Conspiracy

33

When Dean arrived in Vietnam the first time, he hadn’t been prepared for the heat. It hit him with his first step off the plane. He was soaked in sweat by the time he stepped onto the tarmac. He felt as if he’d stepped into the mouth of a whale.

He wasn’t quite prepared for it now, either.

The 757 had parked a good distance from the terminal, leaving the passengers to walk down a set of portable steps to a nearby bus. It had just rained, and there were large, shallow puddles on the cement apron. Dean glanced to his right and caught sight of a row of old hangar buildings, brown half-pipes made of corrugated metal. Thirty-some years before, the buildings had housed U.S. Air Force fighter-bombers; now they looked like overgrown gardening sheds.

“I thought this was the dry season,” said Tommy, picking up the pace toward the squat, open-mouthed bus nearby. The door was where the hood would be on a truck.

“Dry means less than a monsoon,” said Dean. The air steamed with the recent rain, though by Vietnamese standards the seventy-seven-degree temperature was mild.

“Bring back memories?” asked Karr, sliding into a seat.

“Not really.”

“That’s good. Warn me if you feel a flashback coming on.” Dean had actually been to the Saigon airport only once, to pick up someone. It had been nighttime and from Dean’s perspective the airport consisted only of security checkpoints and a big, poorly illuminated building. So rather than seeming familiar or even nostalgic, the airport to him now seemed blandly generic, as if it could be anywhere in Asia.

The large hall where the passport control was located reminded him of the airport in Istanbul, Turkey, where he had been a few months before: somewhat modern, somewhat utilitarian, a place where a crowd could be counted on not to loiter.

The customs line was only a dozen people long. A Vietnam ese woman in front of Dean slipped a twenty-dollar bill into her passport. The clerk took it without comment, studied her documents, then waved her through.

There was no reaction from the clerk when Dean presented his American passport; he flipped through it quickly, then handed it back.

“Have a good day,” said the man, reaching for Karr’s documents behind Dean.

“Hello, Charlie. How does it feel to be back in Vietnam?” asked Jeff Rockman, the runner back in the Art Room. He was speaking to Dean through the Deep Black communications system, partly embedded in Dean’s skull.

“Fine,” said Dean, turning around to wait for Karr.

“We’re in their video security system,” said Rockman.

“Smile — you’re looking right at the camera.” Dean scowled instead. The Art Room regularly “invaded” computer-controlled video security systems to keep tabs on operatives during a mission. Ironically, the more sophisticated the system, the easier it was for the Desk Three hackers to penetrate. This system, which transmitted its images not only to the local security office but also to an interior ministry monitor in Ho Chi Minh City, was about as secure as a child’s piggy bank.

Karr joined him and they walked down the steps to the baggage claim area.

“A woman bribed the passport guy with twenty bucks,” said Dean, talking to the Art Room though he pretended to be speaking to Karr. “What was that about?”

“Commonly done,” answered Thu De Nghiem, the Art Room’s Vietnamese interpreter and an expert on the local culture. “It’s a holdover from the past. A lot of returning Vietnamese will include ‘tips’ in their passports, though it brings them nothing. You will find a lot of petty corruption in the country. It’s pathetic really. A tip worth a few cents at most can get you very far.”

“I’ll remember that.”

Karr led the way to the luggage carousels, where their suitcases had yet to appear. As they joined the small knot of people milling around the conveyor belts, Dean spotted two men in suits watching tourists from the far end of the hall. A maintenance worker mopped up the spotless floor just to their right.

“Your bags are being searched in the room behind the belt,” said Rockman. “Shouldn’t be long.”

“I hope they don’t steal my razor,” said Karr. “I really need a shave.”

A half hour later, re united with their luggage, Dean and Karr passed through the customs area without being stopped for an official inspection. Just past the door, a row of people crowded against a waist-high temporary metal fence, searching for the faces of relatives. The line extended out toward the main hall of the reception area, overflowing outside.

“I’m guessing that’s our driver,” said Karr, pointing at a silver-haired man near the door. He held a cardboard sign with the words “Car/Bean” on it.

“Kin chow,” said Karr, sticking out his hand.

“Xin chào,” said Dean, correcting his pronunciation. The words for “hello” sounded like “seen chaw” to an American.

The rhythm and tone — a flat, slightly drawn-out singsong — were as important as the sound of the consonants. “Tôi tên là Charlie.”

“And I’m Tommy,” said Karr, shaking the driver’s hand.

“Very nice to meet you,” said the driver. “I am Lu. You speak Vietnamese?”

“I know a few phrases,” said Dean. “Râ´t vui d — uoc g˘a panh. I am very pleased to be able to meet you.” Lu answered in Vietnamese that he, too, was happy to meet Dean and welcome him to his country.

“The car is outside,” he added in English. “I will take you to the hotel.”

“How about a drive around the city first?” asked Karr.

“You want scenic road?”

The juxtaposition of “scenic” and Vietnam seemed highly ironic to Dean, and yet as they drove to the hotel he realized that the country was indeed beautiful. Even the developing outskirts of Saigon, which looked a lot like the smaller cities of China, with cranes and bulldozers scraping the earth, had plenty of lush greenery to set off the yellow machines and the buildings they passed.

The city itself looked almost nothing like the Saigon Dean had visited as a Marine. New high-rises were sprinkled among the colonial-style buildings that had completely dominated then. Instead of casting shadows on the older, smaller buildings, the high-rises seemed to light them up, pulling them out of the past.

Motorbikes flooded around the car as it circled a city square marked by a fountain and leafy green trees. Dean noticed a family of four clinging to an older bike, a three-year-old leaning precariously toward the ground.

“The New World Hotel,” said Lu as they pulled up. “You enjoy it very much.”

Built in 1995, the New World was one of the city’s finer hotels. Located not far from the Tao Dan Culture Center and Lelai Park, it towered over the downtown area, pushing the lesser buildings in its shadow toward the murky Saigon River. Sleek marble panels lined the hotel’s glass-enclosed atrium, and the lobby looked as luxurious and modern as any Dean had seen.

Karr whistled as they took it all in.

“We better get some serious sales to justify this bill, huh, Charlie?”

Lu helped them with their bags, then gave them a card to call if they needed a driver again.

They checked out their rooms, which were next to each other on one of the executive floors. Karr examined the rooms for bugs while Dean planted some of their own, positioning dime-sized video cameras so the Art Room could see not only their rooms but also the hallway, elevator, and stairs. The bugs sent their signals to a booster unit the size of a paperback book, which he placed on the interior window ledge of his room. The small case looked like a battery waiting to be recharged.

Their rooms secure, Dean and Karr ambled out of the hotel and began what looked like a haphazard walking tour of the area. They spent a few minutes oohing and aahing, “doing the tourist thing,” as Karr put it — checking out the general area to make sure they were familiar with possible escape routes.

Then they became more serious. They rented motorbikes from four different shops, stashing them at different parking areas so they would have them if necessary. Dean rented a car as well, though in Saigon, cars tended to stand out and were not as useful as the more ubiquitous motorbikes.

Karr, meanwhile, made a visit to a small notions shop several blocks from the hotel, emerging with a pair of large suitcases. Inside the cases were weapons and other equipment pre-positioned in the country. The weapons included an assortment of pistols and a specially designed assault gun called the A2; its boxy magazine held ninety-nine caseless 4.92mm bullets, which could be fired in three-round bursts — or all at once, which would take a little more than ten seconds.

“See anything familiar yet, Charlie?” asked Karr, when they hooked up again. He had already stashed some of the gear in a locker at the bus station and now filled the trunk of the rental car with the rest.

“No.”

Dean glanced around. The Saigon streets were very different from what he remembered. Even allowing for the fact that he had only been here briefly, very long ago, the place bore almost no resemblance to anything he remembered.

He tried to scrub away the obvious anachronisms of his memory — the drab green military vehicles, the rock music that occasionally blared from the most unexpected places, strategically placed sandbags and gun emplacements. There were just too many things to add — tall skyscrapers, a multi-tude of motorbikes, billboards that, except for their Vietnamese characters, could have been sitting over an LA freeway.

“Feels like I’ve never been here before,” said Dean, though that wasn’t 100 percent true.

After spreading backup gear around the city, they found a spot to park the car where it wouldn’t be disturbed and went back to the hotel.

“You think you’ll be all right at the reception on your own?” Karr asked Dean as they got into the elevator.

“You think you’ll be all right breaking into the ministry on your own?”

“I’m not breaking in, Charlie. I’m visiting. After hours.” Karr smiled. “There’s a difference.”