Part 39 (1/2)

”My bep likes people to enjoy his food and I'm letting him down tonight.” Joseph's expression was guarded as he poured ruou de for them both. ”Has there been any reaction from Was.h.i.+ngton yet on the prisoner exchange?”

”No - but we've had an urgent request from the State Department to try to find Out who 'the man in the white room' really is. n.o.body in D.C. is fond of the idea of letting a nameless man go free.” Guy sipped his wine and began to eat, using his chopsticks with quick, deft movements. ”That's why I'm here - to try to persuade you to come back to the emba.s.sy this evening to finish the photo search.”

Instead of replying, Joseph drained his gla.s.s and refilled it again; he neither looked at his brother nor touched his beef, and Guy ate in silence for a few minutes, then pushed his plate away and sat back.

”You know, Joseph, I've never been able to read what goes on inside your head,” he said in an impatient tone. ”You've always been d.a.m.ned cool with me for reasons best known to yourself and I've come to accept that as the norm as far as you and me are concerned. But h.e.l.l, I'm beginning to think you must be some kind of cold-blooded animal all through. Don't you have any human feelings at all? After two years you discover your younger son's alive when he might've been dead, and instead of doing everything you can to help, you closet yourself here in your villa taking dinner on your own and doing nothing! I just don't get it.”

Joseph put down his gla.s.s and glanced across the table at his brother. ”Hasn't it occurred to you, Guy, that if your prisoner in the white room turned out to be someone of the top rank from Hanoi, it might jeopardize the whole deal involving Mark? Hasn't it occurred to you that if I could identify him positively, that fact in itself might condemn Mark to several more years of torture and suffering- maybe even worse.”

”I guess I hadn't looked at it from that angle.” Guy gazed at Joseph thoughtfully for a moment, and when he spoke again his voice was suddenly more sympathetic. ”Does that mean you already know who he is - but aren't saying?”

Joseph got up abruptly from the table and went to the kitchen. When he returned he was carrying a new bottle of ruou de, and he filled both their gla.s.ses without speaking.

”Okay, I can see you don't want to answer that question and I won't press it right now.” Guy picked up his gla.s.s. ”But maybe we've made some progress. For the first time in your life you've actually shared a confidence with your kid brother. Maybe we should drink to that.”

Guy smiled lopsidedly as he raised his gla.s.s to his lips, but despite his faintly sarcastic tone his manner had softened noticeably, and Joseph felt a sudden stab of remorse for always having kept him at arm's length.

”Perhaps there's something I should tell you too, Guy,” he said hesitantly. ”I didn't just get one shock today. Hearing Mark's confession would have been enough on its own - but while I was going through those photographs, I got another one”

”When you saw the picture of the Vietnamese girl, you mean?” Guy paused significantly. ”Tuyet Luong?”

Joseph's eyes widened in astonishment. ”How did you know?”

”I saw the expression on your face and I made a mental note of the file's position as you pushed it back into the drawer. I checked it out after you'd gone and I guessed she must have been someone you met sometime - someone you didn't think was a Communist then maybe. Is that it?”

”No, that's not it.” Joseph bowed his head and spoke towards the table. ”Tuyet Luong is my daughter.”

'Your daughter?” Guy's mouth fell open in disbelief, and for a long time he sat and stared at Joseph; then he nodded his head several times. ”I think I understand now why you're sitting here in the dark not eating dinner.”

”I haven't seen Tuyet since 1954 - she was seventeen then. Since I got back I've heard rumors that someone with a name like hers had got on the 'wanted' list - but I never really believed them until I saw that picture this morning.”

”But who's her mother? And what the h.e.l.l was it that made her go over to the VC?”

”It's a long story, Guy,” said Joseph resignedly. ”But if you have time to listen, I'd like to tell you.”

”Sure, go ahead,” said Guy quickly. ”If it'll help.”

In a voice that sometimes cracked with emotion Joseph told - his brother of his long involvement with Ian and Tuyet, leaving nothing out, and when he'd finished Guy let out a low whistle. ”I'd heard bits and pieces through the family grapevine over the years, but I never dreamed you'd been living with all of that.” Guy picked up the wine bottle and filled Joseph's gla.s.s and his own again, and they lapsed into a companionable silence.

”That's the first time in your life, you know, Joseph, that you've ever let your guard down with me,” said Guy at last in a wondering voice. ”And I appreciate that more than you might think. When I was a kid I spent a lot of time worrying about why you seemed to have your knife in me. You made me feel for a long time like I wasn't good enough to be a brother of yours or Chuck's. Do you remember?”

”I know,” said Joseph quietly. ”I knew I was doing it and I'm not proud of it - it really wasn't your fault.”

”How do you mean?” Guy smiled in mystification.

”Quite illogically I blamed you for something that had nothing to do with you.”

”What was that?”

As Joseph considered how to phrase his answer, he realized to his dismay that without meaning to, he'd arrived on the brink of telling Guy the one thing he'd sworn always to stay silent about. He glanced at the second bottle of ruou de on the table between them, saw that it was three quarters empty and regretted that his tongue had begun to run away with him. ”Forget it, Guy,” he said hastily, rubbing a hand across his eyes. ”It's just the rice wine talking.”

”Oh no, you don't slip out of it that easy,” Guy laughed and emptied the entire contents of the bottle into their two gla.s.ses. ”Now that the wine's started talking, let it finish.”

Joseph smiled in return, and they raised their gla.s.ses to drink in the same moment. -”I'm not too sure how I ought to go about this, Guy - but I guess you're right - it's something you really should have known all along ”Come on, quit the softening-up process,” said Guy with a smile. ”I'm a big boy now.”

”Well, didn't you ever wonder how it was that mother and father lived all those years in that big house in Georgetown on separate floors? Didn't you ever wonder why mother drank so much in her last years? Didn't you ever wonder how long that had been going on?”

Guy's smile waned a little. ”No, I guess I didn't ever really think about it. I suppose I always, kind of a.s.sumed that the rambunctious senator from Virginia always needed a lot of s.p.a.ce for his larger-than-life political activities and our wise mother liked to give him a wide berth.”

Joseph stared into his drink, seeing again suddenly his mother on that day a month before she died welcoming him to her sumptuously furnished apartments on the upper floors of the big Georgian mansion in Dumbarton Street. There had been separate bottles of wine at either end of the long table for luncheon, and she had finished one of them on her own, Afterwards she had dropped her balloon gla.s.s of brandy in the hearth and sobbed uncontrollably in his arms while blurting out what she had called the ”terrible secret” of Guy's birth; she had stared at him in horror when he told her that he already knew, that he had seen her by chance that night in the jungle storm and had recognized Guy's unmistakable likeness to his natural father as he'd grown up. Before he left, she had made him promise never to reveal her secret to his father or Guy, and the memory of the vow he'd made then haunted him fleetingly as Guy waited for him to continue.

”The fact is, you see, Guy, they hadn't just been living on separate floors for the last twenty-five years as you remember they were living on 'separate floors' for quite a few years before you were born.”

”Is that why the old man likes to make those sly references to me being 'bred' in the jungle on that hunting trip?”

”In a way but what he's never known is just how true that was.”

”You'd better say now what you mean, Joseph - so we both know what you're getting at.”

”I'm trying to tell you, Guy, that the man you've always thought of as your father isn't your real father.”

The smile faded instantly from Guy's face, and his features turned to stone. The enormity of the revelation rendered him speechless, and Joseph felt a sudden tide of alarm rise inside him.

”No other living soul except me knows this, Guy,” Joseph went on hurriedly. ”I swore never to tell him or you - but I think you have a right to know.”

”And why in h.e.l.l's name were you let into the dreadful secret?” asked Guy, speaking fiercely between his teeth.

”Mother blurted it out to me a few weeks before she died. It had preyed on her mind, and she had to tell someone to ease the pain.”

”But why did it have to be you?”

”Perhaps she sensed that I knew already that the story about the hunting camp was true. The great senator from Virginia, you see, was as high as a kite on the night in question. I saw him staggering as he went back to their hut. Then a while later the flap opened and I saw Mother run out into the storm ”So you played Peeping Tom! That's how you knew the ident.i.ty of my real father!”

Guy's voice ruse accusingly, and Joseph nodded.

”So who was he?”

”Our French hunting guide - an ex-French army officer. He became an inspector in the Surete Generale here in the 'thirties.”

”Is he still alive?”

Joseph shook his head quickly. ”He was a.s.sa.s.sinated by Vietnamese nationalists in Hue - in 1936.”