Finding Moon

Mr. Lee got out his cigar case, offered it to Moon, extracted one for himself. He shook his head.

“I must simplify this,” he said. “You don’t want a doctoral degree lecture.”

“Just tell me why I can’t do this job for you,” Moon agreed.

“In this cosmos we have the visible world of the natural.” He pointed to Moon. “You and I, the lizards we hear calling out there, the insects, all we see and hear. And then the world of the supernatural. The spirit world. We die. Our soul crosses the bridge. The link is broken. But it can be restored. We feed the spirit of our ancestors through respect. The spirit has power. Mana.”

Mr. Lee paused, thinking. He blew out a great cloud of smoke.

“I will start another way,” he said. “We know that all things are decided by fate. Call it luck, good or bad. But we humans have ways to influence luck. We avoid the evil spirits that cause illness. We please those powers that can bring good. The most important of these is the most powerful of our ancestor spirits. Like you Jews and Christians, we know the power of ritual in dealing with the supernatural. We bury them properly. The place is scientifically chosen, the tomb correctly designed, the depth of the grave measured, the skull faced in the proper direction. All this was done when my most revered forebear was buried in our ancestral place. Then the Khmers captured the village. Before the government troops drove them away, they had killed the monks, burned the temple, and destroyed all things religious-including our family tomb. But the bones were recovered. I hired a geomancer to locate the site of a new tomb where the bones will be safe.”

“And you hired Ricky to go get them.”

“Yes,” Mr. Lee said. “And luck intervened. In itself a bad sign.”

“This ancestor, was he a great man?”

“He had great mana,” Mr. Lee said. “A minister for the great Sun Yat-sen. Great honor. Great power. My family has benefited always with health and luck.”

“We need it now,” Moon said.

Mr. Lee exhaled more smoke. “I’m afraid it is changing already,” he said. “Since his tomb was destroyed, one of my nieces died in an accident. The shop of a grandson in Hong Kong burned. A brother-in-law was arrested by the police in Saigon. These bones must be placed where the feng shui is correct. Where the spirit is again comfortable. Where the mana works for the family and not against it.”

“So you’re going,” Moon said. “I can’t argue.”

Lee gestured toward Nguyen Nung, who had

been leaning against a wall, listening and looking puzzled.

“I should explain the situation to our friend,” Mr. Lee said. “I think he has become part of our partnership. A member of our tour group.”

“Apparently,” Moon said, and followed Osa out into the growing darkness.

She was standing on the floor of the roofless section, looking through the twilight toward the burned-out village.

He stood behind her, organizing what he wanted to say.

“You haven’t changed your mind, have you?” Osa said. “You’ve come to tell me why you can’t go into Cambodia.” She paused, drew in a deep breath. “And let them kill you.”

“I’d like you to understand,” he said. “Remember when we first met in the hotel at Manila? I told you I had come to bring my brother’s child back to her grandmother. Nothing has changed that. I still have to get it done.”

Osa turned and looked at him for a long, thoughtful moment. “Then I still don’t understand you,” she said. “I came looking for you because I had heard all about you. From Ricky. When I heard Ricky was dead, I thought you were coming to take over the company. He’d told me he wanted you to come. Had asked you to come.”

She shook her head, sorting out the memories.

“Then you told me about the child. But you made it seem that you thought finding her was hopeless. You made me think you just wanted to find Ricky’s friends so they would tell you there was no hope and you could go home, having”-she paused again, searching for the best way to say it- “so you could feel you had done your very best.”

“I guess that’s true enough.”

Osa nodded. “You made it seem that way. I didn’t want to believe it, though. That wasn’t the Moon Mathias that Ricky had described to me. I thought if we could get to Ricky’s hangars, you could just get into a helicopter and fly it away and get the child. And my brother.”

“Except I couldn’t fly.”

“But I didn’t know that.”

Moon laughed. “I think Ricky made people think I could fly without an airplane.”

“So I pushed you into this,” Osa said. She threw out her hands. “And now here we are, and the helicopter has gone away with our only hope. And now that it really is absolutely impossible-like I thought you wanted it to be-now you act like it isn’t.”

Moon waited, but that seemed to be all she had to say.

“So I just don’t understand you. Which Moon are you?”

“I don’t know,” Moon said. But even as he said it, he knew that whatever the reason, he simply wasn’t willing to stop now. It had to be done. No use arguing about it.

“How are you going? In that little tank?”

“I put enough extra gasoline in those GI cans to get me there and back. Or close to it.”

She took a deep breath and released it. “You’ll just need enough for one way. They’ll kill you.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Be reasonable. The Vietcong, maybe not.

Maybe they would just lock you up. But the Khmer Rouge? You represent everything they hate.”

How could he explain this? It would sound like dialogue out of a bad movie. But it was true, so he said it.

“There’s something worse than being killed sometimes. It’s living with too much failure. I’ve got a long list of screwups behind me. Finally you decide you can’t stand another one.”

She stared at him, waiting for him to explain. He didn’t.

She produced a wry smile. “Sometime I think you will tell me what happened to you to make you like this. If you live long enough.”

Moon returned the smile, feeling better. “Maybe so. But it’s a long story and dull. We don’t have time for it now.”

“I think we have what’s left of three days,” she said.

“No,” Moon said. “I want to get started tonight. Get out of here in the wee hours of morning. When all the bad guys are getting their sleep.”

Osa said nothing to that for a long time. She looked down at her hands, then up at him. She was facing the west, toward where the remnants of broken clouds still reflected a little of the twilight. Beyond her in the clearing skies over the skeletons of the murdered trees along the creek, the moon was rising. Almost full. The moonlight touched her hair and the twilight her face, and Moon realized for the first time just how much he liked to look at this woman. Unless he was very, very lucky, this would be the last time he’d see her.

BANGKOK, Thailand, April 29 (Agence France-Presse)-An estimated 80 South Vietnamese aircraft streamed into U Taphao airport today carrying at least 2,000 refugees fleeing their country. As night fell the landings continued.

A Thai Foreign Ministry spokesman said no permission had been granted for the landings. He said the refugees would be “deported” and that the aircraft-all provided to South Vietnam by the United States-would be “turned over to the new government of South Vietnam.”