The Last Bridge

Chapter Thirty-nine 2330 Hours

He stepped out of the cave into a jungle clearing washed by moonlight. A dappling of mackerel cloud made patchwork of the sky. He swallowed a quinine capsule and drank deeply from a canteen and set it down. Saville crouched with his back to a boulder. There was not much to see; jungle guarded three sides of the clearing, and the mountainside stood behind them. The girl Lin Thao walked up the slope with a carbine across her arm. Saville said, “You ought to get some more sleep, David.”

“I’ll spell you. Turn in.”

“Hooker can stand guard. You need—”

“I’d appreciate it if you’d quit questioning every order that comes out of my mouth, Theodore.”

Saville got up without a word and stooped to enter the cave.

Tuesday, Tyreen thought. He had four days to limbo. The General would ship him home on the first jet. If I get back.

He sat down and dragged the submachine gun across his lap. The girl was walking back and forth, stopping here and there to turn her head slowly, trying to catch the night’s small sounds on the flats of her eardrums. Her hair was tied back with string. She seemed fierce and proud.

It was a country where the people made child-slaves of orphans; where no one had ever been free; where in four thousand years there had never been a government obeyed by all the people; where the Montagnards hunted gibbons with crossbows and bribed the army with packets of opium. He watched Lin Thao’s lithe movements. She came toward him and knelt down. “You would like a cigarette?”

“Thank you.”

“Be careful, please.”

He hid the match against his chest and blew it out, and cupped the glowing end of the cigarette in his hand. He coughed. “Where did you get this?”

“From a dead soldier.”

“They must make these things out of Ho Chi Minh’s socks.”

She did not laugh. “You are a brave man. Like my brother.”

“You’re thinking he died for his bravery.”

“Perhaps I am.”

“You’re as brave as he was.”

“I must finish his work,” she said.

“Only because you’re brave.”

“It is not the same. I did not wish this. I do not like it. I would like a house and a husband who is a farmer. And no guns.”

“That’s what you’re fighting for, isn’t it?”

“It does not seem right,” she said, “that the strong should fight for the weak. If the strong die in the fight, it is so much more that we lose than if the weak die. My brother was strong, like you — but it only meant that he was so much more likely to die.”

“Everybody dies.”

“That is not what I meant.”

He said, “I don’t know the answer to your question, Lin Thao. Maybe things can be better than they are. We fight because we don’t want our children to have to fight.”

“For some men that is the reason,” she said. “But not for you, Colonel.”

He murmured, “Your eyes see a lot, don’t they?”

“I see your pride, Colonel. It is the same with my brother, and with my cousin who was a Vietcong. He was killed in the south. The cause means nothing. It is pride.”

“Maybe a little more than that. A little better than that.”

“I shall hope for that,” she said.

He pulled her forward and kissed her with no excuse and no apology.

She said, “We are both afraid, then.”

He thought, In case of accident or death, notify... whom? He said, “We’re a little lonely. At least I am.”

The girl turned her face against his chest. Her voice came up to him muffled against the cloth of his blanket. “All the men I have loved are dead. It is good that you do not stay here. Perhaps I would love you.”

“That isn’t what killed them.”

He felt the even rise and fall of her breathing. He did not understand her mystical notions. She made no sense to him; he did not know her. He said angrily, “Do you really think you’re a jinx?”

“A what?”

“The kiss of death. Do you believe your love killed your brother and your cousin and anybody else?”

“Of course I do not,” she said mildly. She added nothing to it.

He wondered what she would look like in a clean high-collared ao-dai. Through her shapeless clothes her body felt taut and hard. She said, “Tomorrow I will take you to the bridge, if that is what you wish.”

“It’s better for you to stay with your people.”

“Yes.”

He said, “We owe you a great deal. There aren’t words to thank you.”

“You have just spoken them,” she said. She uncoiled and got up. Her arm lifted. “That way, you must go over the mountain. When you reach the far side, you will see across the valley to the river Sang Chu and the mountain of the railroad bridge. If you walk slowly, you will need six hours to reach it. There will be many soldiers on the way, and after you reach the bottom of the mountain you must be careful of land mines and traps.”

He stood up. She said, “We are not so very different, you and I. I have many regrets, Colonel. Just now, one most of all.” She gave him a brief smile. “Goodbye.”

“Goodbye, Lin Thao.”

She walked across the clearing. She would reach her village before dawn. He watched her until she disappeared.

He went into the cave and felt his way to the radio kit and took it outside; he read his code book by the glow of his cigarette. He used a telegraph key to transcribe his message onto a miniature tape recorder. After five minutes’ work he attached the recorder to a radio transmitter, connected its batteries, and set a small explosive charge. He took a small packet out of the kit and filled a balloon with helium from a pressure tank no bigger than a pack of cigarettes; he suspended the transmitting apparatus from the balloon and watched it soar away.

The transmitter would broadcast its message in half an hour, with the wind taking it across the jungle valleys; at the end of the broadcast the small charge of detonating cord would explode the mechanism into a thousand pieces.

He sat outside the mouth of the cave with his arms wrapped around his knees. The moon was moving west, and he watched the small balloon diminish into the sky.