“Evan? How will I obtain clothing? Or food?”

  “You have no money?” He shook his head. I had no money, either; the guerrillas had taken my money belt. I still had the flashlight, but the thought of Dhang attempting to pass a British gold sovereign in a provincial Laotian town was somehow disquieting.

  I asked Dhang if he thought he could use the machetes and the canteens for barter, and he said he thought he could.

  “I’ll keep one canteen, though,” I said. “Go now. And return as soon as possible.”

  “Yes. Yevan?”

  “Evan.”

  “Evan. If I find a girl in the town…”

  He looked at me, hope in his eyes. He would not find a girl, I thought, and if he did, she would have nothing to do with him. But it seemed less than kind to tell him this.

  “If you should find a woman,” I told him, “may the gods grant you enjoyment. But do not dally too long with her, and come back to me when time permits.”

  I made myself reasonably comfortable in a clump of brush some twenty yards from the side of the road. I popped a chunk of betel nut into my mouth and chewed and spat and chewed and spat…

  It was night and Dhang still hadn’t come back.

  The night was cold and dark and damp and gave every appearance of lasting forever. I did not really have to remain hidden in the clump of brush. I would have been equally invisible in the middle of the road. It was that dark.

  It began to rain.

  The rain didn’t last very long. This was fortunate; a steady downpour like that one would have flooded all of Southeast Asia if it had lasted an hour or so. As it was, I was soaked through to the bone. After a fifteen-minute version of eternity, the rain gave up.

  I sat through the rest of the night, shivering, shaking, now and then rending the still night air with a sneeze. I waited for Dhang and for daybreak with the certain feeling that neither would ever arrive.

  WHEN DAWN broke, finally, I left my weapons and my canteen in the clump of brush and started down the road with the flashlight. I left the weapons behind because I was fairly certain they wouldn’t work anyway after all that rain and mud, and I left the canteen behind because I could not imagine ever wanting water again. I walked off down the road in the general direction of Tao Dan and I stopped at the first hut I saw.

  It didn’t require any great courage to walk into the little shack. I decided that the worst that could happen was that I would get killed and I told myself reasonably that this was probably also the best thing that could happen. I went inside. An old man sat in a chair smoking a pipe. He looked wordlessly at me.

  “I must wash myself and remove my beard,” I said. “I require dry clothing. And food. I have not eaten in many hours and must have food.”

  He merely looked at me.

  “I am hungry,” I said. I made pantomime motions. “Food, a shave, clothing—”

  “You are not of this country.”

  “No, I am not.”

  “Parlez-vous français?”

  “Oui, je parle français—”

  And off we went in French. I don’t suppose I should have been surprised. French influence had been considerable in Indochina since 1787, and the French had held the area as a protectorate for many years before Dien Bien Phu. Still, I had been talking and thinking in nothing but Siamese and Khmer of late, and the sudden transition to an Occidental language was jarring. The old man spoke reasonably good French and seemed delighted at the chance to show it off.

  “For years I worked for the French,” he said. “I was a very valuable man for them. I was chief overseer on a large rubber plantation. I was well paid and performed my work with skill and diligence.” He turned sad eyes on the mud-floored hut. “And look at me now,” he said. “At what I have come to.”

  “These are bad times,” I said.

  “They are. That a man like myself should not be respected in my old age. The Communists and anarchists run wild throughout the country. You are French, my boy?”

  “Yes.” My head was reeling. I am whatever you want me to be, I thought. Feed me, clothe me, let me sit by the side of the stove, and I will be any nationality you prefer.

  “I have never been to the beautiful France. It has been my dream, but I have never been there. I live and die in this wilderness.” He shook his head. “Once this devastation was a part of France, a part of the French empire. Once it was on the road to dignity, to civilization, to life itself. Now!”

  I said, “Perhaps one day—”

  Gallic fire burned in his wrinkled brown face. “Ah! I can see it now as I have so often seen it in my dreams. Mon Général Charles de Gaulle leading battalions of French troops through all of Indochina, recovering lost territory, bringing my poor country back under the protection of the French flag!”

  I stiffened at attention. I began, thin of voice and oddly lightheaded, to sing the “Marseillaise”—“Allons, enfants de la patrie—”

  He jumped to his feet. “Le jour de gloire est arrivée,” he sang out loud and clear, his hand over his heart…

  “To share with you my rice bowl and my razor, that is my pleasure,” the old man was saying. “But clothing is another matter. My own would not fit you, and I have no other.

  “I have money,” I said.

  “I fear the money of France is no longer of use in this land.”

  “I have gold.”

  “Gold!” His eyes brightened. “Gold is another matter. You wish me to purchase clothing for you? To obtain anything of quality I would have to go into town—”

  “I don’t want quality. Just ordinary peasant clothing.”

  “Ah,” he said. He eyed me closely. “You are French and would pass as a peasant. I wonder if you might be working secretly for the French government?”

  “Well—”

  “Say no more. Perhaps if the day of glory is not too far away, hein? Let me consider. You wish to pass as a peasant, is it so? You are tall for one of us, but that is not so great a difficulty. The Muong tribesmen are men of some height. It is your fair complexion and large white eyes which render you noticeable. In Tao Dan you would be quickly recognized, I fear.”

  “Perhaps I could ride in a cart or something. The less anyone sees of me.”

  “Ah, yes. If I had a bullock, you could ride in a bullock cart, and fewer men would look upon your face. But I have no bullock.”

  “Could you buy one for me?”

  “Have you much gold?”

  I unscrewed the back of the flashlight and took out the dummy battery. I pried the case open and spilled the gold coins into the palm of my hand. The old man’s eyes went wide at the sight of them.

  “With this it will be a simple matter to purchase a bullock and a cart,” he said. “And clothing as well. There is more than enough.”

  “You may keep whatever is left for yourself.”

  “It is not necessary, my friend.”

  “France rewards her faithful sons,” I said. Besides, I thought, leaving the rest with him would keep him free from temptation.

  He left. I heated water on the stove and soaked my beard. His ancient straight razor was sharp enough, but it had a particularly difficult job ahead of it. My beard was long enough to be difficult with abundant lather, and shaving it off without any soap at all was quite a problem. Still, I managed to get the job done.

  My complexion was still very wrong, the effects of the sun on my forehead notwithstanding. I stuffed a wad of the old man’s pipe tobacco into my mouth and chewed it as if it were betel nut. It tasted terrible. I spat tobacco juice into my cupped hands and rubbed it all over my face. I kept repeating the process until I was satisfied with the yellow-brown color I achieved.

  A wave of nausea shook me. I went to the stove and picked up the pot of rice. I was ravenous, and it tasted excellent, and even at that I had trouble getting the rice down and even more trouble keeping it down. I felt feverish and weak.

  The old man returned. “You have changed,” the old man said. “Your whole face, it is very much different. You no longer look like a Frenchman.”

  I never had, but that was beside the point. I put on the clothing he had brought me, a pair of loose-fitting olive drab trousers, a tan tunic, a pair of more elaborate sandals than I had been wearing. A large white coolie-style hat completed my costume and covered my shaggy brown hair.

  Outside, a hump-backed bullock stood hitched to a rickety cart. The cart was piled high with straw. I was still a little feverish. It would come and go, waves of dizziness and nausea.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “A slight touch of la grippe. I guess I’d better go now. I wonder if you have heard any news of five black persons who were brought this way. Perhaps they are now in Tao Dan.”

  “Five black persons.”

  “Four men and a woman. They might have passed this way any time within the last few weeks. They came from Thailand.”

  “I know there are prisoners in Tao Dan. I have heard talk, but no one mentioned their color.”

  “Perhaps it is they.”

  “Perhaps. Are they the reason for your presence in this accursed land?”

  “In a way.”

  I CLIMBED into the bullock cart, sat on the pile of straw, bent forward to keep as much of my face hidden as possible, and let the bullock proceed at his own pace toward Tao Dan.

  Tao Dan turned out to be a rather busy little town, the marketplace and seat of government for the surrounding countryside. Ramshackle round huts with peaked roofs alternated with squat buildings of whitewashed concrete block. The streets were very narrow and extremely crowded.

  I found one street that was a little less crowded than the others and hitched the bullock at the curb, tying his lead rope to a small concrete pillar erected for that express purpose. I followed a small crowd of men into what seemed to be a cafe. Inside, men were drinking out of small handleless cups of tea. I moved to the rear of the cafe and tried to stay as deep in the shadow as possible. A dozen conversations went on at once around me. I listened to them in turn. The dialect was difficult for me to follow, and most of the conversations seemed to revolve upon the various problems inherent in the life of a peasant in Laos.

  Until at length I heard a large, heavy man with a deep voice begin to talk about a criminal event that had transpired during the night. A small crowd gathered around him, anxious for details. I shouldered my way forward and listened to the storyteller.

  He knew his trade well, beginning slowly, letting the excitement build. “And so you know the girl of whom I speak,” he said. “Her father is the commanding officer of the troop garrison. Just a young thing, she is, with the softest and purest skin, and a waist one could span with one’s hands, and breasts exquisitely shaped like cups of tea, and hair like fine black silk…”

  He paused for a chorus of oohs and ahhs.

  “And this stranger appeared. A young man, crude in his ways, and followed the girl down the street. Some say she did not know she was being followed”—he lowered his voice—“and others say she well knew a man was behind her, and let her hips sway from side to side, eh?

  “And he followed her, or perhaps she led him, into the house of her father. The house of her father!” The crowd bubbled at the thought. “And in the house of her father, in the bed of her father, this wayward one prepared to take her.”

  More hubbub from his listeners. It may not astonish you to learn that I had guessed the identity of the male participant in the drama. Poor Dhang, I thought. I hoped at least that he had attained the object of his desires before they killed him. At least he would have died happy.

  But such was not the case.

  “Fortunately,” the fat man continued, “fortunately her own father arrived in the nick of time, reaching his beloved daughter’s side before the culprit could complete his evil mission. With tears of frustration in his beady eyes the criminal was led away screaming.”

  I could well believe it.

  “And the criminal?” someone demanded.

  “He shall receive the punishment that is his due.”

  “Death?”

  “What else?”

  What else indeed? Dhang, I thought wearily, led a profoundly uncharmed life. It did not surprise me that he had been sentenced to death. But had the sentence been carried out yet?

  Someone else asked the same question. “He shall die this evening,” the storyteller replied. “By nightfall”—he pointed off to his left—“his head shall decorate a post at the command headquarters.”

  Not, I thought, if I could help it.

  I slipped unquestioned from the cafe. I stood for a moment on the sidewalk, getting my bearings. Then I retrieved my bullock and led him off in the direction the storyteller had indicated. The streets of Tao Dan were a maze, but at last I turned a corner and stopped in front of a large whitewashed concrete building.

  There was no question about it—this was the place. The armed guards at attention on either side of the front doors indicated this, but something else confirmed it beyond question. There was a row of high metal posts off to the side of the doorway, one of which the storyteller had said Dhang’s head would decorate.

  Four posts were already decorated. I gazed horrified at the four disembodied black heads of the Kendall Bayard Quartet.

  I swayed on my feet. Somehow I managed to take my bullock’s lead rope in hand and headed him around the corner. A few blocks from the command headquarters I picked out another hitching post and tethered the bullock. I was sweating freely now and had to sit down somewhere before I collapsed. I climbed on top of the mound of straw in the cart, stretched out, and put my hat over my face. I had seen natives resting in this fashion and hoped I would look ordinary enough.

  My mind simply wasn’t functioning. The stark horror of those four heads atop those poles had evidently had dire effects upon a brain already numbed by a progressively heightening fever. I gave myself a few minutes to loosen up and unwind a bit, and then I tried putting together what I knew.

  The Kendall Bayard Quartet was beyond salvation, at least in this world. Tuppence was probably inside the building, but maybe she wasn’t. She was probably going to be executed, but that was no foregone conclusion.

  Dhang was definitely inside the building, where he would remain until they put him to death for rape. Attempted rape, actually—the poor son of a bitch was going to die without getting the only thing on earth he really wanted.

  I had to find a way to get into the command post, had to locate and free Tuppence and Dhang, and then had to get out again. Then I would have to find a way to get out of Laos or at least into the comparative safety of the southern part of the country,

  Step One—get in. Step Two—rescue Tuppence and Dhang. Step three—get out.

  Fine.

  But Step One stumped me all by itself. Get in? How?

  I sighed. Everything seemed quite hopeless. My assets were limited: a bullock, a cart, some straw, the clothes I was wearing, and, if I wanted to go back for them, a mud-clogged rifle and a machine pistol, and a flashlight that was missing a battery. I also had one ally: a broken-down old Francophile…

  THE OLD man drew on his pipe. He took it from his mouth and looked in turn at it and at me. In his heavily accented French he said, “My young friend, I do not know how I can help you.”

  Neither did I. I had left Tao Dan to lead my bullock all the way back to the old man’s hut, not because I thought he would really be able to help me but because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. He took one look at me and made me lie down on his straw mattress and cover myself with his few blankets. While I babbled wildly about Tuppence and Dhang he poured cup after cup of strong herb tea into me. It came out through my pores in rivers of sweat. My stomach calmed down after a while, and finally the fever broke.

  I told the old man that a Senegalese princess and a Thai agent of France were under sentence of death in Tao Dan. It was my mission to rescue them and rush them to safety in Paris.

  Perhaps, I suggested, he had comrades in the area, other men who had known the glory of French leadership. Men who would help us in our noble task, men who would join with us to…

  As rhetoric goes, it certainly went. I don’t think I could do it justice in English, but the French language is an ideal vehicle for the expression of such sentiments. The speech fired the old man’s blood, but at the end he merely shook his head.

  “I am such a man,” he said unhappily, “but I know no others.

  I sank back on the straw pallet. I had succeeded only in wasting more precious time. It was hopeless, and I should have known as much.

  “You say that this son and daughter of the beautiful France are in the command headquarters?”

  I nodded.

  “If you could gain access to the command post, if you could manage to slip inside, would you have any chance of success?”

  “Possibly, I don’t know. But the guards—”

  “Perhaps I can dispose of the guards.”

  “How?”

  He held up a hand and waved the question aside. An odd smile played on his thin old lips. He was humming the “Marseillaise.”

  “We must return to town,” he said. “Finish your tea, there is time. I will lead the animal, and you must ride in the cart. When you leave the building, how will you flee the town? Have you a plan?”

  “No.”

  “There is a river east of the town. If you had a small boat moored at the bank, it would be a great asset to you, would it not? Gold will buy a boat. There is enough left of what you have given me.”

  “But—”

  “No time, not now. Finish your tea, that is a good boy. Can you get to your feet? I will help you—”

  In Tao Dan the old man parked the bullock and took me to a little restaurant. He knew the proprietor and spoke rapidly to him before leading me to a small booth at the rear. Then he pressed a few well-creased little bank notes into my hand.

  “I have told him to continue bringing you cups of herbal tea,” he said. “I have said that you have a weakness of the brain and cannot speak clearly. Thus it will not be necessary for you to say anything, and you may remain here until I return. No one will disturb you.”