Christopher opened the envelope and looked at the photographs of Nicole and Do Minh Kha that Luong had taken in Vientiane.
“Yes. Thanks.”
“You’ve identified the girl, right?”
“Yes. She’s a relative of the Truong toe’s.”
“The chick you had lunch with?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the connection with Do?”
Christopher put the photograph back in its envelope. “She’s a courier,” he said.
Wolkowicz grunted. “All in the family. The generals would like to know that.”
“Do this for me,” Christopher said, handing Wolkowicz the envelope. He had addressed it to the Truong toe.
“I’ll mail it in the morning,” Wolkowicz said.
Christopher opened the car door. “Did you bring the Green Beret?” he asked.
“He’s in the Mercedes.”
Christopher walked to the other car and rapped sharply on the roof. Peggy McKinney’s brother, wearing khakis, got out. Planes flew overhead, descending toward the airport with then-landing lights on. Christopher had to shout above the noise of the jet engines.
“Come around in the headlights,” Christopher said.
He handed the boy the Polaroid pictures of his dead agents. The young captain crouched so that the light fell on the pictures. He wore a heavy Rolex watch and a West Point class ring. He was very slender in a sinewy way and he had his sister’s mannerisms: he held his body so as to display it to best advantage, but he had less control over his face.
Staring at Christopher, he stood up and held out the photographs. Christopher took them back. He handed him the pistols Pong had taken from Luong’s killers.
“You’ve lost your amateur status,” Christopher said.
NINE
l
Christopher did not imagine that the Truong toe would be immobilized by a photograph of Nicole. He’d hide the girl, as Christopher intended to hide Molly, and try again to kill Christopher. But he would have to adjust his operations. All this would take time. Time was what Christopher wanted, and Molly’s life.
It was raining in Rome and the Christmas decorations were up. The taxi driver let Christopher out by the door of his apartment on the Lungotevere. Christopher looked up and down the curving street and saw no one. One side of the street was open to the Tiber and the other was lined with old buildings whose heavy doors, built to accommodate horse-drawn coaches, were always locked. There was no place for surveillance to hide; that was why Christopher lived in this street.
Christopher’s training told him it was better to see the opposition than not to. He did not know how quickly the Truong toe could move. He felt the beating of his own heart as he went inside and climbed the stairs. Molly should be asleep. He used his mind to make his body stop trembling.
Letting himself into the apartment, he walked across the marble floors, hearing his own footsteps. Molly had decorated a small Christmas tree and placed it on a table in front of one of the windows. The paintings that had been in the bedroom now hung in the living room. She thought that pictures should be moved from one wall to another so that the eye would be surprised to see them in a new place each day.
It was not yet six o’clock in the morning, and the rooms seemed cold in the wintry light that filtered through the windows. Christopher went into the bedroom. Molly was not in the bed. The clothes she had worn the day before were draped over the back of a chair, and a book she had been reading lay open on the bedside table.
Christopher pushed open the bathroom door. It was a windowless room; he turned on the light and, hesitating for a moment, pulled the shower curtain aside. The tub was empty and the tap dripped on a brown stain he knew was only rust. He was still wearing his raincoat and its hard material whistled softly on the door frame as he brushed against it.
Christopher looked at the bed again. There was a small lump in the center of the mattress. He threw back the covers and saw a bottle of champagne lying on the sheet; there were beads of moisture on the cold glass. He stared at the bottle.
Feeling something at his back, he turned around and saw Molly standing in the doorway, pushing her tangled hair away from her face. She wore one of his T-shirts and carried two wineglasses between the long fingers of her left hand.
“Double bloody damn,” she said. “I wanted to be in bed with the wine poured when you came in. I forgot the glasses.”
Molly pushed the hair away from her cheek and smiled. “I heard the taxi in the street,” she said. “It woke me from a dream, and I looked out and saw you in the flesh, which was what the dream was about. You must have come in like a cat burglar-I didn’t hear you from the kitchen.”
She shivered and placed one bare foot on top of the other. Her eyes were defenseless with sleep. Christopher took several deep breaths, but he could not regain control of himself: he had believed for thirty seconds that she was dead. Blood poured through his heart-he felt its temperature, as hot as tears on the cheek.
“Open the wine,” Molly said. “Never too late.”
Christopher picked up the bottle and began to peel the foil off its neck. He lost control of his hands; they leaped on his wrists and he dropped the bottle. It exploded on the marble floor. He put his quivering hands in his armpits and sat down on the bed.
“Paul,” Molly said, “what’s the matter?”
“Be careful of the broken glass,” he said.
“What is it? Stop trembling, Paul.”
She knelt beside him on the bed and put her hand on his forehead, as if he might have a fever.
“You’re cold as ice,” she said. “You’ve caught a chill.”
When they made love, Christopher cried out as if he were in pain. Molly wanted to talk, but he put his fingers on her lips. After they had lain quietly for a few moments, he opened his eyes, thinking she would be asleep. But she lay on her side with her knees drawn up, gazing into his closed face. When he kissed her, she didn’t open her lips or put her hand on him. He fell asleep.
He woke before she did. Molly found him sitting on the sofa with the long strips of Yu Lung’s calligraphy spread on the coffee table before him.
Christopher rubbed her thick hair; it crackled with electricity in the damp winter air. Molly moved away from him.
“Don’t stroke me,” she said. “I’m not a cat.”
“All right. What do you want?”
“To be told. What was the matter with you when you came home this morning? I thought you were going to scream when I walked into the room.”
“I couldn’t find you.”
“Where would I be? Sleeping with an Italian?”
“I didn’t consider that possibility.”
“Then what?” Molly asked. I’ve never known anyone like you, Paul-each time you show your feelings you act like someone who’s been caught in a lie. *
“I’m trying to get over that.”
“Well, I wish you’d huny it up. I take you into my body. The least you can do is to tell me what it is that’s made you so cold when you’re not making love. When you get out of bed, you change, you know. I’d like to know whether you’re yourself when you’re lying down or when you’re standing up. I used to think it was Cathy, but it’s more than that, Paul.”
“Yes, it’s more than that.”
Something had changed in Molly. Christopher looked at her for the first time without a memory of sex or a desire for it. Molly’s personality had always been the force that lit her face or formed her gestures, something that made her physical beauty accessible to him. Now it leaped out of her flesh. There might have been two women facing him-one with Molly’s body and the other, entirely separate, a spirit that had escaped from it.
“For Christ’s sake, Paul, what is it?” Molly cried. “What am I to you? You confess that you love me at midnight, and go to America in the morning without a word. You go to Saigon for no reason and come back looking as if you’ve done murder. I thought your heart had dropped out of your body when I walked into the bedroom this morning with the wineglasses. Why were you so frightened?”