Black Friday by James Patterson Page B

they had called Lizard Man, was waiting for him inside the command hootch. The North Vietnamese leader sat in silence, crouched behind a low, lopsided table.
    He seemed to be posing for a photo beneath a twirling bamboo fan that barely stirred the hundred-and-five-degree air.
    North Vietnamese cooking smells—green chili, garlic, lichee and durians, spoiled river prawns—made David Hudson suddenly gag. He clutched violently to his mouth. He felt himself begin to faint.
    But he wouldn’t allow that. No! Honor and dignity! That was everything. Honor and dignity kept him alive.
    He stopped on his own mental command, drawing on the scant resources, the spirit that remained inside of him.
    A guard punched David Hudson’s jaw with a hard bare fist Hot blood filled his mouth. He gagged on the metallic taste.
    Honor and dignity. Somehow.
    “You Cap-tan, ah Hud-sun!”
the senior officer suddenly screeched.
    He peered down onto the wrinkled note pad he always carried. His fingers struck hard into the page to emphasize certain words.
    “Ho-Ho. Twen-six yea-ah old. Veet Nam, Lah-ose since nineteen-six-nine. Yow spy six yeah. Ho-Ho. You ‘ssain! ‘ssassin! Convic to
die,
Cap-tan.”
    The prison camp guards let Captain David Hudson fall toward the dirt floor, which was littered with gaping fish heads and rice.
    Hudson’s mind was reeling, crashing, exploding with sharp-pointed lights. His own private light show, his own palace of pain, he thought.
    He’d understood only a few of the Lizard Man’s fractured English words.
“Viet Nam… spy… assassin… convicted to die.”
    On the table sagging between him and the North Vietnamese officer, there was a teakwood game board.
    Captain Hudson’s eyes absently ran over the board surface. Games?
Why did they all love games?
    The Lizard Man snorted. A distorted smile appeared suddenly across his lower face. His jaw moved slowly, seemingly unattached to the rest of his skull.
    “Yow
play game?
Yow
play game me,
Hud-sun?”
    David Hudson’s eyes were riveted to the low-slung game table, trying to gain focus.
    Play a game with Lizard Man?
    The board appeared to be real teak. It was precious wood, exotic and beautiful, incongruous in this sodden armpit of a place.
    Even more striking were the hundreds of polished black and white stones, exquisite game playing pieces. They were circular in shape, convex on each side.
    For a nearly lucid moment, David Hudson remembered a marble collection. Something magical and forgotten from his youth in Kansas. Father’s farm. Collecting solids and cat’s-eyes. Had he actually been a boy in this same lifetime? He couldn’t seem to remember.
Die with dignity! Dignity!
    “Play game for your life? Ho?” the Lizard Man asked.
    The game board was divided into vertical and horizontal lines creating hundreds of intersections. There were 180 white stones, 181 black.
    Beside the pile of black stones, the Lizard Man’s hand rested on a bulky Moison-Nazant military revolver. One of his long yellowed fingers relentlessly tapped the table.
    “Yow play. Play game me! Loser die!”
    Captain Hudson continued to stare hard at the game board, at the beautifully gleaming teak table.
Focus, he thought Concentrate. Die with dignity.
    He only vaguely understood what was happening. What did this man want from him now? It was some kind of joke, Hudson knew. One more way the Lizard Man had of torturing him.
    The black and white stones seemed to be moving by themselves. Spinning, crawling like insects in his badly blurred, tunneling vision.
    Finally, Hudson spoke up. His voice was surprisingly strong, angry, even defiant when he finally found it.
    “I have never lost at the game of Go,” Captain Hudson said. “You play, asshole!”
Dignity!

Chapter 15
    THE NEW YORK SUBWAY noisily braked at a Mid-town station stop. The platform was bathed in eerie blue.
    A few passengers on the early morning train were absently staring at David Hudson.
    Hudson stared back at the