The fourth shrill ring drove me upstairs to Phan Wan. She was no longer in the bed. She was picking up the telephone in the master bedroom suite as it rang a fifth time.
Martin crowded against me in the doorway. We could only guess about the conversation, but from the worried expression on Phan Wan’s face, she was having difficulty being convincing in whatever she was saying to the caller. There was terror in her eyes when she hung up. I was afraid she was going to retreat behind a wall of silence. Martin pushed past me to get to her. Without him, I would never have learned what the call was about.
“I didn’t know,” she sobbed. Her eyes were flooded with tears. “That was Colonel Ho Lin Tsai wanting to talk to Phu Thone on a very urgent matter that was to be settled by midnight tonight. It involves much money that Phu Thone pays for being left alone. Colonel Tsai is Chief of Regional Security, like secret police. He knew I was lying when I told him Phu Thone could not come to the phone. Phu Thone never refuses. He threatens to come immediately to find what is wrong. I am sure that one of the gardeners in his pay reported that I sent them away today. He insists that Phu Thone be ready to receive him when he arrives. He’s going to — find — you know—”
Martin patted her shoulder and pulled her head down on his. He looked up at me sideways. “It’s time we pulled out,” he said. It was stronger than a suggestion. I agreed with him, but I didn’t think the frying pan was quite warm enough. I looked at my watch. Ten minutes before midnight and enough elapsed time for Willow to be showing up. That she had not yet called reinforced my feeling that she would soon return.
I couldn’t abandon her. She would face certain death if we vacated the villa and let her walk into the arms of Colonel Lin Tsai. The clinching argument was that she would bring back vital instructions from Hawk who was too wise and too suspicious to pass them more than once. He’d been stung before when he’d repeated an agent withdrawal plan to an unfriendly foreign power which had wrested the code key from a captured AXE agent minutes before he succumbed under an overdose of highly-effective and lethal truth drugs. AXE not only lost a key agent, but also twelve members of the highly trained extraction team. If anyone was going to have a nit of a chance to clear Hanoi, Willow had to tell us how.
Martin understood the drill. “Whatever you say, Carter. Only you’ve got to understand Phan Wan goes too.”
That would narrow our chances. The odds never were in our favor. Each additional person reduced success by twenty-five percent. Phan Wan was not cut out for this kind of action. Adding in her trauma and instability, she was a definite negative factor.
Martin must have heard the wheels meshing in my head. He came to my side. Keeping his eyes locked solidly to mine with the hard glint of defiance in them, he reached down and relieved me of the machine pistol I still held. I resisted only a moment, then let go. He stood erect. A brief smile crossed his face. “All right, Carter. We’re ready. I’ll do it your way. I mean that. In a deal like this you can’t have shared leadership. You take charge.”
I slung the pack containing our thinned-out survival gear over my shoulder. “It’ll be your job to see that Phan Wan keeps up,” I said, turning away. “We’ve got to move fast.”
I didn’t bother to look back. When I reached the iron gates at the end of the gravel drive, Martin — dragging Phan Wan at arm’s length — was only two steps behind me.
The residential street was empty, but the sound of at least two approaching vehicles echoed down the wall-lined lane. I remembered details of the area from reconnoitering the street when I first scouted the layout of Phu Thone’s estate. “Follow the ditch to the end of the block,” I said rapidly. “Around the corner there’s a concrete culvert. The opening is screened by high weeds. You should be safe if you hole up there. With any luck Willow will return before anyone comes around to investigate. You keep an eye on this road for her, though it’s not likely she’ll come this way. If I—” I corrected myself. “If someone doesn’t come for you in half an hour, it’s up to you to decide to stay longer — or whatever.”
Martin understood my meaning. He nodded, then bustled Phan Wan off down the quiet street.
I trotted in the opposite direction, coming to an intersection after a dozen steps. I turned that corner and hurried to the middle of the block. This was the street Willow would use to return to Phu Thone’s villa. I huddled in a shallow depression next to a rough stucco-finished wall.
Colonel Lin Tsai’s troops arrived first. They swarmed out of two heavy trucks. Without hesitating, they forced the driveway gates to get inside. Room lights come on throughout the huge house. Then the shouting began.
I was so intent on watching what was happening at the corner that Willow almost got by me. I pivoted my head to focus on a shadowy movement in mid-road and saw it was Willow. She had come up noiselessly. When I called out her name, she stopped dead in her tracks.
She didn’t ask me to explain what had brought on the raid by military troops. I ran along beside her as she rode away from the upheaval going on. “Where are the others?” she asked.
I didn’t gloss over the facts. Willow gave an unladylike curse when she heard of the capture of Bu Chen. I explained how we were now circling the block to join up with Martin and Phan Wan. As I jogged along, I asked: “You had no trouble making contact?”
“I’ve got information you wouldn’t believe. The president went Navy on me and flashed a ‘Well Done,’ but Hawk reserves comment until your feet are firmly planted on U.S. soil.”
“You’ve also got a cloth satchel hung over the handlebars of your bike that you didn’t have before,” I said in a suggestive tone.
“It was waiting for me at the French Embassy. The young man who supplied it said he was well paid to get it together. It’s a gift from AXE and contains some hardware Hawk felt we might need.”
“Hold it!” I said, drawing Willow and her bicycle to one side. A motorcycle roared past, a helmeted rider in uniform astride it. Another followed. The walls paralleling the street trapped and amplified the deafening noise of their engines.
The street in front of Phu Thone’s estate was filling with vehicles. Flashing red lights blinked atop ambulances. Clanging fire truck bells added to the racket.
“From here it looks like this is going to develop into a Keystone cops exercise,” I said. “We can’t go near Martin and Phan Wan now. So we’ll lay low. Martin can handle himself. I just hope Phan Wan doesn’t panic.”
“She won’t,” speculated Willow. “Not with Martin beside her to give her strength.”
“You’re an incurable romantic,” I snorted.
We came upon an alley barely discernible in the thin moonlight. Halfway down it, a cat darted away from us, spitting and snarling as it scampered into the shadows. I relieved Willow of the bicycle and leaned it up against a weather-beaten wooden fence. I drew her down to sit with our backs against the rough boards. “What was Hawk’s bottom line?”
“Naturally, he was pleased to know that you had Martin in tow.”
“Naturally.”
“He warned that Martin will have to be watched very carefully.”
“He’s told me that before.”
“Yes, but some new data has been unearthed on our wayward VIP. An on-going crash program involving psychiatrists, ex-POWs who shared confinement with Martin, and others who knew him well, has produced a new profile on Martin. The upshot is fairly well-documented revelations that Martin, besides being interrogated repeatedly, may have been subjected to more than the ordinary brainwashing techniques.”
“Meaning what?” I was getting impatient.