第 15 页

vanished."

"Vanished?"

"Yes, I don't know where he is. Creasy didn't tell me."

She had noticed in the mirror that Maxie was constantly glancing through the rear window, but

the Belgian never turned his head. He was watching the road ahead. They were not tense, but

they were totally alert. Maxie said to her: "When we get to within five hundred metres of this guy

Tran's house, pull over and stop. Keep the engine running."

For the first time, Rene glanced over his shoulder. He asked: "What do you think Guido is up

to?"

Maxie chuckled. "He's roaming. He does it well. You and I will be inside that house. Guido will

be outside. Miss Moore, does Guido have a mobile phone?"

"Yes. He will be in touch...And, under the circumstances, you can call me Susanna."

She felt a light tap on the shoulder as he said: "Thank you. So far so good. I assume that the

family has been fully briefed and will not do anything stupid."

"Yes, Maxie. They are in great fear of their lives."

"OK. This is the procedure: first we park five hundred metres away for a few minutes, so Rene

and I can check that we're not being followed. Then you drive to within ten metres of the house

so we can recce the vicinity. After that we move in. You follow ten minutes later...I gather the

Trans don't speak English?"

"Very little."

"Then you must brief them for us, and emphasize that they must follow the procedures exactly.

Let them know that if they do something stupid or outside the procedures, Rene and I will stop

protecting them and start protecting ourselves. We won't shed a tear at their funeral."

She found herself talking in the same staccato manner. "Understood. They will get a full

situation report."

She drove across the bridge, and five minutes later eased the car to a stop at the side of the

road. Maxie reached from behind and adjusted the rear-view mirror so that he could survey the

road behind. It was a busy road. Cars, buses, tri-shaws and bicycles, together with a lot of

pedestrians. Rene was looking forward and to both sides. They sat absolutely still. Susanna

managed to stifle a sneeze.

Finally Maxie said: "OK. Move closer."

She engaged first gear and, as they moved forward, listened to their conversation.

Maxie said: "Lot of movement, Rene. It's a bag of worms."

"Yeah. It's going to be inside work. Seal the place off. It's a reaction job. There's no place to

stand off or cover forward."

Again Susanna pulled the car to the curb. She pointed. "The house is down that side street.

Exactly fifty-five metres on the left-hand side. The front door is painted black. Mrs Tran and the

children are waiting."

A minute passed and then Maxie muttered: "Let's go."

She watched them amble down to the side street and then turn into it, carrying their two bags

and the bag of machinery. The busy hubbub continued around her, and she felt it a little strange

that life should be so normal after she had just injected two such men into the community.

Ten minutes later she locked the car and followed them. The door was opened by Rene. He had

already changed from his slacks and sports jacket into black jeans, a black polo-neck shirt and

black sneakers.

Mrs Tran and her two daughters were sitting apprehensively on the sofa, watching Maxie go

about his work. He had also changed into black clothing. Susanna pulled up a chair next to the

sofa and watched with interest.

Maxie was cutting up sections of fishing net and then fixing them across the windows. Rene had

a roll of white marker tape in one hand. The other hand was held up in front of his eyes as he

moved around the room looking through each window. In his turn, he started unrolling the tape

and sticking it into lines on the wooden floor. Susanna asked: "Can you tell me what you're

doing, so I can explain to Mrs Tran?"

Maxie turned and said: "The netting over the windows is anti-grenade. Its mesh is fine enough

not to be noticed from the outside. If someone lobs a grenade through the window, it will

bounce back outside." He gestured at Rene. "But obviously, it won't stop a bullet. So Rene is

checking lines of fire." He pointed at one of the windows. "For example if there should be a

sniper in a building across the street, he will have a limited view into the room. We have to make

sure that the angles are right. Also the lighting. When we're finished, I'll explain everything."

She glanced at Mrs Tran and gave her a little background. The Vietnamese woman listened

intently, as did the two young girls.

They were like little dolls with round faces and black, bobbed hair. She thought they were

adorable. Abruptly, she was conscious of her own condition and the need to make a decision.

She forced it out of her mind and turned back to watch the two men.

Rene had finished laying his lines of tape and was unscrewing the light bulb from a red, ornate

lampshade hanging from the ceiling. Maxie was testing the tension of the netting. Satisfied, he

said to Susanna: "We'll do the other rooms in a minute." He pointed at the lines of tape. "These

are passage lines. When Mrs Tran and the girls move around this room and the others, they must

always follow those lines. Then they're not exposed to sniper fire through the windows. We'll

take out the bulbs from any lights that illuminate the wrong areas. We'll build a safe area in the

bathroom." He reached down into his canvas bag and pulled out several small black boxes

attached to long, thin wires.

"After dark we'll rig these outside. They make up an infrared alarm system. If anyone

approaches the doors or windows, a buzzer will go off in all the rooms. Immediately Mrs Tran

and the girls will go to the bathroom and stay on the floor until Rene or I tell them to flush the

toilet." He grinned. "That's the password for them. All clear 'flush the toilet'."

She translated that, expecting the woman to be amused. But she simply nodded silently and then

asked: "Will I be safe with these two men?"

Susanna glanced at them and then answered: "They will do their very best to protect you and

your daughters."

The woman shook her head. "I didn't mean that. We're going to be sort of locked up together

for many days and nights. What if they get drunk and try to rape me?"

Susanna started an answer, but then stopped and put the question to the two men.

They showed no offence. Maxie said: "First of all, while in this house, we will drink no alcohol."

He glanced at Rene. "And secondly, if it will reassure her, you can tell her that we are both gay"

She looked at them both and then translated to the woman.

For the first time, Mrs Tran smiled. Then she laughed and said: "Of course they are not gay. But

now I trust them. Please tell them thank you, and welcome to my house."

Chapter 27

She had seen the scars on his face, but not those on his body. And her eyes were drawn to them

in morbid fascination. It seemed almost impossible to be able to place even a fingertip on his

torso without covering a scar.

She had tapped on the door of his room a few minutes earlier.

He had only been wearing shorts; the air-conditioning in the hotel had broken down yet again,

and on a windless evening the room was as hot as an oven.

He poured them both a glass of cold water from a flask and listened intently as she briefed him

about the arrival of Maxie and Rene, and their preparations at Tran's house.

"It was reassuring," she said. "They seem to be very competent."

He gave her one of his rare, brief smiles. "The fact that they're alive is proof of their

competence. It all comes from experience. You can take a twenty-year-old athlete and turn him

into a bodyguard by training him in the martial arts and the use of a variety of weapons. He can

become a total expert physically, and to some extent, mentally. But the only time he gets actual

experience is when someone tries to kidnap or kill his charge. And then you have a situation of a

highly trained man or woman having to do a job at which they've had no experience. It's like

training a company of soldiers and then sending them into battle without experienced officers or

sergeants. The minute the fire-fight starts, their training goes out the window. It's ironic. Rene

and Maxie both passed fifty years old. There's no protective organization I know of who would

think of hiring fifty-year-old bodyguards. And yet those two are the best in the business."

She was looking at the scars again. She gestured at his body and asked: "Do they have as many

scars as you?"

"They have enough," he said. "To my knowledge, Rene was wounded several times in Algeria

when he was in the Legion. And again in the Congo. Maxie was once left for dead on the

Zambian border during the Rhodesian war. He dragged himself ten miles back into Rhodesia.

He was in hospital for over three months. The point is, Susanna, that they've been through it all

many times."

"Why do you do it?"

He shrugged. "It's all we know. I joined the Marines when I was seventeen to get away from a

lousy life at home. I've never known anything else except being a soldier of one kind or another.

The same applies to Maxie and Rene, and of course to Guido. There's nothing romantic about

it. We've been called the dogs of war and the orphans of society. Maybe the truth lies somewhere

in between. Mercenaries have a bad reputation and usually it's deserved. By its nature the

profession attracts very low-life types, but they're not all bad. The best time of my life was in the

Legion. It was like the family that I'd never had before. The same applied to Rene and Guido.

We were brothers in that family."

"You had to retire?" she asked.

"No. No soldier ever has to retire from the Foreign Legion. If he wants to stay on after his

fighting age, then they give him other duties or he goes to their vineyards in France. Under

normal circumstances, he's never forced out of the family."

"So why did the three of you leave?"

"It was at the end of the Algerian war, when de Gaulle decided to give the Algerians their

independence. Some of the generals and other officers rebelled, including those commanding

our own parachute regiment. Legionnaires always follow their officers. When the rebellion

failed, our regiment was disbanded. De Gaulle was very vengeful, and perhaps with good

reason. At one point we were within forty-eight hours of parachuting onto Paris." He shook his

head at the memory. "It was madness, but it was a mad time."

Abruptly, he stood up, walked to the window and tried to force it even wider to let in a shred

more air. He looked down at the buzzing street below and said over his shoulder: "So they

kicked us out."

He turned. She could see the discomfort on his face. He was a taciturn man not given to long

monologues and definitely averse to showing his own feelings.

"End of speech," he said, "and change of subject. Tomorrow I'm heading to Phnom Penh. I

don't think we'll make any more progress here. Guido will stay on for a couple more days to

keep an outside eye on Tran's house and on Tran himself."

"Is that what he's doing now?"

He nodded. "I think we can trust Tran, but you can never be sure. In this country there are many

wheels within wheels. And there may be more than one puppeteer pulling the strings." He

moved back to his chair and sat down and said: "I'm grateful for your help. Your introduction

to Dang Hoang Long was very useful. I'm sorry you had to go through that unpleasantness at the

river."

She hardly heard his last words because her mind was forced back to a decision she had put off

for the last two days. The speed of events and their emotional impact had allowed her to push

her own personal problem to the back of her mind. But she would soon have to face it. She must

have been lost in her thoughts for a long time because she suddenly heard his voice.

"Are you all right, Susanna?"

Her head jerked up. "Yes, I'm fine. I was just thinking about something."

"It must have been something sad."

"Why do you say that?"

"It shows on your face. It's been that way now for the past couple of days. You're not the same

person. Has something happened?"

Abruptly, she realized that his tone of voice had changed. The hardness had left it. For a

moment she felt an urge to tell him everything. Maybe it was because he was twenty years older

than her and so much more experienced. But then her eyes looked at the scarred body and face,

and her mind asked the question: What would such a man know of the emotions of a woman

who realizes that a child is about to grow inside her? What would he know about the

disappointments of a man she thought she might love and who might love her? What would he

know about anything, apart from weapons and killing? His world was as far from hers as a

planet a million light years away.

She stood up and smoothed her skirt, saying: "I'm fine, Creasy. I'll probably stay on a couple

more days and then head back to Washington. I hope everything goes well for you in

Cambodia...for all of you. I'm glad I was a little help."

She went back to her room and took a cold shower, wrapped herself in a towel and lay on the

bed. She could not seem to focus her thoughts in any clear direction. Slowly, it became apparent

that she had reached a crossroads in her life. She was of an age and in a condition that required

one of life's decisions. She felt lonely and even abandoned. She pushed herself up against the

headboard. She made a decision. It was an easy one. She would decide tomorrow. She would

have dinner in the hotel and drink a good bottle of wine, sleep late and then decide.