Never Say Die Read Online Free

beautiful women…"
    "It's changed a lot since then. Most of the cars are gone."
    "And the beautiful women?''
    He laughed. "Oh, they're still around. Along with the heat and dust. But everything else has changed." He was silent a moment. Then, almost as an afterthought, he added, "If you get stuck, I might be able to show you around."
    She hesitated, obviously tempted by his invitation.
Come on, come on, take me up on it,
he thought. Then he caught a glimpse of Puapong, grinning and winking wickedly at him in the rearview mirror.
    He only hoped the woman hadn't noticed.
    But Willy most certainly
had
seen Puapong's winks and grins and had instantly comprehended the meaning.
Here we go again,
she thought wearily.
Now he'll ask me if I want to have dinner and I'll say no I can't, and then he'll say, what about a drink? and I'll break down and say yes because he's such a damnably good-looking man
—
    "Look, I happen to be free tonight," he said. "Would you like to have dinner?"
    "I can't," she said, wondering who had written this tired script and how one ever broke out of it.
    "Then how about a drink?" He shot her a half smile and she felt herself teetering at the edge of a very high cliff. The crazy part was, he really
wasn't
a handsome man at all. His nose was crooked, as if, after managing to get it broken, he hadn't bothered to set it back in place. His hair was in need of a barber or at least a comb. She guessed he was somewhere in his late thirties, though the years scarcely showed except around his eyes, where deep laugh lines creased the corners. No, she'd seen far better-looking men. Men who offered more than a sweaty one-night grope in a foreign hotel.
    So why is this guy getting to me?
    "Just a drink?" he offered again.
    "Thanks," she said. "But no thanks."
    To her relief, he didn't press the issue. He nodded, sat back and looked out the window. His fingers drummed the briefcase. The mindless rhythm drove her crazy. She tried to ignore him, just as he was trying to ignore her, but it was hopeless. He was too imposing a presence.
    By the time they pulled up at the Oriental Hotel, she was ready to leap out of the car. She practically did.
    "Thanks for the ride," she said, and slammed the door shut.
    "Hey, wait!" called the man through the open window. '' I never caught your name!''
    "Willy."
    "You have a last name?"
    She turned and started up the hotel steps. "Maitland," she said over her shoulder.
    "See you around, Willy Maitland!" the man yelled.
    Not likely,
she thought. But as she reached the lobby doors, she couldn't help glancing back and watching the car disappear around the corner. That's when she realized she didn't even know the man's name.
    Guy sat on his bed in the Liberty Hotel and wondered what had compelled him to check into this dump. Nostalgia, maybe. Plus cheap government rates. He'd always stayed here on his trips to Bangkok, ever since the war, and he'd never seen the need for a change until now. Certainly the place held a lot of memories. He'd never forget those hot, lusty nights of 1973. He'd been a twenty-year-old private on R and R; she'd been a thirty-year-old army nurse. Darlene. Yeah, that was her name. The last he'd seen of her, she was a chain-smoking mother of three and about fifty pounds overweight. What a shame. The woman, like the hotel, had definitely gone downhill.
    Maybe I have, too,
he thought wearily as he stared out the dirty window at the streets of Bangkok. How he used to love this city, loved the days of wandering through the markets, where the colors were so bright they hurt the eyes; loved the nights of prowling the back streets of Pat Pong, where the music and the girls never quit. Nothing bothered him in those days—not the noise or the heat or the smells.
    Not even the bullets. He'd felt immune, immortal. It was always the
other
guy who caught the bullet, the other guy who got shipped home in a box. And if you thought otherwise, if you worried too long and hard about your