Our successful infiltration into the city of Hanoi was a major achievement by itself. Making contact with Phan Wan was a plus that could be exploited. It was obvious that she had a smoldering hate for Nho Phu Thone. It was also understandable that she would tolerate his physical excesses and her common chatel status in exchange for an existence better than any other she could hope to have. Because she was intelligent, she had made the best of it, having grown wise and more sophisticated. Her intimate knowledge of Phu Thone’s business affairs might be put to good use. Phan Wan had planted seeds of an idea which warranted cultivation.
My feelings of well-being lasted only as long as it took to pedal down the tree-lined residential street to the next major intersection. It was a bustling thoroughfare crowded with carts, lorries, and thickly-bunched bicycles. I viewed it as a problem area. The movement of the traffic, outwardly orderly, could easily become my nemesis. One misturn, one minor collision, and I could be the center of an unpredictable, argumentative confrontation. Police would be drawn into it. My disguise would be penetrated. I would fail in my mission just when I began to think there was a chance for success.
When I pushed the nose of my bicycle out into the moving log-jam of vehicles in the wake of Bu Chen and Willow, I equated the action to playing Russian roulette with a revolver having five loaded chambers.
The situation reminded me how vulnerable and how desperate Keith Martin must be. What was it — three days or four since he had entered Hanoi with the help of Colonel Jeleff? That would have been the easy part. But to have blown away top government officials in one, two, three, four order and gotten away clean was a record closely approaching my own.
Martin’s death list was shrinking. So were his chances. If he wanted to make sure of Nho Phu Thone, he would have to strike against him very, very soon.
I almost ran into the back wheel of Bu Chen’s bike when he came to a stop along the curb. He put Willow in charge of his bike while he went inside a noodle shop. “He’s going to get directions to the Street of Seven Flowers,” she explained.
He took an ungodly long time. When he came out he was wiping his mouth with his sleeve and grinning like a Cheshire cat. Anger welled up in me. He had left us waiting while he gobbled down some hot food. Willow and I had had none since the in-flight meal furnished by Air India on the way to Bangkok.
The building site on Seven Flowers Street was hidden behind a head-high wooden fence. The crossbar of one bicycle provided the boost needed to get over it. While topping the fence I scanned the surrounding area. To the north, across a narrow, pockmarked street was what appeared to be a former military compound. A number of barracks-type wooden buildings, some with windows boarded up, occupied the open, treeless area. It was evident that the camp was once surrounded by a pair of concentric, chain-link fences topped with strands of barbed wire. Now only steel posts and a few sections of the barrier fence remained. There was no activity to be seen, although evidence of recent demolition work was all about.
Work on Phu Thone’s building had progressed to where a matrix of girders, five stories high, had been erected. The first three levels of the steel-beam skeleton framework were in a cage of lashed bamboo. The outer scaffolding provided platform from which workmen would add cinder block and brick. Adjacent to the foreman’s shack were idle pieces of earthmoving equipment. I recognized a curved-blade bulldozer and a backhoe for digging trenches parked next to a lime-encrusted cement mixer.
The workshed Phan Wan had told us to look for was little more than a single door, single window lean-to erected next to the fence. The heavy, impressive-looking padlock on the door yielded with a minimum of persuasion. The interior was typical of a construction foreman’s site office. It contained a work table with a bin of blueprints beside it. Some tools were stacked in one corner. Two chairs and a folded-up tarpaulin gave us places to sit. The air inside was unbearably warm and had a wet cement smell.
We were bone-weary and untalkative. Each of us made ourselves more comfortable by removing our backpacks. Willow repacked the items in hers. Bu Chen dropped off to sleep and snored fitfully.
At dusk, I went to the door and made a visual reconnaissance. All was quiet. Willow came out to stretch her legs. She found a water spigot with a hose attached to it behind a shoulder-high pile of cinder blocks. She called me over. “It’s dark, okay to take a shower?”
I lay flat on top of the stacked cinder blocks, holding the hose over Willow’s head. She balanced on a platform of two cinder blocks, gasping and splashing under the cold water. What a lovely creature she was.
We traded places. When I finished, Willow leaned down and kissed me on the cheek. “What’s that for?” I asked. She’d just had a cold shower. It should have dampened her sexual urges for a little longer than three minutes.
“I was just testing to see how your false face is holding up.”
I patted my eyelids. “I’ve been afraid it would start flaking off, but it’s holding. I don’t know how much longer. I’ve been sweating a lot.”
“I’ve noticed. You’re worried about Bu Chen, I can tell.”
“Shouldn’t I be? From his viewpoint, he’s gained what he was after: a quick trip away from a murder rap in Bangkok. There’s no point in him sticking with us anymore. In fact, it’s downright dangerous. He knows that. If I were him, I’d consider breaking off and fading into the woodwork. He knows too much about what we’re up to now for me not to worry. He always will—” I stopped short of admitting to Willow that there would come a time when I’d have to consider how to deal with Bu Chen to guarantee his permanent silence.
“He isn’t going to run out on us, Nick,” Willow said. “He’ll hang in there until we make a final settlement. Bu Chen loves money more than life. He knows we aren’t going to cart this load of gold coins back home with us... I’ve already told Bu Chen there’s more in it for him than what he’s carrying around his middle. He’ll wait us out like a hound dog baying at a treed possum.”
Bu Chen was missing from the foreman’s shack. The sinking feeling I had curled up like a fishhook lodged in my stomach. Then the phone rang.
I stared at it.
It rang a second time.
“Answer it,” I told Willow. “Lower your voice to a man’s register.”
“It’s Phan Wan,” she said, holding the instrument out to me.
I snatched it from her hand. The abrupt action was unlike me. I was getting edgy which is a bad sign. “Yes?” I answered, prepared for the worst.
Phan Wan wanted to make sure we had found the construction site and were safe, nothing more. I was more relieved than she was. And I was glad she had called. I had some important questions to put to her. The right answers would tell me if a plan I had in mind was workable.
In the past few days I had begun to feel I knew Keith Martin in some detail. I had acquired an insight as to how he thought and how he reacted under certain circumstances. In many ways, Martin was not much different than me. I couldn’t help but admire his daring and perserverance.
I hoped he had a flaw in his personality that could be turned to my advantage. Time was running short for both of us, and Martin had little flexibility left. Knowing that, and hearing from Phan Wan that Phu Thone made occasional trips to Haiphong, gave me bait which might lure Martin into the open. It depended upon my belief that Martin had some way of keeping posted on the whereabouts of his victims. He seemed to have some means of learning when and where to strike.
Phan Wan assured me that she would have no difficulty in getting word out in the right places about Phu Thone’s imminent departure for Haiphong. It would be a believable hoax. Phu Thone’s connection with General Linpak Tung’s business ventures in Haiphong could easily result in Phu Thone rushing off to guard his interests. The deception would work if Phu Thone took no steps to deny it.