A Perfect Cover. Maureen Tan

and alone, in a battered boat on the South China Sea. Pulled on board by hands that eagerly pressed a tin cup of water to a child’s parched lips.

      I walked on.

      Suddenly there was a blaring horn and squealing brakes.

      America! I thought as I heard a woman shouting at me in English. I’ve made it to America!

      More lucid thoughts quickly followed, snapping me back into the present.

      I had emerged from the dirt road, stepped into the highway and owed my life to the quick reaction time of a middle-aged woman with bleached-blond hair driving a shiny blue pickup truck. She rolled down her window to get a better look at me, stopped shouting, and scrambled from her vehicle. Her arms around my shoulders supported me as we staggered back to her truck.

      I need help, I thought, but the words came out in Spanish. I saw her incomprehension, forced myself to concentrate and managed a language I hadn’t spoken for many weeks.

      “Please,” I said in English, “Do you have a phone I can use? To call the police.”

      She listened, openmouthed, as I offered the dispatcher enough information to convince him that the situation was beyond urgent. Then I disconnected. And my rescuer stopped me from walking back into the desert alone.

      I sipped the bottle of lemon-flavored water she offered as I counted the minutes. A lifetime seemed to pass before the police arrived, before I could lead a convoy of police cars and ambulances to the abandoned trailer.

      Within that lifetime, no one inside the trailer died.

      Within that lifetime, a baby girl was born.

      Chapter 2

      U ncle Duran had arranged his desk to take full advantage of the window in his office. A man of upright posture, powerful build and impeccable taste, the senator sat with his back to the expanse of glass, fully aware that the view from the trio of wing-backed chairs facing his desk was a postcard image of the nation’s capitol. Seen from a height and distance that softened detail and muted noise, visitors to his office saw stately monuments, manicured lawns, cherry trees and the orderly movement of pedestrians and traffic along wide boulevards. It was Washington, D.C., at its most picturesque.

      Framed by the window as he sat in his leather-bound chair, the senator looked positively presidential.

      Not only did he look the part, but he wanted the role. Because he was a man who knew the right people and did the right things, the Beltway press was already speculating that he was a strong contender for the Democratic party’s nomination. Although it was too early in the election cycle for Uncle Duran to make a public announcement, he had begun talking privately and often about his ambitions. Mostly to people who counted. Occasionally to me. Before I’d left for Mexico, he’d wondered out loud if being President would inhibit his ability to act as he saw fit, then smiled as he told me that my job was to be sure that it didn’t.

      It was only when he stepped away from his big window and massive desk that first-time visitors realized how big Uncle Duran was. At six foot seven and a muscular three hundred pounds, he dwarfed not only me, but most of his constituency.

      It was his size that had terrified me as a child when I first saw him in the Songkhla refugee camp in Thailand. Though I wanted desperately to go to America, I shrank back as this burly, big-voiced man and his entourage approached. Only a camp worker’s tight grip on my hand kept me from running to hide in my bed.

      Most Americans I had met had large noses, but this man’s was very large and crooked. His face was craggy, with a tall forehead, a jutting chin and thick eyebrows. Like a fairy-tale giant, I thought as I stared at him. Without hesitating, he leaned forward and scooped me up, lifting me far from the ground. I trembled when I saw that his eyes were like pale pieces of silver. And that his teeth, when he smiled, were large and very white. I had wondered if he ate children.

      Then he turned to those who were with him and spoke. My English was not good enough to understand what he said, but the camp worker whispered a translation. As cameras flashed and pencils scribbled on small notebooks, the senator explained that I was special to him. Because he could not locate my father, his brother and his wife would adopt me. I was the first of the needy children that the loving, generous citizens of America would rescue. He intended to find placements for hundreds of children like me—children who had been orphaned by war and who dreamed of America.

      Now, almost two decades later and just months past his sixtieth birthday, Uncle Duran’s dark hair had turned the color of brushed steel. But his rich baritone voice and gentleman’s charm still won hearts and even votes on the campaign trail.

      Unfortunately, Uncle Duran was not being charming now. Nor was he smiling. The argument that we were having across his centuries-old desk had boiled down to a few simple truths. It didn’t matter that I had worked for him long enough to prove that my professional judgment could be trusted. And it didn’t matter that I was his brother’s only child. It only mattered that I was defying him.

      As I stood behind one of the wing-backed chairs, my fingers digging into its cushioned sides, my face impassive, I watched him clamp his unlit cigar between his front teeth and slowly shake his head. Then he rolled the cigar back into a corner of his mouth to speak again.

      “Though I warned your parents against him long ago, I’ve overlooked your friendship with Tinh Vu, even tolerated your addressing him as ‘uncle.’ I tried to accommodate a child’s need to rediscover her roots, to embrace the familiar. But you are no longer a child. And you’re more American than you are Vietnamese. Damn it all, Lacie. When was the last time you actually spoke Vietnamese?”

      “It’s been a long time,” I admitted. As a teenager, I’d tried to become part of the Vietnamese community in Chicago, but quickly discovered I didn’t belong. Even Uncle Tinh and I had, for many years, conversed in English.

      Uncle Duran nodded, smiled around his cigar. But if he thought I was going to back down, he was mistaken.

      “Does it matter how Vietnamese I am?” I said. “Or how American? I’m a good mimic and a quick study. As you’ve often pointed out, I can fit in anywhere I want to. All I am asking is to be allowed to do a job that I’m trained to do. That’s all Uncle Tinh is asking.”

      Uncle Duran’s smile disappeared.

      “And I am asking you—no, I am telling you—that I will not authorize this venture. I have been part of your life longer than Tinh Vu has. I was the one who found you, who gave you a family and a job that means something. Can you so easily dismiss my decision about this?”

      Tears welled in my eyes. I didn’t want to defy him, to hurt him. But it was because of him, because of the values he’d taught me, that I had made the only decision I could when Uncle Tinh called.

      “You’ve told me often of your work for the senator,” Uncle Tinh had said. “Can you come down to New Orleans right away? On business, Lacie. Please. My people…our people…need you.”

      How could I say no?

      I looked directly at Uncle Duran, lifting my chin for emphasis.

      “I’m sorry, Uncle Duran,” I said. “This is something I have to do.”

      He moved the cigar away from his mouth, put it down on the clean crystal ashtray on his desk. When he lifted his head, our eyes met and I braced for what I knew was coming.

      “You’re fired,” he said clearly. “Effective immediately.”

      I had chosen.

      And so had he.

      I went back to my adjacent and more functional office. Determinedly dry-eyed, I packed my personal belongings into several cardboard boxes as Uncle Duran stood in the doorway and watched, unspeaking. Then he helped me carry my possessions downstairs and load them into my car. But before I turned the key in the ignition, he leaned into the open driver’s side window.

      “Even if I approved of