Gift of the Golden Mountain (78 page)

     May bent close to ask, "What is your name?"

     "Le Minh Hao," he answered, with a small, catching sob that quickly escalated into hiccoughs.

     "Don't be frightened, son," Hayes said in French, "You are safe now. You will be with your mama very soon." They could feel his sobs subsiding and soon his dark head fell against May's arm. He was sleeping.

     "Poor little guy, he must be exhausted," Hayes said, his own voice weary.

     "Thank God for Gerard," May answered.

     "We needed a Gerard, right here and right now," Hayes answered, "It is good to know there are a few decent men left in the world."

Hayes's credentials got them into the French Embassy, and they were left sitting in an anteroom until someone could be found, as an aide put it, "to address their problem."

     Hao began to cry for his mother.

     "We have to let her know he's all right," May said in English. "She must be frantic with worry."

     "But if we call directly," Hayes answered, "we won't be allowed to speak to her, to explain what happened, and it is possible that she may think we had something to do with the kidnap. If she believes that, she will never let us help her. She has to understand that we had nothing to do with this."

     May bent to place her cheek against the child's, and tried to reassure him. "Soon, little one," she murmured. "We have to talk to your mama on the telephone, and she will come here with your grandpapa, or maybe they will ask us to take you home, because we are your friends." She rummaged in her bag and found a pack of chewing gum, which she held out to him. His small hands carefully
removed one stick from the pack, he put it in his mouth, and looked up at her, smiling.

     "Ah," she said, beaming back at him, "what a nice smile you have, little Hao."

     "And what a good wife you are. Wing Mei-jin," Hayes put in.

     "Mei-jin," Hao said, looking at her timidly.

     "And this is your uncle," she said, "Your Uncle Hayes."

     "Hayes," the boy repeated, testing the word, then he pointed to himself, "Hao."

     "Yes," Hayes said lifting the child to his lap, "our names sound alike, I've noticed too."

     Gerard pushed through the door in a stream of rapidfire French aimed at the aide, who was following him. "Sorry to keep you waiting," he said. "Our man Galt insisted on counting out the money, and his arithmetic is sadly lacking. Unfortunately, your acquaintance was in no condition to help, and the girls only know piastres. Follow me, please," he directed, almost without breaking stride.

     Hayes lifted the boy in his arms and they climbed the stairs to a spacious second-floor office where a man with thin, graying hair listened attentively as Gerard explained the situation.

     "And you would like me to act as an intermediary?" he said.

     "If you would be so kind," Gerard answered with the slight lilt of sarcasm old friends use with each other. Very quickly, May and Hayes chimed in to say how grateful they would be as well, and it was settled.

     "My venerated friend," the ambassador began when An's father came on the line, "I have here before me in my office your grandson, quite well and healthy, and the good people who have rescued him." He gave a brief account of what had happened, emphasizing Hayes's determination to return the child.

The ambassador told them, "He has asked that you bring the boy to his villa. He has agreed to allow his daughter to speak to you in his presence."

     May and Hayes exchanged glances, May's more triumphant than Hayes's.

The Le family lived in a walled villa on Nguyen Dinh Chieu Street near the diplomatic quarter. Driving down the tree-lined street. May noticed shadows swooping in and out of the trees, flickering in the street lights.

     "Bats," Hayes told her. "They live in the plantain trees." May shuddered.

     A servant was waiting at the gate. He held it open long enough for them to hurry through, then bolted it with a loud scraping. They followed him along a path that led to the house.

     An's formidable father waited for them. A small, fragile man with the eyes of a hawk, he ushered them into a dimly lit courtyard. At that moment, Hao's mother rushed to her son, her cry hanging in the night air.

     She held the boy close to her, her eyes closed as if in prayer. Then she opened them and saw Hayes and wavered. Her beauty was soft and luminous and complex.

     The child was turned over to an amah. Hayes stood, bowed, and spoke in French.

     "We beg your forgiveness," he began, addressing the mother but including her father. "Hooligans who learned we wished to see you took your child. Our first concern was to return the child safely to you, so we did as they asked. Hao was frightened, but he was not harmed. He is a brave little boy. We are very sorry that this should have happened. I should never wish harm to come to the child of my brother, or to the mother of his child. Nor would my wife, whom I would like to present to you."

     May bowed, lowering her eyes before the father's piercing glance. "You are Chinese," he said, in ragged Mandarin.

     "My mother is Chinese," she responded, in properly low tones. "My father was an American. Like your grandson, I am a child of two cultures."

     He turned his back on her. She understood the disdain Southeast Asians feel for the Chinese, for mixed races even more. There was nothing she could say to him.

     Le Tien An bowed to May. "Thank you for returning my son. It was kind of you, and I am grateful with all my heart." She turned to Hayes, then, and said, "Thank you, the brother of my son's father. I have received your messages, and those of your mother in California, and I must say to you that it is the wish of my father and my mother to stay in this land where our family has lived for many generations. Elder Brother died in the war with Japan, Second Brother was killed while serving with the French forces, and Youngest Brother left one year ago and we have not heard from him. I am all that is left to my parents. They have accepted my son, Hao. They revere our country and can never leave, nor can I leave them."

     "We believe Saigon will fall," Hayes began, a pleading note in his voice, "and we feel certain that the son of an American soldier will face great hardships under a Communist regime, as will his mother and her family. All we wish is to ensure your safety, to try to make certain my brother's family is spared unnecessary suffering. In a letter written only days before his death, my brother asked me to care for his family. He wished to bring you to our country. I loved and honored my brother, and I am pledged to do this for him. If you do not wish to come to America, perhaps you would consider France . . ."

     The old man stood, anger rising. Hayes saw it and finished, rapidly, handing An one of his cards, "This is very important. All you have to do is to let me know and I will arrange everything. We want you to know that you can trust us, that we honor you and . . ."

     The father stepped in front of his daughter, his small legs spread, and slapped the card to the earth. "Enough," he said with a flourish in English. "You leave. Now."

     "Please, sister . . ." May tried, reaching out to An, but the old man and his servant intervened, pushing at them.

     "I'll be back," Hayes called to An as they left.

The ceiling fan rasped as it turned, stirring the heat above them. They lay on their backs in the bed, trying not to listen to the fan, wanting and needing to sleep. They were exhausted from the long flight, drained by the encounter with Sam, with their meeting with Hao and An. It was too much to grasp, she could feel the tension in the muscles in her chest, her arms. She shook her hands to try to loosen them.

     "Are you all right?" Hayes wanted to know.

     "If I could just stop thinking, I would be. Everything keeps whirling in my head."

     "Sam," he said.

     "Yes Sam—my God, Hayes, I thought Bangkok was as bad as it could get, but this . . . stealing Andy's boy, what could bring him to this venality? And Hao and An, and her father, and Gerard and the ambassador, why would they help us?"

     The fan made several grinding rotations while she thought, and when she spoke again, she started in mid-sentence, ". . . in Hawaii that last time, when he talked me into going into China through Burma, I knew something had changed with Sam—he was doing a lot of dope, for one thing. Bells should have gone off in my head when they came to my house, after only two hours in the Islands, with a stash of Maui pot. Sam was already stoned, and later on he got a little drunk too. Faith tried to warn me that something was off, but I wanted so much to believe he could do what he said he could do. Then, it never occurred to me that he was capable
of betrayal. And now, this—it is evil, truly evil." Her voice slipped away into the heat.

     Hayes laid his hand lightly on her thigh, a comforting touch. "I wanted to kill him," he said, "I've never felt that way before, I didn't think I could. Jesus. But it's the truth, May."

     "I think he won't live long," she answered. "He's been eaten from within, like wormwood . . . it's been this long process, all the resentment and anger and envy. But why your family? He seemed to focus so intensely on your family . . ."

     "And you," Hayes said, "he shifted part of his rage to you."

     She thought about that. "Sam brought us together. It's strange, but I remember thinking once, at the beginning, that it was purposeful—I'm not certain why, but I think he meant to set up some sort of tension among the three of us . . . as if he was using me to get at you. I don't know, this doesn't make sense, but I think he wanted to be you . . ."

     ". . . No, he wanted to destroy me, and he's come too damned close . . . first, sending you into Burma, and now this with Andy's boy."

     "I don't know," she said, "it doesn't seem to me that he's capable of revenge any more . . . he's too burned out. I get the feeling it's survival of a sort now. He saw a chance to make money to support his habit, that's all. I don't think it mattered who we were, and that's even more frightening . . . betrayal of that magnitude, I mean. I just don't think he's capable of feeling."