Long after he had left she sat motionless on the sofa. The sensation of vertigo was as real as if a physical abyss was opening at her feet. Her husband knew… something at least. Her sister teetered on the edge of suspicion. While she herself, Mary Page Butler, fought to keep at arm’s length the thought that all Cy Stevenson’s attention, flattery, compliments and caresses were devoted to the single aim of buying her vote.
She hurled the magazine across the room, fury possessing her as even he had never possessed her. Water poured from an upturned flower vase. The magazine skidded to a slow stop across the carpet. The sound of her scream of anger came back to her as an echo memory.
While the resolution was still with her she picked up the phone. It would be late in Paris but not too late. Fin, she told Josette Picard on the phone, was planning a business trip. Could she come over to Paris to stay for a few weeks while he was away?
When that was settled she made another call, this time to Cannes and after that a call to the Marbella Club in southern Spain. By the arrangements she made she had ensured that she would be away from Meyerick until late into the autumn.
Chapter Twenty-One
The fever returned as night fell. In the white vaulted hospital room lit by a single kerosene lamp, Nan Luc sat beside Max’s bed feeding him trickles of water and washing the heat from his body.
For Max the night was another agony of strange dreams; of intolerable heat; and the sounds of torrential rain raking the long windows of the hospital room, gurgling along zinc gutters and spurting from downpipes. But it was also a night when he was aware of Nan Luc next to him, aware of holding her hands and talking to her, feverish repetitions of his wish for them to stay together.
Waking before dawn, he found Nan Luc lying awake on the bed beside him. Her face had an extraordinary, almost translucent pallor like the transulence of her teeth between the slightly parted lips. She lay on her side, facing him. Her legs were drawn up towards him, not quite evenly, so that he could reach out and touch the smoothness of the inside of her thigh.
She smiled at him. ‘You’re feeling better.’
‘I must be.’ He leaned over and kissed her lips. ‘I feel as if I’ve been talking to you all night.’
She smiled. ‘You have.’
‘Was it gibberish? Nonsense?’
‘Not nonsense,’ she said.
‘I’m not leaving without you, Nan Luc.’ He stopped. ‘Did I say that already?’
‘Many times last night,’ she said. ‘That and a lot of other things.’
He heaved himself on to one elbow. ‘I don’t know how it came out but I meant it all,’ he said. ‘I want to marry you, Nan.’
‘You said that, too.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘I said I wanted to marry you.’
‘If we were married here in Vietnam, is there any chance the government would let you leave?’
She sat up on the edge of the bed, her face turned towards the window. ‘We must stop talking like this, Max,’ she said after a moment. ‘It hurts and it does no good. Even if the French priest would marry us, the administration would never recognise it. Much less let us leave together. You know, you’ve seen it. The party line is that nobody has any wish to leave Vietnam, even while hundreds of boat people each day are risking everything on the high seas.’ She got up and fetched the water bowl and a cloth from the wooden table and began to bathe his hands and arms.
‘If I found a way, another way,’ he said, ‘would you come with me?’
‘There’s no time to find another way.’
‘If we could make time, would you take the risk?’
‘It’s not just a risk for me, Max. You would have to be very sure yourself.’
‘You think all this is just the fever talking.’
She shrugged uncertainly. ‘You’re a long way from the West, you meet a girl…’
‘I was sure back in Paris,’ he said. ‘From the moment I realised you were not going to make it to the cafe.’
‘Is that true?’
‘It’s true.’
She knelt on the bed, resting her forehead against the side of his head. ‘If you’re sure,’ she said, ‘I’ll take any risk. Any risk for us just to be together.’
‘Forget about her, Max,’ Harold Bolson said. ‘Every second American who comes here falls for one of these girls. Usually it’s not something that lasts. In any case you can’t put her in your duffel bag and smuggle her from Saigon. It’s over. Be smart about it.’
Max stood unsteadily in Bolson’s hotel room. ‘Sometimes it pays not to be too smart,’ he said.
‘Tell me when,’ Bolson said. ‘Listen, I’m thinking of Nan Luc.
Van Khoa’s a decent man. He can give her the protection she needs here.’
‘And if she doesn’t want to marry Van Khoa?’
Bolson shrugged. ‘You’re still pretty sick. I guess they just might let you stay on a few days. Settle for that, Max.’
Max shook his head. ‘They’ve made it clear we all leave together.’
‘Then what the hell have you got Hunter running round trying to buy black market jerry cans of fuel for? Even if you can heist a jeep and make a run for the Cambodian border you’ll be no safer there. The whole central and southern part of the country is controlled by a pro-Vietnamese government. To the north you risk falling into the hands of the crazy goons of the Khmer Rouge. Like I said, Max, forget about her. It’s best for both of you.’ Outside, a small party of Vietnamese had been assembled by Van Khoa to see off the foreign journalists: some of the court officials, the hotel management, the interpreters and Van Khoa himself. Max’s eyes never left Nan Luc as Van Khoa made a brief speech from the bottom step of the bus.
‘What has been important in your visit is the demonstration that Vietnam has a system of effective, revolutionary justice,’ Van Khoa said, reading rapidly in barely comprehensible English. ‘Comrade Quatch was faced with serious charges. The court was quickly able to determine that these charges were malicious and false. Accordingly the verdict was not guilty on all counts.’
‘You’re saying there was no corruption?’ Hunter called from the back. ‘You’re saying there was no American associate in Geneva?’
Van Khoa consulted his watch. ‘Regrettably we have no time for questions before the bus leaves. Good luck, gentlemen.’ He bent his head to his script again. ‘And let us hope you will feel able, as the judge said in his opening words, let us hope that you will feel able to report a fair trial, fairly.’
Van Khoa came forward to shake hands with Hal Bolson. One or two journalists said goodbyes to the interpreters they had worked with. Max and Nan Luc were no more than four yards apart. He walked slowly towards her and she extended her hand. ‘I love you,’ he said quietly as they shook hands.
‘What difference can that make to us now?’ she said, her eyes brimming with tears.
‘You meant what you said about the risk?’
‘Yes.’
‘Meet me on the river path. As close to midnight as you can make it.’
She looked towards the bus where some of the journalists were already climbing aboard. ‘But they’re taking you straight back to Saigon.’
‘Please, Miss Hyn,’ Van Khoa’s voice called. ‘The bus is leaving.’
‘I’ll be waiting for you,’ he said. ‘Where the river bends.’ And releasing her hand he turned away and mounted the steps to join the other Westerners on the crowded open platform at the back of the old bus.