“It has been years since I had any business with the Company,” said Gerard. “I know nothing that could possibly help you now.”
“Maybe you do,” said Guy. “We’re here about an old matter. From the war.”
Gerard laughed. “These people are perpetually at war! Which enemy? The Chinese? The French? The Khmer Rouge?”
“You know which war,” Guy said.
Gerard sat back. “That war is over.”
“Not for some of us,” said Willy.
The Frenchman turned to her. She felt him studying her, measuring her significance. She resented being appraised this way. Deliberately she returned his stare.
“What’s the girl got to do with it?” Gerard demanded.
“She’s here about her father. Missing in action since 1970.”
Gerard shrugged. “My business is imports. I know nothing about missing soldiers.”
“My father wasn’t a soldier,” said Willy. “He was a pilot for Air America.”
“Wild Bill Maitland,” Guy added.
The sudden silence in the room was thick enough to slice. After a long pause, Gerard said softly, “Air America.”
Willy nodded. “You remember him?”
The Frenchman’s knobby fingers began to tap the armrest. “I knew of them, the pilots. They carried goods for me on occasion. At a price.”
“Goods?”
“Pharmaceuticals,” said Guy.
Gerard slapped the armrest in irritation. “Come, Mr. Barnard, we both know what we’re talking about! Opium. I don’t deny it. There was a war going on, and there was money to be made. So I made it. Air America happened to provide the most reliable delivery service. The pilots never asked questions. They were good that way. I paid them what they were worth. In gold.”
Again there was a silence. It took all Willy’s courage to ask the next question. “And my father? Was he one of the pilots you paid in gold?”
Alain Gerard shrugged. “Would it surprise you?”
Somehow, it wouldn’t, but she tried to imagine what all those old family friends would say, the ones who’d thought her father a hero.
“He was one of the best,” said Gerard.
She looked up. “The best?” She felt like laughing. “At what? Running drugs?”
“Flying. It was his calling.”
“My father’s calling,” she said bitterly, “was to do whatever he wanted. With no thought for anyone else.”
“Still,” insisted Gerard, “he was one of the best.”
“The day his plane went down…” said Guy. “Was he carrying something of yours?”
The Frenchman didn’t answer. He fidgeted in his chair, then rose and went to the window, where he fussed prissily with the curtains.
“Gerard?” Guy prodded.
Gerard turned and looked at them. “Why are you here? What purpose do these questions serve?”
“I have to know what happened to him,” said Willy.
Gerard turned to the window and peered out through a slit in the curtains. “Go home, Miss Maitland. Before you learn things you don’t want to know.”
“What things?”
“Unpleasant things.”
“He was my father! I have a right-”
“A right?” Gerard laughed. “He was in a war zone! He knew the risks. He was just another man who did not come back alive.”
“I want to know why. I want to know what he was doing in Laos.”
“Since when does anyone know what they were really doing in Laos?” He moved around the room, covetously touching his precious treasures. “You cannot imagine the things that went on in those days. Our secret war. Laos was the country we didn’t talk about. But we were all there. Russians, Chinese, Americans, French. Friends and enemies, packed into the same filthy bars of Vientiane. Good soldiers, all of us, out to make a living.” He stopped and looked at Willy. “I still do not understand that war.”
“But you knew more than most,” said Guy. “You were working with Intelligence.”
“I saw only part of the picture.”
“Toby Wolff suggested you took part in the crash investigation.”
“I had little to do with it.”
“Then who was in charge?”
“An American colonel by the name of Kistner.”
Willy looked up in surprise. “Joseph Kistner?”
“Since promoted to general,” Guy noted softly.
Gerard nodded. “He called himself a military attaché.”
“Meaning he was really CIA.”
“Meaning any number of things. I was liaison for French Intelligence, and I was told only the minimum. That was the way the colonel worked, you see. For him, information was power. He shared very little of it.”
“What do you know about the crash?”
Gerard shrugged. “They called it ‘a routine loss.’ Hostile fire. A search was called at the insistence of the other pilots, but no survivors were found. After a day, Colonel Kistner put out the order to melt any wreckage. I don’t know if the order was ever executed.”
Willy shook her head. “Melt?”
“That’s jargon for destroy,” explained Guy. “They do it whenever a plane goes down during a classified mission. To get rid of the evidence.”
“But my father wasn’t flying a classified mission. It was a routine supply flight.”
“They were all listed as routine supply flights,” said Gerard.
“The cargo manifest listed aircraft parts,” said Guy. “Not a reason to melt the plane. What was really on that flight?”
Gerard didn’t answer.
“There was a passenger,” Willy said. “They were carrying a passenger.”
Gerard’s gaze snapped toward her. “Who told you this?”
“Luis Valdez, Dad’s cargo kicker. He bailed out as the plane went down.”
“You spoke to this man Valdez?”
“It was only a short phone call, right after he was released from the POW camp.”
“Then…he is still alive?”
She shook her head. “He shot himself the day after he got back to the States.”
Gerard began to pace around the room again, touching each piece of furniture. He reminded her of a greedy gnome fingering his treasures.
“Who was the passenger, Gerard?” asked Guy.
Gerard picked up a lacquer box, set it back down again.
“Military? Intelligence? What?”
Gerard stopped pacing. “He was a phantom, Mr. Barnard.”
“Meaning you don’t know his name?”
“Oh, he had many names, many faces. A rumor always does. Some said he was a general. Or a prince. Or a drug lord.” Turning, he stared out the curtain slit, a shriveled silhouette against the glow of light. “Whoever he was, he represented a threat to someone in a high place.”
Someone in a high place. Willy thought of the intrigue that must have swirled in Vientiane, 1970. She thought of Air America and Defense Intelligence and the CIA. Who among all those players would have felt threatened by this one unnamed Lao?
“Who do you think he was, Mr. Gerard?” she asked.
The silhouette at the window shrugged. “It makes no difference now. He’s dead. Everyone on that plane is dead.”
“Maybe not all of them. My father-”
“Your father has not been seen in twenty years. And if I were you, I would leave well enough alone.”
“But if he’s alive-”
“If he’s alive, he may not wish to be found.” Gerard turned and looked at her, his expression hidden against the backglow of the window. “A man with a price on his head has good reason to stay dead.”
CHAPTER FIVE
SHE STARED at him. “A price? I don’t understand.”
“You mean no one has told you about the bounty?”
“Bounty for what?”
“For the arrest of Friar Tuck.”
She fell instantly still. An image took shape in her mind: words typed on a file folder. Operation Friar Tuck. Declassified. She turned to Guy. “You know what he’s talking about, don’t you. Who’s Friar Tuck?”
Guy’s expression was unreadable, as if a mask had fallen over his face. “It’s nothing but a story.”
“But you had his file in your room.”
“It’s just a nickname for a renegade pilot. A legend-”