The Tears of Autumn - Charles McCarry [73]
4
Christopher called Wolkowicz on the car radio and, speaking German, asked him to bring two things to their last meeting. An hour later, he found Wolkowicz waiting in his Mercedes on the Yen Do Road, near the airport.
Wolkowicz walked from his car to the Chevrolet and got into the back seat. When Christopher told him what had happened, he showed his teeth.
“What did you do with the bodies?”
“Put them back in the paddy.”
“The cops’ll think it was the VC.”
He handed Christopher an envelope. “Is this what you wanted?” he asked.
Christopher opened the envelope and looked at the photographs of Nicole and Do Minh Kha that Luong had taken in Vientiane.
“Yes. Thanks.”
“You’ve identified the girl, right?”
“Yes. She’s a relative of the Truong toe’s.”
“The chick you had lunch with?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the connection with Do?”
Christopher put the photograph back in its envelope. “She’s a courier,” he said.
Wolkowicz grunted. “All in the family. The generals would like to know that.”
“Do this for me,” Christopher said, handing Wolkowicz the envelope. He had addressed it to the Truong toe.
“I’ll mail it in the morning,” Wolkowicz said.
Christopher opened the car door. “Did you bring the Green Beret?” he asked.
“He’s in the Mercedes.”
Christopher walked to the other car and rapped sharply on the roof. Peggy McKinney’s brother, wearing khakis, got out. Planes flew overhead, descending toward the airport with then-landing lights on. Christopher had to shout above the noise of the jet engines.
“Come around in the headlights,” Christopher said.
He handed the boy the Polaroid pictures of his dead agents. The young captain crouched so that the light fell on the pictures. He wore a heavy Rolex watch and a West Point class ring. He was very slender in a sinewy way and he had his sister’s mannerisms: he held his body so as to display it to best advantage, but he had less control over his face.
Staring at Christopher, he stood up and held out the photographs. Christopher took them back. He handed him the pistols Pong had taken from Luong’s killers.
“You’ve lost your amateur status,” Christopher said.
NINE
l
Christopher did not imagine that the Truong toe would be immobilized by a photograph of Nicole. He’d hide the girl, as Christopher intended to hide Molly, and try again to kill Christopher. But he would have to adjust his operations. All this would take time. Time was what Christopher wanted, and Molly’s life.
It was raining in Rome and the Christmas decorations were up. The taxi driver let Christopher out by the door of his apartment on the Lungotevere. Christopher looked up and down the curving street and saw no one. One side of the street was open to the Tiber and the other was lined with old buildings whose heavy doors, built to accommodate horse-drawn coaches, were always locked. There was no place for surveillance to hide; that was why Christopher lived in this street.
Christopher’s training told him it was better to see the opposition than not to. He did not know how quickly the Truong toe could move. He felt the beating of his own heart as he went inside and climbed the stairs. Molly should be asleep. He used his mind to make his body stop trembling.
Letting himself into the apartment, he walked across the marble floors, hearing his own footsteps. Molly had decorated a small Christmas tree and placed it on a table in front of one of the windows. The paintings that had been in the bedroom now hung in the living room. She thought that pictures should be moved from one wall to another so that the eye would be surprised to see them in a new place each day.
It was not yet six o’clock in the morning, and the rooms seemed cold in the wintry light that filtered through the windows. Christopher went into the bedroom. Molly was not in the bed. The clothes she had worn the day before were draped over the back of a chair, and a book she had been reading lay open on the bedside table.
Christopher pushed open the bathroom door. It