have stayed in New York. With all of its muggings and stabbings and race riots and air pollution, it was worlds safer than the hills of Laos. The FBI agents who bugged my apartment and the CIA clowns who read my mail were nuisances, but they had never done me any appreciable harm.

And at least in New York my life had a sort of purpose. I went to meetings, I sent articles to newspapers and magazines, I ground out theses for inept scholars, and I did what I could to support a wide array of noble lost causes. I made myself useful. Minna depended upon me, and so, in a more remote way, did my son, Todor, in Macedonia. Now Todor’s mother, according to word that had made its way from Macedonia to Athens to London to New York, was awaiting another child.

What good would I be to that unborn child or to Todor or to Minna or to anyone if I managed to get myself killed chasing wild geese in Laos?

I chewed. I spat inexpertly, and ruby saliva trickled through my beard. I wiped it away and said one of the English words I had taught Dhang. Somehow the sight of the jeep had brought reality home to me in an uncomfortable way. We were out of the jungle now. We had returned to a mechanized world, a world of cars and planes, of rapid-fire automatic weapons, of uniformed soldiers, of passports and visas and sundry documents. If Tuppence were a prisoner in Tao Dan, she was no doubt a well-guarded prisoner. They were not a band of primitive guerrillas. They would not have her hanging in a bamboo cage. I could not dance naked among the uniformed guards, babbling of magic tricks and gassing them with cyanide. Nor could I expect the town of Tao Dan to be sleeping when I visited it in the dead of night. There would be men on duty all night long, and one glance at me would assure them that something was wrong, and they would either shoot me or capture me or both.

I uncapped my canteen, took a sip of water, and rubbed the tip of my index finger over my blackened teeth. I stretched out on the ground and closed my eyes and gave myself up to a veritable orgy of betel nut mastication. The narcotic properties of the nut could not begin to cope with the general wave of paranoia that was beginning to engulf me. I divided my thoughts into rumination over what had already gone wrong and speculation as to what would go wrong next. The waking dreams that the betel nut provided were fantasies of terror and betrayal.

Dhang would sell me out, I decided. He had one thing on his mind and one thing only and he would do anything to get what he wanted. After all, one had merely to look at his past performance chart. Once I promised him a woman, he promptly betrayed his guerrilla companions and cheerfully joined me in annihilating them left and right. Now, in Tao Dan, he would stick to form. He would go to the authorities and explain that if they provide him with a woman, he would repay them by leading them straight to an American spy who was conspiring against the Pathet Lao.

I couldn’t really trust him, I told myself. For that matter, I couldn’t trust anyone.

Tuppence, for example. What did I know about Miss T’pani Ngawa, when you came right down to it?

Blessed little. It had somehow never occurred to me to wonder whether the kidnapping had been the genuine article. But now that I thought it over, there was more than one possible explanation. Suppose she and the quartet had not been kidnapped at all. Suppose they had managed to steal the royal gems all by themselves, and suppose they had subsequently headed for Laos quite voluntarily, picking the northern retreat as the safest and simplest escape route. Any reason why that was impossible?

None that I could think of. The more I thought it over, the more possible it became. I actually knew rather little of Tuppence’s political leanings. Every type of political orientation was represented in Africa lately, and both the far right and the far left were to be found in such organizations as the Pan-African Unity League. Tuppence had given the impression of being generally apolitical, a sharp and fun-loving girl more interested in treble and bass than in left and right. Yet it might all have been a pose.

What if Tuppence had been a Communist all along?

It was possible, I told myself. She could have come to the States as a Communist agent ordered to infiltrate Black Nationalist political groups. Then, when the State Department sent her on a Far Eastern tour, she bided her time and waited for a chance to strike a blow at the West. She masterminded a plot to steal the jewels, thus driving a wedge between the United States and Thailand, and ran off to freedom in Pathet Lao territory in Laos. And then, after she was home free, some harebrained insomniac named Tanner was fool enough to chase all over Southeast Asia to rescue her.