Almost… almost she'd suggested that he spend the night with her, but a final professional reserve within herself, the knowledge that mixing business and pleasure like that would only lead to trouble, had decided her against it.
He had arranged for a room for himself and not even suggested that they share her bed. Pamela felt a mild disappointment at that which bordered on regret.
It wasn't that she wanted the guy to make a pass at her… but she wasn't used to such gentlemanly discretion ― or patience ― and it left her wondering if the man even found her attractive.
She pushed the thought aside. What Tombstone had suggested instead had turned into a delightful excursion that left her feeling far closer to the man than a recreational romp in bed would have. They'd left requests for wake-up calls at the ungodly hour of five thirty A.m. ― zero-dark-thirty, as Tombstone had called it ― met in the hotel coffee shop for a thoroughly American breakfast of coffee and Danish, then made it to the Oriental Docks in time to catch a tour boat by six forty-five.
The boat had brought them to Thonburi, navigating through a klong crowded from shore to shore with native craft of all descriptions, heavily laden with tropical produce. Here, two pretty That girls in enormous lamp-shade hats, obviously sisters, jostled their skiff close to the shore to display a bountiful pile of dry fish; there an ancient man with white whiskers spread woven mats on the dockside piled high with fried bananas and noodles. Perhaps most surprising were the tourists. Farangs ― the That word for foreigners ― outnumbered the locals by a considerable margin, and most of the shops along the klong appeared to be selling souvenirs, cameras, and native crafts aimed at Western tourists. The air was thick with the sharp tang of That spices and foodstuffs. The crowd noise was loud enough that she had to lean close to Tombstone's shoulder and raise her voice to be heard.
"What are you so serious about?" she called. He'd grown quiet in the last few minutes, and she wondered what had triggered the change.
He flashed her a shy smile. "Just wondering if my dad ever came here.
He would've liked this place. He liked people."
Tombstone had told her about his father earlier that morning, about Sam Magruder's death while attacking a bridge in Hanoi. "Lots of servicemen came here for R&R back then, didn't they?" she asked.
"That's probably when Bangkok got its reputation as sin city." He stopped next to the spot where a black-eyed girl who couldn't have been more than twelve was selling custard-like sweets wrapped in banana leaves. "Here!
Let's try some of these."
Tombstone indicated he wanted two, and fished in his pocket for several baht to pay for them. "Kawpkun!" Tombstone said as she handed the bundles up from her boat.
The girl burst out laughing, though whether at Tombstone's pronunciation or in pleasure at the tall stranger's attempt at her language, Pamela couldn't tell. "You are welcome!" the That girl replied in perfect, somewhat stilted English.
"I didn't know you spoke That, Tombstone," Pamela said, trying one of the custards. It was at once sweet and tart, reminiscent of butterscotch. When had she started using his call sign? she wondered. Last night sometime. It seemed so… natural.
"Oh, was that That?" He feigned innocence, then sobered. "Actually, a wise man once said that you need to learn two words in any language in order to get along in another culture.
"Oh? And what are those?"
"Please and thank you."
"And who was the wise man?"
"My father." He shrugged. "It really helps a lot if you at least try a bit of their language. It is their country, after all."
"Matthew Magruder, the more I know you, the less likely you seem as a Navy aviator. You're supposed to be arrogant!"
"Sorry. You want to see my Tom Cruise Top Gun imitation?"
"No, the Navy has enough Tom Cruises. I kind of like you the way you are."
He shook his head. "What is it about the Navy? During the interview you were going after the Navy's carrier program like nobody's business."
She thought back to the questions she'd asked on camera, and saw what he meant. Much of the thrust for her series called into question the whole issue of the Navy, of the government spending tens of billions of dollars for a fifteen-carrier fleet it no longer needed. While drawing out Tombstone and getting him to talk about himself, Pamela had argued that carriers were too expensive and too vulnerable, useless high-tech toys in an age when nuclear confrontation with the Soviets was no longer a likely possibility, and when Third World banana republics no longer knuckled under to gunboat diplomacy.
Pamela knew she'd done a damned good job putting her message across, too.
Still, she'd liked the way Tombstone had kept the ball coming back into her court. He believed in carriers as an extension of Presidential foreign policy with an almost passionate conviction. He'd not convinced her of his side of the argument, not by a long shot, but she admired the way he stood up to her.
Maybe that was what she found most fascinating about the guy.
They finished the custards and disposed of the banana leaf wrappings in a street-side waste container.
"It's waste I don't like, Tombstone," she said after a long silence. "We don't need multibillion-dollar floating airfields anymore. Maybe back in the days when we were toe-to-toe with the Soviets, but…"
"The Russians aren't the only bad boys on the block," he said. "Besides, they're preoccupied with their own troubles right now… but there's nothing that says they might not come out of their hole sometime soon meaner and scrappier than ever."
"Nonsense." Her tone was harsher, more sarcastic than she'd intended.
"The Cold War is over, or hadn't you heard?"
He looked at her, his gray eyes like ice. "You know, Pamela, I've had the distinct impression all along that you had it in for us service pukes."
The accusation hit her in the pit of the stomach like a blow. She stopped in mid-stride, turning on Tombstone, unable to keep the fury out of her face and voice. "Don't you say that! Don't you ever say that!"
Tombstone's expression showed first confusion, then concern. "Pamela?
What's wrong?"
Slowly, she forced herself to relax, unclenching her fists, and looking away from the Navy officer to study the crowd surrounding them. As many people as there were, the surroundings felt strangely private.
Pamela took a deep breath. "Sorry, Commander," she said. "It's… what you said."
"What did I say?"
She was silent a long moment. "I'll tell you something. Something I…
don't like to talk about." She looked away, catching her lower lip between her teeth before she continued. "I had a brother once."
He gave her a hard look. "'Had'?"
Pamela nodded. The pain was still sharp. "His name was Bobby and he was three years younger than me. I was a journalism major at Pitt when he graduated from high school. Our… our family was all set to pack him off to college, but he wouldn't have any of it. You talk about conservatives! He figured the colleges were all liberal hotbeds ― this was the dawn of the Reagan Era, you understand ― and that there were better ways of getting an education without spending forty thousand dollars for a piece of paper to hang on a wall."
"What happened?"
"He joined the Marines." She sniffled once, surprised that the memory still brought tears. "He went to boot camp at Paris Island, then got assigned to a rifle platoon going overseas. Beirut."
"Oh, God."
"October, 1983. Some crazy drove a truck bomb into his barracks one floor below where he was sleeping. They never even found enough of him afterward to send home in a body bag."
"I'm… sorry."
"So, Commander, I do care for… for 'service pukes," as you call them.