"My mother was notified, of course, and she came to see me. I told her about the lawyer. What he had said. She said that was intolerable. I said it was also inevitable. And she said surely something could be done. I said no it couldn't be done, because we had no money for the big law firms and no political clout. I gave her the whole self-pity business. If I couldn't have freedom, have my life back, at least I could wring some sympathy from my mother. And I did."

Moon hesitated.

"I even cried," he added. "I'll never forget that. I actually cried."

"Twenty years in prison," Julian said. "I would have cried too. Who wouldn't?"

"So my mother went home, and almost right away I got a letter from her. She was marrying Dr. Morick."

"An," Julian said.

"I told you Morick was Dad's doctor. But he also had inherited real estate, and he was smart, and he'd made great investments in California land and in Florida beachfront. And was chairman of the county Democrats and a great friend of a congressman on the House Military Affairs Committee and had all sorts of connections. A lawyer showed up at the stockade, a white-haired man with an a.s.sistant carrying his briefcase. He took about fifteen pages of notes on what happened, and who questioned me, and what went on in the military hospital. And-guess what-a little later somebody at a higher level reexamines the charges, and they are reduced to conduct unbecoming a noncommissioned officer, unauthorized use of a military vehicle, and so forth. The penalty becomes loss of rank, loss of six months' pay, and a general discharge."

That finished the story for Moon. His confession had been made. He was tired.

Julian considered it. "Someone might say that was a happy ending," he said. "But it wasn't. Not for you."

"She never liked Morick. He was Dad's doctor and that gave him an excuse to be there a lot, to keep l.u.s.ting after her. And he was a stuffy, boring, self-important old bachelor more interested in his real estate projects than in practicing medicine. But she wasn't a very lucky woman, my mother. Her husband gives her a vegetable to care for, and then, when he dies, she has to marry another one to save a weakling son."

"You don't think she would have-"

Moon pounded his fist into his thigh. "Never. Never. Never!" Moon said. "She never never would have married him. She did it to save her pitiful boy." would have married him. She did it to save her pitiful boy."

Special to the New York Times New York Times WASHINGTON, April 21-Defense Department officials concluded today that the situation in South Vietnam was deteriorating so rapidly that the United States must plan an immediate evacuation of all Americans and their dependents.

FOR MOON MATHIAS, THE FLIGHT from Manila to Puerto Princesa was in the aisle seat of one of those twin-engine prop-jet aircraft that short-hop commuter airlines favor. Moon had already learned to avoid such aircraft when possible. The planes were fitted out for small people and intended for short trips. So used, they were barely tolerable for someone of his dimensions. But the flight from Manila on Luzon Island down the Philippine archipelago and then across the Sulu Sea to Puerto Princesa was anything but short.

While waiting for the consulate to call and tell him he had clearance to visit George Rice, Moon had bought a map of the Philippines and a tourist guidebook. And then, on an uneasy hunch, he bought a large-scale map of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. He put that map in his bag, hoping never to need it. On the Philippines map, he took a scale of distances he marked off on a sheet of hotel stationery and made some calculations. A direct flight from Manila to Puerto Princesa, the capital of Palawan Island and site of its only airport, was just about four hundred miles. But, of course, there was no direct flight. The only one scheduled from Manila took one first to Iloilo, three hundred miles southeast on Panay Island. From there one flew two hundred and fifty miles southwestward across the Sulu Sea to Puerto Princesa. That made five hundred and fifty miles, broken by an hour sitting in an airport in a tiny town, which, Moon's guidebook said, "had little to offer the tourist except an open-air market where exotic tropical products may be purchased."

The guidebook made Palawan itself sound equally unpromising, unless one loved to rough it in the tropics. It called the island "one of the world's few remaining unspoiled paradises," Its economy was based on fishing "with some subsistence agriculture." Its population was described as "light, scattered, and largely Malay in ethnic origin." Looking at it on the map made Moon wonder why the cartographers and politicians had included it as part of the Philippine cl.u.s.ter. It lay like a line drawn from Borneo to Luzon, almost three hundred miles long, from Bugsuc on the south to the tiny settlement of Taytay on the north and only about fifteen or twenty miles wide. It looked to Moon like Bugsuc was a h.e.l.l of a lot closer to Borneo than Taytay was to any dry land in the Philippines. He measured it out, and it was. Not that it mattered. What mattered was four and a half hours' flying time in a small seat designed for someone half his size.

Moon Mathias had quit fitting small seats since he started growing seriously in about the fifth grade. But he had made himself proficient at enduring. He sat, legs cramping, neck hurting, expression bland, and listened to the small Filipino who occupied the window seat.

The small Filipino wore a thin mustache that had turned gray. He said his name was Mr. Adar Docoso. He had been a platoon sergeant in the Philippine Scouts. He had fought the j.a.panese "until General MacArthur sailed away and abandoned us." Now he was in the sc.r.a.p metal business. He was flying out to Puerto Princesa to see about buying a Panama-licensed freighter that had been more or less abandoned there because it wasn't worth fixing its worn-out diesels. He had four sons, all unusually intelligent, and one remarkably beautiful daughter. This out of the way, he wanted Moon to explain to him why the United States of America had chosen to make Hawaii the fiftieth state instead of the Philippines.

"Hawaii is just three or four little insignificant islands, and not many people, and most of them are j.a.panese." In describing his adventures as a Philippine Scout, Mr. Docoso had already made it clear that he considered the j.a.panese savages. "We cannot understand why you made those people a state and not us. You tell me so I can know that."

"I don't have the slightest idea," Moon said.

"I know lots and lots of Americans," Mr. Docoso said. "Nice people. Like you. I deal with them in my business. They bring their old worn-out ships in here, and run them ash.o.r.e or set them on fire, so the insurance companies will pay them something, and then I buy the sc.r.a.p metal. Good for everybody. Good people. But why did they do that to us? Why did you turn us away like dogs, and give us gangsters for our government, and then have the CIA teach the government how to torture people so we can't get rid of them? I wish somebody could tell me why that is."

"What would you think if I told you I was an agent of the CIA?" Moon asked.

That seemed to work. Mr. Docoso lapsed into silence. Moon edged a cramped foot from under the seat ahead of him and flexed it. He thought about how to deal with Mrs. van Winjgaarden, who, unfortunately, was occupying a seat three rows ahead of him.

"But I know Mr. Rice," she'd said. "Of course I should go along. I know that part of Cambodia, that part along the border just above the Mekong Delta. I've been there visiting my brother. I will know what to ask Mr. Rice."

And he had said no deal. He'd handle this alone. She couldn't go. She couldn't get into the prison even if she did go. And she had said they would probably let her in if she was with him. They would think she was his secretary, or something like that, and he had said, Maybe, if I would be stupid enough to lie to authorities of a foreign prison.

But anyway, there she was three rows up the aisle, head bent slightly forward. Asleep, apparently.

Mr. Docoso poked him with an elbow, grinning up at him. "You are joking me," he said. "You are never with the CIA."

"No?" Moon said. "Why not?"

Mr. Docoso clutched his throat. "No necktie," he said. "CIA they wear nice clothes. Clean. Pressed. Expensive suits, vests, shined shoes." He pointed to a man who Moon had thought to be a j.a.panese businessman in the aisle seat two rows up. "Like that one. Or the other kind of CIA, they wear sports shirts and leather jackets. Two kinds of CIA but neither kind is like you." Mr. Docoso was grinning broadly at this, shaking his head in affirmation of his wisdom.

And so Moon flew across the Sulu Sea listening to Mr. Docoso's vision of the state of the Filipino nation circa April 1975. He learned that Fernando Marcos's father hadn't been a poor Filipino as his press releases and biographers insisted but the son of a wealthy Chinese loan shark, and how Imelda had the airport at Puerto Princesa enlarged because one of her cousins was building a tourist resort on the beach up at Babuyan, and a great many other things about the presidential couple's kith and kin and their nefarious dealings.

Finally, the blue water below them converted itself into the deep green of tropic jungle.

"Puerto Princesa," said Mr. Docoso, pointing downward. And below there appeared a cl.u.s.ter of wharves, barnlike warehouses roofed with red tin, a docked ship that looked to Moon like some sort of navy auxiliary vessel, a very small and very dirty freighter, and a hodgepodge of anch.o.r.ed small craft, among them a pencil-slim two-masted sailing ship, which seemed from high above so white, so clean, so tidy that Moon thought of a swan in a yardful of dirty ducks.

The town itself reinforced that impression. One- and two-story buildings, some thatch-roofed, some bamboo, some of more or less standard concrete-block construction, cl.u.s.tered along narrow dirt streets. It was a very small town with trees everywhere, a small open square where a public market seemed to operate, a dilapidated church with a cross atop each of its double spires. Moon could see no sign of anything that looked formidable enough to be a government building.

"That's Puerto Princesa?" Moon asked. "It's the capital for the island?"

"It's a very long island," Docoso explained, "but it is also very thin." He demonstrated thinness with his hands. "And n.o.body lives here but mostly Malays."

The airport was also thin, a single runway closely bordered by palms, bamboo thickets, and a.s.sorted tropical vegetation strange to Moon. He wondered how it must have looked before Imelda ordered it enlarged.

"The hotel here at the airport is the best," Mr. Docoso said as they crowded down the exit stairway. "Very modern. Toilets and bathtubs in the rooms and every room is equipped with refrigerated air-conditioning." Docoso seemed to feel that this recitation of a.s.sets might seem incredible. He shrugged. "Imelda owns it," he explained.

SAIGON, South Vietnam, April 21 (Agence France-Presse)-President Nguyen Van Thieu resigned tonight after ten years in office. He appointed Vice President Tran Van Huong to replace him and denounced the United States as "unworthy of trust."

THE ROOMS OF IMELDA'S HOTEL on the road between Puerto Princesa and its airport were indeed equipped with refrigerated air-conditioning. Exhaust vents for this frigid air had been installed above the bed and in the bathroom. Unfortunately nothing came out of them. Moon called down to the friendly young man behind the front desk to report this deficiency and received the information that the "machinery was temporarily inoperative" and that "repairs were currently under way." It sounded to Moon as if the young man had either memorized this report or was reading it from a card. Not a good omen.

He forced open his windows and stood beside them, breathing in the hot, humid air.

The last glow was dying from the sky along the western horizon, and the jungle was producing the tropical sounds of twilight. Moon stood listening. He could identify the mating song of frogs, which seemed to be universal. The little chirps would be bats patrolling for mosquitoes, just as they did on summer evenings in Oklahoma and Colorado. But most of the sounds were strange to him: a sequence of whistles (perhaps a lizard of some sort), odd grunting sounds, a sequence of rapid clicks, repeated, and repeated, and repeated. They were sounds that might be from another planet, or a science fiction fantasy, and they gave Moon Mathias a sudden overwhelming sense of being absolutely alone.

He turned away from the window. His suitcase was where he'd tossed it on the bed, waiting for him to finish unpacking. The doorless closet s.p.a.ce contained only a cl.u.s.ter of coat hangers waiting to be used. The room, even the door to the bathroom, had been painted a color Moon couldn't identify- what a mortician would think of as flesh tone.

Moon hurried out into the hallway, down the stairs, and into the lobby. Mr. Docoso was sitting there with a middle-aged j.a.panese couple and a man who looked Arabic. They were watching something on the television set in the corner. The set produced the sound of laughter. Mr. Docoso motioned Moon to join him on the lobby sofa.

"I'm going out for a walk," Moon said. "I have to get some exercise."

He took it slowly in this darkness at first, going carefully down the front steps and across the gravel pathway to the parking s.p.a.ces. But there was still a faint glow of twilight. A first-quarter moon hung halfway up the eastern sky, and Moon's eyes adjusted quickly. By the time he'd reached the road leading toward town he was walking his standard U.S. Army pace.

The road surface seemed to be a mixture of clay and gravel, packed hard and pocked with deep potholes. The roadside ditches produced frog sounds that his pa.s.sage affected-loud ahead of him, silent beside him, and rising again to full cry behind him. This phenomenon reminded Moon that he was an intruder in this world of South Asian frogs and South Asian cultures. It reminded him of what he had come here to do.

A roadside palm had fallen there. Someone had sawed off the part that intruded into the roadway, but the remainder still spanned the ditch. Moon sat on it and reviewed his plans.

They were simple. His letter from the consulate had included a note from a.s.sistant Warden Elogio Osoor. Warden Osoor said visiting hours were from one P.M. until two P.M. in the visiting room in the administration building. Convict Rice would be available for an interview. A guard would be present in the room at all times. No weapons or other contraband should be brought into the prison. This note should be shown to the guards at the perimeter.

Fair enough. He would ask Mr. Rice if he knew what the devil had happened to Ricky's daughter. if he had any idea how to find her. And if Moon was lucky, Rice would say. he didn't have the slightest idea and he knew of no one else who had an idea, and that the child was probably safe with her Cambodian grandmother somewhere in Thailand by now, and one of these days, when all this trouble was over and Southeast Asia returned to normal, Victoria Mathias would probably be receiving a letter from the Cambodian granny soliciting money for the child's upbringing.

Whereupon Moon would be free to fly back to Los Angeles, make sure Victoria Mathias was getting proper care, and resume his life as a third-rate managing editor on a third-rate newspaper, sleeping with Miss Southern Rockies when she decided it was a good idea to have s.e.x and trying to persuade her to marry him.

"Aaah!"

The cry came from the darkness down the road and was accompanied by a clatter and then an exclamation, which, while Moon couldn't understand the language, was clearly an expression of anger and frustration.

He waited. Now the faint sound of footsteps coming toward him. The figure taking shape was tall, slender, female. Carrying a suitcase and a small handbag. Osa van Winjgaarden.

Moon didn't want to startle her. He said, "Good evening, Mrs. van Winjgaarden."

She produced what would have been a startled shriek, had she not instantly suppressed it, and said, "Who?"

"It's just Ricky's brother," Moon said, getting to his feet. "I didn't mean to startle you."

"Oh," she said. "Oh." And put down the bag.

What was she doing out here carrying a suitcase? When they'd left the airport she'd said she was going to check into a hotel in Puerto Princesa. She hadn't said why.

"Have a seat," Moon said. He gestured to the palm trunk. "It's comfortable."

"Thank you," she said. She left the bag on the road and sat. Even in the dim moonlight, he could see she was trembling.

"I'm sorry," he said.

She laughed. "It wasn't your fault I'm so spooky.

What could you do? Just sit there and hope I didn't -notice you when I walked past? That would have scared me to death."

"An, well," Moon said. "Anyway, it's a nice night for a walk."

"If you don't break your ankle. I stepped in a hole back there."

"I heard you," Moon said.

Brief silence. Then she laughed. "I hope you don't understand Dutch. Or the Indonesian Dutch we speak out here. You would have been shocked at my language."

"I translated it to mean something like 'Oh, shoot!' in English."

A chuckle. "That was kind of you," she said. "And close enough, I guess."

Moon had exhausted his small talk. He wanted to ask her what she was doing out here. Walking from her hotel in the town to Imelda's hotel, apparently. Surely not all the way to the airport. But why not take a cab? Was she out of money? If the rates here were as cheap as Manila, it would have been less than half an American dollar. Moon's lack of response didn't seem to bother her. She sat motionless, looking at the night sky.

"You're Dutch, then?"

"Van Winjgaarden," she said. "That's as Dutch as windmills and tulip fields."

"It's your husband's name, though," Moon- said. "Your maiden name might be French, or Italian, or Spanish, or just about anything."

Silence. "No. Winjgaarden is my family name. Only the Mrs. isn't really mine. I never married."

"Oh," Moon said.

"In my work I have to travel a lot. All over. In Asia, a woman traveling alone attracts attention- the wrong kind of attention. So I use the Mrs. and I bought myself the wedding ring."

"Does it work?"

"It seems to be effective." And she laughed. "Or maybe I just flatter myself with this. Maybe I just think think I need the Mrs. and the ring." I need the Mrs. and the ring."

Moon thought about that. And about her. Remembering how he had first seen her walking into the hotel restaurant. A handsome woman, really. Graceful. Feminine. The sort of woman one saw in Cadillac commercials, escorted by a man in a tux. Not the sort of woman Moon would even think of approaching. But he knew a lot of men who would.

She glanced at him now, and away. It occurred to Moon that her remark wasn't one to be left hanging. Silence would seem a confirmation.

"No," he said. "I think you need the ring and the Mrs. I'm surprised they keep the wolves at bay."

"Wolves at bay?"

"Wolves," Moon said. "American slang for men who go around trying to connect with unattached women. I'm surprised you don't attract them even with the ring and the t.i.tle."

"Oh," Mrs. van Winjgaarden said. "Thank you." And in an obvious effort to change the subject, added, "Have you noticed the constellation just above the horizon? The Southern Cross. I don't think you see that in the United States. Aren't you too far north of the equator?"

"We are in Colorado," Moon said. "Can I ask where you are going with your suitcase?"

"To the new hotel. The one in the town was much cheaper, and I thought- Well, when I was here once before, the little hotel in the town wasn't so bad. The ships' officers stayed in it, and I guess the tourists stopped there when there were any, and a few businesspeople who came here. So they made the plumbing work and it was clean. Well, so-so. And the screens kept the mosquitoes out. But that was four years ago, and now the businesspeople come out to this new hotel, and the old one-" She shuddered. "The old one is awful. The smell. The roaches."

"The new one is pretty good," Moon said. It didn't seem the time to mention the lack of refrigerated air.

"And of course I couldn't get a taxi." She laughed. "Puerto Princesa has only four with motors and then some pedicabs. But they all seem to quit at night."

"No place much to go," Moon said. "But weren't you nervous? I mean, walking all the way out here in the dark. Alone."

"No," she said. "No tigers out there. But I was thinking of other things and when your voice came out of the dark, calling my name, then I was surprised."

"What did you buy in Puerto Princesa? When you came four years ago?"

"Let me remember," she said. "Yes. I bought ten dozen bamboo blowguns with pigskin quivers, four bamboo darts in each quiver. And one hundred fetish figures, carved out of bamboo, and some little things made out of shark bones, and-" She stopped. "Things like that. Then we sell them to exporters who resell them to importers, and someday they end their travels on the wall of someone's parlor in Tokyo or Bonn or New York."

"Could you buy poison for the darts if you wanted it?"

"I never asked," she said. "But I think they still hunt with blowguns back in the hills, so they'd have to make the poison. It would be trouble for the importers, though."