‘And what did you decide?’ Johnny Prophett asked.
‘Aw, c’mon,’ Hatcher whispered, staring across the dark room at him. ‘None of you would’ve let a stranger do your dirty work. Whatever reason you had to kill Wol Pot, and I can think of a lot of them, if it was to be done, one of you would have done the trick. It’s not your style to give the job to an old man.’
‘That’s very astute,’ Earp said.
‘So the answer is, he’s not an old man. He’s one of you.’
He turned back to the old man.
‘Right, Polo?’ he whispered.
The stooped Chinese stared across the room at Hatcher. Then he started to chuckle. He stood up, and then he stood erect, adding another three inches to his height. He limped across the room toward Hatcher.
‘Well, I’m sure as hell older. I haven’t heard that nickname since the academy, Hatch,’ said Murphy Cody.
THE SECRET OF HUIE-KUI
Hatcher felt a sudden rush of excitement. He had not been sure until that moment that Cody vas really alive. Now, looking at his old friend, he felt a sense of relief and joy.
Namtaan opened the shutters. Sunlight invaded the room, filling its dark corners.
‘Jesus, Polo, I’m glad you’re alive,’ Hatcher said. ‘I don’t remember you as being so tough,’ Cody said. ‘I didn’t remember you with white hair,’ Hatcher whispered with a smile, trying to break the tension.
‘Part of the act,’ Cody said. Every wife is very good at makeup and disguise. My real heir still has a little color to it.’
‘What happened to your leg?’
‘Tore it up when I fell out of my plane. How about your box?’
‘Walked into a gun butt.’
‘Funny how simple stories become after a while,’ Cody said. ‘With time, an hour-long story is reduced to a sentence.’
He seemed taller than Hatcher remembered and thinner. Whatever bad cards had been dealt to Murphy Cody through the years had taken a toll, although the powdered beard and age lines added illusion to reality.
‘Look,’ said Hatcher, ‘if you think you can trust me, I’d like to have a couple of minutes in private.’
Cody thought about that for just a moment, then turned to the regulars.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Leave us alone for a minute, please. Namtaan, you stay.’
The regulars scuffled out of the room.
‘I’ve thought a lot about you through the years,’ Cody said, leaning against the windowsill, and stared out across the fields, and then he chuckled. ‘We saw some good days together, didn’t we?’
‘That’s a fact,’ Hatcher said.
‘Remember that New Year’s Eve? We went to New York, both ended up in bed with that girl, what was her name?’
Hatcher had to think for a minute before he remembered. ‘Linda.’
‘Yeah, Linda.’
‘A very compassionate soul, Linda.’
‘Wasn’t she, though,’ said Cody’. He turned to face Hatcher. ‘You know, I’ve owed you an apology for a long time.’
‘You don’t owe me anything, Polo.’
‘I had dinner in Saigon with my- dad about a month before I went down. The last time I saw him. He told me you were in Nam working undercover for him and had been for a couple of years. I felt about an inch tall, remembering what I said that night in San Diego. I guess my mouth ran a lot faster than my brains in those days. For what it’s worth, I apologize.’
‘Thanks. That means a lot to me.’
‘You’re a persistent son of a bitch, you know.’
‘I’ve been told that.’
‘So what’s the message, Hatch?’ Cody asked seriously.
‘It’s from your father.’
Cody was surprised. ‘My father knows I’m alive?’ he said.
‘That’s what I was sent over here to determine.’
‘Forget it,’ Cody said. ‘Let the dead stay dead.’
‘There’s no way to put this gently,’ said Hatcher. ‘Your father’s dying of cancer.’
Cody was jarred. He stared into space, then sucked in his lower lip. His eyebrows bunched together. ‘Oh Jesus,’ he said, and his shoulders suddenly sagged and the middle went out of him and he reached out and leaned against the window shutters. The seams in his face grew deeper. After it sank in for a full minute, he asked, ‘How long?’
‘Six months, maybe, if he’s real lucky.’
‘Oh God . . .‘ The words choked off in his throat. He lowered his head and tears ran down his cheeks. Pai stood beside him and put her arm around his waist.
‘Y’know, I never thought I’d see him again, I took that for granted. I just never thought about . . . that someday . .
‘He doesn’t care what you’ve done or what you’re doing,’ Hatcher said huskily. He just wants to know you’re alive, to see you once before he dies.’
‘God,’ Cody said. He wiped his face, and the age lines painted on it by his wife came off on his hand, leaving behind the true furrows of age and hard times. He stared out the window for a very long time. Neither Pai nor Hatcher said anything.
Finally Cody said, ‘Funny, isn’t it, how things you thought were important suddenly become — insignificant. All my life I had to toe die mark. Being Buffalo Bill’s son wasn’t easy. I couldn’t fail at anything —, He stopped for a moment, then shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘that’s not fair, I didn’t allow myself to fail at anything. It was in my head. I mean in my head the finger was always pointing at me from the time I was a kid. It wasn’t that he said anything to me. He didn’t push me, he didn’t have to, he was always there like a — like the giant in the woods you’re scared of when you’re a kid. When I decided to go to Annapolis instead of the Point, it almost killed him. Shit, he went berserk. Here I was just trying to do something on my own, but, Christ, it was the ultimate insult to him. He ordered me to go to the Point, and when I refused he tried to get my appointment to Annapolis withdrawn. But it was too late.’
Hatcher remembered that night when Cody had torn up his room in a drunken rage because he was alone at Christmas.
‘Hell,’ Hatcher whispered, ‘that was twenty-five years ago.’
‘Twenty, fifty, no difference, lie never forgot it. And he never let me forget it. That decision to go Navy clouded our relationship from then on. Maybe it still clouds it.’
‘Doesn’t much matter anymore,’ Hatcher said.
‘It does to me,’ Cody said in a faraway voice.
Cody continued to look out die window, shaking his head, clinging to Pai.
‘Look, Polo, I can’t say anything for Sloan, and I don’t know what the hell Porter’s motives were,’ said Hatcher. ‘Your father doesn’t give a tinker’s damn what happened or what you’re doing. He’s dying, for God’s sake, he wants to say good-bye. My job is to set up a meeting somewhere safe so you can see each other once more.’
‘What irony,’ said Cody. ‘As Prophett would say, two warriors facing each other across the river and no way to say good-bye.’
‘His abstract poetry eludes me,’ Hatcher snapped with a touch of irritation.
‘Don’t you get it?’ said Cody. ‘As far as the world is concerned, we’re all dead. In Prophett’s metaphor, we all crossed over the river. We can’t go home because there’s no home to go to. And some of us couldn’t go home if we wanted to. You know about Riker and Gallagher?’
‘I know they were both in big trouble when they disappeared. I assume Prophett can’t go back because he’s a hopeless junkie, you can tell by looking at him. Wonderboy — he’s learned to live with his face. But you, Corkscrew, Potter, Max Early —‘
‘It all started back before Nam. Hell, my dad and the admiral arranged my marriage like a couple of feudal kings arranging a wedding for the good of the realm. It was like living in a strait-jacket, my wife and I were barely civil. The old man was over here. So I volunteered for the Black Ponies.’