The Tears Of Autumn

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Cholon was alive at night. The Chinese were everywhere, crouching in the street to eat rice, moving quickly through the din of voices and loudspeaker music on errands, exchanging goods for money. Christopher drove the Citroen through the boiling crowd; pedestrians banged on the thin metal hood to let him know that they were there.

“We’d do better to walk,” Nicole said.

Christopher parked the car; the gray Simca that had followed them from the hotel stopped a block behind. Two Vietnamese, shorter than the Chinese who filled the street, got out of the Simca and vanished into the crowd.

Nicole led Christopher through a series of alleys; the mob thinned and finally disappeared altogether as they entered a narrow dirt street lined with the windowless walls of warehouses. Nicole opened a door that squealed across a concrete floor and grasped Christopher’s wrist, guiding him along a walkway past piles of crates.

They went down a stairway and through a passage with dank earthen walls. Streams of rats whimpered around their feet in the darkness. At the end of the tunnel they climbed another stairway and Nicole rapped at a door. They were let into a dark hall that smelled of incense by a young Chinese. He opened another door, let them go through, and closed it behind them.

The Truong toe, dressed like a peasant in pajamas, sat on a divan; the priest, Jean-Baptiste, crouched on a mat on the floor, with his legs crossed under him and his feet clasped in his hands. Nicole knelt, poured three cups of tea, and handed them to the men. She and the Truong toe spoke to one another in Vietnamese. Christopher understood most of what they said; the Truong toe merely wanted to know if Christopher had come willingly. “He has no fear,” the priest said, “there must be a reason why.” Nicole left the room.

Christopher, leaving his tea untouched, faced the two old men. He supposed they might be sixty, but it was impossible to tell with Asians; one year they were fresh with youth, and the next their skulls came through their flesh as if their corpses were eager to escape into the grave.

“I’m glad to see you safe,” the Truong toe said. “You take chances, going about at night as you do.”

“He takes certain precautions, I’m sure,” the priest said. “Your car is quite all right?”

The priest sniffed loudly and scratched his ribs. His eyes and his voice were clear, and his tic was quiet.

“Last night you asked my cousin, here, certain questions,” the Truong toe said. “I am intrigued to know your purpose.”

“It’s simple. I hope for answers.”

“He has none. Nor do I.”

“Then there’s no purpose in my being here,” Christopher said.

“You didn’t tell me that you knew my relative Nguyen Kim.”

“It didn’t seem important.”

“After you left my house, I tried to puzzle out why you had come to tell me of the death of young Khoi. It made no sense. I concluded you wished to make yourself known to me in a way that would ensure that I’d remember you.”

“My idea seems to have succeeded,” Christopher said. He put his teacup on the table.

“You’ve certainly shown us that you are very direct. Are you working against time?”

“No.”

“Then why,” asked the priest, “do you behave like a man with an incurable disease? Really, it’s very stupid to go about talking as you do and showing yourself as you do unless you care nothing for your life.”

“I’ll be direct again,” Christopher said. “I hoped to shock you into speaking about the things I mentioned to you.”

“You’ve shocked us,” the Truong toe said. He paused, as if reluctant to say something rude. “If you are right in what you think, you must expect that we will kill you. Why, then, come here?”

“Let me ask you this: why waste a gesture, like Nicole in a Paris suit?”

“You know her.”

“You must know I’d have come in answer to a telephone call or a note.”

“And you must know that such things leave traces. An American dining at the Continental with a Vietnamese girl leaves no trace. It’s the sport of the times.”

“Were those your men who followed us across the river?” Christopher asked.

The Truong toe’s eye sockets were filled with shadow; when he turned his face toward Christopher, he showed as little expression as an animal. “Now you waste a gesture,” he said.

“Let me explain something to you,” Christopher said. “What I said to you about Diem was honest-I thought him a great man in his way and I regret his death. I would tell you who killed him, if I knew.”

The priest was scratching his skin now with great violence, as if he was glad heroin had given him this evidence that his nerves were alive. “And in exchange for this worthy intention,” he said, “all you want is for us to confess the murder of an American President and a plan to destroy the American army with heroin.”

“Briefly, yes.”

“Then you’re a fool. What do you think this is-a film? We tell you everything, you escape with the truth, the world is saved. I believe you’re insane.”

“Then you should be frightened,” Christopher said. “We’re alone in this room. You are old. Even if I have no weapon, which is illogical, I could kill you both with my hands before anyone came. You don’t seem to be afraid of that.”

The Truong toe moved his face into the light. “Nothing is gained by this,” he said. “Why exchange these threats?”

“It’s useless,” Christopher said. “I want to ask you a question. If I’m right, and your family arranged such a colossal revenge as the murder of Kennedy, what is the point of keeping it a secret?”

The priest threw his arms wide and began to speak; the tic was moving in his cheek again. He subsided when the Truong toe raised his palm. The Truong toe kept his eyes fastened on Christopher’s face.

The Truong toe said, “Go on.”

“You are the head of the family,” Christopher said. “What do you want for it?”

“That it should continue,” the Truong toe replied.

“No-that it should rule. You had power when Diem and Nhu were killed, and Can was put into prison. How long did it take you to achieve that? The whole length of the family’s life. Are you content to wait another hundred generations for another Diem?”

The Truong toe made a brusque movement of his fingers, as if to summon the words from Christopher’s mouth.

“If you kill a man for revenge, and he does not know why he died, and no one knows,” Christopher said, “then what have you accomplished? Your own emotional release-and what use is that?”

The priest began to reply, but the Truong toe silenced him with another gesture.

“Say what you mean,” the Truong toe said.

“I mean you have everything to gain and nothing important to lose by letting yourselves be identified as the assassins of Kennedy.”

The priest had begun to sweat and tremble. He reached into his pocket with a fluttering hand and produced an envelope of heroin. With his eyes fixed on Christopher, he drew the white powder into his nose. After a moment he was quiet again.

The Truong toe returned his attention to Christopher. “That’s certainly a novel idea,” he said, his dry lips opening in a faint smile.

“It’s logical,” Christopher said. “To complete the act, you must be discovered. There may be a certain elegance in killing an American President with ignominy-using a man who appears to be a lunatic so that the assassination will be regarded as a bit of random madness. But it accomplishes nothing.”

“Accomplishes nothing? The man is dead.”

“But not his policies. When Diem was killed, he and Nhu were desperate to end American influence in Vietnam. They had no chance. But you do. Let it be known that Kennedy was shot in Dallas in revenge for the death of Diem and Nhu, and there will be such revulsion in the United States against Vietnam that you won’t see an American face in your country, or an American ship in your harbors, for a generation to come.”

The Truong toe flicked open his clenched hand as if releasing a bird into flight. “You’d give this country to the Communists?”

“Why not?” Christopher said. “Diem and Nhu were prepared to do so. At least the Communists are Vietnamese. Some of them are members of your family.”

The Truong toe relaxed on his divan, steepled his fingers, tapped their ends together. The priest spoke to him in rapid Vietnamese. Christopher watched the Truong toe’s impassive features and the priest’s face, one side of it as unreadable as the Truong toe’s and the other side in spasm. “Kill him tonight, in the street, anywhere,” the priest was saying. “No, he can do no harm,” the Truong toe replied. Christopher realized the old man knew he understood Vietnamese.

“Mr. Christopher,” said the Truong toe, speaking the name for the first time, “I’m curious-how did you come to hear the name Lê Thu?”

“Nguyen Kim mentioned it. He seemed to think it would be a great joke to use it as an introduction to you.”

“And you thought it had great significance-that it symbolized this assassination you think we carried out?”

“I didn’t know,” Christopher said. “That was one of my questions.”

“You’ve translated the name, I understand. It means ‘the tears of autumn.’”

“Yes-if it’s a code name it’s poetic, but insecure.”

“And you wish to know the name of our relative in the North Vietnamese intelligence service?”

“Yes.”

“That is all you require to prove our guilt, and rid our country of the Americans, who, as you suggest, will destroy it for reasons of their own policy?”

“Yes.”

As Christopher and the Truong toe spoke to each other, they smiled-more broadly with each question and answer. After hearing Christopher’s final reply, the Truong toe laughed, a string of dry barks like the cough of a man who has swallowed smoke. His laughter was a compliment. Only a clandestine mind like Christopher’s, free from values and concerned with nothing but the results of action, could have conceived the proposal Christopher had just made. The Truong toe had the same sort of mind. He was delighted to encounter another brain so like his own.

“We’ve heard a good deal about you since yesterday, Mr. Christopher,” he said. “It all seems to be true. This really is a most clever provocation. I have no idea what purpose your masters think it will serve, but you may give them my answer. It is this: your hypothesis is absurd. How could we touch a Kennedy? They live in another dimension of power.”

“Murder requires very little power.”

“No, no, no. Mr. Christopher, Lê Thu is just a name. You will search in vain for any relative of ours who is a secret agent of Ho Chi Minh’s. We accepted the death of Ngo Dinh Diem and Ngo Dinh Nhu-we are weak, Mr. Christopher. How could we do what you think we’ve done?”

Christopher rose. “Very well,” he said. “I’ll go on with my work.”

“What bravado,” the priest said. “You want what-admiration? You’re mad-I’m more convinced of it than before.”

The Truong toe stood and took Christopher’s cold teacup from his hand and he drank from it with a smile. Christopher had not touched the tea. “You are not lacking in caution,” the Truong toe said. “I have something to give you.”

He reached into a pocket of his pajamas and brought out a gray envelope. Christopher opened the flap and looked at the photograph it contained.

It was a picture of Molly, smiling into the camera in surprise, a lock of her hair drawn tight between her thumb and forefinger. Half of Christopher’s face showed in the photograph. It was the picture Nguyen Kim had taken in Rome after they had had lunch together.

The Truong toe looked steadily into Christopher’s eyes. “You may have that print,” he said. “I believe Kim has the negative.”

Christopher felt a stab of panic. The Truong toe watched it flicker in Christopher’s face. He bowed slightly. His brown scalp showed like shined leather through his thin hair.

2

No one interfered with Christopher as he left. The Truong toe showed no surprise when Christopher opened the door into the front of the house instead of going back through the darkened warehouse.

He moved through small rooms that smelled of burnt joss and cooking. There were no windows, only a streak of lamplight sifting through a series of doors leading to the front of the house. Christopher moved quickly through the dim rooms; there was almost no furniture, nor any sign of Nicole or any other Vietnamese. In one of the rooms a withered Chinese woman sat in a large wing chair, staring at an oil lamp that burned on a low table in front of her; she paid no attention to Christopher.

He heard the noise of the street on the other side of a door, and opened it. Stepping into the crowd, he was borne along through the choked street until it opened into a larger thoroughfare. He searched the horizon for the glow of Saigon’s lights. Finding his direction, he set off for the place where he had parked the car.

The crowd, mostly Chinese, was still very think but he stood head and shoulders above it, so that he could see into its depths. One side of the street was lighted by shop fronts; the other, running along the blank backs of godowns, lay in deep shadow.

He saw the first Vietnamese with his face in the full light of an open doorway; his expression had not changed since morning. Christopher looked for the other, and when he did not see him at once, knew that he must be behind him.

He turned around and saw that the crowd had parted. The second Vietnamese stood with his feet apart, poised like a diver on the balls of his feet. He was lifting a pistol with a steady sweep of his arm, wrist locked, both eyes open, mouth relaxed. Christopher recognized the technique. He leapt sideways toward the darkened half of the street. The gunman moved his arm instead of his whole body, and lost his aim. Two soft-nosed bullets hit the wall to Christopher’s right. Two more rounds gouged shallow holes in the concrete. The gunman ducked behind the parked car, expecting return fire.

Across the street, the Vietnamese Christopher had seen first had a revolver in his hand; he was motioning people out of his way. The crowd made no special noise; people moved away from him in both directions to make room for the shooting. Christopher ran back the way he had come, past the parked car with the gunman hiding behind it. The crowd did not see him coming until he was well within it, running with his knees bent and his head bowed so that he was not much taller than the small people who surrounded him.

Christopher looked behind him. One of the Vietnamese was running after him at an easy trot, his long pistol held against his thigh, his head turning alertly from side to side. Christopher saw the other man move in the shadows by the warehouses. The two Vietnamese moved well as a team, like terriers used to hunting together. The crowd drifted toward the lighted half of the street.

Pushing bodies aside, Christopher plunged through the door of an apothecary’s shop. A young Chinese looked up in surprise, then shouted in anger as CL ristopher went through a beaded curtain at the back of the store. A family of Chinese sat around a low table, playing cards. Christopher walked over the table, scattering the cards, and into another room. A window stood open in one wall. Christopher climbed through it, scraping his back on the sash. He fell into a space between two houses. The ground was littered with broken glass, and the passage was so narrow that there was no room for his shoulders. He moved through it sideways as quickly as he could toward a strip of light at its end.

One of the men who had killed Luong stuck his head out the window, braced his pistol against the sash, and took careful aim. Christopher turned his face toward the gunman, threw his arms into the air, gave a loud wordless roar that scraped the skin in his throat, and fell to his knees. The gun wavered as a spot of bluish flame blinked at the muzzle. Christopher did not hear the round go by, and he thought it might have struck him. He felt no pain.

He staggered into a bright street and saw a canal shining at the end of it. A young Chinese grasped his arm roughly and glared suspiciously into his face. Christopher smiled at him and struck him under the chin with the heel of his open hand; the boy’s light body was lifted into the air by the blow, and he landed in the opposite gutter with his neck twisted. A knot of Chinese gathered around Christopher, shouting angrily, and followed him as he walked rapidly away.

The Citroen was parked in the shadows in the next block. Christopher headed for it, pushing the chattering Chinese roughly out of his way. There was no sign of the two gunmen. He was fifty yards from the car when two of the Chinese, young men with angry faces, realized that it belonged to Christopher. They broke out of the crowd and ran ahead. One of them opened a knife and knelt to slash the tires. The other darted around the Citroen, still screaming in a hoarse voice. He snatched at the door handle, and as the door began to swing open, Christopher remembered that he had locked it.

He fell to the ground with his arms around the two people closest to him. Afterward, he thought that he remembered the flash of the explosion lighting the flat face of the Chinese boy and the blast lifting the boy’s thick black hair so that it stood on end. The noise was a long time coming. Before he heard the explosion, like the slap of a heavy howitzer, he saw the whole body of the car swell like a balloon full of water. The glass blew out and one door cut through the crowd like a great black knife.

Concussion sent blood gushing out of his nose. He could hear nothing except a high ringing in his ears. All around him, mouths opened in noiseless screams of terror. He lay where he was with his eyes open.

In a few moments a policeman wearing a lacquered American helmet liner leaned over him and spoke. Christopher pointed to his ears and said, “I’m deaf.” He heard nothing of his own voice but felt its movement over his tongue. The policeman pulled him to his feet and led him toward the end of the street. He would have been killed by the fire truck that roared up behind them if the policeman had not pulled him out of the way.

3

“All I have to do is say the word and they’ll slap a murder charge on you,” Wolkowicz said. “Ten witnesses saw you break that Chinese kid’s neck.”

The Vietnamese police major had withdrawn when Wolkowicz arrived. Christopher’s passport and a sheaf of Polaroid photographs of the bombed Citroen were spread over the top of the policeman’s gray metal desk. Wolkowicz’s face was bleached by the strong fluorescent light in the ceiling, his beard blacker than usual against his pallor. Christopher’s hearing was returning, but his ears still rang, and Wolkowicz’s voice sounded thin.

Wolkowicz tapped on the desk with the edge of Christopher’s passport. “You’d better hear me,” he said. “These guys can take two or three years just deciding if there’s a case against you. You’ll be eating rice and spoiled fish three times a day, and having a little chat with the juge d’instruction whenever he bothers to remember you’re in jail. Believe me, it can go on for a long time.”

“What do you want?”

“The story,” Wolkowicz said. “What in hell was that all about? Your car blown up and five innocent bystanders killed, Luong dead in an alley, shots fired at you in the middle of a crowd. What do you think you’re doing, for Christ’s sake?”

Christopher looked around at the metal furniture, the chirping fluorescent lights, the air conditioner on the window-sill. “There seems to be a lot of American equipment in this room,” he said.

“We’re not going to talk here. I just want to know if you’re going to bullshit me again if I take you out of here.”

Christopher made a gesture. Wolkowicz pressed a button on the telephone. When the major returned, Wolkowicz walked with him back into the corridor. Christopher watched them through the half-open door, talking quietly and nodding.

The major came into the office. “There’s one more formality,” he said, gesturing for Christopher to follow him.

Christopher went with him down the hall and into another room. Honey, wearing her silk ao dai, sat on a scarred bench in the empty office. Her joints were locked in fright-fists clenched, neck rigid.

“Is this the American?” the major asked in Vietnamese. Honey nodded stiffly.

“Look at him,” the major said.

Honey turned her head, a quick movement like that of a child forced to look at a corpse, and nodded again.

In the corridor, the major tapped Christopher’s sleeve. “I believe you knew Vuong Van Luong,” he said. “I believe you know he’s dead.”

“Yes.”

“The girl saw you searching the body. You woke her when you came into the room-she believes you killed this Luong.”

“She’s not a very intelligent girl, major.”

“No. But she has the power of speech, Mr. Christopher. We have her statement, and we’ll keep her with us for the time being.”

“I understand,” Christopher said.

“I hope you do, Mr. Christopher. It can be very inconvenient for you if the police decide to take an interest in you. One violent death, and you can maintain that you’re a victim of circumstances. But there have been six in less than twenty-four hours. Even in Saigon, that’s too many.”

The major was carrying a dossier. He held it up so that Christopher could see his name written on its cover. “You’ve formed a great many friendships here,” he said. “Your passport will be returned to you at midnight today at the airport. You are already booked on the UTA flight to Paris. Don’t miss the plane, Mr. Christopher.”

The Continental Hotel was only a short distance from the police station in Tu Do Street. Wolkowicz sent his Marine driver to fetch Christopher’s suitcase from his room and pay the bill. They waited in the car, the windows rolled up, until the driver returned.

At Wolkowicz’s villa, Christopher threw away his bloodstained shirt and washed his face. The police doctor had painted the small cuts on his arms and chest and told him that his right eardrum had been ruptured by the explosion. He ripped the adhesive bandage from his cheek and looked at the cut on his face. His head ached. He took four of Wolkowicz’s aspirin.

The villa was icy; Wolkowicz kept the air conditioning turned up so that his snake would sleep. In the living room, Wolkowicz gave Christopher a glass of bourbon and motioned him into a chair.

“Okay,” he said. “It’s gut-spilling time.”

Christopher told him where he had been. He described the visit to Jean-Baptiste Ho’s church, and his meeting with the Truong toe. He did not tell Wolkowicz what had been said, except to describe the movement of opium into Ho’s church.

“Describe this guy who tried to shoot you,” Wolkowicz said.

“He’s been taught either by us or by someone who learned how to shoot a pistol from us,” Christopher said. “When I turned around, he was in a crouch, bringing the pistol up, wrist and elbow locked, both eyes open, not using the sights. He fired two shots at a time in the prescribed manner. He’s trained.”

“Not very well trained,” Wolkowicz said. “How many times did he miss you?”

“Four rounds that I know of, but I jumped off to the side. He didn’t expect that. He didn’t shift his feet, just swung his arm, so he lost his stance. And then, I was in a crowd and it was dark.”

Christopher described his flight through the apothecary shop. “The kid in the street must have thought I was a burglar when I came out of that crack in the wall” he said. “I hit him to make him let go of my arm.”

“I know these things mean something to you,” Wolkowicz said. “I was bullshitting you about your killing him-all he’s got is some busted teeth and maybe a slipped disc or two in his neck.”

“I know. I saw him get up.”

“And then the car blew up while you were still half a block away from it,” Wolkowicz said. “I don’t understand that.”

“They wired the door on the driver’s side. A Chinese kid ran ahead and yanked it open-he wanted to do me some damage. The priest saw me check under the hood when I was out there last night. You have to open the door to open the hood.”

“The cops think there must have been a kilo of plastique in the car. I guess you’re immortal, just like Patchen’s always said.”

“I was surprised that they were so public about it-why not wait until I was asleep in the hotel?”

“Maybe they thought you’d done enough talking. What did you say to them, anyway?”

Christopher’s hearing continued to clear; when Wolkowicz shook his glass, he heard the ice cubes rattle.

“They’re doing something with heroin,” Christopher said. “Jean-Baptiste Ho is an addict, but for some reason his church is the depot. That country is VC-controlled. They bring in the raw opium from Laos, Cambodia-wherever it’s grown. Luong told me there’s a tunnel complex under the village. They keep it there. It’s crazy, but that’s the way they’re doing it. They store it under the church.”

“Did you confirm any of this?”

“The tunnels, yes. I saw the priest’s woman disappear through the floor.”

“Opium isn’t heroin.”

“Tom Webster thinks they’re trying to buy the technology in Marseilles. Have you seen that traffic?”

“Yeah, I read the cables-two million bucks through Lebanon. But why take all the risk?”

“They figure they’re going to have a big market in-country pretty soon,” Christopher said. “The Yanks are coming.”

“That’s speculation-garbage,” Wolkowicz said.

Christopher shrugged. “Okay, Barney.”

“What’s their objective? They’ve got enough money not to have to take chances like that.”

“What chances? Jean-Baptiste is a member of the family- he’s not going to talk,” Christopher said. “If the police or the ARVN come smelling around, they’ll see them coming ten miles away. They can blow those tunnels in thirty seconds.”

“Thanks to you, they’re probably moving the stuff out right now.”

“Maybe. It doesn’t matter. They’ll do it some way-they’re not in it to make a profit,” Christopher said. “They want to send a few thousand junkies back to the States when all this is over. That’s the purpose.”

Wolkowicz tossed melting ice from his glass into his mouth and chewed it. “Why?” he asked.

“They think we killed Diem and Nhu,” Christopher said. “They think we ought to pay for that.”

Wolkowicz walked across the room and came back with a handful of ice cubes and a bottle of bourbon. He dropped ice into the glasses and filled them with whiskey. Handing Christopher one of the dark-brown drinks, Wolkowicz beckoned him to follow and walked out of the house. The garden was surfaced with gravel, so that Wolkowicz could hear footsteps approaching in the night. In the center of the garden was its only ornament, a bed of flowers surrounding an aviary. Wolkowicz paused by the cage and made kissing noises at the sleeping birds.

“You ought to come out in the daylight and have a look,” he said. “Some of these birds are really pretty-they don’t sing worth a shit, though.”

Christopher sipped bourbon; his hands were steadier than they had been in the first hour or two after the explosion.

“Now that we’re in the open air, how about coming clean?” Wolkowicz said.

“You’re the only man I know who goes outside to get away from his own bugs,” Christopher said.

“I think you told the Truong toe and the priest more than you’ve told me,” Wolkowicz said. “I thought maybe you’d feel easier in your mind if we could talk in the open.”

“I don’t care where we talk. Even next to the birdcage. I’ve told you everything I can.”

“Okay, it’s your ass. But I know you’re on to something besides a heroin racket-just remember that. I know. I’m going to be on you like a sheet of flypaper, Christopher.”

“I’ll be glad of your company, after tonight.”

Wolkowicz took Christopher’s arm and walked him over the crunching gravel to the back of the garden. “I’m going to tell you something I’m sure you know, Christopher,” he said. “I don’t like you and I never liked your operations. That’s basic.

However, you’ve been around for a long time and I feel I’ve got an obligation to you-do you understand?”

“Perfectly, Barney. Spit it out.”

“I’ve heard some things about you behind Mother’s back. There’s a certain guy in the White House you had some problems with-you follow me?”

Christopher nodded in the dark. Wolkowicz rattled the ice cubes in his glass after each sentence.

“Well, this guy sent me a letter. A Green Beret captain carried it out to me from Washington. In the letter he says you’re around the bend with a crazy idea about something that could have dangerous consequences to national security. What he was asking was this: if you showed up out here, would I get in your way.”

“And have you been getting in my way, Barney?”

“No. Who the fuck is he to tell me what to do in a letter delivered outside channels? However, remember the Green Beret.”

“What about him?”

“Well, they’re gung-ho sons of bitches. And they’re amateurs. They’re setting up all kinds of networks around here. You said the guy who shot at you looked like he’d had training. What kind of a handgun did he use-did you notice?”

Christopher thought for a moment. “It was a.22 automatic with a long barrel and a silencer-a Colt Woodsman or maybe the Hi-Standard that looks almost the same. The rounds didn’t ricochet, they gouged big hunks out of the concrete like heavier ammunition when they hit, so I could have been wrong.”

“Mercury in the bullets,” Wolkowicz said. “Didn’t you think it was funny the Truong toe would try to shoot you and blow you up, all on the same night?”

“I thought it was thorough of him.”

Wolkowicz rattled his ice. “It’s not a pretty thought,” he said. “But I think you ought to consider the possibility that you’ve got people coming at you from two directions.”

“You’re telling me that Americans are trying to do me in?”

“If they are, maybe it’s a case of too much zeal. Soldiers have a way of giving a hundred and ten percent-look at Diem and Nhu. The lieutenant who shot them thought he was a hero. Nothing was supposed to happen to them, the way I understood it.”

“The way you understood it, Barney?”

“That’s what the traffic said-stand back and watch. We had a guy carrying messages between the ambassador and one of the generals in the plot, but that was all. There was no mention of bloodshed. I guess they couldn’t face it in Washington. I could have told the dumb bastards what would happen.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“You know why. I wasn’t allowed to do anything, why should I say anything? The amateurs were running the show.”

“I see,” Christopher said.

“What happened to you tonight was more amateur stuff- shooting in a crowded street, chasing you through houses full of witnesses. I’ll do what I can to shut these guys off-not that I think they’re going to admit anything. That captain is just a kid. Whosis in Washington probably told him just what he told me -get in Christopher’s way. The kid misunderstood-but that’s not going to be much help to you if you end up like Luong, with pudding for brains.”

“That was no amateur bomb.”

“No,” Wolkowicz said. “I’d say that part of it was real life.”

Christopher put his hand in his pocket and touched the sharp edge of the photograph the Truong toe had given him. Molly’s face, as perfect as Cathy’s had once been, moved over the screen of his memory. He knew they would kill her if they thought he needed the lesson.

“What are you going to do?” Wolkowicz said. “The cops want you out of the country in twenty-four hours.”

Christopher looked at the green dial of his watch. “It’s two in the morning now,” he said. “I’ll make the deadline.”

In the darkness, Wolkowicz was chewing ice. “We’ll miss you, baby,” he said,

4

Luong lay in his coffin with a bunch of bananas on his chest to confuse the appetite of the Celestial Dog, devourer of the entrails of the dead. A ring of candles burned around the edge of the coffin, and an oil lamp smoked beneath it. A child of ten, Luong’s eldest son, stood at his father’s feet, welcoming mourners. He wore a straw headpiece and a robe of white gauze, covered with patches to show his wretchedness. Christopher bowed to the corpse and gave the child an envelope filled with piasters, two bottles of Veuve Cliquot, and a satin banderole on which was written a compliment to the dead man.

“I was your father’s friend,” Christopher said.

“Tho spoke about you,” the boy said. “I remember your visit.”

In death, Luong had been given another name, Tho, and no member of his family would call him by his own name again. Probably they had never done so when he was alive. A Vietnamese’s name is used only by officials and foreigners; those who know him call him by nicknames or a number that fixes his position in the family, so as not to provoke evil spirits.

Luong’s son placed Christopher’s gifts with the others on a low table beside the altar at the end of the coffin. No attempt had been made to conceal the bullet wound in Luong’s forehead; his relatives had put rice in his mouth, and a white grain of it was visible between his lips. In his best clothes, Luong looked not much older than his son. Luong had been dead for a full day, and the weeping had ceased; his wife, wearing patched gauze like her children, sat in a group of women with a white veil covering her face.

Musicians played at the end of the room, and male relatives with white mourning bands tied around their foreheads were drinking and laughing at jokes. They stared at Christopher, who stood alone by Luong’s coffin, and went on with their loud conversation. Luong’s widow made no sign that she saw him. When he turned away from the corpse, an old woman approached and gave him a bowl of food. He thanked her in Vietnamese and she bowed.

Christopher ate the food. Guests continued to arrive, crowding into the small house and filling it with a babble of voices and laughter. Luong’s picture of Christ with a burning heart had been brought out of the bedroom and hung beside a portrait of Buddha on the wall nearest the coffin.

A man detached himself from the group of male relatives and came toward Christopher with a cup of rice wine in either hand; he gave one of the cups to Christopher.

“You are my brother’s friend Crawford,” he said.

“Yes, I’m sorry for your family’s sadness,” Christopher replied.

“You speak Vietnamese.”

“Very badly,” Christopher said in French. “You are Tho’s brother? You look a great deal alike.”

“Yes, I am older by five years. My name is Phuoc.”

“I don’t want to intrude here. I only wished to pay my respects. I knew your brother well.”

“We thank you for the gifts you brought,” Phuoc said. “You knew he liked that sort of champagne. I told him often it would be his downfall.” Phuoc looked into Christopher’s face and gave an explosive high-pitched laugh. “The burial is tomorrow-will you come?”

“Alas, I’ll be gone tomorrow. But my thoughts will be here.”

Christopher finished his rice wine. Phuoc handed him his own cup. “Drink it,” he said. “I have no use for it. Perhaps Tho told you I am a cu si-not quite a monk and, my brother always said, not quite a man. I observe the five interdictions of Buddha: no sex, no alcohol, no tobacco, no theft, no killing.”

“Yes, he spoke about you. I believe he admired you very much.”

“Did he? Tho lived without interdictions of any kind, except that he never betrayed a friend.”

“That I have known for a long time,” Christopher said.

“How much money did you bring?” Phuoc asked. It was a polite question among Vietnamese, who were always asking each other the details of their salaries and bank accounts.

“There are 175,000 piasters in the envelope.”

“Very generous. In dollars or piasters?”

“In piasters-it’s an odd sum, but it equals five thousand dollars.”

“Piasters will be less embarrassing,” Phuoc said. “It will be a great help to his widow. She must stay indoors for two years, as you know. She worries about the children-Tho insisted on expensive schools.”

“He was right in that, of course.”

“He was right in most things. He put money away, I believe more than a million piasters. My brother expected to die young, he often told me so. His was not the sort of life that lasts very long in a country as troubled as ours.”

“He lived his life with courage, at any rate.”

Phuoc laughed again, opening his eyes and his mouth wide and letting shrill notes escape from his throat; it was a mannerism of grief.

“For your friendship and your money, you should have something in return,” Phuoc said. “Come with me for a moment.”

He led Christopher down the hall and into his dead brother’s bedroom. Closing the door behind them, he went to the window and looked out, then leaned his back against the wall. Incense burned on the dresser in front of a photograph of Luong.

“My brother was going to meet you when he died,” Phuoc said. “Did you know that?”

“Yes. I found his body.”

“Did he speak to you?”

“That doesn’t happen,” Christopher said. “He died instantaneously-you saw his wound.”

“Can you tell me anything more about his death?”

“I saw the men who killed him. They walked past me as I entered the street where he lay. I did not, of course, know then what had happened.”

“Would you know them again?”

“I saw them again. They shot at me.” Christopher gave Luong’s brother a description of the two men. “Both times they were in Cholon. I’d look for them, if I were looking, around

Dong Khanh Boulevard. They’ll have money to spend, and that’s where they’d go to spend it.”

Phuoc absorbed the information. “Have you any idea what my brother wished to tell you?”

“No. I asked him to find a person named Lê Thu. Before he went out for the last time, he told me he had one more source to question-nothing more than that.”

“Then he went to his death for you?”

“Yes,” Christopher said.

Phuoc did not laugh again. “My brother always did as he wanted to do. It wasn’t your fault. He thought highly of you. As it happens, I know where he went.”

Christopher waited. When Phuoc did not speak again, he said, “Would your brother have wished you to tell me?”

“Oh, I think so,” Phuoc said. “You paid, after all. He went to see a Chinese named Yu Lung. You know the name? Yu Lung is a respected astrologer and geomancer. He knows the stars and all the rest very well-it’s a gift as well as a science. Very expensive. Yu Lung serves the famous in secret, he won’t deal with ordinary men.”

“Thank you. Where is Yu Lung’s house?”

“In Cholon, near the Tat Canal, by the racetrack. Ask anyone. Yu’s house is poor outside, rich inside-he’s a Chinese.”

Christopher rose, hesitated, held out his hand. Phuoc gripped it tightly and, holding it for a long moment, threw back his head and laughed again. “Luong-Tho should have asked Yu Lung about his own future, eh? Instead of asking questions for you, Craww-ford. Do you know what the Vietnamese name Tho means?”

“Longevity.”

“Yes, my brother will be dead for a long time,” Phuoc said. “Tho is also the word for a coffin that’s purchased well in advance of death. We thank you again for the money.”

5

Wolkowicz had given Christopher a car and a driver. “It’ll save us both trouble,” Wolkowicz said. “You don’t seem to care who knows where you go, and I can’t spare three men to sur-veille you until you get on the plane tonight.”

“Who’s the driver?”

“Pong’s his name. He’s a Thai, so he’s disinterested. He’ll take you where you want to go and wait outside-but don’t go off and leave him. I’m responsible to the cops until you get out of the country.”

The car was an air-conditioned Chevrolet with a two-way radio and local license tags. Pong was flicking dust from the waxed hood with a feather duster when Christopher emerged from Luong’s house. Under the tail of his long silk shirt, Pong wore a heavy revolver. One of Wolkowicz’s Swedish submachine guns was clipped under the dashboard, with three extra magazines stowed in polyethylene pouches tacked to the door. “Pong’s got a reputation around town,” Wolkowicz had said. “These people fear the Thais, and they couldn’t be more careful of old Pong if we painted shark’s teeth and a crazy eyeball on him, like a surplus B-26.”

Pong put his feather whisk in the trunk of the car and sat quietly with his hands on the steering wheel until Christopher told him where to go. Then he moved off, turning the car into traffic as a good dancer would swing a woman onto a ballroom floor. He was a competent man.

All during the morning, while he was looking at Luong in his coffin and talking to Phuoc, Christopher had controlled the impulse to touch the photograph the Truong toe had given him. Now he reached into the breast pocket of his coat and brought out the picture of Molly. He looked at his watch; he could not be in Rome in less than thirty-six hours. It was useless to send a telegram. Molly wasn’t trained, she wouldn’t know how to hide, she would think the cable was a joke. Christopher was not used to feeling emotion; he was as surprised by his fear for Molly as he had been by his love for her.

Pong maneuvered the clumsy car through traffic on the quais along the Ben Nghe Canal. Sampans lay in the foul water, their decks swarming with boatmen whose joints bulged on their thin bodies like knurs on diseased trees.

“Driving this car is like being in America,” Pong said, “so cool and quiet-I don’t like to get out.”

Christopher pressed the electric window control. The stench and noise of the canal and the heat of noon thrust through the open window like a beggar’s hand. Pong made a disgusted sound in his throat and stared at Christopher in the rear-view mirror. He turned north, toward the center of Cholon.

Yu Lung’s house was not far from the place where Christopher’s Citroen had exploded. The wreck had been hauled away, but broken glass still glittered on the pavement and the flames had left a long smudge across the face of a building. A soup vendor stood with his car where the Citroen had been, tapping on a block of wood with two sticks to attract customers.

They drove through the neighborhood twice before they found the house. Once, emerging from a sea of tin-roofed hovels, they found themselves across the city boundary, trapped on a narrow road through fields of paddy. Pong stepped on the accelerator and, reaching through the steering wheel, worked the action of the submachine gun to put a round in the chamber. He found a place to turn around by a group of huts; Pong pulled the wheel all the way over and skidded the tires in an arc through the dust. Christopher watched a young boy, astride a buffalo in a water hole, disappear in the cloud of dirt thrown upward by the wheels of the Chevrolet, and then come out the other side, not having moved while the slow wind moved the dust over him and the buffalo.

“Stop in the shade,” Christopher said, when they had passed Yu Lung’s house for the second time. He wrote six dates, each followed by a time of day, on a page of his notebook. Then he tore five hundred-dollar bills in half, put five halves in an envelope with the notebook page, and placed the other torn halves in his wallet.

“Pong, walk back so they don’t see the car,” he said, “and give this to whoever answers the door. Make an appointment for me to see Yu Lung after dark tonight-but not after nine o’clock. Tell him I want horoscopes for the men born under the first four dates and times-he’ll have to transpose the dates to the lunar calendar. I want to trace the connection between the birth dates and the last two dates, which are days and times when certain events took place. Have you got all that?”

Pong scowled and repeated Christopher’s instructions. “Who do I tell him is coming?” he asked. “He may not want to see an American.”

“Tell him I’m a friend of Lê Thu,” Christopher said. Pong tapped the submachine gun to call Christopher’s attention to it and stepped into the street. Pong rocked from side to side as he walked, as if the taut muscles of his squat body were disputing the signals from his brain.

When he came back, he nodded at Christopher. “Yu Lung will have the stuff for you at eight o’clock,” he said.

“Let’s have some lunch, then,” Christopher said.

“Barney told me not to leave the car.”

“Have you anything with you?”

“Sandwiches,” Pong said, holding up a packet. “I made them at Barney’s while you were telephoning the young lady.”

“You’re a good operator, Pong. Did you report that to Wolkowicz?”

“Yes, on the radio while I waited for you at the dead man’s house. That’s when he told me not to leave the car.”

6

Nicole was waiting at the table on the roof of the Majestic, a Coca-Cola before her and the city spread out beyond her soft profile. She wore a different French frock; her hair was bound with a broad white ribbon that passed over the top of her head. Christopher sat down with his back to the view, so that he could watch the door and the room.

“I’m a little surprised you came,” he said.

“You came last night when I invited you.”

“Yes. I hope you have a quieter journey home than I had.”

“You seem well. There’s a cut on your cheek.”

Christopher spoke to the waiter, who poured cassis in the bottom of a glass and filled it with white wine.

“You shouldn’t drink wine at midday in this climate,” Nicole said. “It’s very bad for the liver.” Her eyes looked beyond him as she watched ships move in the river.

“Well,” Christopher said, “have you any compliments or messages for me from the Truong toe?”

Nicole smiled, a sudden sly glint of teeth and eyes. “He doesn’t confide-I listen at doors. I listened last night, in Cho-lon. You took their breath away, you know.”

“Did I? Then they have very good self-control.”

“They don’t know how to deal with you. At first they thought you were insane.”

“And now?”

Nicole traced a pattern on the tablecloth with her fingernail, then looked up quickly into Christopher’s eyes. “They think you’re in a terrific hurry. That upsets them more than what you say you know, or suspect. They think you want to lay this theory out before the world as truth. They know you’re a journalist.”

“I’ve never concealed it.”

“They know what else you are. You conceal that.”

“Then I’m concealing it still. I’m only a journalist, Nicole. There’s no one behind what I’m doing.”

Nicole shuddered with impatience. “You suppose they don’t know where you slept last night, or whose car you have today? Come, Paul-really.”

“My embassy thought, for some reason, that I needed protection. I was glad to have it.”

Nicole looked at him again and laughed shrilly, almost in the tones of Phuoc’s laughter. The waiter brought them fish, poured more wine, and went away. Nicole ate deftly, saying nothing until she had cleared her plate. Her eyes moved busily over the landscape behind Christopher’s shoulder; the sun filtering through the green awning changed the hue of her skin as she turned into the light or away from it.

“What you were saying to my uncles last night-were you serious?” she asked.

“About revealing what they had done? Absolutely.”

“If they have done such a thing-let us have that plainly understood.”

“All right. It isn’t proved that they did.”

“You think the proof would have the effect you described? Would the Americans leave?”

“Yes.”

“It’s logical,” Nicole said. “The Americans would do what you say in the open, before the world. But what would they do secretly?”

Christopher shrugged. “I don’t know. Not much. After all, it was a fair enough exchange.”

Nicole drew in her breath. “You are cold-blooded. Would you speak in this way to an American?”

“I’ve done so. They don’t like it any more than you do, Nicole.”

Nicole touched the back of his hand with her fingertips. “Leave Vietnam,” she said. “You don’t understand us.”

“Don’t I? Tell me about yourself, Nicole. Where were you born? What were your schools? What is your future?”

She drew back her hand. “All that means nothing.” She touched her temples. “You believe one lives in this part of the body, but I live in my three souls and my nine spirits, and there are a thousand vital points in my body. Each one of which touches a time or a date or a number in the lunar calendar, which you cannot even understand. I never speak my own name, nor does anyone who loves me. You haven’t time, if you lived here for another fifty years, to begin to understand.”

Christopher put a forefinger on her brow; she made no movement to avoid it. “If your brain stops,” he said, “then all this wonderful system of mysteries stops, too, doesn’t it?”

“In this body, yes. There are other forms, other forces that go on.”

“You seem determined to convince me that Vietnamese culture is a secret code.”

“And you seem determined not to believe me.”

Christopher called for the bill. While he counted out the money, Nicole sat watching him, her upper lip caught between her thumb and forefinger. Christopher remembered how he had closed Luong’s dead mouth, and again saw the grain of rice between his lips, magic against the Celestial Dog. It took him a moment to realize that Nicole’s long fingernail was pressing into the back of his hand. When he looked up, she removed it, leaving a white half-moon on his sunburnt skin.

In Vietnamese she said, “My name is Dao. I was born in Hanoi. I am twenty-three. All that is worth loving will die around me before I have a child.”

Christopher, giving no sign that he understood her language, folded his napkin into a neat triangle. “We seem to be back where we began,” he said. “I thought we might to beyond gibberish today.”

“You really don’t believe in the importance of anything I’ve told you, do you?”

“Oh, yes, I believe in its importance, and you’ve taught me quite a lot,” Christopher said. “But if there is one certain thing about codes, it’s this-they can be broken. Tell the Truong toe I thank him again for the photograph he gave me last night. Tell him, too, that I have some pictures of my own.”

“I don’t understand that message.”

“The Truong toe will understand. Like me-and like Diem and Nhu-he believes in consequences.”