I found an Internet coffee shop, or koffieshop, as the locals knew them, a place called Get Down To It, on a side street off Leidseplein, and descended the stairs to find a terminal and see what Kanezaki had for me. Halfway down, the rich, heady smell of cannabis enveloped me, and for the second time in not much more than a week I was back in Saigon, a young man this time, a boy, really, on leave and smoking the Thai Stick an enterprising rear-echelon type had smuggled in on a military flight from Bangkok. The iceman breathed it in, exulting in an almost physical sense of recall, the memory of what it was to be a teenager with skills and a license to use them, ten thousand miles from home and making it up as we went along, knowing no one had ever been here before us, like Neil Armstrong on the moon but better, juiced with hormones and adrenaline, excitement and fear, an adolescent’s curious mind and a predator’s deadly instincts. We knew we were special, anointed for our role, baptized by our experience, our childhoods shed, as lost and useless to us now as empty snakeskins. Everything else would come later-the horror, the cost of it, the regret. But on leave in Saigon, in the back of a dark Dong Khoi bar, high on Thai Stick and our status as gods, we had no idea what was being mortgaged, or what we would have to pay for it.
The koffieshop was a quietly lit space with a low beamed ceiling and a red-tiled floor, the walls darkened by years of accumulated smoke. There was a pinball machine, pool tables, a dark wood bar and a handful of black stools in front of it. In one corner were cushioned seats, a half-dozen young people sitting on them, absorbed in their smoking and conversation; in the other, three Internet terminals, all empty. Soft house music played in the background. I used one of the terminals to access the Kanezaki bulletin board. As promised, he had left me a full dossier on Boezeman, including photographs. I wrote down what I needed to and memorized the rest. Then I purged the browser and, without really thinking, took a seat at the bar. A sign was taped to the counter:
SPECIAL OFFER: WHITE WIDOW AND SUPER PALM POWER HASH, 24 EUROS. DUTCH, 12 EUROS. THAI, 3 GRAMS, 12 EUROS.
Thai, huh. That shit was still around.
I looked at my watch. Close to five hours until I needed to call Boaz.
The bartender came over, a tall guy with thinning brown hair. “What can I get you?”
Fuck it. “Thai,” I said. “And some papers.”
I rolled a single joint. Just a little, I thought. Just to see what it feels like after so long away.
I took a very small hit and coughed anyway, and the bartender smiled. Not the first time he’d seen a coughing patron, no doubt. He brought over a glass of water and moved off again.
The iceman liked it, I could tell. I gave him another small one, which went down easier, and then a third.
What the fuck are you doing? I thought. I looked at the joint with horror and stubbed it out. I was exhausted, I’d let my guard down, but shit, I was in the middle of an op. Was I trying to get myself killed?
Amazing, though, the association of the smell, and now the taste, with Saigon. I’d never smoked dope before or after. It was purely a Vietnam thing for me.
You’ll be okay, I told myself. It was only a little. What the hell…
I felt the outer edges of my perception beginning to fuzz over. It was nice, actually. It reminded me of a time I hadn’t realized I’d missed. And it made me aware of how strung out I’d been since receiving Hilger’s message in Paris. Sex with Delilah, and all the booze that night…it was like I had been trying to get outside myself, or anesthetize something within.
Sometimes you need the anesthesia. Because what you learn about yourself when fear finally overtakes you isn’t pretty. You understand that the person you thought of as yourself, your immutable, indivisible self, is just an overlay, fragile and frail. Fear strips away the façade. And having to see what lies beneath, and accept it, makes you different from everyone who hasn’t been similarly forged. You’ve been aged; they remain neophytes. You have brutal clarity; they, comforting illusions. You’ve looked into the abyss, and can still feel it looking back; they don’t even know such a place exists. And for all of it, you hate them.
Why had I insisted on Saigon with Hilger? There were other places we could have gone, places that offered the same operational advantages. But the iceman wanted Vietnam. He wanted to take me back, back to the place he was born, where he thrived, the place that was purely him. Why?
Because you need me.
I started. The voice was whispered, intense, familiar.
I looked around. No one had spoken. The bartender was at the other end of the bar, talking to one of the girls at the corner tables. The house music seemed far away.
What are you talking about? I thought. I know I need you.
No. You’ve been trying to kill me.
I’ve been trying to accommodate you.
Bullshit. You’re ignoring me. Smothering me. Letting me run loose at night in Paris like I’m a fucking dog that needs to be walked so it won’t crap the house. And then when you need me for Dox, you second-guess me, fight me, tolerate me like I’m the hired help and you can’t wait until I’m finished with the chores so you can send me off again. That shit is over. Get the fuck out of my way.
No. You don’t own me.
The hell I don’t. You’d be dead now if it weren’t for me. You would have died the first night you pissed your pants in a firefight. Your life is mine. I don’t own you? I fucking am you.
“You okay?”
I jumped to the side and my right hand went to clear a blade clipped to my pocket, a blade that wasn’t there. Before I knew it, I had the stool in my hands, cocked back like a baseball bat.
It had been the bartender talking to me. He took a step back and raised his hands, his eyes wide.
“Hey, man,” he said. “It’s cool. It’s cool.”
Fear had blown away the marijuana trance like an arctic wind. I looked around and realized where I was. And what I was doing.
I put the stool down. Everyone was looking at me.
The bartender slowly lowered his hands. “You were pretty zoned out there, man. That Thai weed can be strong.”
“Yeah, it can be,” I said, nodding. “I don’t think I’ll be having any more of it.”
I walked in the wet, cold air until I found a cheap hotel, where I slept for several hours. When I woke, I still felt exhausted, the way you do from a post-combat parasympathetic backlash, but at least my head was clear again. All the flying, the stalking, the near catastrophes. Then getting Dox out, knowing he was all right. And now that thing in the coffeehouse…it was like facing off with your worst enemy, then getting pulled apart with everybody still armed, nothing really resolved.
I stopped for some food and coffee at a place called Café Bouwman, on Utrechtsestraat along the Prinsengracht canal. It was good-a neighborhood kind of place, low-key, unpretentious, with old wooden tables and leather seats, and a bartender who knew her customers. When I was done, I called Boaz from a pay phone.
“How are we doing?” I said.
“We finished up ahead of schedule. We were waiting for your call.”
“Good. How soon can you be in the place we talked about?”
“We’re here now. But we have a car, we can meet you anywhere.”
Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have accepted the proposal. But I wasn’t worried about Boaz right now. And the Krasnapolsky was less than a fifteen-minute walk from where I was. It would save time to go straight there.
“I’ll meet you in front in fifteen minutes,” I said.
BOAZ AND NAFTALI were waiting out front as promised. Boaz had lost the Hawaiian shirt and was wearing a bulky down jacket and jeans. He looked thoroughly unremarkable, nondescript, unmemorable. Naftali had on a nylon windbreaker and a backpack. But for a certain hard look in his eyes that not everyone would know what to make of, Gil’s brother looked like a young European tourist on a budget. We walked down the street to a pizza place. Boaz and Naftali ordered a few slices, and we sat in back to talk.