"And now the woman's disappeared too?"

"Slick. But I got a good idea where she went. Hank gives me fifteen minutes tomorrow, I'll find out for sure. She's got a brother or uncle or something in New York that she doesn't know we know about. She'll go there."

Annie had managed to get rid of Carrie and Nancy somehow. He didn't ask, just collapsed into a chair and listened bemusedly to Beth and Le Quyen, who were carrying on an animated conversation. Friday would be another along day, and during it he would have to tell Carrie the truth.

And Teri, too.

His life was closing in. His job was polluting it, and he was losing his zest.

He didn't get to bed till one, and then only with Hank's hard, "Be in bright and early, Cash!" still ringing in his ears.

XXII. On the Z Axis;

1969-1973;

Huang's Academy

Michael had been there for two years. His teachers had succeeded. He now could not remember ever having been anything but a Maoist. Once, maybe, an unawakened Maoist. But never an enemy of the people. It had been his awakening social conscience that had driven him to enlist in the imperialist army. So he could learn its ways against the day the Revolution came.

He could scarcely wait for the war's end. He dreamed of carrying the truth to family and friends.

He gloried in having been the first American graduate student, and the first of his class chosen to instruct his countrymen. He was now the official greeter of new classes, and one of the senior American staffers. From his humble beginnings here he might one day rise to command an army of liberation.

There wee signs that the potential had begun to develop at home. The marches, the excitement at last summer's Democratic Party National Convention, seemed so promising. It was time for a man, an American Mao or Ho.

Michael believed Huang was grooming him for big things.

The school had a name so typically, so Chinese communistically, hyperbolic that Michael found it embarrassing to repeat. In English it came out resembling: Institute of Imperialist Recidivist Reeducation for the Purpose of the Establishment of a Peace-Loving People's Guided Democratic Republic of the United States of America. It sounded better in Chinese.

Michael suspected that the director himself found the name both tedious and ludicrous and had chosen it in hopes the fascist intelligence agencies would discount it as a fraud or red herring.

The academy's mission was to produce agent-larvae who would, eventually, devour the rotten fruit of capitalism from its core outward after their repatriation. Only an honored few men were to be reserved, at war's end, for later special employment on behalf of the director.

Michael's dream of bearing the light to his near and dear was pure fantasy. He already knew that he was one of the elect stay-behinds.

What he didn't know was that his selection wasn't an honor. He hadn't been chosen as the American Mao. Those chosen to remain forever MIA were the moral weaklings, the personalities incapable of withstanding the heat of the forges of pre-Revolution. Michael had been singled out as a loser, as a blade good for but one stroke. In the long run he was as expendable as a hand grenade.

Let him dream his dreams of becoming mighty among the socialist mighty. They did no harm, and kept him usefully eager.

The academy's population was never large, and the lot of a confirmed collaborator was loneliness. The weakness of character that made shifting allegiances easy was such that even defectors secretly loathed it in one another.

Michael Cash didn't have a single friend inside.

So it was that he awaited Snake's arrival with rising excitement.

But people change. Time, separation, and hardship devour the commonalities that form the bedrock of friendship. Michael and Snake had lived out two years in radically different environments. They had worked toward radically different goals. They were no longer the two pained, frightened, bewildered GIs who had shared the march up the Ho Chi Minh trail.

Snake wanted nothing more than to get the essential spark that was his self through this purgatory unconquered.

"Hey, man!" said Michael as Cantrell came toward him, down the ramp, beneath the cold-eyed desert stars. "Hey! Two years."

His pleasure was genuine and absolute. He had missed Snake's stubborn strength. "Really good to see you. How have they been treating you? I heard they gave you to Chico and Fidel for a while. They tell me those guys play rough. That's why I been busting my ass trying to get you here. Things are better here. You'll see."

While Michael's mouth motored, Snake limped along beside him, following the other new students. The bone hadn't set properly. The two Cubans, who operated out of their country's Hanoi embassy, had refused to let the camp doctor see him. Their specialty was breaking spirits. Sometimes they shattered bones trying to shatter hope.

They had met their match in Snake Cantrell. Snake hadn't had a hope to lose, nor an illusion to kill, for a decade.

He regarded Michael from the edge of his vision. His expression remained unreadable. Sometimes it threatened to become amusement, contempt, compassion, or sorrow, but always it faded before taking real life. He spoke only in response to direct questions.

Even there in the night Michael's apparel betrayed him. Spartan, a curious hybrid of Chinese Army and American work clothing, it did not resemble POW wear at all. The shiny new first lieutenant's insignia were a dead giveaway.

They passed through a camouflaged entrance into a long, steep stairwell illuminated by dull red lights which came to life only after the door closed. Posters and pennants clung to the pale green flaking paint on the concrete walls, sad imitations of college dormitory decor. Each proclaimed some gem of genius from Chairman Mao. Two years of study hadn't made the meaning of most any less impenetrable to Michael.

Snake broke step, frowned at one especially foggy quotation.

"I think you have to be Chinese," Michael observed. He felt euphoric, daring. "I guess the first thing should be to show everybody where they bunk. Then you and me can go down to the cafeteria. Shoot the shit about what's been happening. How long since you've had a cup of coffee? Or bacon and eggs? Or a real American cigarette? We've got it whipped here, Snake."

It took only minutes to settle the new class. It consisted of just twenty men, and Cash had done most of the work beforehand. He had tagged bunks and lockers. Issue clothing-sized according to information received from the Vietnamese-and study materials were in place. Soap, towels, blankets, and so forth, he had placed in the lockers. It was an inspection-ready barracks. Occupants were all it needed to bring it to life.