Garden of Lies (44 page)

probably for the rest of his life—regretting it like hell.

At the same time he felt it would be wrong. It might open up wide something that should have

stayed locked. He loved her, but he couldn’t offer her anything besides that ... just the fact of it,

plain and useless as a spoon without a plate of food in front of it. So maybe it was better off just

left alone.

A week in Okinawa, then, with luck, he would have his medical discharge, his ticket home.

Home to Rose ... if she still wanted him.

He saw her in his mind, seven years old, kneeling at the altar in her white communion dress

and veil like the smallest bride in the world, so solemn, eyes scrunched shut, white-gloved hands

clasped before her. A little white bride all alone. And he felt again the way he’d felt then, the

longing to protect her, his poor little Rose who needed so much to be loved.

Then an ugly voice taunted him,
She’s forgotten you by now. Not a single letter. She’s found

someone else to look after her.

Rachel spoke, shattering his thoughts, “I suppose you’ll be going home, back to the States.”

He nodded. “If they give me a medical discharge. I’d sure as hell hate to make a U-turn in

Okinawa. What’s that saying, you can trick the devil once, but not twice?”

“The devil wouldn’t like it here. Too much competition. Anyway, I’ve recommended you be

discharged. You may be back on your feet but you’ve still a long way to go before you’d be ready

for combat.”

“Jesus, is anyone ever ready for that?”

She was silent a moment. “Promise me something, Brian.”

“Anything you say, Doc.”

“Promise me you’ll write that book. You have a wonderful gift. And something important to

say. People should know. People back home ... about this war.”

[260]
People back home.
He thought again of Rose. No, he couldn’t imagine telling her about

it. How could she—or anyone who hadn’t been through it—possibly understand?

Rachel knows, he thought. I don’t have to explain anything to her.

“If I write it,” he said, “it’ll be just so
I
can understand. And I’m not sure if maybe even that

isn’t asking too much.”

She touched his hand, running her fingers lightly over the knob of bone protruding from his

fleshless wrist. He felt, oh, such sadness in that touch ... he wanted to open that locked door

between them and find out what else was there. ...

“Make sure you eat enough,” she said. “You could use some fattening up.”

“Pizza,” he said and laughed, “till it’s coming out my ears. Jesus, I think I’d trade all the rice in

this damn country for a single slice of Avenue J pizza.”

“Pastrami on rye at the Carnegie Deli, that’s what I dream about. With brown mustard and a

big fat half-sour dill pickle. Will you do that for me, Brian, will you go there when you get home

and have one for me?”

“All the way on crutches if I have to.”

“I’ll miss you. Brian, I don’t know how to say this but ...”

He reached up, pressed one finger lightly to her soft mouth. “You don’t have to. I know.”

“I ... I’ll miss you,” she repeated weakly, and when he leaned forward to kiss her lightly on the

cheek, he felt the wet sting of tears on his lips.

I
love you,
he longed to say.

But what he said was “I’ll write it. The book.” He would dedicate it to her, though he might

never see her again.

“I’m glad,” she said.

In the moonlit darkness, he saw the fine, strong outline of her face, the proud tilt of her jaw,

and he had never in his life regretted anything so much as what he had to say now.

“Good-bye, Rachel.”

Chapter 15

Brian accepted the pint of Glenlivet that Dan Petrie offered him. He tipped his head back in a

long swallow, the whiskey burning its way down his throat. The last ten days in Okinawa had

been the longest ones of his life, and he was trying—not succeeding, but sincerely trying—to get

himself through one more endless day by getting royally blasted.

“Goes down cool in a hot climate,” said the cocky little Australian and laughed. “Last time I

got pissed like this I was on a fishing boat in the Gulf of Mexico swilling black rum with Fidel

Castro. If ever there was a bloke could match me dead on, drink for drink, it was that black-

bearded sonofabitch. But you’re not doing too badly, mate. Trouble is, I don’t think it’s killin’ the

bug you’re after.”

Brian focused on the sandy-haired little fellow seated in the orange plastic chair across from

him. Petrie reminded him of a smalltown Little League coach. The UPI correspondent was

wearing a snaggly blue terry robe, his right arm in a sling, a navy bill cap pushed back showing

the stubble of his crewcut. In the half hour since they’d struck up a conversation in the lounge on

Two East, Brian had taken note of the cutting edge beneath Petrie’s easy banter. His sharp blue

eyes looked as if they’d been bolted into his head, and he had a sly knack for appearing hardly to

listen while soaking up every word that was said.

“I got the word today,” Brian said. “They’re discharging me. Less one kidney and three yards

of intestine qualifies me for immediate DEROS and a Purple Heart.”

Dan tipped the bottle to his mouth, then wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “War’ll work

wonders on your perspective, but it’s hell on the anatomy. You don’t seem too happy about it.

[262] Home, I mean, not the bleedin’ Purple Heart. Which unit did you say you were in, mate?”

“One Hundred Twenty-first Infantry,” Brian said, wiping the mouth of the bottle with the

sleeve of his tartan robe before handing it back. “We were stationed about halfway between Da

Nang and a village name of Tien Sung. Firebase Alpha.”

The pint-sized Australian nodded. “Yup, I know the place right enough. Ought to ... I was

there. Bloody hell of a mess. Looks like you got out just in time.”

Brian felt himself stiffen, his throat constricting painfully.

“You were there?” he echoed.

Petrie gestured toward the sling-supported arm with the nearly empty bottle he’d clutched in

his good hand. “That’s where I picked up this souvenir. Piece of shrapnel the size of a bloody

doorknocker.” He grinned. “Cracked me elbow in half. Now I’ve got two funny bones instead of

one. But I’ll be all right.” He stopped, screwing a tight gaze on Brian. “Christ, I’m not so sure

about
you.
You look like an undertaker at your own funeral, mate.”

Brian did feel queasy, a rolling seasickness taking hold of him. The lounge they were in—an

ugly windowless room filled with plastic chairs and rickety cardtables where dull-eyed men in

bathrobes and pajamas sat playing desultory games of gin rummy and five-card stud—tilted

abruptly off balance.

He gripped both sides of his chair, afraid for a second he might fall out of it. He was more

looped than he’d realized. But not enough to keep from feeling the cold knot of fear forming in

his stomach.

“What happened?” he asked, a bitter chalky taste in his mouth.

“I was in Da Nang, covering some SEATO muck-a-muck, that’s when we got word of this

action. Time they got me there, party was nearly over. ... Charlie’d pushed your company back

into the hills, infiltrated the whole area.”

Brian’s throat tightened so, he couldn’t swallow. “There ... there’s a hospital. Catholic hospital.

In Tien Sung. Corpus Christi. I was there before they shipped me here. Do you know if they were

evacuated?”

“I haven’t heard, but I doubt it. Good thing you got out when you did. Place is crawling with

VC—they got all their wounded bivouacked there.”

[263]
Oh God, let him be wrong. Just this once.
But Petrie was a top reporter. If anyone had the

facts straight, surely he did.

He thought of Rachel—she hadn’t been off his mind for more than a minute or two in the ten

days since he’d left her. The acid burn of the whiskey backfired up his throat. He’d heard plenty

about what the VC did to white women ... Christ, what about those two French nuns, found dead,

tied to trees with their tongues cut out. God, he hoped they needed her as a doctor too much to

inflict the horrors running through his mind.

A small voice in the back of his mind said,
She can take care of herself. She’ll get out if there’s

danger. Who appointed you her savior anyway?

Suddenly Brian felt stone-cold sober. The tightness was gone from his throat. He knew what he

had to do. He leaned forward, and the room abruptly righted itself.

“Petrie, I have to get back there,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Someone I know—a doctor

—I want to make sure she’s all right. Get her out if she’s still there.”

The journalist snorted in a half-laugh. “You and the whole bloody Armed Services. Sorry,

mate, you’ve been watching too many John Wayne flicks. Besides, didn’t anyone tell you?—

there’s a bloody war on.”

Brian waited. After a minute or so the cynical grin faded from Petrie’s face. Then Brian said, “I

don’t have much time. And I’ll need your help.”

The Australian had told him about how when covering the Six-Day War he’d been taken

prisoner by Syrians at Golan Heights, and how he’d managed to con his way out of getting his

balls cut off. And even if half the tale was pure bullshit, the guy’s inventiveness was worthy of

Robert Louis Stevenson. If Brian could win him over he’d be one hell of a useful ally.

“Christ, who d’you think I
am,
the bloody Green Berets?”

Brian could feel his mouth forming a smile he didn’t feel. The muscles in his face hurt with the

effort. “They don’t give out Pulitzer prizes to Green Berets.”

He could tell from Petrie’s suddenly riveted attention that now he had the man’s complete

attention.

“There’s a helluva story in this,” Brian went on, struggling to keep riding his momentum. “I

was literally dead, and she ... she [264] cut me open, massaged my heart back to life. And besides

that ...” He stopped.

Besides
what?
What had he been about to say?

Nothing you haven’t thought a thousand times,
he answered himself.

Petrie waited, hat off now, running short square fingers through the stubble of his crewcut. His

quick blue eyes were fixed on him as if Brian were about to deliver the Sermon on the Mount.

“... I’m going to get her out of that place and marry her,” Brian finished.

Was that true? He didn’t know. But, Christ, it had felt good saying it. And it
would
make a

helluva story.

“Shit.” Petrie slapped his knee, grinning wider than ever. “Now, that
is
a story. Maybe even a

movie. Hell, I’ll bet you could even get John Wayne to star in it. She pretty, this doctor of

yours?”

For a second, Brian didn’t know what to say. He’d never thought of her in those terms. Pretty

was a bare-shouldered girl with long tanned legs passing you on the sidewalk in her summer

dress. But things like that couldn’t begin to describe Rachel.

“She’s like no woman you’ve ever seen,” Brian said.

Dan Petrie drained the last drops of whiskey. There was a high flush in his cheeks, and a

sparkle in his eyes.

“Take you a month of Sundays to get your orders changed,
if
they’d ever let you, which is

about as likely me winning the Pulitzer,” Petrie said.

“I’ll go AWOL if I have to. So never mind about me. What about you? Can I count you in on

this?”

“I’ve been accused of being reckless, but never a bleedin’ idiot. Next time it could be m’head

that gets shot.”

“What about Golan Heights? That wasn’t exactly a Sunday picnic.”

“That was different.”

“How?”

“At least out there in the desert, you usually see ’em coming. They’re not shooting at you out

of trees. That’s if you even get that far. First, how you plan on getting sprung from ’ere?”

“I figure it won’t be the hardest thing ... there aren’t too many of us fool enough to go AWOL

back
into that hell. It’s the last place they’d think to look for me. But, dammit, I’ll need your

help.”

[265] Petrie thought for a moment, pulling on his chin. “I’d have to call in some favors. A mate

of mine, works for
Stars and Stripes,
he might be able to get us in. Can’t make any promises,

though.”

Brian, desperate now, coaxed, “I’ll give you an exclusive on this, Petrie. Hell, I may even make

you best man at my wedding. What do you say?”

Christ,
he thought,
what am I saying? What wedding? If we can even pull this off it’ll be a

fucking miracle.

But for Rachel, he knew he would have promised anything.

Petrie gave a slow nod, his expression still dubious. “I’ll see what I can do, mate.”

The boy looked no older than fourteen, fifteen maybe. But in his scarred face and slitted black

eyes, Rachel saw something she’d never seen before.

Hatred. Pure and murderous.

She felt as if she’d just swallowed something cold on an empty stomach. An ache flared above

her right eyebrow. The flesh on her arms shrank with goosebumps.

She sensed that the boy lying in the bed, staring up at her with those burning eyes, would have

killed her without a moment’s pause if he had the strength.

I am the enemy. He doesn’t care that without my help he’d die. He’d just as soon, than have