Finding Moon Part 12

"Just imagine. You could carry one of those right through the metal detectors at airport security and then hijack the airliner," said Moon, who found he was enjoying this conversation. "I wonder why the terrorists haven't thought of it."

The frogs had become used to them by now and rea.s.sured by their silences. Now there was frog song all around them, and from somewhere near, a whistling, and from somewhere far away, the sound of something huffing and grunting.

"We don't have many night sounds in the mountains," Moon said. "Just silence in the winter. In the summer, sometimes you hear the coyotes, and that starts the dogs barking."

"You're a long way from home," she said. "Halfway around the world."

Moon thought about that. This was like a totally different planet.

"Did you hear any news today?"

"No," Moon said.

"There was a radio-shortwave I think-playing at the hotel in town. It said ARVN troops had commandeered two evacuation planes at one of the big airports. They threw off the civilians. Running away."

"Urn," Moon said.

"They said Vietcong and North Viet troops had captured the provincial capital just north of Saigon. And the airport north of Saigon had been hit by rockets."

Moon could think of nothing to say.

"And they had a report from Bangkok. Refugees from Cambodia were saying that the Khmer Rouge were forcing city people out into the country. That whole towns were being totally emptied and the Khmer Rouge were killing those who looked professional."

"It doesn't sound reasonable," Moon said. "It sounds like propaganda. Don't you think so?"

She sat looking out through the sound of the frogs, across the road, across the rice paddy, into the jungle. The moonlight illuminated her face, but the jungle was dark.

She said, "Are you ever afraid?"

She was looking at him now and Moon studied her expression, not sure exactly what she meant. She was hunched forward, hugging herself.

"I'm afraid sometimes," she added. "When I let myself think of going into Cambodia, I'm terrified."

Moon had parted his lips, beginning the standard rea.s.surance, which was something like, There's nothing to be afraid of. But he bit that off. There was a h.e.l.l of a lot to be afraid of.

"I don't blame you," he said. "I don't think you should go. Surely your brother will come out."

"No," she said. "He won't. So I am also terrified that I won't be able to get to him there. And then I am terrified that I will be able to get there, and the Khmer Rouge will get me. Afraid of what they would do to me. Afraid that Damon already is dead." She paused. "Just scared. Of everything. Of failing. Of being alone. Of being alive. Of dying. I really doubt if you can understand this business of being afraid."

"I can," Moon said. He saw she was s.h.i.+vering.

"Did you ever wish you could be little again? Just a child with somebody taking care of you?"

"Yes," Moon said.

"Really?"

"Sure," Moon said. "To tell the truth, I'm afraid too. Right now."

"I don't believe that."

"I don't know what I'm getting into. I don't know who I can trust. It's like-" He tried to think of an a.n.a.logy. "Like walking around with a blindfold on."

She laughed. "You're trying to make me feel better. To make me cheerful. I can't imagine you being afraid. Ricky told me too much about you."

"Ricky didn't know what he was talking about," Moon said.

The faintest hint of a breeze stirred the palm fronds somewhere behind them. Moon smelled dampness, the yeasty smell of decaying vegetation, and the perfume of flowers. The frogs were totally rea.s.sured now; their calls rose to full volume.

"I should go and see if they have a room for me," Mrs. van Winjgaarden said. She pushed herself, wearily, up from the palm trunk.

Of course, Moon thought. She would be exhausted. He'd taken a shower, rested awhile, had a drink. She'd spent the time inspecting c.o.c.kroaches, trying to get a cab, and making the long dark trek through the darkness up the potholed road.

He carried her bag. She explained that the whistling was the mating signal of the male of a species of tree lizard, and the odd high-note low-note call they were hearing now was from the gecko, another climbing lizard, and the huffing came from water buffaloes resting after a day's work in the rice paddies.

"And how about that sweet smell?" Moon asked. "Sort of like vanilla?"

Mrs. van Winjgaarden gave him the name of the vine that produced that aroma. It was a Dutch word. As he repeated it after her, Moon became aware that he no longer felt quite so lonely.

PARIS, April 22 (Agence France-Presse)- The French government today urgently appealed for speedy resumption of negotiations to carry out the 1973 Paris agreement on Vietnam and for an immediate cease-fire.

THE SOUND OF RAIN POUNDING against his window had awakened Moon during the night. But by midmorning it had blown out over the South China Sea. The sky over Palawan Island wasn't the dark deep blue that Moon had learned to expect in the Colorado high country, but it was as blue as it gets in the tropics. And the sun was bright enough to raise Moon's spirits. It also produced a barely visible haze of steam from the potholes, rice paddies, and roadside ditches and sent the humidity up to steambath levels.

"I still don't think they're going to let you in," he told Osa van Winjgaarden, who was jolting along. beside him in the back seat of their converted jeep taxi. "Prisons aren't going to let strangers in without any sort of credentials or pa.s.ses."

"If they don't, then they don't," Osa said. "Then I will just follow your plan. I'll take the taxi back to the hotel and get out and send it back to pick you up."

The tone was complacent, however. Moon glanced at her. Clearly Osa van Winjgaarden didn't expect she would be taking the taxi back to the hotel.

Neither did the cabdriver, a tiny middle-aged man with a bushy mustache. Moon, who was trying to develop a better eye for things Asiatic, thought he might be part Chinese. Or perhaps, this far south, it was a Malay look. His cab, however, was distinctly Filipino. It was painted with pink, purple, and white stripes, with the name c.o.c.k SLAYER c.o.c.k SLAYER superimposed on both sides in a psychedelic yellow. Plastic statues of two fighting c.o.c.ks facing each other in attack positions were mounted on the hood, a location that forced the cabbie to tilt his head to see past them when he rounded a curve. The cabbie had quickly lost patience with the argument in the back seat over Osa's admissibility to the prison. superimposed on both sides in a psychedelic yellow. Plastic statues of two fighting c.o.c.ks facing each other in attack positions were mounted on the hood, a location that forced the cabbie to tilt his head to see past them when he rounded a curve. The cabbie had quickly lost patience with the argument in the back seat over Osa's admissibility to the prison.

"They let her in," he said, waving a hand impatiently. "No question. We all go in. I park at the office in there. I write down the time I wait for you. All right?"

The gate to the Palawan Island Federal Security Unit proved to be a large palm log blocking the narrow road. The log was overlooked by a palmthatched bamboo hut, which rose on bamboo stilts from the roadside ditch. A neatly printed sign above its door read IWAHIG PRISON AND PENAL FARM IWAHIG PRISON AND PENAL FARM.

The cab stopped. Two men wearing blue coveralls emerged from the hut. If either of them was armed, Moon saw no evidence of it.

Cabbie and guards exchanged pleasantries and information in a language that wasn't English and didn't sound like the Tagalog Moon had been hearing in Manila. The older of the security men tipped his cap to Osa, gave Moon a curious stare, and held out his hand.

"He wants to see your pa.s.s," the cabbie said.

Moon handed him the letter.

The guard examined it, stared at Moon again, returned the letter, and said something to the cabbie. All three laughed, and the older guard, still grinning, waved them through.

"Like I told you," the cabbie said. "No trouble about the lady."

Moon could see no sign that the inside of the Iwahig Prison and Penal Farm differed in any way from the outside. The potholed road still ran between rice paddies; hills rose a mile or two distant on either side of the road. The hills were covered by the deep green of the jungle, and at the margin of the jungle, bamboo shacks were scattered. Just ahead, two men were walking up the road, shovels over their shoulders. They stepped off into the gra.s.s, grinning, and made the universal hitchhiker's signal.

"We're inside the prison now?" Moon asked.

"Inside now," the cabbie said. He laughed. "Don't try to get away." He slowed the jeepney to walking speed. The shovel bearers climbed onto the back.

"But who lives in the houses? Out beyond the rice paddies."

"The colonists," the cabbie said, gesturing toward his newly acquired pa.s.sengers. "These guys." He laughed. "They call 'em colonists. After they've been here awhile, not done anything wrong for a while, they can bring their women in and build a house and get some land to raise their crop."

"Really?" Moon said. He was remembering the cabbie laughing with the guards. Clearly this cabdriver liked his little jokes at the expense of tourists. The hitchhikers were actually prison employees, of course.

"And the prison keeps some buffaloes. So the prisoners can rent them when they need to plow. And then they turn in part of their rice, and the warden sells it and keeps part of the money to pay for the seed and the fertilizer and the rent." The cabbie laughed again and held up his hand-rubbing his fingers together in all of suffering humanity's symbol of extortion. "And a little something for the warden, I think. And a little something to buy Imelda a present too."

"They used a system a lot like that in Java too," Osa said. "When it was Dutch." She turned and said something to one of the hitchhikers. The man grinned a gap-toothed laugh and produced a lengthy answer.

"He said you have to serve a fifth of your sentence before you can bring your wife," Osa explained. "For him that was four years. And now he's growing vegetables."

"Not everybody wants to be a farmer, though," the cabbie said. "Some of them work in the shop. Carve things. Make antique canes, chairs. Nets to fish with. Blowguns. Things to sell in the market."

"What were you telling the guards back there at the gate?" Moon asked.

"I told them the lady was a lawyer the government sent down from Manila to investigate something. I told them you were her bodyguard."

This time Moon laughed. "You'll have trouble getting me to believe that story," he said. "They looked at the letter."

Now Osa chuckled. "I'll bet they don't read," she said. "Is that right?"

"That right," the cabbie said. "I had to tell them what it said. And I don't read either."

The man who came down the steps when the cab stopped at the administration building certainly could read. "I am Lieutenant Elte Creso," he said, and took Moon's letter. He glanced at it. "You are Malcolm Mathias," he said, and looked at Osa. "It says nothing about a woman. Do you have a pa.s.s for the woman?"

"This is Mrs. van Winjgaarden," Moon said. "My secretary. In Manila they said the letter would suffice for both of us. They said the authorities here would understand that one would be accompanied by one's secretary."

The lieutenant looked surprised. He considered this, looked at the letter again, sighed, shook his head, and motioned them up the steps.

The building reminded Moon of buildings he had seen in coastal Louisiana. It was a two-story concrete structure, whitewashed but stained by whatever those organisms are that grow on buildings in the tropics. It was raised some five feet off the earth on posts in tropical fas.h.i.+on and surrounded on both levels and all sides by broad verandas. Moon guessed it had been built early in the century, and not as part of a prison. Perhaps it was a hospital once, or a school. It dominated a broad, gra.s.sy plaza, the other three sides of which were lined by one-story buildings. They looked like barracks, Moon thought, but probably were quarters for the nonfarming inmates. He paused in the shade of the portal and looked back. Nothing stirred in the noonday heat.

It was very little cooler in the whitewashed room where they sat waiting for George Rice to be delivered to them. High ceiling, high windows, and a bra.s.s plaque beside the door declaring that Iwahig Prison was built in 1905 by the United States Philippine Commission. Overhead the blades of an ornate ceiling fan made their leisurely effort to stir the humid air. Even the lieutenant, wearing knee-length shorts and a short-sleeved s.h.i.+rt, was wilted. He was also a bit confused. His stare made his suspicious dislike of Moon apparent. But somehow Mrs. van Winjgaarden had charmed him.

"You know the rules," he said, glowering at Moon and then smiling shyly at Osa. "Visits are limited to twenty minutes for colonists during the first month of their incarceration. Colonist Rice has not been here long enough to qualify for a longer visit. Nothing can be pa.s.sed to the inmate. Nothing can be received from the inmate. The rules require that a guard will be present at all times."

This recitation completed, the lieutenant gave Moon a final warning stare and backed out, bowed to Osa, and closed the door behind him.

They sat in straight-backed wooden chairs behind a long wooden table. And waited.

"Here we are, then," Osa said. "I think this will be it. I think Mr. Rice will tell us what we have to know. I have prayed for that."

Moon nodded. "Maybe so," he said. And maybe this would be an appropriate time for prayer. He closed his eyes. Lord, Lord, he thought, he thought, let this Rice guy be the end of it. Let me just go home. Let this man tell us he doesn't know where the kid is, and he doesn't know how to get to this let this Rice guy be the end of it. Let me just go home. Let this man tell us he doesn't know where the kid is, and he doesn't know how to get to this crazy crazy preacher's mission, and he doesn't know a d.a.m.ned thing useful. preacher's mission, and he doesn't know a d.a.m.ned thing useful. He opened his eyes. Closed them again. He opened his eyes. Closed them again. Arid, Lord, let my mother be well again. And let her forgive me if I disappoint her again. Let her know it just wasn't possible. That I really did- Arid, Lord, let my mother be well again. And let her forgive me if I disappoint her again. Let her know it just wasn't possible. That I really did- The door opened and a small man walked through it. George Rice. He wore a loose cotton blouse with broad horizontal stripes in black and white. And under the blouse, loose pants with the same stripes. Exactly like the costumes cartoonists put on convicts, Moon thought. But the man didn't look like a convict even in that uniform. He had bright blue eyes, and a broad grin showed perfect white teeth. He had a well-trimmed white beard and mustache. Moon thought of Santa Claus. The door opened and a small man walked through it. George Rice. He wore a loose cotton blouse with broad horizontal stripes in black and white. And under the blouse, loose pants with the same stripes. Exactly like the costumes cartoonists put on convicts, Moon thought. But the man didn't look like a convict even in that uniform. He had bright blue eyes, and a broad grin showed perfect white teeth. He had a well-trimmed white beard and mustache. Moon thought of Santa Claus.

A guard walked in behind him, even smaller. The guard looked about seventeen, and nervous.

"Well, howdy do!" George Rice said, beaming at Osa. "It is so good to see you agin, darlin'. So very, very good."

The guard pointed to the chair on the other side of the table and said, "Sit, please."

Rice sat.

"Mr. Rice," Osa said, "this is Ricky's brother. We hope you can give us some information."

"Moon Mathias," Rice said, extending a hand.

"I'll be d.a.m.ned. You finally got here. Ricky thought you were the greatest thing since sliced bread."

The guard stepped forward. "No touch," he said.

His expression said he was embarra.s.sed by this rudeness. He looked at Moon, his eyes asking forgiveness.

"I'm glad to meet you," Moon said. "Ricky told me a lot about you too. I guess you were his right-hand man." A small white lie, but harmless as it was, Moon regretted it, just as he regretted the small ones he told Debbie. All Moon remembered hearing about Rice was a couple of anecdotes about his escapades.

"Don't believe all you hear," Rice said, grinning. And then, to Osa, "d.a.m.n', did you come like the prince came to the tower where the princess was"-he searched for the proper word-"was incarcerated against her will? I trust that is your motive."

"It would be nice if we could," Osa said. "But we-"

Rice interrupted her. He turned to the guard. "This is my friend Mr. Preda. Mr. Preda, these are my good old friends, Mrs. van Winjgaarden and Mr. Moon Mathias. Good people. Good friends of President Ferdinand Marcos and Imelda."

"How do you do," Moon said. Osa said something that sounded like it might be in Tagalog, and Mr. Preda smiled shyly and nodded.

"Mr. Preda speaks English," Rice said. "But when it comes to La lengua La lengua of Shakespeare, to the multiple-syllable latinate vocabulary, then it's a different ball game. You two will understand without any explanation from me the advantage this linguistic situation will have for us." He looked back at Preda, who smiled and nodded. of Shakespeare, to the multiple-syllable latinate vocabulary, then it's a different ball game. You two will understand without any explanation from me the advantage this linguistic situation will have for us." He looked back at Preda, who smiled and nodded.

Rice smiled back.

"I understand," Moon said glumly.

"You don't have to be a Houdini for the first step," Rice said. "I guess you noticed that coming in. A low hurdler could do the palm log. This isn't Sing Sing. That's not the problem. The problem is getting a drawbridge across the moat."

"The Sulu Sea," Moon said. He wasn't happy about the direction this conversation was taking.

"Exactly," Rice said. "Or, in our case, it would be the South China Sea."

"Mr. Rice," Osa said, "to tell the truth, we don't have any way to build bridges over moats. We are trying to find the baby. Eleth's baby. And Ricky's. She was supposed to be brought out to Manila, but she didn't get there. And we want to get my brother out of his mission too. Mr. Brock told us that you might-"

"Little Lila didn't get to Manila?" Rice said, frowning. "Well, now, she should have."

"And I would also like you to tell me some way I can reach my brother."