I nodded.

  “I will be back shortly. I will arrange for a boat.”

  He left.

  I sat and drank endless cups of tea. My time sense was completely shot. When the old man sat down opposite me—I hadn’t even noticed his approach, which shows how magnificently I was functioning—I had no idea whether he had been gone an unusually short time or an exceedingly long time.

  In French he whispered, “It is arranged. I have purchased a boat. It is small, but I believe it will accommodate three persons. You and the Thai and the Princess.”

  “What about yourself?”

  “Do not worry yourself about me. Now”—his finger traced lines on the scarred table top—“we are here. Here is the command headquarters. You see? The front of the building here, a rear entrance here. Down this way is a street that leads to the river. It runs just so. You follow me? You take that street and do not leave it, and it will lead you directly to the bank of the river. The boat is hidden in the rushes perhaps fifty paces in this direction. The boat is well hidden, I cut reeds and placed them atop it. You will be able to find it?”

  “I think so.”

  There will be very little time. You must hurry into the building and liberate the two prisoners and hurry out again as quickly as possible. You may find this useful.”

  He put a hand under the table, and I reached to take what he handed me. It was a dagger with an eight-inch blade, razor sharp, with deep blood grooves running the length of the blade on either side. The hilt was covered with tightly wrapped leather. I concealed it as well as I could in a fold of the tunic.

  “What are you going to do?”

  He looked at me, and over my shoulder, and miles past me. Perhaps he was seeing a parade in the Place de la Concorde.

  “I shall do what I must,” he said.

  “But—”

  “It is time.” A smile. “The day of glory has arrived. Do not ask questions, young friend. Go now. The day of glory has arrived…”

  THE FOUR heads outside the command headquarters stared at me as before, but this time they had no effect upon me. Perhaps I was prepared; perhaps it was the fever. I looked at the heads, and they looked back, and I walked past them to the side of the entranceway, leaning against the building in what I hoped was a casual fashion.

  In the street a jeep made its way through the crowd, the driver driving with a fine disdain for the throngs in front of him. Magically the crowd melted aside just in time to let him pull to a stop in front of the building. Two men climbed out of the back seat. One of them was middle-aged and looked important. The other younger and in a less impressive uniform, hurried to open the door for him. The guards stood aside, and the two men walked on into command headquarters.

  Wonderful, I thought. By the time I made my move, half the soldiers in Laos would be inside the concrete structure. I looked around, wondering what the old man had planned. For a moment I had thought he might have organized some sort of riot, with the mob storming the building, but the crowd did not have the look of potential rioters. They were just a mass of bored yokels waiting for something to happen.

  Then something did happen.

  I didn’t even recognize the old man at first, but I stared at him anyhow, just like everyone else. He was a sight. He was riding in my cart, and my bullock was pulling it, and all of that was normal enough, but that was where normalcy stopped. For the bullock was moving faster than it had ever moved in its life, faster, I suspect, than any bullock had ever moved. It tore through the crowd like a bull at Pamplona, tossing its head and snorting, bouncing the little cart on the bumpy roadway, while the old man prodded its rump with fire.

  I do not speak metaphorically. The old colonial boy held a long stick like a shepherd’s crook, and on the end of that stick was a rag soaked in kerosene or something of the sort, and the rag was burning. He kept poking the flaming end of the stick into the tormented end of the bullock, and the results were spectacular.

  All hell broke loose. The crowd stampeded. The animal charged for a mass of onlookers. They broke and ran; some of them got away and some of them did not.

  The guards didn’t know what to do. They had drawn their guns and were now waving them uncertainly. Through it all the old man prepared for his finest hour. The day of glory has arrived—

  He was in costume, for one thing. He wore the uniform of a French Legionnaire. God knows where he found it. The pants covered his feet and the jacket’s sleeves came down well over his hands. He paused, kept the fire away from the bullock’s rear for a moment, and his little voice rang out over the crowd.

  “Long Jive King Charles de Gaulle! Long live the beautiful France! Lafayette is here! Long live Napoleon! To hell with Marx! To hell with Lenin! To hell with the Pathet Lao! To hell with Mao Tse-tung! Long live Jeanne d’ Arc!”

  Singing the “Marseillaise” at the top of his lungs, he began waving a tin can around madly. He splashed something from it, soaking the straw around him, soaking the fine French Legion uniform, soaking the flanks of the unfortunate bullock.

  Then, still singing bravely, he brought the day of glory to its peak. He touched his torch to the straw beneath his feet. And, as the straw and the cart and the bullock and the old man burst suddenly into flame, with bullets flying overhead, and with the final death-echoes of the French national anthem sounding around me, I drew my dagger and rushed into the command post.

  The entire place was in an uproar, with uniformed men barking commands and rushing to and fro. I too rushed to and fro, and to as little purpose.

  “Outside,” I bellowed. “All men to their posts in the streets. Everyone! At once!”

  That got rid of a few of them, but there were still too many soldiers around. I looked into one room, then another, but there was no sign of either Dhang or Tuppence. And I couldn’t peek into every damned room in the place. There simply wasn’t time.

  I started into a third room. A soldier on his way out met me with a pistol in hand. I acted without thought, plunging the dagger into his belly. He pitched forward, and I spun away from him and on down the corridor.

  And promptly walked into another man. We bounced off one another, and I said “Pardon me,” and he said “Who are you?” and I looked at him, and he looked at me. His chest was full of medals and ribbons. He was the important-looking middle-aged man who had dismounted from the jeep in front.

  He said, “Seize this man!”

  BUT I SEIZED him first. I grabbed him by the shoulder and gave a yank, and he spun like a top. I wrapped one arm around his chest and with the other hand I held the tip of the dagger to his throat.

  A semicircle of armed men stood around us, their guns pointed at me. I kept my grip on the important man, and the tip of my dagger stayed within an inch of his throat.

  “If you do not cooperate, you will die,” I told him, in Khmer. “Tell your men to throw their weapons down upon the floor. Do this at once!”

  I pricked the skin over his Adam’s apple with the dagger. His voice shaky, he conveyed my order to his men. Rifles and pistols bounced crazily on the bare concrete floor.

  “The Thai who was taken prisoner last night,” I said. “Where is he?’’

  “The ravisher of my daughter?’’

  So this was the commandant. “That’s the one,” I said. “Where is he being held? Do not waste time.” I prodded him with the dagger.

  He barked the order and the men led the way to Dhang’s cell. A heavy iron door was unbolted and drawn open. At the far end of a dank, windowless room a half-naked Dhang, the upper portion of his body scarred badly with the marks of the lash, stood upon the tips of his toes. His hands were tied to a pipe overhead. He stared ahead dully.

  The sight of him infuriated me, and I came very close to ruining everything by killing the commandant then and there. But I snapped out a brace of orders, which he conveyed to his men. They cut Dhang free, and he sprawled face-down on the floor. I shouted at him. He shook himself, looked up at me, then struggled to his feet.

  “Heaven! You have come…”

  “There’s very little time,” I told him. “We have to get out of here.” I singled out one of the soldiers who was about Dhang’s height and build and had the commandant tell him to get out of his uniform. He did this, and Dhang dressed himself in the soldier’s clothing.

  “I could have had her, Evan. So beautiful she was! And she wanted me, too. They said I tried to have her against her will, but in truth she wanted me. She—”

  “No time now,” I said. “We have to hurry. Tuppence is somewhere in the building. Go back toward the front door and make sure it’s locked. And pick up a couple of pistols from the floor, one for yourself and one for me.” I backed off toward the door, dragging the head man with me.

  “Tell your men to sit down,” I ordered him. “Tell them to seat themselves upon the floor, and remain there until they are called.”

  He did, and they did. We left the room with the dozen men inside it, and I toed the door shut, then bolted it.

  I spun the little man around and backed him against the wall. “The girl,” I said. “Where is she?”

  “There is no girl.”

  “The black girl.”

  “There is no black girl.”

  I transferred my dagger to my left hand, made a fist of the right hand, and hit him in the mouth with it. He sagged against the wall, wiping at the blood that trickled from his mouth.

  Dhang was trotting down the hallway, moving gingerly over the floor: I found out later that they had beaten the soles of his feet. Dhang handed me a pistol and kept one for himself.

  “Much is happening outside. Flames and screaming. We must get out of here.”

  I cupped my hands and shouted. “Tuppence! Tuppence, where are you? Tuppence!”

  A muffled cry came in answer from off to the left. Dhang led the way, and I grabbed up the little commander, and we ran. I shouted, and she called out in answer, and we kept running to the sound of her voice until we found the room.

  The door was locked. The commander denied possession of a key, and there was no time to find out whether he was lying or not. I called out for Tuppence to stand aside, and put three bullets in the lock before it fell apart. The door flew open, and there was Tuppence.

  “Evan, baby! Like where did you come from?”

  “Later,” I said. “This is Dhang, he’s a friend, he doesn’t speak English. This is the Lord High Everything-Else, he—”

  “I know him,” she said contemptuously. “How’d you get here, baby?”

  “Later.”

  “Kendall and Willie and Chick and Niles—”

  “I know. Dead.”

  “You can tell me about it later,” I told Tuppence. “First we’ve got to get out of here. There’s a boat waiting. We’ll go out the back door and——”

  But Tuppence said, “Wait, cool it, Evan. We don’t want to leave without the jewels.”

  “The jewels?”

  “The Siamese pretties. This bastard has them locked up in his office. We can’t leave them.”

  “The hell with them. There’s no time.”

  “Won’t take a minute.”

  “I don’t even know where his office is.”

  “I do,” she said. “I damn well should. His men dragged me to it once a day, regular as a clock.” She glared at the commander. “You little bastard,” she said to him.

  She led the way through a maze of corridors to another locked door. There was a pane of frosted glass in the door. I knocked out the glass with the butt of my pistol and reached through to unbolt the door.

  Tuppence had said. She hurried past it without looking at it and tugged at a drawer of the desk. It wouldn’t open.

  I let Dhang cover him and went around the desk. I shot the lock off and Tuppence yanked open the drawer and hauled out two leather sacks.

  “Wait till you get a look at these, Bwana. Your eyes shall roll in disbelief.”

  “Later. Let’s move.”

  We moved. Tuppence took one sack of jewels, and Dhang carried the other. I twisted the commandant’s arm behind his back and propelled him in front of me, the muzzle of the pistol against the side of his neck.

  We located the back door. Dhang thrust the door open, and we went through.

  There was no one there. The noise from the other side of the building was deafening—shouts, screams, the staccato snapping of small arms fire. Dragging the commandant along as a hostage, we headed for the river.

  The river was dark and muddy, the current swift, forming little whirlpools here and there. The bank was dense with undergrowth. We made our way along the river’s edge and found the boat just where the old man had said it was. I would never have found it if I had not been looking for it. It was completely concealed among the reeds.

  We removed the camouflage. I studied our craft. It was not the rowboat I had suspected but was more along the lines of the dugout canoes of the American Indians.

  Tuppence studied the boat thoughtfully. “We don’t need him any more,” she said, pointing to the commandant. “He’s a good hostage, but we have no use for him now.”

  “We could take him.”

  “Really, Evan. There’s scarcely room for three of us, and we have the jewels as well. We needn’t waste space on a rapist and a murderer. He made me watch when he killed those four boys.

  “So?”

  “He’s had a long life. I think it’s time it ended.”

  I still had the dagger. I handed it to her. “Want to kill him yourself?” I asked. And she, of course, was supposed to do as the girls always do in the movies, clutching the dagger, studying it in horror, and then muttering something like Oh, let him live with himself, that will be punishment enough for him, or Oh, no, I couldn’t, I couldn’t.

  BUT TUPPEMCE hadn’t read the script. “I’d bloody well love to,” she said, and fastened her small black hand around the butt of the dagger and advanced on the cowering commandant. He shrank from her, let out a rather pathetic moan, and Tuppence sank the knife into his soft, round belly

  I threw up, but I think it was more the fever than the spectacle that caused it. Tuppence and Dhang helped me into the dugout. There was a single oar inside it, and we used it to push the boat free of the bank and out onto the waterway.

  I sat in the stern, Dhang perched in the bow, and Tuppence was between us. Dhang had taken the oar and wanted to know in which direction he should head.

  “Go with the current,” I said, pointing. “We’ll go that way whether we want to or not, so we might as well paddle in that direction.” Then I leaned back in the dugout and watched birds diving for fish in the river.

  What happens now, baby?” Tuppence asked.

  “We just keep sailing. I think we should keep moving as fast as we can.”

  “Uh-huh. Moving where?”

  “Downstream.”

  “Yeah, groovy. What I’m getting at is where does the stream go?”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “I said something wrong?”

  “No,” I said. I shook my head groggily. I had somehow forgotten to ask the old man that little question.

  I had no idea where the river was headed…

  My fever grew worse. I huddled in the stern of the canoe while the world went on around me and I paid it as little attention as I possibly could.

  I slipped in and out of an eerie waking dream during which periods of fantasy and reality overlapped so that it was impossible to tell which was which, and even now I cannot be entirely certain what was real and what was imagined.

  Fragments… Tuppence saying:

  “It was a groovy trip until those cats came down on us, Evan. And Bangkok was like the best part of it. The group had this very tough sound, and I was in good voice and all. And the king was too much. He sat in on clarinet for a while. I thought he would be bloody awful, but his technique is good, and he knows where it’s at.

  “You know I sent you that postcard? That was the day after the command performance. After we played, the king showed us the royal collection, and then he gave us each a present. Chinese jade, he said it was. I got a crazy pair of earrings, and there were cufflinks for the boys. I figured it would say in the news-paper stories how we had viewed the collection and what the presents were, so I wrote you that bit about selling my jewels. I guess it’s good I did, huh?’’

  Our boat is caught in a current and spins madly around. Dhang paddles furiously. On the starboard side a huge log bobs in the water. We paddle over to it, and the log turns and begins swimming for us. It is a crocodile. We try to escape. It swims closer.

  Tuppence again. “I couldn’t get it was all about. They came into the hotel in the middle of the night and chloroformed us. I guess they had already stolen the jewels. The next thing I knew we were on our way up through Thailand and into Laos. I got some of the drift of what was happening or at least I think I did. They’re Laotian Communists, they’re hooked up with something called the Pathet Lao, or maybe that somebody’s name. The bit was that they were going to make it look as though the five of us stole the jewels from the king and took them to Laos, the part of the country that’s not run by the Communists. And then when we came north, they snatched us and executed us and returned the jewels. They were going to make the United States look bad and they were going to make the other government of Laos look bad, and it was supposed to do a lot of good for them and for the guerrillas in Thailand. Or something like that…

  “I was beautiful, and soft and warm and sweetly formed, with golden skin and long black hair,” said Tuppence, who had suddenly turned Oriental. “And I wanted Dhang and would have gone with him, and just as he was on the point of making a woman of me…”

  “Just as I was on the point of taking her,” Dhang said, “just then her father came into the room, and furious he was, and they put me in that room and beat the soles of my feet with long strips torn from old auto tires, and hung me up so that I had to stand on the tips of my toes, and swore they would cut off my head…”

  The old man was riding on water skis pulled by a blazing bullock. Fire danced in his hair. He sang the “Marseillaise” at the top of his voice and poured kerosene over himself and burned, and the entire river turned into a sheet of icy flame…