“This is Kim Giau Minh,” Belew said, shaking the new arrival’s hand. “He’s an expert in the very kind of warfare we’ve been discussing. He fought as a counterinsurgency commando in Cambodia. His father was a North Korean engineer, and during his hitch in the People’s Army, Kim here was sent to North Korea’s famed schools for aspiring terrorists, where he studied death and destruction alongside the best and the brightest of Provo, ETA—Militar, and Nur al-Allah henchmen.”
Shaking hands around the table, Kim smiled and bobbed his close-cropped head shyly, as if embarrassed by vast praise. He came to Moonchild and his eyes lit.
“I have heard much about you,” he said in English, vigorously shaking the hand she offered him, then, “Choum boepgetsumnida. Kim Giau Minh rago hamnida.”
She stood there staring at him with horror seeping down over her face and body like blood from a scalp cut. She did not understand a word.
He said something else. The words struck no sparks of meaning in her mind.
He took her hand in both of his. “Asimnikka?” he asked, frowning with concern.
“I’m sorry,” she said. She pulled her hand back, turned, and ran.
Blindly she stumbled out of the derelict villa, off the grand veranda, several steps across granite flagstones laid to keep expensive European shoes from contact with the red mud. She dropped to her knees, hands on thighs, weeping soundlessly.
The Khmer Rouge standing to the left of the doorway with his Kalashnikov slung started forward. From the other side of the door Lou Inmon cleared his throat, held out a warning claw, and shook his head. The Cambodian stopped.
Grandfather, that had to be Korean he was speaking to me. And I did not understand a word.
What am I?
She breathed deep, from the diaphragm, trying to find her center. She wasn’t sure she ever could again.
Isis.
She stopped breathing. She had thought her name without willing it.
Isis. Do you hear me?
It was as if a voice was speaking in her mind. A… familiar … voice.
“Eric?” she whispered.
“Yes, Isis. It’s me. Surprised?”
“Yes.”
“Limited telepathy is one of my gifts, hon. Very limited, I’m afraid. I think our — closeness — gives me better range with you. By the way, you don’t have to talk out loud. Just think at me and I’ll hear.”
Where are you?
“Not far, I think, though I can’t say for sure. Where are you?”
Why?
“We’ve been looking for you. We want you to come back. We want you to come home, Isis.”
Is — is that all?
“I won’t play games with you. Rumor has it that you — you in person — are having a confab with some of the Republic’s heaviest criminals and traitors. The Colonel would very much like to find out where this is all going down.”
You want me to inform?
“I want you to remember whose side you’re on: ours. The wild cards’. These people are dangerous to our hosts. That makes them dangerous to us — all of us, hon. You included.”
She forced her breathing to a regular rhythm. She glanced back at the porch. Inmon stood with his great raptor head averted. The Khmer watched her with undisguised interest.
“I — that is, one of us, one of Mark’s friends killed Spoiler.”
“Don’t sweat that. Spoiler was a hothead. Haskell told us he drew down on Jumpin’ Jack Flash. It wasn’t Flash’s fault… Haskell’s fine, by the way. We got the infection in his arms under control.”
I am pleased for him. J. J. intended him no harm.
“We assumed that, or he’d be toast like Spoiler. Look, all is forgiven. Please come home.”
Mark led a mutiny —
“No hay importa, babe. His hand was forced. The Colonel says it’s a non-issue. Come back. We want you. We need you.
And you?
A pause, then: “Sure, babe, I need you too. That goes without saying —”
“Isis?”
She jumped, came up on one knee, turning. Belew stood behind her.
“Are you all right? You left the meeting pretty precipitously.”
“Isis. Just tell us where you are. You don’t have to do anything; we’ll come find you.”
She stood unsteadily, hung her head. “I am sorry if I have caused shame.”
“You’ll be a hero —”
Belew was shaking his head. “No. Indeed, I’d say you knocked their socks off in there when you busted Nguyen’s popgun for him. I couldn’t have dreamed up a better demonstration of what you’re all about if I had a year and infinite beer.”
“Isis —”
Eric, I love you. But she felt the contact stretch, and snap, and fall away into a void within her. She reeled. Belew caught her arm, helped her keep her feet.
She would not show him her pain. “What — what of what I said?” she asked him, stepping away and holding up a hand to forestall further help. “Did I pass that test too?”
He grinned. “With flying colors.”
“And you agreed with me?” For some reason it was very important for her to know these things. She could not imagine why.
“Well, I think you’re a little bit of a bleeding heart, it’s true. On the other hand, if the colonel and that commie hard-case Nguyen Number Two had their way, we’d have half the country after our hides. Just as you pointed out.”
“But that which I said about the bombers — you were not offended? I — aimed it at you.”
He shrugged. “Sorry. But it missed me clean. Special Forces were the hearts-and-minds boys; we saw how the populace reacted when granny and little sister got turned into crispy critters.”
She made herself stand erect, head up, shoulders back. She wanted him to know she was back in control.
“What of strategy?”
“You were spot-on. We need to soften PAVN up big-time. Otherwise they steamroll us.”
“Oh.” She had been prepared for assault, carping criticism at the least. Agreement caught her off guard.
“By the way,” Belew said, “Kim is half-blind from worry over what he did to upset you.”
“I am sorry. I —”
“It’s okay. I calmed him down. I understand; it’s just the time”
“That is a sexist remark!”
“Not time of month, kid. Time of day. Your hour’s almost up.”
She looked at him. “How can you know so much?”
“I do my homework. Now, git.”
Ten minutes later Mark staggered back into the ballroom. Belew had requested that he return after he came back to himself. The conferees looked up at him, then bowed their heads.
“Hello?” he said tentatively.
Bert the Montagnard stood up and shook his hand. “Please permit me to be the first to congratulate you,” he said in flawless Oxonian English. He had a gold incisor.
Mark blinked at him. He hadn’t even though the ’Yard spoke Vietnamese.
“What’s going on?” he asked Belew.
“Big news. The Command Council here has just voted your friend Moonchild in as head of the resistance. You’re her deputy and official representative to the Council when she’s unavailable.”