“Sounds like propaganda.”

“That’s what I figured it was-Commie lies designed to break him down. But they got Valdez scared. He kept waking up at night, screaming about the plane going down…”

Lassiter stared out at the water. “Anyway, after the war, they released us. Valdez and the other guys headed home. He wrote me from Bangkok, sent the letter by way of a Red Cross nurse we’d met in Hanoi right after our release. An English gal, a little anti-American but real nice. When I read that letter, I thought, now the poor bastard’s really gone over the edge. He was saying crazy things, said he wasn’t allowed to go out, that all his phone calls were monitored. I figured he’d be all right once he got home. Then I got a call from Nora Walker, that Red Cross nurse. She said he was dead. That he’d shot himself in the head.”

Willy asked, “Do you think it was suicide?”

“I think he was a liability. And the Company doesn’t like liabilities.” He turned his troubled gaze to the water. “When we were at Tuyen, all he could talk about was going home, you know? Seeing his old hangouts, his old buddies. Me, I had nothing to go home to, just a sister I never much cared for. Here, at least, I had my girl, someone I loved. That’s why I stayed. I’m not the only one. There are other guys like me around, hiding in villages, jungles. Guys who’ve gone bamboo, gone native.” He shook his head. “Too bad Valdez didn’t. He’d still be alive.”

“But isn’t it hard living here?” asked Willy. “Always the outsider, the old enemy? Don’t you ever feel threatened by the authorities?”

Lassiter responded with a laugh and cocked his head at a far table where four men were sitting. “Have you said hello to our local police? They’ve probably been tailing you since you hit town.”

“So we noticed,” said Guy.

“My guess is they’re assigned to protect me, their resident lunatic American. Just the fact that I’m alive and well is proof this isn’t the evil empire.” He raised his bottle of beer in a toast to the four policemen. They stared back sheepishly.

“So here you are,” said Guy, “cut off from the rest of the world. Why would the CIA bother to come after you?”

“It’s something Nora told me.”

“The nurse?”

Lassiter nodded. “After the war, she stayed on in Hanoi. Still works at the local hospital. About a year ago, some guy-an American-dropped in to see her. Asked if she knew how to get hold of me. He said he had an urgent message from my uncle. But Nora’s a sharp gal, thinks fast on her feet. She told him I’d left the country, that I was living in Thailand. A good thing she did.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t have an uncle.”

There was a silence. Softly Guy said, “You think that was a Company man.”

“I keep wondering if he was. Wondering if he’ll find me. I don’t want to end up like Luis Valdez. With a bullet in my head.”

On the river, boats glided like ghosts through the shadows. A café worker silently circled the deck, lighting a string of paper lanterns.

“I’ve kept a low profile,” said Lassiter. “Never make noise. Never draw attention. See, I changed my hair.” He grinned faintly and tugged on his lank brown ponytail. “Got this shade from the local herbalist. Extract of cuttle-fish and God knows what else. Smells like hell, but I’m not blond anymore.” He let the ponytail flop loose, and his smile faded. “I kept hoping the Company would lose interest in me. Then you showed up at my door, and I-I guess I freaked out.”

The bartender put a record on the turntable, and the needle scratched out a Vietnamese love song, a haunting melody that drifted like mist over the river. Wind swayed the paper lanterns, and shadows danced across the deck. Lassiter stared at the five beer bottles lined up in front of him on the table. He ordered a sixth.

“It takes time, but you get used to it here,” he said. “The rhythm of life. The people, the way they think. There’s not a lot of whining and flailing at misfortune. They accept life as it is. I like that. And after a while, I got to feeling this was the only place I’ve ever belonged, the only place I ever felt safe.” He looked at Willy. “It could be the only place you’re safe.”

“But I’m not like you,” said Willy. “I can’t stay here the rest of my life.”

“I want to put her on the next plane to Bangkok,” said Guy.

“Bangkok?” Lassiter snorted. “Easiest place in the world to get yourself killed. And going home’d be no safer. Look what happened to Valdez.”

“But why?” Willy said in frustration. “Why would they kill Valdez? Or me? I don’t know anything!”

“You’re Bill Maitland’s daughter. You’re a direct link-”

“To what? A dead man?”

The love song ended, fading to the scritch-scritch of the needle.

Lassiter set his beer down. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know why you’re such a threat to them. All I know is, something went wrong on that flight. And the Company’s still trying to cover it up…” He stared at the line-of empty beer bottles gleaming in the lantern light. “If it takes a bullet to buy silence, then a bullet’s what they’ll use.”

“DO YOU THINK HE’S RIGHT?” Willy whispered.

From the back seat of the car, they watched the rice paddies, silvered by moonlight, slip past their windows. For an hour they’d driven without speaking, lulled into silence by the rhythm of the road under their wheels. But now Willy couldn’t help voicing the question she was afraid to ask. “Will I be any safer at home?”

Guy looked out at the night. “I wish I knew. I wish I could tell you what to do. Where to go…”

She thought of her mother’s house in San Francisco, thought of how warm and safe it had always seemed, that blue Victorian on Third Avenue. Surely no one would touch her there.

Then she thought of Valdez, shot to death in his Houston rooming house. For him, even a POW camp had been safer.

The driver slid a tape into the car’s cassette player. A Vietnamese song twanged out, sung by a woman with a sorrowful voice. Outside, the rice paddies swayed like waves on a silver ocean. Nothing about this moment seemed real, not the melody or the moonlit countryside or the danger. Only Guy was real-real enough to touch, to hold.

She let her head rest against his shoulder, and the darkness, the warmth, made sleep impossible to resist. Guy’s arm came around her, cradled her against his chest. She felt his breath in her hair, the brush of his lips on her forehead. A kiss, she thought drowsily. It felt so nice to be kissed…

The hum of the wheels over the road seemed to take on a new rhythm, the whisper of the ocean, the soothing hiss of waves. Now he was kissing her all over, and they were no longer in the back seat of the car; they were on a ship, swaying on a black sea. The wind moaned in the rigging, a soulful song in Vietnamese. She was lying on her back, and somehow, all her clothes had vanished. He was on top of her, his hands trapping her arms against the deck, his lips exploring her throat, her breasts, with a conqueror’s triumph. How she wanted him to make love to her, wanted it so badly that her body arched up to meet his, straining for some blessed release from this ache within her. But his lips melted away, and then she heard, “Wake up. Willy, wake up…”

She opened her eyes. She was lying in the back seat of the car, her head in Guy’s lap. Through the window came the faint glow of city lights.

“We’re back in Saigon,” he whispered, stroking her face. The touch of his hand, so new yet so familiar, made her tremble in the night heat. “You must have been tired.”

Still shaken by the dream, she pulled away and sat up. Outside, the streets were deserted. “What time is it?”

“After midnight. Guess we forgot about supper. Are you hungry?”

“Not really.”

“Neither am I. Maybe we should just call it a-” He paused. She felt his arm stiffen against hers. “Now what?” he muttered, staring straight ahead.