"You must not blame yourself."
Stone pushed the dinner plate away and frowned.
"There's no one else. I was in charge. I blew it."
Across the hand-carved table, old An Khom regarded him with almost fatherly concern. The eyes set in his wrinkled face were bright, alive, entirely aware of Stone's internal turmoil.
"There are limits to a man's responsibility. Some things are meant to be. You cannot change fate."
Stone shook his head. He knew the old man's argument by heart, and none of it rang true. It would have made things easier if he could simply shrug it off and put the blame on fate or karma, but the gap between their points of view was generations wide, ingrained in each of them beyond eradication.
And while Stone knew that he had blown it, he could still appreciate the old man's efforts to put his mind at ease, to lift the burden of responsibility from his shoulders.
He had known An Khom long enough to realize that there was no point in arguing philosophy across the dinner table. Politics was one thing, business something else again . . . but when it came to matters mystical and pre-ordained, the old man lapsed into the archaic ancestral mold. It was part of his charm, the inscrutability of the East coupled with a Western instinct to aim for the jugular when it came down to money.
The old man was a weapons dealer, operating out of Bangkok, and he had grown wealthy in the martial trade. Stone had used his services on more than one occasion, when he had had a mission to conduct and needed some reliable equipment off the record, but their personal relationship was more than strictly business.
Stone had risked his life to rescue An Khom's daughter, An Ling, from the clutches of a rival arms dealer, and he had avenged the murder of the old man's wife in the process. Friendship had been sworn between them, forging ties that went beyond the mere material concerns and mutual interests of their two professions. An Khom felt a debt to Stone which he could never fully pay, and while Stone never pushed that sense of obligation, he accepted An Khom's friendship gladly.
"You must rest," the old man told him, rising from the dinner table, motioning for him to follow. "Let the war go on without you for a time, and seek yourself within."
Stone trailed him through an exit leading to a garden behind the house. From where they were, he could look out across the lights of Bangkok, which seemed small and far away with the illusion of distance. Five million people lived down there, jammed together in varying degrees of poverty and affluence, an easy quarter of them more or less continuously involved with the intrigue that had been spawned by Vietnam. Among them, An Khom was a minor legend, with his contacts reaching into both the public and the private sectors, assuring him a margin of protection which the less successful operators could only hope to emulate in time.
Stone knew Bangkok the way he knew Saigon—now renamed Ho Chi Minh City—and the other capitals of Asia. He had moved among the city's people, never one of them but not entirely alien, either. He had shared the burden of their wars, and knew the faces of the refugees who had been flocking into Cambodia for a decade, seeking sanctuary. If he was not one of them, at least he knew their suffering and loss. He had been there, all too recently.
"Nothing changes," An Khom told him, staring off across the lights. "There is nothing new under the sun."
Stone glowered at the darkness, wishing he could find an argument against that one, but coming up empty. In his heart, he knew that there should be a way to make a difference, strike a blow for what was right . . . but he had butted heads with bureaucrats and their red tape for much too long to cherish any optimism as he went about his private war.
You struck a blow wherever and whenever you were able. If you scored, so much the better. If you missed . . . well, there was nothing you could do but try again.
Providing you survived.
There was a movement in the shadows to his left, and Stone turned toward it, feeling the old combat prickle along the nape of his neck, adrenaline rushing through his veins to prime the fight-or-flight reflex. Another heartbeat, and he let himself relax.
It was An Ling, the old man's daughter. She approached him almost silently and slid her arm through his. Stone dredged up a smile for her, and nodded a greeting.
"It is late," the old man said to no one in particular. "I need my rest."
And he left them standing there together in the darkness, with the lights of Bangkok spread below them like a magic carpet.
It occurred to Stone that this had been the old man's purpose from the moment they sat down to dinner in the dining room.
An Ling had not joined them at the table. She had served the varied rice and seafood dishes, then retired to take her own meal in the kitchen.
In the Oriental scheme of things, the woman was subordinate. Though Mark Stone had learned to accept the system, he did not particularly subscribe to it.
An Ling would never take second place to anyone in his own personal estimation.
And there were complications—such as Carol, a blonde, blue-eyed beauty who kept Stone's bed warm and helped with the stateside aspects of his work.
When they had passed some time in silence, An Ling released his arm and moved to stand in front of Stone, demanding his attention.
"I feel your pain and sorrow," she said softly. "I understand."
The soldier did not contradict her. She had known her share of pain, no doubt about it. If their cases were not identical, they were close enough for her to empathize. In other circumstances, at other times, it might have been enough to help him.
"Let me share your burden," An Ling offered, moving closer, until they were touching in the darkness. "I can bring you to forgetfulness."
He smiled at her.
"It's tempting . . . but I'll have to pass. Reluctantly." Her frown was thoughtful, rather than insulted.
"You do not find me . . . adequate?"
"I find you more than adequate," he told her frankly. "In fact, I find you beautiful. But this is not the time or place."
"My father—"
"Never mind your father," Stone interrupted her. "I have to find my own way out of this. Alone."
She studied him for another silent moment, finally nodding, and the frown had disappeared when she looped her arm back through his, turning to face the lights of the city again.
"I understand," she told him softly.
And she did, of course.
He needed fire and blood to wash the taste of his defeat away. A different flame from the one that men and women kindled when they came together—this one fierce, destructive.
Stone was hungry for revenge, for the opportunity to start getting even on his loss. It was not ego—at least not primarily—that drove him in his quest for violent confrontation with the enemy. That was part of it, of course, but there was much more.
A need to pay some dues, to keep the silent promise he had made to absent comrades.
A need, if nothing else could be accomplished, just to spread the suffering around and make damned sure the enemy absorbed his share of punishment along the way.
Tonight was not a night for love. When Stone lay down tonight and slept, his dreams would be of fire and blood and killing.
There was no remaining room for softness in him, not tonight. And Stone had no desire to take An Ling along with him into the nightmare world that his nocturnal hours had become since the bungled mission into Vietnam.
The girl deserved a warmer, softer place.
Perhaps, in time, Mark Stone could join her there, and they could share some tenderness.
But first there was the fire.