第 6 页

"Apart from what you have read in that report, do you know anything about that man Creasy?"

"No, sir. Just that he's a mercenary."

The tone of Senator Grainger's voice changed. He became almost musing. He said: "Colonel

Friedman, can we talk off the record and in confidence?"

Friedman glanced at Susanna as if for advice. She simply shrugged and started to walk towards

the door. Friedman stabbed the hold button and told her: "Stay where you are, Susanna. When a

senator wants to talk to an officer in confidence, it's better to have a witness."

Very intrigued, she returned to her seat. Friedman reopened the line and said: "Of course,

Senator. This conversation is between you and me."

"Good. I'm going to ask nothing that will compromise you. It's simply a request. I would like

you to keep me informed of any further contact you or your department have with this man

Jensen or with the man Creasy. I would also ask that in the event of such contacts, you render all

assistance possible."

The colonel looked up at Susanna, who again simply shrugged.

A few seconds passed, then Friedman said: "I'll be happy to do that, Senator Grainger, under

any circumstances. However, you will understand my curiosity. Can you explain why?"

Friedman and Susanna looked at each other through the silence. Through the speaker, she could

hear the Senator's breathing. He said: "I'll be in Washington next week. Perhaps you would join

me for lunch at The Red Sage?"

Susanna saw Friedman's eyebrows rise in surprise. It was a very rare event when a senior Senator

invited a colonel to the best restaurant in town.

"It will be an honour, Senator."

"Good. I'll have my secretary phone you and fix the appointment. Thanks for your

cooperation."

The line went dead. Friedman sat back in his chair and looked thoughtfully at the ceiling. Then

he lowered his gaze to Susanna.

"What the hell is all that about?"

"It's about having perhaps the best meal in your life."

A thought struck him. "Should I wear uniform or a suit and tie?"

"Ask the secretary when she phones. I would certainly polish my shoes."

He was thoughtful again. "Put your thinking cap on, Susanna. What the hell is behind all this?"

"I don't know. But my guess is that his interest lies more in the mercenary Creasy than in the

Dane." She had stood up. "But Elliot, one thing is for sure: you had better go to that lunch fully

prepared. You need to know more about this man Creasy."

"That's true. But if I ask for a more detailed report from the FBI, they'll alert Grainger. I have to

find another way."

She nodded. "You have to have the advantage of knowledge without the Senator being aware of

it."

"So what do I do?"

"You put a routine inquiry through to Interpol in Paris."

"Interpol? But he's a mercenary, not necessarily a criminal."

"Yes, but I read somewhere that for the last couple of decades Interpol have been keeping a

registry of all known mercenaries. It's no problem. We often put inquiries through to Interpol,

and I doubt if Senator Grainger has any influence there."

She closed her eyes as the plane screeched onto the runway. No matter how many times she

flew, she could never relax during the take-off or landing. A voice from the seat beside her

drawled, "I know how you feel, ma'am. To me it's always a miracle that these damned machines

ever get off the ground."

She opened her eyes and turned her head. From an earlier conversation she knew that he was a

Texas oilman. She would have known it anyway. He was all boots and a big brass belt buckle

and a friendly courtesy. He helped her off with her bag and invited her to share a taxi into town.

She declined politely, not relishing the idea of conversation or an invitation to dinner. During

the half-hour journey she noticed the increased bustle of the city. There were ever more street

vendors and Honda mopeds. Capitalism was returning to Vietnam with a vengeance. Her

thoughts turned back to Washington and to Elliot Friedman.

Interpol had answered their query within hours. She had watched the fax come off the machine

in her office. It had kept coming and coming until more than five yards of it had spilled onto the

floor. She had read it in silent fascination and then taken it through to Elliot. After he finished

reading it, he looked up and asked: "You read it?"

"Yes. I'm sorry, I should have brought it through straight away, but I started reading as it came

off the machine and I couldn't stop."

Slowly and thoughtfully, he rolled the paper into a tube. He tapped it on his desk. "You saw the

connection," he said.

"Yes. Lockerbie, Pam Am 103. Creasy's wife and child were on it. So was Senator Grainger's

wife. It's known that some person or organization mounted a revenge attack against the

bombers in the Middle East. That fax more or less confirms it. Creasy was involved."

"He was involved in a lot of things," Friedman answered grimly.

"An ex French Foreign Legionnaire, then a mercenary in the West African wars in the sixties.

And then in Vietnam and Cambodia as an 'unofficial' connected to our special forces."

"The dogtag," she said.

"The dogtag?"

"Yes, Elliot. That has to be the connection. Maybe he knew Jake Bentsen over there."

"Let's try and track it down. I want you to scrutinize every unit that Bentsen was attached to.

The records will not show if any 'unofficials' were attached, but I can use my own unofficial

sources to find out." He grinned. "Senator James L. Grainger is not the only one with

connections."

The taxi pulled up at the Hotel Continental. Every time she came to Ho Chi Minh city she

always decided to stay at a modern hotel, but inevitably she changed her plans at the last minute

and booked into the Continental. Her father had stayed there very often during his years in

Vietnam. He had told her of its famous veranda and bar and its old colonial atmosphere. It was

always a bitter-sweet feeling as she went through the door. Then, after a few minutes, it was

better to have the memory and in a strange way feel his presence.

She stood under the old copper showerhead washing her hair and irreverently thinking of the

line from South Pacific, "I'm gonna wash that man right out of my hair". Her boyfriend, the

professor Jason, was not really in her hair. Somehow her passion seemed to be on hold.

Subconsciously she was waiting for a man to come along: not to sweep her off her feet, but to

light some passion that she knew must lie within her. So far it had been dormant. She enjoyed the

company of the man, both mentally and physically, but the physical side had always been more

or less routine. A social act rather than a blending of the body and the mind. She had watched

some of her friends stumble madly into love and then usually out of it. It had never happened to

her.

Perhaps her mind was too logical, her life too controlled. She rinsed the shampoo from her hair

and soaped her long body. Again, her mind went back to Washington and her boss.

Elliot had returned from his lunch with Senator Grainger at The Red Sage and immediately

dropped by her office. She had spent the first ten minutes pumping him about the restaurant, the

food and the clientele. His gossip was satisfying. He had spotted the Vice-President's wife

lunching with an ageing actor, and the Attorney General with a couple of Senators. He was sure

it had all been strictly business. Grainger had ordered a plain grilled steak but Elliot had been

more adventurous, starting with a wild salmon mousse and going on to duck a l"orange. It had

been delicious. At first Grainger had been cautious, obviously sizing up his man. But with the

main course he had opened up and talked about his personal life. The conversation had slowly

turned to Creasy.

It appeared the two men were very close friends. It had begun with their

shared tragedy over Lockerbie indeed, Creasy had mounted a revenge attack partially funded

and assisted by Grainger. A couple of years later Creasy had become involved in a sort of war

against a white-slave-and-drug ring in France and Italy. Grainger had been able to pull a few

strings to help the mercenary during that time. The ring had been destroyed and its leader killed.

The Dane Jens Jensen, together with The Owl, had been part of that operation. A year later the

daughter of one of Senator Grainger's constituents in Denver had been murdered in Zimbabwe.

The local police had made no progress and the dead girl's mother had come to Grainger to ask

his help in applying pressure on the State Department to get results. Instead, Grainger had

introduced her to Creasy who, in his own way, had extracted justice. Jens Jensen had also been

involved. So it was no surprise that the Senator's curiosity had been roused when Elliot had put

in a query to the FBI about the Dane.

Elliot had been pacing up and down her small office with a coffee mug in his hand. He stopped,

turned and said: "Susanna, at this point it became obvious to me that the senator holds much

affection for this man, Creasy. There and then I took a decision. I told the Senator that for the

next few weeks I would routinely be basing one of my officers in Saigon. I suggested that the

Senator get in touch with Creasy and inform him that if he needed any help and backup in that

city, he could call on our organization in the person of that officer."

Elliot smiled, and said: "Who happens to be Susanna Moore."

She was startled. She had not been due to visit Vietnam for at least three or four months.

"I want you to leave tomorrow," he said. "Something in my blood tells me that this could be

important. I have a feeling that this man Creasy does not go charging around the world on

wild-goose chases."

She stepped out of the shower and towelled herself down. It was something of a mystery to her.

Elliot Friedman was not a man to act on impulse. He had a well-trained logical mind, which is

why he was so good at his job. He was also careful with his budget and not given to sending his

officers on speculative trips. But then he had given her another nugget of information.

"I checked with my sources," he said. "Jake Bentsen went missing in action during a fire-fight

near the Cambodian border on September 24th 1968. It was a Special Forces mission. It so

happened that they were accompanied by two unofficials. Of course those guys always used false

names.

I tracked down the then lieutenant who led that mission. He's now a full colonel. He

remembered the mission well, and the two unofficials. One was a Belgian. The other one had

French papers and spoke with a slight American accent. His physical description fits that of our

man Creasy. Also his actions and demeanour. The colonel remembers that young Jake Bentsen

was only twenty-one years old at the time. He tended to keep close to the unofficial who fits

Creasy's description."

He took a sip of his coffee and said thoughtfully: "I see the scenario thus:

Bentsen's dogtag was returned mysteriously to his parents in San Diego. They had previously

drawn a blank with us. Maybe young Bentsen had mentioned Creasy in his letters from 'Nam.

They managed to track him down and now he's on his way back to 'Nam to look for Bentsen or

his remains. The point is, Susanna, a man like that can do things that we cannot. He can go places

that we could never go.

He could ask questions in a way we never could. He might turn

something up. He might even throw a light on other MIAs at the same time." He gave her a long

look and continued: "So I want you on the scene. Keep your eyes and ears open. And if he does

contact you, give him every cooperation."

She finished drying her dark hair, went into the bedroom and slipped on a lime-green linen

dress. She applied a minimum of make-up, and decided to have a pre-dinner cocktail in the bar.

As she walked down the stairs her thoughts turned to her professor back in Washington, and

she tried to decide if there was any future in that situation. She tried to decide if Professor Jason

Woodward was the man to spend the rest of her life with.

Not that he had asked her to marry him. On the contrary, the subject had never arisen, but she

knew that he would never leave her. She chuckled mentally, realizing that in a way she was like his

rows of dusty books or the old, felt slippers he pulled on when he came home in the evening.

She was a fixture in his comfortable, ordered life. As she tried to define her feelings, it dawned

on her that she actually loved his mind. She loved the way he looked at a situation or a problem

or an event: the way he analysed things without presumptions or suppositions: she loved his

fairness. She enjoyed long conversations over dinner when she would act as devil's advocate,

trying to probe and provoke. Of course he knew what she was doing and he would give her his

gentle smile and argue with a combination of logic and humanity.

In her mind she tried to find a balance between the mental and physical. Was it enough to love a

man for his mind, or was it necessary to have the juxtaposition of physical love as well? There

had been many times when she wished she did not have physical desires. She had read in a

biography of Gandhi how he believed that it was impossible for the mind to develop to its full

potential unless the weaknesses of the body had been overcome. By weaknesses he meant sexual

urges. He had deliberately cast out sexual urges in order to focus on his life's mission and

destiny: but she was no Gandhi. She was a normal, healthy woman who once in a while wanted to

climb into bed with a man and make love. It was that simple.

Occasionally she had cast an eye over other men intrinsically looking for a body more than a

mind. There was a young lieutenant in the office. She could feel his physical interest in her.