"He just left," Hubbell said.

"Tell the son of a b.i.t.c.h to stay sober until I get back or I won't just fire him, I'll whip his b.u.t.t right there in the office."

"All right," Hubbell said.

"What else? Any good news?"

"J.D.'s been asking about his truck," Hubbell said. "Said he wanted to go to Denver."

"Tell J.D. it was the fuel injection pump. I fixed it, and all he needs to do is put in new glow plugs. He can put it back together himself. Or ask one of the guys down at the truck stop if he has troubles."

Hubbell laughed. "Yeah," he said. "Can you imagine that happening? Getting his hands greasy?"

Moon couldn't, but he didn't want to talk about it. He told Hubbell he'd be home as soon as he could. Then he just sat on the bed awhile staring at the telephone, mood somewhere between dismal, disgruntlement, and sleepy stupor. He fell back against the pillow, yawned hugely, and went to sleep.

The phone awoke him. Nine-ten. Who would be calling?

It rang again.

He picked it up and said, "Mathias."

"h.e.l.lo. Is this Mr. Mathias?" The voice was hesitant, accented, and feminine.

"Yes. Yes," Moon said, "this is Mr. Mathias."

Brief silence. "This is then the room of Moon Mathias? Am I correct?" The voice was small, tone abashed. Moon had a vision of Shirley's spaniel when Debbie yelled at it.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to sound-so grouchy. But, yes, this is Moon Mathias talking."

"I am Mrs. Osa van Winjgaarden. I had written you a letter. I hope I can talk to you."

"Of course," Moon said. What was the accent? Probably Dutch, from the sound of the name. "What can I do for you?"

Silence again. Moon waited. "It is too complicated for the telephone," she said. "I had hoped we could sit down and talk."

"Probably," Moon said. "Where are you calling from? And what will we be talking about?"

"I am at the airport. The Manila airport. I called Mr. Castenada, and he told me you were here. He told me he had given you my letter instead of mailing it on to America. And we would be talking about getting my brother out of Cambodia."

Good G.o.d, Moon thought. What next?

"Look," Moon said. "I don't know anything about Cambodia. Or getting people out. What makes you think-"

"I thought you would be taking charge of Ricky's company. And you are getting Ricky's daughter out," she said. "From what Mr. Castenada told me, I understand you are doing that."

Now the silence was on Moon's end. Was he doing that? He guessed he would if he could. He didn't have much choice. But, of course, he couldn't.

"I would if I could."

"It won't be much out of your way," she said. "And I could be of some help."

"How?" And what did she mean, out of your way? out of your way? Did that mean she thought she knew where he was going? Did she know where the child might be? Did that mean she thought she knew where he was going? Did she know where the child might be?

"If you don't speak the Cambodian version of French, I could be useful there," she said. "And I speak one or two of the mountain dialects. A little, anyway."

"Hey," Moon said, "what did you mean, getting your brother wouldn't be much out of my way? Where is your brother? What's the-"

But now Moon was hearing Osa van Winjgaarden saying something to someone away from the telephone mouthpiece. She sounded angry and tired.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't hear you."

"You're calling from the airport?" He was thinking, The woman has just got in from Timor, wherever the h.e.l.l that is, and probably on some little prop-driven airline. She sounded exhausted.

"Yes. A coin telephone box here by the doorway. I am trying to hold a taxi. I'm-"

"Look," Moon said. "You go ahead. Check into your hotel. The Del Mar, isn't it? Take a shower. Get some rest. Then call me, and we'll get together tomorrow morning. Maybe you could come over here and have breakfast and we'll talk."

"Oh, yes!" she said. "Thank you!"

He paused. "But I think you are wasting your time. There's nothing I can do for anybody in Cambodia."

"Oh, no, Mr. Mathias," she said. "I don't think so. Ricky told me about you."

Special to the New York Times New York Times WASHINGTON, April 16-Secretary of State Kissinger said today that the United States Emba.s.sy in Saigon had been ordered to reduce the number of Americans remaining in South Vietnam to "a minimum level needed for essential duties."

MOON WALKED DOWN THE dark streets, emerged into the lights of Quezon Boulevard and the busy noise of traffic, and stopped to get his bearings. He loved to walk. It restored the spirit, cured him of whatever ailed him. But tonight it wasn't working.

This new task was one he could do absolutely nothing about until tomorrow. Only tomorrow would bring the information he had to have before he could decide what to do. Thus there should be no pressure until then. But the pressure was there. He'd watched the evening news on the TV in his room. Mostly Philippine stuff, but enough videotape of refugees flooding into Saigon to remind him that time was running out. So he went through it all again.

Tomorrow he would meet the woman from Timor. He'd asked the hotel desk clerk the location of that island. The clerk had revealed ignorance even deeper than Moon's.

"It is somewhere way down on the south coast of Leyte," the man had said, after thinking about it a moment. "Dirty little port town, I think. Nothing much to see there." He had wrinkled his nose, made a motion of dismissal. "Smells bad. You don't want to go to Timor."

The woman with the Dutch name and the Dutch accent could clear up the geography question for him at breakfast. Beyond that, she'd either tell him something useful or she wouldn't. If she didn't, he would begin hunting Ricky's friends. Perhaps they would justify the optimism of Castenada. Until then there was nothing to do except walk. Carefree hours in a place new to him and exotic. He should be luxuriating in that. Why wasn't he?

He was nervous, that was why. He was nervous about Mr. Lum Lee for one thing. It was a rare feeling for. Moon, and he tried to deduce the reason. Perhaps it was the Chinese-looking man in the lobby who seemed to be watching him. More likely the man had seemed to be watching him only because Moon was already nervous. He was an Oriental wearing a blue turtleneck shirt. Chinese, Moon guessed, but that was probably because Chinese had been his generic label for all Orientals who were not clearly j.a.panese. And why had Mr. Lum Lee followed him to Manila? He'd called the number Lum Lee had left for him. No one had answered.

"Who's the man sitting over there by the fountain?" he'd asked the clerk. "Wearing the blue shirt? Is he one of the guests?" And the clerk had looked, shook his head, and said, "Maybe. I think not so." And then when Moon had walked away from the hotel, past the line of waiting taxis, he'd seen Blue Turtleneck standing in the doorway looking after him. Or possibly just looking at the weather.

The weather was mild, dead calm, more humid than he'd ever experienced. Prestorm weather, he thought. Certainly far different from the high dryness of the Colorado Plateau. The surface of Manila Bay reflected city lights, the lights of traffic along Quezon Boulevard. Moon walked briskly, at the three-miles-in-fifty-minutes pace the U.S. Army had taught him, past dark warehouses and the twinkling mast lights of a thousand boats docked in the Manila yacht basin. He smelled fish, oil, flowers, salty ocean air, decayed fruit, a strange animal aroma. The perfume of the tropics, he guessed. Strange, exciting country. He should have been enjoying it.

The vehicles pa.s.sing him were mostly World War II vintage jeeps, remodeled as taxis, garishly painted, honking for no reason he could understand. The sidewalk now was illuminated by the yellow glare of a streetlight. It showed him a shallow flood of dark water running down the concrete toward him.

Water?

Moon stopped, stared, sucked in his breath, and jumped to one side.

The stream was a mult.i.tude of insects: agile, light brown c.o.c.kroaches. A migration of them flowing rapidly down the sidewalk. The crunching he'd felt under his shoe soles on the dark street behind him hadn't been dead leaves as he'd thought. Feeling slightly sickened, he hurried down the sea-wall away from this grotesque strangeness.

The rain caught Moon as he crossed the park in front of the Manila Cathedral. A drizzle at first, the tiny droplets oddly warm. But the drizzle quickly became a heavy shower. Moon ran across the gra.s.s and up the cathedral steps. In the shelter of the vestibule he stopped to catch his breath, looked back. A man was hurrying through the rain behind him, protecting his head with a newspaper. He wasn't wearing a blue turtleneck.

Moon sat at the end of the final pew. A dim red light at the main altar told him the Consecrated Host was there. An electric bulb cast a yellow glow on one of the side altars, silhouetting two kneeling men and a woman. But the body of the church was dark, lit only by a bank of offertory candles burning before an ornate crucifix in an alcove. The breeze brought in the smell of rain, of pollen, of mildew, seaweed, and decay. And then the breeze died. Moon found himself engulfed in the aroma of burning candle wax, furniture polish, old incense. Engulfed in memories.

Of sneaking with Eddie Tafoya and Ricky into St. Stephen's and salvaging guttered-out candles, melting them down, making their own candles which Eddie believed, erroneously, they could sell in compet.i.tion with Father Kelly. Of swinging the censor in the sacristry, fanning the charcoal to red heat, producing a great blue cloud of aromatic smoke. Moon closed his eyes, trying to remember the sound of the Latin-"Qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere n.o.bis"-and tollis peccata mundi, miserere n.o.bis"-and Ricky saying, "Who told us pick cotton Monday," and getting away with it because Father Kelly was too deaf to tell the difference. Ricky saying, "Who told us pick cotton Monday," and getting away with it because Father Kelly was too deaf to tell the difference.

"He who takes away the sins of the world," Moon said, "have mercy on us." He slid out of the pew, walked down the side aisle, looked out the doorway at the rain, examined the stained-gla.s.s window above him-the Holy Family in faded colors. He walked past the row of confessionals, the center door of each with its barred window curtained in black and the doors to the penitents' booths solid wood. Much like the ones in old St. Stephen's.

That was so Father Kelly could see who was coming, Eddie had always insisted, so he'd know which boy was admitting his awful crimes against G.o.d and society. Moon had asked his mother about that and she'd laughed. Actually, Victoria had said, it was because the priest had to sit in that hotbox for hours and needed the air to keep from smothering.

Moon opened the penitents' door. In addition to the standard kneeler, a little straight-backed chair had been crowded into the tiny s.p.a.ce. Perhaps this booth was intended for the aged and infirm. At St. Stephen's one knelt, infirm or not. But times change. He sat on the chair, closed the door behind him, and let the memories come. The darkness was the same, and the silence, and the fear he could remember. And, most vividly, the shame. And finally, the despair.

Moon knelt and leaned his forehead against the wooden grating. The only difference between this .and the confessionals of his boyhood was the sound. Closing the door had shut out the whispers and shuffling of the other students waiting for their turn. But through the closed privacy shutter behind the grate you could hear the indistinct, indecipherable mutter of offenses recited by the sinners on the other side, and of Father Kelly's instructions to the sinner. And then the shutter would slide open. The dreaded moment would arrive.

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned," Moon whispered into the emptiness. "It has been-it has been a hundred thousand weeks since my last confession, and since then-"

A slight sound reached him through the grating, a polite, throat-clearing cough. The shutter was open. Moon felt his heart stop beating.

"How many weeks?" a soft accented voice said. "A long long time, I think you mean."

Moon sat back on the chair, drew in his breath. Of Of course. A priest had been sitting there thinking his thoughts, his night on duty in the confessional. "Sorry," Moon said. "I'm sorry. I was just ... it was raining, and..." He stopped. Nothing to say. course. A priest had been sitting there thinking his thoughts, his night on duty in the confessional. "Sorry," Moon said. "I'm sorry. I was just ... it was raining, and..." He stopped. Nothing to say.

"If I were a religious man," the voice said, and chuckled, "If I was that, I would say the rain drove you in. And since G.o.d makes the rain, perhaps G.o.d had a hand in this. In getting you here after one hundred thousand weeks."

The voice sounded neither young nor old and the accent had that odd cadence Moon had noticed in Filipinos speaking English. A little like reciting song lyrics. He'd heard it in Castenada's voice. The man behind the wooden grating is about my age, Moon thought. Maybe a little older. But he could think of nothing to say. He opened the door.

"Since we are here, and I have almost another hour, and since you don't want to get wet, why don't you just stay and talk? Or even make your confession?"

"Why not?" Moon said. "Because I'd be wasting my time. And your time."

"That bad, is it? You've done something even our G.o.d of Mercy could not forgive?"

"I don't think that's the trouble," Moon said. "Another priest told me you have to forgive yourself." It had been a chaplain at Fort Riley, a captain who had come to visit him in the stockade. He hadn't liked the captain, and the captain hadn't liked him.

The priest laughed. "In my long experience in here I've learned that's usually the easiest part. It is for me. I come to like my own sins. I find myself a reason for doing them. But is that why a hundred thousand weeks ago you stopped going to confession?"

"No," Moon said.

Silence.

The priest sighed. "I guess you're an American. A military man from the base, right?"

"American, but not military. Here on business. I was just out taking a walk."

"I peeked out a little while ago," the priest said. "The regulars have already been in to see me. I'm not going to have any more business. Not likely with the rain. I see three or four people out there. Praying for better lives and better luck. at the side altar. And then there are a couple of poor souls who came in to stay dry."

Moon heard the sound of a sigh.

"I've said my evening prayers. I've meditated a little, and when you came in I was trying to remember what I was going to tell my students Monday about Thomas Merton. I have them reading The Seven Story Mountain The Seven Story Mountain and I've taught that book so often that thinking about it makes me sleepy. And my chair in here is just as hard as yours. So then you come in and sit awhile. But then there is nothing but silence. Mi, something different. I start waking up. And when you finally speak you tell me a hundred thousand weeks. That's a challenge. I think of how many commandments could be broken in such a long lifetime. I think, What could provoke repentance now for sins so fossilized? I was excited." He sighed again. "But now you are thinking of disappointing me. You didn't know a priest was lurking here. You were engulfed in nostalgia. I think you were remembering how it was that lifetime ago the last time you asked your G.o.d to help you." The mockery in the tone included them both and swept away Moon's embarra.s.sment. and I've taught that book so often that thinking about it makes me sleepy. And my chair in here is just as hard as yours. So then you come in and sit awhile. But then there is nothing but silence. Mi, something different. I start waking up. And when you finally speak you tell me a hundred thousand weeks. That's a challenge. I think of how many commandments could be broken in such a long lifetime. I think, What could provoke repentance now for sins so fossilized? I was excited." He sighed again. "But now you are thinking of disappointing me. You didn't know a priest was lurking here. You were engulfed in nostalgia. I think you were remembering how it was that lifetime ago the last time you asked your G.o.d to help you." The mockery in the tone included them both and swept away Moon's embarra.s.sment.

"You left out the important part," Moon said. "About telling G.o.d I was sorry. That I had repented. That I would go forth and sin no more." And as he said it, he realized that he was, in a strange way, confessing.

"And then next week, or next month, back again with the same litany of l.u.s.t and avarice and anger and malicious gossip," the priest said. "Is that it? It is for me. It has always-been my problem too. This business of feeling like a hypocrite."

"Sure," Moon said. "And do you also feel like you're wasting your time? The rule says you have to-what's the language-'make a firm resolve to sin no more'-and when you walk out of the confessional you know you're going to do it again."

"It's usually s.e.x," the priest said. "With men, anyway. Adultery with the married men, or single men sleeping with their girlfriends, or trying to. With women, it's more often some sort of malice. Or it's laws of the church. Missing ma.s.s on Sunday without a good reason. It used to be eating meat on Friday, but since Pope John the Twenty-third that's off the list. G.o.d be praised for that. Anyway, women seem to have trouble forgiving somebody."

"Really?" Moon said. He was thinking of Victoria.

"Sometimes it's stealing, of course. Shoplifting. Taking a neighbor's chicken. But finally they get down to what's really bothering them. Her sister has insulted her and she has done so much for her sister. How can she be expected to forgive this? Surely the Lord would not expect it of her."

The priest sounded so troubled by this that Moon suspected he had just dealt with this question.

"How about men?" he asked.

"Little things. Things done in anger. G.o.d's name taken in vain. Illicit s.e.x. Hardly ever does anybody confess cheating on the wages they pay, or taking bribes." He laughed. "In Manila if people confessed to taking bribes, I'd never get out of here." The tone of that canceled the chuckle.

"I guess you'll find avarice everywhere," Moon said. "We have some of it in Colorado."

"n.o.body seems to think greed is against the rules. Or grinding down the poor." The priest sighed. "I wonder what President Marcos says to his confessor? 'I've been stealing a billion pisos a month from my people. I will give that back. I will stop torturing the political prisoners. I will-'" Brief silence. "Mi, well. I doubt if the president and Imelda go to confession much anymore."

"So women have trouble forgiving," Moon said. "How about mothers? Do they forgive their children?"

"How about you?" the priest asked. "Was treasuring a hatred that favorite sin of yours? The one that caused you to leave the church?"

"As you said," Moon said, "with men it's usually s.e.x."

"Adultery?"

Moon laughed. "I was just a boy. Fifteen, maybe sixteen. With a heart full of l.u.s.t."

"Impure thoughts? Or impure actions?"

"Fiercely impure intentions," Moon said. "Relentless. To make it worse, the target was usually the sister of a very good friend. Intention to betray as well as intention to fornicate. Thus a double load of guilt."

"So you stopped going to confession."

"I went," Moon said. "But I quit telling Father Kelly about the things I knew I wasn't going to stop. I'd just make up stuff. I'd tell him I'd stolen something. I'd lied to my mother. I'd been mean to my little brother. Cheated in cla.s.s. So forth. Until finally I just quit going."

Moon heard the priest shifting on his chair. Then a long silence. Finally a sigh.

"And now, a hundred thousand weeks later, how do you feel about it?"