"Then why does he have to wear a disguise here?"
"I don't want to risk being described to some outsider over the telephone," Veil answered. "Also, it's simply wise to take every precaution."
"Precaution against what?" the woman persisted.
"Later, Sharon," the director said quietly. "I appreciate your concern for your people, but I'll have to ask you to trust me."
Sharon Solow sighed, nodded. "Of course I trust you, Jonathan. For the time being, Veil can stay in the storeroom adjacent to my office. It has a cot. When he's disguised to your satisfaction, I can either put him up in a chalet or an apartment in staff quarters."
"Make it a chalet—and a remote one. If anyone asks, say he's a new staff member who needs the peace and quiet of a chalet for the special work he's doing. I want Veil to have maximum privacy so he can come and go without attracting undue attention."
"I'll take care of it, Jonathan."
Pilgrim lit a cigar. "I'll see the two of you later."
The woman smiled wanly. "Get some sleep, Captain Hook. We both know how much you need it."
Pilgrim stepped back into the cable car and closed the door after him. A moment later the car lifted from the platform and began its return journey to the top of the mountain on the other side of the valley.
Sharon Solow watched the car for almost a minute before she finally turned and smiled at Veil. "This way to the Solow Hilton, Mr. Kendry," she said, pointing to her right to indicate a path cut into the side of the mountain.
Chapter 8
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Veil dreams.
Dawn will break in two hours; Veil's plane will leave at three. Through the night Veil has walked the streets of Saigon, fording garish rainbow rivers of neon, flinching at the sound of disembodied groans, screams, sighs, grunts, and whispered invitations that reverberate in his ears like gunshots.
Veil does not rest like other men, whom sleep renews through dream-discharge of terror, rage, frustration, and forbidden desire; dreams do not flash across the surface of his consciousness to cleanse his mind. Like now, Veil hangs suspended in dreams like a diver in a clear sea roiled by things that sometimes soothe, but more often rend. He is still more than a year away from learning how to control, to roll away from, his night journeys, and physical exhaustion is the only thing he has found that will sink him to the bottom of the sea and give him peace; violence is his most potent narcotic.
It has been this way all his life, and there has never been anyone to understand. The fever that burned his brain made him irrevocably different from other children, as it now sets him apart from other men. Bright, a fast learner who excelled at athletics, Veil was also tormented and hyperactive; filled with rage and terror, he was unpredictable, often uncontrollable, dangerous. Peers and adults feared him, for good reason. It was inevitable that he would come to the attention of the police and the courts.
The Army, to which he escaped and which accepted him at seventeen, was his salvation. In the service of his country, Veil found redemption—for, with the acquisition of discipline, precisely those qualities of fierceness and physical strength that made him a threat to others outside the armed forces, became a valuable asset to those in command inside. He was first in his basic training group, first in advanced armored training, first in Officer Candidate School, first in his training group with Special Forces, where he was recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency. Within six months he was fighting in Vietnam, where he discovered that combat left in its wake welcome, renewing oblivion.
With the meeting in the jungle clearing, all this has changed. His period of indoctrination in Tokyo has left him increasingly disturbed at night, and no amount of exercise seems to help. He is fearful of the future, does not know if he can carry out his new assignment, does not know if he can remain sane without war.
"Hey, soldier. Want girl? Clean girl. Virgin. Twenty dollar."
The pimp's voice has come out of the shadows of a doorway. Veil keeps walking, stiffens as someone grabs his arm.
"How about boy, soldier? Clean boy. Also twenty dollar."
Veil looks down at the cowering, trembling children the Vietnamese has dragged in front of him. He feels short of breath, as if he is plunging into a vacuum, hears an agonized groan that he realizes comes from his own throat. Veil knows this boy and girl, knows their names, has played with them and told them stories about America. They are Hmong children, members of the tribe he left six weeks before.
"What you say, soldier? You be sport. You take both. Thirty dollar for thirty minutes."
Veil stabs at the eyes of the Vietnamese, then rolls away from the dream.
Chapter 9
______________________________
Veil awoke with a start, momentarily disoriented by the intensity of his dream-memory. Then he remembered where he was. He took a number of deep breaths, then sat up on the swaybacked Army cot and looked at his watch. It was four-thirty. The warm, late-afternoon sunlight that lanced through the leaves of the surrounding trees filled the room with strange, shifting, chiaroscuro patterns of light and dark; branches swayed in a gentle breeze and scraped against the sides of the wooden building with a pleasant sound like wire brushes on a snare drum.
The nutty smell of rich, fresh-brewed coffee that permeated the air came from a Silex pot set on a hot plate across the room. Next to the hot plate was an array of toilet articles in their original packaging. Veil rose and poured himself a cup of coffee, carrying it and the toilet articles into a small bathroom where he shaved and washed himself. He refilled his cup, then opened the door and stepped into the adjoining office.
Sharon Solow was seated at the keyboard of a large computer console at the opposite end of the spacious office. To her left was a sheaf of papers to which she would occasionally refer as she tapped on the keys. Tiers of symbols that Veil did hot understand flashed sporadically across the console's display screen. Sharon was dressed now in a white lab coat worn over a plaid skirt, flesh-colored stockings, and low-heeled black pumps. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail that arced gracefully away from her neck and cascaded down almost to the small of her back. There was a faint aroma of expensive perfume, and Veil felt a curious sense of intimacy at the sight of the woman working, unaware of his presence.
The walls and ceiling of the office were painted a flat white, and the only decoration was an enlarged black-and-white photograph mounted on the wall above and behind the console. It was an eerie and beautiful photo, captured by a camera that had been positioned half in and half out of a vast body of water. The surface of the sea was absolutely still and flat all the way to the horizon. Beneath the surface, just barely visible in the murky depths, a fish had been caught in the middle of a half turn; in the distance, not much larger than a speck even in the blowup, a lone gull soared high in the cloudless sky as it rode thermal drafts. There were two levels of existence, two different creatures inhabiting the same world, but separated from each other by a membrane at the cusp of air and water that was at once dimensionless and as impenetrable as eternity.
Finally sensing Veil's presence, the woman turned in her chair, nodded, and smiled warmly. "Hi," she said easily.
Veil felt a tug in his chest as he gazed into the blue eyes that still, even in entirely different light, appeared to be streaked with silver. "Hi. Thanks for the coffee. It's excellent. I like the Solow Hilton."
"I'm glad. I thought you might like some coffee when you woke up. I brought the pot in about a half hour ago. Did I wake you?"