Tree of Smoke

“Perhaps you don’t want to.”

During supper, when his lousy Vietnamese kept the talk to a minimum, Skip observed his environment anew—wondering what the visitor must see—fine old mahogany and rattan furniture, an imposing front door where normally in this region the home’s entire face would stand open to the air, protected at night by iron gatework; and plastered walls decorated with paintings on lacquered wood, brushstroke pastorals: studious, silent scenes with sawtoothed coconut palms in a world without a soul to be torn. Mrs. Diu served a beef-and-noodle soup, greens, steamed rice. This morning she’d placed small yet striking arrangements of blooms around the house. Skip realized she did it daily. He’d hardly noticed. She and Mr. Tho lived just upstream from the villa in a hooch surrounded by palm and frangipani trees with white blossoms… At one point the double covered his mouth with a hand and yawned.

“Are you sleepy?”

“Not yet. Where will I sleep?” “I have a room ready upstairs.” “Anywhere.” “It’s not elegant.” Trung then either asked for a pistol or declared he possessed one. “Excuse me?” He said it again, in French: “Do you have a pistol for me?” “No. Nothing like that.” The request called him back to the situation. He’d ceased thinking of

this man as anyone in particular. A guest, someone deserving of hospital

ity, nothing more. “For protection only.” “You won’t need protection. You’re safe here.” “All right. I believe you.” For dessert Mrs. Diu served a delicate egg custard. Trung and Skip

got out the dictionaries. “Sorry about my Vietnamese. I’ve studied, but I can hardly make out a word you say.”

“People tell me I picked up an accent from the North. But I didn’t pick up much else there. In the North we southerners stuck together. We have a style down here. It’s very different from up there.”

Skip said, “That’s true in our country too.” “What are the southerners like in your country?” “They’re known to be very gracious and slow of speech. Among their

families and friends they’re very open with their affection. Whereas in the North we’re thought to be more restrained, more cautious, we give less of ourselves. That’s how we’re known. But there are exceptions. A person’s birthplace can’t tell you everything. And you know, we had a civil war too. The North against the South.”

“Yes, we know your history. We study your history, your novels, your

poems.” “It’s true?” “Of course. Even before your military came to Vietnam, America was

important in the world. The world’s major capitalist nation. I like Edgar Allan Poe very much.”

Next they talked of the mistake of the war, without mentioning whose mistake it was. “In Vietnam,” Trung said, “we have the Confucian mode for times of stability—for wisdom, social conduct, and so on. We have the Buddhist mode for times of tragedy and war—for acceptance of the facts, and for keeping the mind single.”

“I can’t expect to see the end. I want to go to the United States.”

“We understand that. And it can be arranged.” He pictured this man standing on a corner in San Francisco, waiting for a sign that said WALK. Some of Skip’s childhood schoolmates had come from immigrant parents, Scandinavian, most of them. He’d visited their stuffy homes, felt his lungs clutched by alien odors, looked at unimaginable bric-a-brac and cloudy photographs of military men with feathers jutting up behind the brimless caps of their uniforms, and heard the parents fumble the grammar and drop small words, thick-spoken and sincere, everything about them an affront to their sons, who endured the fathers in silence and rushed past their mothers’ offerings: “Yes, Ma—okay, Ma—I gotta go, Ma.” Naturally at his age Skip had overlooked these grown-ups, heroes of dogged risk, ocean-crossers, exiles. With their little questions they touched the walls of their children. On the other side, this child for whose sake they’d wagered their lives rolled his sleeves up tightly above his biceps, plastered back his hair with Wildroot Cream-Oil, lied about girls, performed surgery on firecrackers, golf balls, dead cats, propelled loogies of snot at lampposts, laughed like an American, cursed without an accent. But his best friend in the seventh grade, the Lithuanian Ricky Sash—probably from Szasz, come to think of it—said “please” and “thank you” as much as “fuck you,” and tied his shoes with a big double knot. Nothing else gave him away. Asians wouldn’t have it so easy. “Certainly,” Skip said, “we’ve wondered about your motives.”

“Do you want a practical reason?” “Can you give me one?” “No.” “You understand: for us, it’s an important question.” “You need something simple. You need to hear me say I stole some

Communist Party funds or I’m in love with a forbidden woman and we must escape.”

“Something like that.”

“It’s nothing like that.”

“Can you tell me?” “With every gesture I make in betraying my comrades and my cause,

I feel pain in my soul, but it’s the pain of life returning.” The poignant shreds of a torn heart, or high-minded sewage? “Trung, you say you want the U.S. But you say you’ll go north.” “First the North. Then the USA. I know a way north.” “The colonel mentioned you worked with primitives.” “Some boys from Ba Den. It’s true. There was a program to enlist the

tribes, or at least indoctrinate them. I don’t know what happened to the

program. There’s so much wasted effort. And pointless death.” “The colonel is interested in such people.” “It’s true, he wants me to accompany a group to the North again.” “Why would you go back north?” “The question is why didn’t I get out a dozen years ago, when I went

to the North and hated it there? In 1954 some people stayed in the South because they knew the party expected nothing in two years, no election, no reunification. The rest of us weren’t so smart. We boarded the ships for the North with our eyes put out by hope, and saw nothing. They took us north to make us forget our homes, our families, our true land. But I only remembered more clearly. I remembered the red earth of Ben Tre, not the yellow earth of the North. I remembered the warm southern days, not the chilly northern nights. I remembered the happiness of my village and not the rivalry and thieving of the kolkhoz. The life of the family, the life of the village, that’s the communal life —not the kolkhoz. You can’t throw people together and forbid them to leave and tell them they’re a commune united by doctrine. I thought Marx would give us back our families and villages. That’s because I only thought of the end Marx talked about: I don’t know the English or the French, but he says that at the end of the future the state is like a vine that will die and fall off. That’s what I expected. Do you know Marx? Do you know the phrase?”

“I know the English.” Together they paged through the dictionaries and Sands devised an equivalent for the expression “the withering away of the state.”

“Yes. The withering away of the state. And when it withers away, it leaves my family and my village. That’s what I saw at the end of the future: the French are gone, the Americans are gone, the Communists are gone, my village returns, my family returns. But they lied.”

“When did you realize they lied?”

“Soon after I came to the North. But it didn’t matter to me then that they lied. The Americans were here. First we must deal with the Americans, then we can deal with the truth. I was wrong. The truth is highest. The truth first. Always the truth. Everything else comes after the truth.”

“I agree. But what truth are you talking about?”

“The Buddha describes four truths: Dukkha, Samudaya, Nirodha, Magga. Life is suffering. Suffering comes from grasping. Grasping can be relinquished. The Eightfold Path leads to this relinquishment.”

“You believe it?”

“Not all of it. I can only tell you my experience. I know from experience that life is suffering, and that suffering comes from clinging to things that won’t stay.”

“Well, those are facts. What we in America would call ‘the facts of life.’ “

“Then what is the truth for you in America?”

“Something beyond the facts. I suppose we’d call the Word of God the truth.” “And what is the word from God to America?” “Let me think.” He laid his hand again on the French-English vol

ume. But he was tired now. Ten minutes’ conversation had dragged them through a hundred dictionary entries and taken nearly two hours. He knew only the Word as imparted by Beatrice Sands, his Lutheran mother: This life, she’d wanted to tell him at moments that transported her, moments that embarrassed him because he viewed her as a woman unworthy of them, a woman trapped by clotheslines in a yard of tall grass by the railroad tracks, this life is but the childhood of our immortality. Mother, now you know if it’s true. And I pray to God you weren’t wrong. And as for America—inalienable rights, government by consent, parchments, mountains, elections, cemeteries, parades … “Well, all of it can be debated,” he said in English. “In any language it can all be argued about. But the facts you name can’t be argued with. But there’s something beyond that.” He tried French: “There is a truth, but it can’t be told. It’s here.”

“Yes, there’s nothing else. This place, this moment now.”

“And now I’m very tired, Mr. Than.”

“I am too, Mr. Skip. Have we done enough today?”

“We’ve done enough.”

He put Trung upstairs, across the small hallway from his own quarters, in the room full of the colonel’s files, among which he hoped the double slept soundly. Skip slept, but not soundly. He woke in the dark and looked at the iridescent dials of his watch: a quarter after two. He’d dreamed of his mother Beatrice. The details evaporated as he tried to remember them, and only his grief stayed, and a certain excitement. He’d been everything to her. That could stop now. No longer a widow’s only child—once on the long train ride to Boston he’d looked out the car as it moved slowly through downtown scenes—Chicago? Buffalo?—to see two boys on the street outside a small grocery, eight-or nine-year-olds, ragged, sooty, smoking cigarettes, and had assumed they must be orphans. Hereafter, that’s who he was.

Then remorse crushed him physically, the blood pounded in his head, he struggled for breath—he hadn’t called, hadn’t written, left her to ride to her death on a gurney all alone in helplessly polite apologetic midwestern confusion and fear. He flung the netting aside, put his feet on the floor, straightened his shoulders, raised his face, and drew air in short gasps. Maybe a drink.

Trung turned in upstairs in the big house in a storeroom filled with boxes, on a bed made of boards stretched between two footlockers and covered with a Japanese straw tatami. The CIA’s representative had given him a butane lamp, and he had a socialist-realism novel in Vietnamese which he didn’t care to finish and a copy of Les Misérables in French. He’d read it so many times it no longer interested him. He lay in the dark feeling the house around him and wondering if he’d ever slept in a dwelling this large, outside of the New Star Temple of his boyhood.

He heard the hallway’s other door open. With the soft tread of bare feet Mr. Skip passed the storeroom and took the stairs down to the rest of the house.

What now? Grief, sleeplessness, Trung believed. Noises from the kitchen—It’s best to leave him alone. His mother is gone.

Mother, I grieve for you still.

He lay in the dark ten minutes and then got up and followed. Downstairs he found the American in shorts and T-shirt, sitting beside a hissing butane lantern in the study with a book, and a glass with ice in it beside the lantern. “Did you get some sleep?”

“Not yet.” “I’m having some Irish whiskey. Can I get you some?” “All right. I’ll try it.” Mr. Skip started to rise, and then said, “We have glasses in the

kitchen,” and settled back in his chair.

When Trung had found a glass and returned, the American was paging through one of his phrase books. He reached to the floor beside his chair and raised his bottle of liquor. Trung held out the glass and he poured a little into it.

“Do I drink it fast or slow?” “How do you drink rice brandy?” “A little slowly,” Trung said, and sipped. Musky and medicinal. “It’s

quite good.” “Please. Sit.” Trung took the chair at the desk, sitting sideways. Mr. Skip said, “I’ve been looking for your name.” He closed his

phrase book. ” ‘Than’ means the color of the sky, and there’s a flower that color

also, with the same name.” “I don’t know it. You mean the blue of the sky?” “Blue, like the sky.” “And ‘Trung’ means ‘loyalty,’ doesn’t it?” “Loyalty to the country. It’s humorous today that I have this name.” The study was lined with shelves, the shelves full of books. Tight net

ting covered the two windows, also the eaves in the main room and the ironwork on either side of the wooden door to the outside. Nevertheless small bugs attacked the butane lamp and died.

“You have a lot of books.” “They don’t belong to me.” “Who lives here?” “Just me and a ghost.” “Whose ghost?” “The previous owner. The man who built the house.” “I see. I thought perhaps you meant me.”

Mr. Skip emptied his glass and poured a little more whiskey over

what was left of his ice. He didn’t speak. “Perhaps I’m intruding.” “No. I appreciate the company.” The American finished his drink. “I thought you’d be Judas,” he said,

“but you’re more like the Christ.” “I hope that’s good.” “It is what it is. Do you want some more?” “I’ll finish mine slowly.” The American said in English, “You’ve gone there. You’re there,

aren’t you? What is it like to carry two souls in one body? It’s the truth, isn’t it. It’s who we really are. The rest of us are just half of what we should be. You’re there, you’re there, but you killed something to get there. You killed—what.” Trung couldn’t follow.

And the resignation to the truth, the final resignation, the despair that breaks into liberation, where was the word for that in all these books?

In silence the American poured another for himself and drank it slowly. Trung stayed, though it was clear the American didn’t want conversation.

Next morning his friend Hao came again. The woman served breakfast, and he and Skip and Hao sat down to eat, but Trung sensed some trouble.

Mr. Skip asked them about their days at the New Star Temple. They told him about the times they’d stolen brandy during the Tet celebrations, told of laughter and singing; all three conducting themselves like students in a foreign-language exercise called “Breakfast with an American.”

“Trung, the library’s all yours today. I have to go to Saigon on an er

rand. I’ll be back around noon tomorrow.” “I’ll stay by myself?” “If you don’t mind.” Trung walked them to the black car. He detained Hao a minute.

“What is it about?” “Only a quick meeting.” “Tell me.” “I can’t. I don’t know.” “Nothing serious?”

“I don’t think so.”

The American had heard them. Standing on the other side of the car, he spoke across the hot metal roof. “A friend has invited me to lunch. A colleague. I think I’d better see what he wants.”

“Perhaps there’s a safer place for me until you come back.”

“No, no, no. Nobody knows you’re here.”

“But they know that you are here.”

“That’s not a problem,” the American said. Trung disbelieved him.

Dietrich Fest of Department Five of West Germany’s Bundesnachrichtendienst boarded a night flight at the National Airport near Washington, DC, and for eighteen hours had nothing to do but read and nap and nothing to think about other than his father’s medical crises. Seven, eight months since the old man had seen the outside of a hospital. Gallbladder; liver; heart; a series of small strokes; hemorrhaging in the bowels with massive blood loss and transfusions; a feeding tube in his stomach; latest of all pneumonia. The old man refused to die. But he would. Perhaps already. Perhaps earlier while I dozed with a sagging head. Perhaps now while I look at a stupid mystery book. “Claude,” the old man had called him when he’d visited in October—wires and tubes exiting from him everywhere, blue eyes shining into space. “Look, it’s Claude,” he’d told the urine-smelling, otherwise empty room, and Fest had said, “No, it’s Dirk,” and his father’s eyes had closed.

At 3:00 p.m. local time Fest landed in Hong Kong. He gave his cabbie inaccurate instructions and was forced, some blocks short of his hotel, to get out of the taxi and continue on foot. Even this tiny vehicle was too large for these tiny streets. With his one bag Fest climbed a steep stairstepped alley jammed with doorless shops selling nothing but junk.

On a larger thoroughfare he hailed a pedicab and rode behind a stringy old man wearing a kind of diaper who pedaled him swiftly to his hotel, which was right there, looming three blocks straight ahead, as the old man might easily have told him. Two minutes after climbing aboard the strange conveyance, Fest had arrived. A printed notice posted just behind the bicycle’s handlebars listed the official rates, and for a journey of this small distance Fest owed four or five Hong Kong dollars; but the old man smacked fist on fist and shouted, “Tunty dollah! Tunty dollah!” Fest didn’t begrudge him. At his age, the old man deserved whatever he could get for such labor. But Fest believed in fair dealing in business. He refused. In seconds he was hemmed in by pedicabs and besieged by diapered drivers of all sizes, babbling, frothing. He thought he saw a knife. An angry bellboy came out and drove them all off with magical outward-chopping gestures of his hand. The old man remained. He’d rather die. Fest turned over the twenty dollars. He went upstairs and slept through the afternoon, woke at 2:00 a.m., and read a short novel—Georges Simenon, in English. He called the hotel’s operator and asked about overseas calls to Berlin, but his mother’s number was somewhere in his bag, and he let it go. He’d called her frequently of late, almost daily in recent weeks, while she dealt with his father’s failing health.

At eight he showered, dressed, and went downstairs to the lobby to meet his contact. They drank coffee, sitting across from one another in large uncomfortable mahogany chairs. The contact was an American, youthful, impressed with his assignment, a little pious about his role. At first he told Fest only where he was going. Of course he knew where he was going, he had the ticket in his pocket.

“Do you have the ID materials for me?”

The young man lurched downward to rummage in his leather briefcase, clasping it between his shoes. “We have two versions for you.” He handed over a manila envelope. “While on assignment you use the one with the predated entry visa. Destroy it before you leave. For your exit use the one with the postdated visa.”

“How long is determined for this assignment?”

“You mean according to the visas? The postdated one says you entered on—what does it say? February eleventh, I think. So you’ll have to stay in-country till then, at least. But the visa’s good for six months.”

He didn’t like the sound of six months. But the purpose of a visa postdated by two weeks was to say he’d entered after the period of the assignment. He took it, therefore, that they’d planned for no more than two weeks’ duration.

Fest laid the envelope across his lap, pinched together the clasps, opened the flap, and raised its open end to peek within. Two German passports—he took one out and read the bearer’s name—Claude Gunter Reinhardt.

“Interesting. My son is named Claude.” After the old man. And my dead heroic brother.

“Whatever’s on top of the stack.”

“Of course. A coincidence.”

The face was his own. He’d always looked somewhat like a spoiled boy, but the beard covered the softness and made him look, he believed, a little like Sigmund Freud or Ernest Hemingway. In clothing, perhaps, he appeared portly, but he felt solid. Even in the States they’d kept him taking courses, including physically challenging operational training. But he was thirty-six and two months. This couldn’t go on. In fact he’d thought it was over with the American posting.

“You enter on your own passport. Whatever you’re traveling with now.”

“Of course.”

As the man paid for their rolls and coffee and rose to go, he assumed an insufferable casualness and mentioned, as if in afterthought, the pass-signs and the time and place arranged for Fest’s briefing in Saigon.

Fest distrusted Hong Kong’s drivers now. He skipped lunch and left for the airport two hours early and arrived without trouble and sat watching his fellow passengers assemble for their journey home, cheery affluent Asians returning from holidays in Hong Kong or Bangkok or Manila with pastel shopping bags, smiles, even laughter. He didn’t know what he’d expected—the beleaguered members of a ravaged populace, hunched shoulders, tight faces—he hadn’t thought much about this war, had never expected to come to it, had been sent, he was sure, ill— advisedly, like everybody else. The stewardess gave him a purple Vietnam Airlines traveling bag and he held it empty in his lap looking down at the clouds and nodded off until late afternoon, when the same stewardess touched his shoulder to tell him they were descending toward Tan Son Nhut.

In a deteriorating terminal crowded with soldiers both American and Asian, the floor piled with boxes and baggage, he found his man, a Negro holding up a small sign saying MEEKER IMPORTS. “Mr. Reinhardt,” the man said. “I’m Kenneth Johnson. Anybody else?”

“I don’t know.” “Me neither. But we’ll take all comers.” A man of good cheer. There was nobody else.

“How was the flight?” “All flights end on the ground.” “That’s what the ducks say. Jesus,” he said, “who thinks up these pass-signs?” “I don’t know,” Fest said, and added nothing, though he understood this was probably the moment for a joke.

They came out through the front entrance to a line of taxis whose drivers leapt up waving, and Johnson said, “You’re all set up under the name of Reinhardt at a place called the Quan Pho Xa. You’re papered for Reinhardt, right?”

“Correct.” “All right. Off you go, Mr. Reinhardt.” “I don’t understand.” “This is as far as I go. I’m just verifying arrival.”

1 see. “You’ll get a glimpse of me tomorrow. Just a glimpse.” “At the briefing?” “Yes. Just a glimpse.” “Will I use the same pass-sign?” “No. I’ll be there to introduce you.” They shook hands, and Kenneth Johnson put him in a cab and spoke

to the driver briefly and was gone. “Do you speak English?” “Yes, sir. Little bit.” “Do you know where my hotel is?” “Yes, sir. Hotel Quan Pho Xa.” “What does it mean?” He got no answer. The taxi entered the city proper, passed down an

avenue crowded with buildings painted pink or blue or yellow, and slowed, stopped, moved a couple of car lengths, stopped. The driver told him it was the New Year. Everyone was going somewhere. “What is New Year this time?” Fest asked. “Year of Dog? Year of Goat?” The driver said he didn’t know. A buzzing tide of motorbikes flowed around the larger vehicles. One went past with a woman passenger seated sidesaddle, ankles crossed, reading a magazine. Engines coughing out exhaust. The palms looked none too healthy. He watched a foursome of street boys who lounged on the pavement playing cards for cigarettes.

Why had they stopped him in Hong Kong to pick up documents prepared in Saigon?

The traffic moved again. On gravestones in a tiny cemetery he saw emblems in a swastika shape, and swastikas carved on the door of its small temple. The sight shocked him. He’d never seen one except in photographs. Including two or three taken of his father. Fest watched for street signs and landmarks, trying to inscribe it all on his mind, to locate himself. He checked his watch. In nineteen hours he’d be briefed as to schedule and method. The brusque treatment at the hands of Kenneth Johnson told him much. His colleagues wanted him only at a distance. Possibly he’d been sent here after an American—even Kenneth Johnson himself.

It was raining lightly but felt no cooler when he got out of the cab at the hotel. A woman sat on her sandals outside the entrance. He guessed Americans didn’t stay here—she was its only protection.

While he checked in, the two girls downstairs in the lobby, the receptionist and her assistant or her friend, sang unintelligible lyrics along with their radio.

“What is your name?” he asked the clerk.

“Thuyet.”

“Thuyet, can I make an overseas telephone call?”

“No, sir. Only cable. Only the telegram.”

She wore a blue skirt and crisp white blouse. She interested him. Bizarre and delicate of face. No jewelry, no paint, but probably all of them were whores.

He showered and changed and went down to the street, wondering where he’d find an overseas telephone to call his mother. It was night now. In the distance above the city, helicopters tore up the air with their rotor blades, and tracer bullets streaked upward into the darker reaches. From over the horizon, bombs thundered. Down here, innumerable little horns and small engines. Radios playing silly local music.

Sandbags lined the curbs. He walked along the fractured sidewalk, picking his way among holes and people’s outstretched feet and parked motorbikes, chased by beggars and pimps and snide, sassy children who offered him “cigarette, grass, boom-boom, U-globe, opium.”

“Bread,” he said.

“No bread because of Happy New Year,” a vendor explained.

He gave up hope of a telephone and had dinner in a place with hostesses wearing fringed red miniskirts and small red cowboy hats and fancy plastic gun belts with empty holsters. The waitress said because of the New Year they had no bread today.

Fest had seen the signs and banners saying “Chuc Mung Nam Moy” and gathered they wished him a Happy New Year, though they could just as easily have meant The Plague Is Terrible.

He woke in the night, as he’d done the night before. He heard gunfire outside. He fumbled with the bed net, and keeping low he crossed the room and chanced a look over the windowsill. A woman walked along in the glow of a paper lantern. Her hand, swinging the light by its wire haft, looked like a claw. Children chased past her in the street, setting off firecrackers. He heard music, and voices singing. He went back to bed. His pattern hadn’t changed yet, he wouldn’t sleep again tonight. He had two books and he’d read them both. The ceiling fan whirred at its top speed but didn’t cool him. Out the window the madness continued. It seemed to him absurd that people surrounded by warfare should entertain themselves by lighting off explosives.

He stayed in bed rereading Georges Simenon, fell asleep at dawn, and woke around ten in the morning.

Not long before his lunch date, he took a cab to Sung Phoo Maps and Charts, only, as the driver had assured him, a few blocks from the hotel, but hard to find. Inside, a brisk young man greeted him in English. When Fest explained he wanted the most current available map of the region, the young man led him up narrow stairs into a chamber full of women seated at drafting tables under circular white neon tubes, and very soon he stepped back into the Saigon morning with three scrolls wrapped together in brown paper and tied with twine: hand-colored, French-language maps: North Vietnam; South Vietnam; Saigon.

The day was sunny, clear, hot, bright, with black shadows on the pavements under the trees. He walked a block and hailed a taxi. The cabbie said because of the New Year he couldn’t turn the meter on and would have to be paid copiously. Disgusted, Fest got out and took a cyclo to his rendezvous and arrived, by his watch, four minutes early at the Green Parrot Restaurant, a very narrow establishment much like a locomotive’s dining car with tables for two—no more than two—along either wall, and an aisle between. No maître d’ greeted him, only a young man behind a cash register, who raised his eyebrows.

“Do you speak English?” he asked the cashier. “Yes, please.” “Do your facilities have a flushing device?” “Sorry, I don’t understand.” “Plumbing with water.” “I don’t know what you say.” “Where is your bathroom?” “Yes, sir. To the back.” He took a seat. Almost everyone in the place was Vietnamese. Only three tables away, alone, sat an American he recognized from

the earlier assignment in the Philippine Islands, the nephew, he believed, of the bullish colonel who’d so enjoyed joking with Filipinos. His contact? A flush of warmth, familiar ground under his feet, a friend to work with, or anyway an acquaintance.

Basic craft required they not greet each other without a pass-sign. Fest headed for the men’s room, passing close to the American’s table as he made his way. He leaned his tubular parcel against the damp wall, washed his hands, and waited three minutes, until exactly twelve-thirty. When he went back out the American was gone and a different American waved to him from a different table—Johnson, who’d picked him up at the airfield yesterday and so quickly disappeared. A Vietnamese officer in uniform, wearing aviator’s sunglasses, sat facing the Negro; nothing before him on the table but a pack of cigarettes.

Johnson rose as Fest approached. “Mr. Reinhardt, meet Major Keng.” “It’s a pleasure,” Keng said, and reached up to shake hands. “Where can I sit?” “Take my place,” Johnson said. “I’m running late. You’re in capable

hands.” “It’s local business?” “What’s that there?” “Maps of the area. I just bought them minutes ago.” “Walk me to the door.” At the entrance Johnson handed him a business card on which the

name was Kenneth Johnson, of Meeker Imports. “In the event of something unforeseen, go to the basement of the Armed Forces Language School. I’ve written the street address on the back there. The basement, okay? You’ll be greeted by a U.S. marine, so hand him this card.”

“Many thanks.”

“That’s only as a last resort. Only and absolutely.”

‘Tes. I understand you. A last resort.”

Once again the black man vanished like a fugitive.

Fest placed the card in his money clip, taking extra time for himself. Another native handler. That meant the same kind of business as in the Philippines. Over at the table the Vietnamese had removed his sunglasses to look at the bill of fare. His khaki uniform looked slept in, but his black boots shone brightly. Local business. Fest didn’t like it.

He took the seat across from his contact.

“Mr. Reinhardt, what will you eat?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? Some tea?”

“Tea, all right. And bread, if possible.”

“Of course it’s possible. I’m having pho-ban, some beef soup with noodles. It’s very inexpensive here.”

Without the sunglasses Major Keng’s eyes seemed small and black and polished. As Fest looked at the faces around him they all had their differences, but all the faces, including this man’s, were identical to his recollection of, say, the face of the desk clerk Thuyet, or any others he’d seen in this city. Their language sounded impossible. Fest observed he was now the establishment’s only white patron.

He remained stubborn and had only bread and weak tea. The major asked him what he’d seen of the city, shoveled into his noodle soup a salad of greens and pallid sprouts, and slurped viciously at it, using enameled chopsticks for everything, including, somehow, the liquid, and spoke of his university days here in Saigon.

“Do you like your baguette?”

“Yes,” Fest said sincerely, “it’s wonderful.”

“Many things survive from the French.”

“I see. Of course.”

Keng pushed his empty bowl aside, took a cigarette from his pack, and brought a lighter from his tunic. “May I offer you a cigarette and also a light?”

“No, thank you.”

With a look Fest interpreted as one of light contempt, or disappointment, the major produced a flame. “It’s a Colibri of London. Butane.”

“Is this a good place to discuss business?”

“Of course. That’s why we’re here. I have some things for you.” He reached for the floor between his feet, almost laying his chin on the table’s surface, and sat back with a brown briefcase in his lap. “I have the goods.” It was a parcel wrapped in brown paper and string. “Now you have two packages. Did you say you have some maps there?”

“Yes.” “I worried that perhaps a rifle.” “No. Is this the pistol?” “Yes. Use the silencer.” “Is it as I requested?” “It’s a three-eighty automatic.” “I asked for twenty-two caliber.” “We don’t have anything that small.” “Do I have surveillance photos?” “At this time there has been no surveillance.” “What can you tell me about the target?” “Not yet identified to me. You’ll be told.” “How long can I expect to stay in Saigon?” “At this time the schedule is uncertain.” “I was told I’d receive the timetable at this meeting.” Keng made a long business of finishing his cigarette and stubbing it

out in a small dirty ashtray. He folded his hands in his lap. “We lost him.” Fest believed this man was amused. What now? Even to remark on

such incompetence seemed pointless. “I am here as a courtesy only.” “We’ll find him.” “Can you understand me? If I stay or go, that’s completely up to me.

My decision. That is my brief.”

“I can only give you the facts. Then you must make your own decision,” the major announced, as if Fest hadn’t just said precisely the same thing.

“All right, give me facts. Who is the target?” “A Vietcong.” Fest kept silent. “You don’t believe me.” “There are a couple of armies here for killing Vietcong.” Keng lit another of his cigarettes with his marvelous silver butane. “A couple of armies, yes. And today also one extra guy, eating lunch with me. Reinforcements.”

Now Fest believed him. This man was angry. Possibly the extravagance of this operation insulted him, and he’d decided to view it as an entertainment.

“I can tell you it’s simple to find him. The Americans are working

on it.” “So you know him.” “I can be a little more specific. The truth is that we don’t have his lo

cation, and we are trying to get more specific information without caus

ing alienation of the source.” “You have a source, but you don’t want to jeopardize.” “Correct. We have to be careful. We can’t put a gun to someone’s

head in this case. Do you see what I mean?” “This is not my area, Major.” “We need our sources for future use.” “I understand.” “In the meantime, we have a secure drop point for communication

close to your hotel.” “I want another one.” “Two drops?” “No. Just one. The lavatory of this restaurant. On the underside of

the sink.” “You’re going to check it every day? It’s a lot of trouble to get here.” “No. You will check it in three days. The message will give you the

location for a new drop.” For a full minute the major didn’t reply. “I’m not going to fight you,”

he said at last. “But don’t make the new drop too far from here.” “Then we’re agreed?” “We are agreed, Mr. Reinhardt.” They parted, and with his maps and the weapon in their two brown

packages Fest charged down the walk looking for a cab. He perspired heavily but kept his pace, daring anybody to block his course, the beggars rushing at him to display their stumps, their crumpled heads, their stick-figure infants blotched with ulcers, and what does this one want— attacking my flank with offers of opium, U-globe, grass, and what is U-globe? It was 3:00 p.m. before he reached the Quan Pho Xa.

The next morning he moved. The small desk clerk Thuyet was on duty downstairs. “Checking out?” she said when she saw his valise, and he said he was. As he waited for transportation, he asked her about the name of this hotel. “It means ‘Around the Town,’ ” she said.

UT n

1 see.

“Are you leaving for the Europe?”

“I have to do a lot of traveling.”

“Okay. It’s good for your business.”

“This is the New Year.”

“We call Tet.”

“Happy New Year.”

She laughed, as if surprised by sharp wit. “Happy New Year!”

“Is it the Year of the Dog? Goat? Monkey?”

“Not now. The Year of the Monkey is finish. Now will be the Year of the Rooster.”

An hour later he checked into Room 214 at the Continental Hotel. This place was famous, and somewhat expensive, and it had air-conditioning. He took lunch in a restaurant downstairs full of Europeans and Americans. Afterward he went down to the square out front, where seven or eight celebrations seemed to be taking place, each oblivious to the others, all under the eyes of armed figures in a variety of uniforms and helmets—local police, American MPs, American and Vietnamese infantry.

Fest spoke with a cyclo driver, who walked with him to a side street and introduced him to a girl in a café and then proposed to escort them both to a room in a hotel Fest had never heard of.

“We’ll go to my room.”

The driver explained this to the girl, and she nodded, smiling, and wrapped Fest’s upper arm in a full embrace and put her head on his shoulder. Her deeply black hair smelled like vanilla extract. Perhaps she used exactly that as a perfume. He didn’t want her, but something like this was necessary. He’d learned on these operations that he came as a predator, he must violate the land, he must prey upon its people, he must commit some small crime in propitiation of the gods of darkness. Then they’d let him enter.

Richard Voss spent the morning at the embassy reading and sorting cables that had come in over the weekend designated “Classified,” which meant almost everything. Anything of importance had already been dealt with, but somebody—anybody—from Internal Ops had to see every word, that was the rule. “Send it Classified,” his first boss at Langley had once told him, “otherwise they won’t read it.” He didn’t mind being shut away. He preferred it to drinks with foreign diplomats and Vietnamese semi-dignitaries, and if Crodelle stretched their lunch with Skip Sands far enough into the afternoon, he could return here, look over the new cables, and find some excuse for hanging around through the cocktail hour.

At noon he left the embassy and made his way down the block and across Tu Do, through the mass of vendors and celebrants who all week had made the thoroughfare impossible for four-wheeled traffic. He found a taxi on a side street. For this short trip he’d allowed thirty minutes; even so he was ten minutes late when they came into view of the Green Parrot.

Skip Sands stood out front in the noon sun wiping perspiration from his eye sockets and looking confused—and don’t we all these days, Voss thought. Skip had gained weight. And haven’t we all done that too. Aren’t we all fat and sweaty and confused.

Voss opened the cab’s door and beckoned him in. “Long time, my man! Come on—I thought of a better place.” “Good. Scoot over.” Sands climbed in beside him. “I saw a guy I don’t like.”

“Who?”

“A guy from Manila. Let’s move, okay? I need a breeze.”

“Cross the river,” Voss told the driver.

“What about the Rex?”

“We can’t go downtown,” said Voss, “they’ve got checkpoints everywhere. Uncle Ho won’t catch us sleeping! We are absolutely thoroughly prepared for one year ago.”

“What’s going on across the river?”

“Not a thing, brother. It’s like real life. Some nuns opened a French place last month.” “Nuns? Can they cook?’ “Outrageously well. Nobody goes there yet, but they will.”

The driver said, “One bridge no good. I take other bridge.” “Go ahead, make a buck,” Voss said. Sands said, “How’s the family?” “They’re great. Haven’t seen them since April. I missed Celeste’s

birthday.” “How old is she?” “Jesus… No, wait—four. What about you? Still solo?” “Afraid so.” “Completely? No fiancée in the States?” “Not yet. Completely single.” They crossed the bridge to the east side, where junks and miscella

neous unsinkable wrecks jammed against the bank. “Jeez, the river stinks worse than ever.” “Welcome back.” “Thanks. I think.” “No, I’m serious. It’s good to see you,” Voss said, and he meant it.

“How long have you been gone?” “I’m in and out.” “So you’ve been gone all this time?” “I’m just back for a week or two. Collecting stories. How goes the fray?” “Oh—we’re winning.” “Finally someone who knows.” “You’re collecting stories?” “Stories, yeah—folktales. Fairy stories.” “Well, you’ve come to the right place for that stuff.” Neither of them

laughed. “Folktales.” “Yeah —remember Lansdale.” “I never knew Lansdale.” ” ‘Know the people’—songs and stories.” Voss heard himself sigh. “Hearts and minds.” “Yeah. It’s for a project at the Naval Grad School.” “Over there in—where.” “Carmel.” “I’ve never been there.” “A beautiful place.” Small talk, Voss thought, in the Terminal Ward. He had to take over

directing the driver, and he was spared.

Only a few blocks across the river, and not far from the neighborhood of the old CIA-Psy Ops villa where for several weeks Voss and Skip had lived together, they found the Chez Orleans. “I like these vines,” Voss said of the incredible overgrowth almost extinguishing its façade. “You can hardly see through the windows. Privacy.” I sound like a fool.

“Do you still stay at the old place?” “The old place is no more. I think the army got it. Fm at the Meyerkord.”

The vines continued around the building and flourished over lattices to make relatively cool shade for the flagstone patio. Music emanated from a burlap-wrapped PA high in the coolest corner of the trellis— flamenco, classical guitar—and beneath the speaker, near the small fountain, three officers with large yellow Fifth Cavalry patches on their sleeves ate without speaking. Otherwise not a soul. They sat down and Sands ordered 7Up and grenadine. “Fm having a martini,” Voss said.

“I don’t like olives,” Sands said. While Voss wondered how you reply to such a statement, Sands went on: “I didn’t mean to sound cynical a while ago.”

“I’m the one who sounded cynical. And I kind of think I meant to.” “No, no, I understand. We’ve all got questions.” “Yeah, and the left thinks we don’t, we’re all brainwashed and stupid,

we have to have somebody shouting up our ass—do they think they’re intellectuals? Who wants to be an intellectual? Who cares how powerful your equipment is if you can’t safely operate it? What have the intellectuals got?”

“Chess.” “Cross-eyed Communism. Unhealthy unsatisfying perverted sex lives.” Sands said nothing. He seemed as clear-eyed as ever, and just as

blind. Where, Voss thought, is the fun in this? Crodelle, you’re a shit. “Skip. Skipper. What’s the matter?” “My mom died.” “Oh, shit.” “I just got the news yesterday.” “I’m sorry.” “Well, I’m dealing with it.” “I guess you have to.” “I know. What can you say? Let’s eat.”

The lunch menu was light, salads, crepes, and sandwiches, and Voss recommended the salade niçoise, which he promised was made with real tuna and which Skip declined because of the olives. Sands asked instead for the salade d’epinard et crevettes, and they spent the interval looking over the dinner menu with admiration: filet de porc rôti, carré d’agneau aux pistaches, thon aux pignons de pin, these nuns had it all—and privacy—if in fact the management were nuns. He’d never seen any nuns here. “Better than the Yacht Club,” he told Sands, “and cheaper, man.” He was hungry, and he took his salad as a reprieve. But Sands, after going at his shrimp and spinach for several bites, drifted visibly from the scene and began poking with his fork, stirring whorls in his orange-andcaper sauce, and Voss felt terrible about Skip’s situation and said, “It’s hard to believe people back home can pass away. It gets so you think we have all the dying right here. All the death in the world.”

Skip looked up in surprise and said, “That’s true. I’ve felt just that

very thing.” “We all do. Remember last Tet?” “Yeah.” “You were here?” “I was around.” “Cao Phuc?” “Off and on.” “You’ve been getting mail pretty regularly at the embassy.” “Oh. You keep track of those things?” “Every little thing, somebody keeps track of it. But who’s keeping

track of who’s keeping track? So Cao Phuc. Yeah. You guys did some

nice work on Labyrinth.” “Yes, thanks —do you really mean that?” A cab stopped out front, and even through the viney lattice Voss

could see who it was.

“Well, Skip,” he admitted with sudden irritation, “no. Not really. What the heck do I know about Labyrinth? I’m just being—you know-generally and vaguely complimentary.”

“Okay. Generally and vaguely thanks. Look, Rick,” Sands said,

“maybe we can talk straight.” “Always. Always.” At this moment Crodelle made his appearance, moving directly toward their table as if he’d consulted a map and planned the route. Tall, angular—not tall enough for college basketball, but surely pressed into it in high school. Physically he looked the drowsy, slouching intellectual. A misapprehension. He had a redhead’s characteristic fire. Voss had led himself to believe that redheads outgrow their freckles with childhood, but Crodelle still sported several across his cheeks. Voss was aware that he considered these things too often, that they’d lodged as irritants in his thoughts—Crodelle’s height and type, his intellect, his freckles— because Crodelle frightened him.

“I want soup!” Sands said, “I’m not sure they have soup.” “Bizarre. No soup?” “Not for lunch.” “Terry Crodelle.” The two shook hands. Voss said, “Skip Sands.” Crodelle sat down and said, “Indeed,” and called across the room:

“Martini? And a salad”—he pointed a bony finger at Voss’s plate —

“comme ça.” “And some tea,” Sands said. “And tea, please.” Sands said, “Were we expecting you, Terry?” “I’m stuck this side of the river. Nothing on the other side but ban

ners and flags and firecrackers. So—you’re back in Cao Phuc? Or you were never gone.” Sands kept good control of his physical presence, but couldn’t hide

his surprise. “I assume you’re working with us.” “Us who?” “We. Us. The outfit.” “I’m with the Regional Security Center.” “Stationed here?” “Visiting. A visitor to your charming planet.” “First time in-country?” Crodelle blinked and stared. “I’ve been in the region off and on since

‘59. I’m pre-Kennedy.” “Wow. You look younger.” “I looked in on Cao Phuc once or twice. How’s the scene there these

days?”

“A lot quieter. Quiet.” “Have they broken down that relocation facility?” “I don’t know the official status of that endeavor.” “But what do you see?” “It’s hard to tell what stage they’ve reached”—Sands looked up and

around as if seeking their waiter—”whether they’re breaking it down or if it’s just been more or less abandoned. But I’d say the Buddhist temple is pretty much the center of things again.”

“Are the VC moving in?” “I haven’t been bothered.” “What have they got you doing over there?” “Collecting stories. Folktales.” “Gimme a break! Rick, here, thought you’d left the country.” “I’m in and out.” “So the base is broken down?” “We didn’t call it a base. Landing zone.” Sands seemed inexplicably

content. “Did you ever get over to the Purple Bar once in a while?” Skip laughed. “Only at the legitimate cocktail hour.” “You know what, Skip? I’m glad we finally meet.” “Hey, you guys,” Voss said, and excused himself. He went to the restroom and found its urinal filled with ice cubes, a

fascinating extravagance.

Voss wished Crodelle had stayed away from lunch longer. Maybe some straight talk after all, he and Sands—who can you talk to but a man on the way out? He’d worked in intelligence for only six years, but he would have liked to crawl out of its waters and into a cave and confess to some giant mollusk. Absurd, yes. But it had the right elements. Air and drowning. Darkness, damp.

What a monstrous stupid fucking mess.

One of the army officers joined him in the bathroom, hawk-faced, crew-cut, major’s bars on his shoulders and the yellow sleeve patch of the Fifth Cavalry, a man without secrets, a man who relieved himself in front of others. While the major pissed meditatively down onto the piled ice, Voss washed his hands and dried them on one of the cloth napkins stacked beside the sink and tossed the napkin into a wicker basket. This place had class. Above the cloudy yellowish mirror that gave his face back as if he were the victim of some viny invasion of hepatitis were painted in a precise, feminine, nunlike script the words:

Bon appétit!

When Voss returned to the table they were already on the subject Crodelle wanted to raise, at least to begin with—the colonels insane article—and Crodelle was showing off. He managed to seem blithely expert on any area that strayed into his conversational grasp. Voss didn’t mind it so much, but he minded that at this moment he was bullying Sands. This business of tracking “command influence,” Crodelle wanted to know— had the colonel considered how tricky the whole idea was? Hadn’t the Mayo brothers written of Dr. Gorgas, “Men who achieve greatness do not work more complexly than the average man, but more simply?” Wasn’t the problem with trying to show “command influence” through experiments just that almost all such experiments, those Crodelle knew of anyway, had been carried out to determine the impact of an intervention, a treatment, a new drug, rather than to prove the presence or absence of a causative factor?—like Lind’s eighteenth century tests with treatments for scurvy, or, a more recent instance, the Salk vaccine trials? On the other hand … was Sands maybe familiar with the nineteenth century Yellow Fever Commission and the then-new science of bacteriology?—with the efforts of Walter Reed and James Carroll? Maybe trials could be run, but what would serve as the experimental “marker” for “command influence”? And the struggle against malaria and typhoid and yellow fever, hadn’t that been as much a war as this one?—hadn’t Jesse Lazear died a martyr’s death in a sick ward in Havana, cut down by the disease he was helping to conquer? Wars demanded new ideas; and maybe the colonel had landed one: could we maybe, just maybe, inject the elements we think would provoke “command influence” into preselected information channels? Crodelle’s curiosity overpowered him, an earnest wish to communicate charged his features, he held up his hands before his face, fingers splayed, head forward, taking careful and passionate aim, as if each of his concepts were a basketball—but, come on, who was the colonel in all this, Walter Reed the careful investigator, or Guiseppe Sanarelli, the guy with the quick answer to the wrong question? The colonel needed an Aristides Agramonte to get in there and dig into the corpses. Did Skip

know the work of Agramonte? Did Skip know, come to think, that with that mustache and high forehead he resembled Agramonte? This last question seemed other than rhetorical. Crodelle stopped. He waited. Voss couldn’t tell whether Sands was a fool, or the Buddha himself. From where came this poised, shiny-eyed amusement?

Sands said, “Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah. It’s pretty wild.”

“What is your interest in all this, Terry?”

“Purely academic. Disease control was a passion of mine in college— premed. Then I dropped out and wandered into our world, and I never thought I’d see anything from that field that applied to our field, the field of intelligence.”

“It’s just a draft. He’ll never finish it.”

“What you need to do is prove the existence of ‘command influence.’ What you need to do is isolate these different channels running up the chain of command, and randomly inject information among these channels to see how much they get distorted. How do you, so to speak, ‘clean’ a channel? You need channels you affect and channels you keep unaffected. This isn’t new. Yellow fever again, polio, et cetera. What you’d really need is two or more unconnected intelligence organizations—get some of our allies to participate. It would be interesting. It might get us somewhere. It might bring on a revolution. But do we need to start one until we need to start one?”

“I’m not sure what you mean by that.”

“It’s just remarkable he’s opened the whole question. The colonel. I mean, is it possible to create markers, intelligence markers, and follow them up and down the chain of command and out through the lines of commo, and draw conclusions about the way we do things? It’s pretty wild, man. Your uncle’s a wild revolutionary.”

“Have you met him?”

“Once or twice. I enjoy the colonel. He’s a sizable personality. I mean, Cao Phuc—case in point. As far as we can trace things he talked someone, some drunken commander of one of the helicopter assault groups, into securing a landing zone on that mountain in ‘64, then when the Twenty-fifth Infantry arrived he sort of borrowed a platoon and kept them out there twenty-four months, on one pretext after another, and had the Twenty-fifth serving that LZ as if it were a base. Then he sold the ville as the world’s best place for a relocation camp. At the peak he had half a dozen platoons running up and down that mountain, and his very own helicopter. That is one impressively large personality, man. Unfortunatamente, during the Tet thing he took casualties and lost a whole platoon we can only hope are POWs now, and folks started asking what in tarnation is going on in Cao Phuc. If it wasn’t for last Tet, by now he’d probably have his own brigade. And he’s not in any way connected to the military!—except as liaison to Psy Ops, hardly any of whom have actually personally encountered the guy, ever. He did it all on his personal authority. I mean, man, he did it all on balls and bullshit. Can you believe it?”

“You seem to know more about him than I do.” “There’s a lot to admire there. He’s a warrior—” “A genuine war hero, Terry.” “Of course, let’s say a hero, he’s got medals up the ass, okay—but he’s

not a spook, he’s not that type. He suspects everybody’s against him, but he acts like he hasn’t got an enemy in the world. You know what a guy once told me about the colonel? ‘His enemies are only friends he hasn’t defeated yet.’ “

“John Brewster, right?” “Who?” “You heard me.” “Matter of fact, it might have been John. I don’t remember. Look.

Come on. Look … your uncle has something to teach us, which is: Trust the locals. He’s never separated himself from them. He works with them, he’s joined to them. But in doing that, he separates himself from us, his people.”

Skip said, “I think you’re misinterpreting the facts, and then exaggerating your own misinterpretation. Or at least you’re just allowing your interpretation to enlarge itself.”

“Have you read The Quiet American?” Skip said: “Boo-coo fuck you.” Voss said, “Boy, this is quick. I thought we’d shoot the shit awhile.” “Yeah. Yeah.” Crodelle blinked. Nothing more. “He was living at the

Continental when he wrote it.” “Graham Greene. Next door to the colonel.” “Skip… a man outgrows his mentors. It’s inevitable.”

“Look,” Skip said, “I get it.” “Then explain it.” “You explain it.” “I’ve been explaining it. If the colonel wants to make empirical sense

out of his theories, then let him propose a random-assignment study using two systems—a control, and a system into which he introduces some agent or catalyst whose effect he can measure against the control system without the agent. Think back: the old proposals for the cause of polio, the days when they were just banging away with any idea that came into their heads—dog feces, for Christ’s sake; injecting polio patients with their own urine. That’s the colonel, man. Shooting piss into the intelligence apparatus. I mean,” Crodelle said, “even in Washington he was legendary for his three-hour hydraulic lunches.”

Sands turned to Voss. “Fuck you too, Voss.” He stood up. “Speaking

of shooting piss. I gotta whiz.” “Melt yourself some ice,” Voss said. “What?” “You’ll see.” He left, and Crodelle watched him until he’d gone inside the res

taurant. “Gee, Terry. What took you so long?” “Rick? Do you know your role?” Voss didn’t answer. He watched Crodelle sip from his martini. “Is there a window in there?” “He’s not going out the window.” “How do you know?” “He’s having too much fun.” “Are you?” Voss thought of ordering another drink, but felt the remark about hy

draulic lunches had rendered such a thing inadvisable. “If he pushes, I’m gonna push back. Just to keep the balance in my fa

vor, okay? And things are gonna speed up.” “They certainly are.” “Fine with me. And you do have a role to play. When the balance

tips too far, you jump on the teeter-totter—on my side, incidentally.” “I’m clear on that.” “On the way here I picked up something at the shop.”

“What shop?”

Crodelle convulsed into life again. “Will you look at this?” He took from his breast pocket what looked like a large cigarette lighter. Holding it in his palm, he pressed its side with his thumb. “Open it up, and— zow.” Two tiny reels within. “The tape is—you see it? That little wire? That is one one-thousandth of an inch in diameter, man.”

People from Manila’s Regional Security Center showed up in town regularly and Voss thought he knew them all; Crodelle wasn’t one of them. He’d set up a shop in the Language School’s basement, and Internal Ops had been told to give him what he needed, and today he needed a twenty-first-century recording device.

“You guys have all the nifty stuff.” “These things have been around for a dozen years.” Sands was back. He sat down, and Crodelle held out the recorder, its

face still open. “Behold.” “Where’s the tape?” “The light has to be right. See?” Voss said, “One one-thousandth of an inch.” “Is it on?” “Why the hell not?” Crodelle said, and shut its lid and left it between

them on the green linen tablecloth. “Let’s give it a whirl. We’re here at the Aragon Ballroom with bandleader extraordinaire Skipper Sands … Sands. German? English.”

“No. Irish.” “Irish?” “My great-grandfather came from the Shaughnesseys. Apparently he

started calling himself Sands on the ship over.” “A bit of a turncoat.” “I never met him. I wouldn’t know.” “Was he in trouble?” “No. Can I ask you something?” “Sure.” “Am I?” “The Aragon Ballroom is a place of music and frolic. No one’s in

trouble here.” “Hell. Why not polygraph me?” “That’s not out of the question.”

“I mean right now, Crodelle.” “No, Skip. Not right now. We’ll need to prepare you if we want to

end up with a decently conclusive polygram.” “Any old time.” “Sure. Noted.” “What about Crodelle? C’est Français?” “I don’t know. Yeah, French. It may be a misspelling of ‘Cordelle.’—

Where’s Uncle Francis, Skip?” “I don’t know. Right here in town, I assume.” “Do you know he was recalled to Langley seven weeks ago, eight

weeks ago—anyway, early last November?” “I didn’t know that.” “No, because he never went.” “He goes where he wants to.” “Yeah. And when he wants to, he’ll just whip out a pistol and shoot a

bound prisoner.” “Really, now.” “Didn’t he execute a prisoner at Cao Phuc during Big Tet?” “I don’t know anything about it.” “Well, it’s known you know something about it. We know you know.” “I’m pretty sure you’re confusing a story from World War Two.” “He executed prisoners back then too? We’ll have to look into that.

But you’re located at Cao Phuc right now, right? And last Tet too? Is Cao

Phuc your station, more or less?” “In-country, yeah. I’m in and out. Mostly out. I keep some stuff there.” “Well, you spend a lot of time there. You’re bound to have some stuff.

When we say you keep some stuff there, we’re including some of the

colonel’s stuff, right? His footlockers and such.” “Footlockers?” “You know, here’s the crux of it all. I think these guys we admire so

much, I believe that every one of them has fallen away from the faith, each in his own way. We fight Communism, but we ourselves exist in a commune. We exist in a hive.”

“You think they don’t believe in freedom anymore?” “I think they’ve just gotten numb.” Silence. Crodelle said, “What do you think, Skip?”

“I think it’s too complicated for discussion.” Crodelle said: “What’s in the footlockers?” Skip kept his peace. “Why the silence?” “Am I supposed to answer suddenly just because you ask suddenly?” “Three of them, three footlockers. You had them at Clark Field on

December thirty-first, 1966, and they arrived with you at the CIA villa

right over here on Chi Lang Street on New Year’s Day.” Sands hadn’t once touched his teacup. His focus was amazing. “I’d like to ask what you’re doing in Cao Phuc,” Crodelle said. “Well, I don’t think you should even be wanting to know.” Crodelle stared. “Gosh-darn it.” Sands stared back. “You’re in business. You’re running something. Something or some

body.” “Who, exactly, are you?” “All right. Let’s get ourselves identified. I’m Terrence Crodelle, Re

gional Security Officer.” “Congratulations.” “Your turn. The Saigon base has two branches, designated Liaison

Operations and Internal Operations. Which are you, Skip?” “I Ops, working mainly with military Psy Ops.” Crodelle sat back and sighed. “I Ops with Psy Ops,” he said, and Voss

thought: I believe you’re on the ropes.

With an actual mounting nausea, Voss forced his own face into the muck: “You remember the footlockers? Those three footlockers? Sure you do. I don’t think you would’ve forgotten those footlockers. Do you remember the name on those footlockers?”

“No, I don’t.” “Can I ask what name you’re here under?” “My name is William Michael Sands.” “What’s the name on your passport?” “That is the name on my passport.” Crodelle said, “Where’s the colonel’s hideaway?” “He’s got a room at the Continental, last I knew.” “I understand he has some associates on the Mekong Delta. One in

particular. A female.”

“That’s news to me.”

“Near Binh Dai.”

“Further news.”

A vehicle stopped outside. Skip rose, went to the patio’s edge, and spoke through the vines: “Hold that cab for me, please.” He still had his napkin tucked into his belt. It was the only off move Voss had seen him make all day. He came back and laid his napkin on the table and said, “Lunch is on you guys,” and walked out.

Certain that he was spending too much, that the GIs and local businessmen got lower prices, Fest passed the afternoon with the young woman whose hair smelled of vanilla, who charged him thirty dollars for four hours in his air-conditioned room. She huddled under the blankets, she insisted on using the phone many times, though he didn’t think she knew anyone to call and was only pretending to have conversations, she plucked at his beard and the curls on his chest, and tried to squeeze the blackheads on his nose—in fact she played constantly with his nose— delighted with its European dimensions, and in general behaved like the stupid harlot she was. Just as Fest was a stupid customer. He ordered champagne for the room and she refused it—chattering, giggling, fearful—as she might the offer of a particularly nasty bedroom game. Fest drank it all himself. She wouldn’t eat. He showered while she fraudulently telephoned. His greatest hope for this hotel had been extinguished—that its phones reached Berlin, and news of his father. Cables were no good. He had to keep his whereabouts to himself. Apparently it was possible to call Berlin, but not from the hotel. The concierge had promised to arrange it, to take him somewhere personally. Meanwhile, the old man would die. Perhaps already. Perhaps yesterday while I bought the maps. Right now he’s dead while I shower in tepid, diseased water and a whore stinks in my bed. People die when you’re thinking of something else. That’s the way of it. Claude had done so; shot in the throat by a sniper of the French Resistance. Their father had been a strong man, a patriotic German, an acquaintance of Heinrich Himmler. His older brother had been an officer of the Waffen-SS. These were facts. They were not to be disputed, covered over, or despised. And Claude had given his life for the Nazis, another fact. But Claude was more than a fact: the family legend, constantly on his father’s lips; dead, yet throughout Fest’s youth more alive to their father than Fest himself. He gave the girl some Vietnamese money, he didn’t care how much, and sent her away.

While celebrants out in the square produced the music and explosions of warfare, defeat, and victory combined, he took dinner in his room and prepared to turn in early. He had a drop point, a point of rendezvous, and a point of last resort. As of this moment, no one could find him, in particular not his local handlers. The champagne left him with a headache that kept him awake. He sat at the writing desk of Room 214 and broke apart and examined his equipment. The gun had been ramped and throated, he saw. It wouldn’t jam. He reassembled it. Both clips went into it smoothly and the bullets cycled through it almost without sound as he worked the slide backward and forward. Both the silencer and the barrel to accommodate it were factory-made. Somebody was paying attention. But the pointless meeting in Hong Kong, his quick treatment at the hands of Kenneth Johnson, the sense he was being passed from cousin to cousin, always farther from the source … And that he was being used at all. Not that work for other services was unprecedented. Nine or ten years ago an Algerian in Madrid; and a man on a yacht in Como, Italy, whom Fest thought might have been Mafia. And the Philippines, the American priest. Not one of them an enemy of his homeland. Eleven operations in all, counting this one. Showalter had described it as “a hurry-up,” and yet Showalter had entertained them for a couple of weeks before ever mentioning an assignment, and next not another word until a month ago, and even then no discussion of scenarios, and now the gun was in his hands … And would they even have picked me if I’d taken the family to Berlin on our summer leave, if I hadn’t avoided, like a coward, another look at my father’s deathbed, if I hadn’t spent my leave showing New England to young Claude and Dora from the small windows of a rented caravan? In Cape Cod they’d parked behind Showalter’s summer place. Both families knew each other well, considered themselves friends, in fact, but he’d never been associated with Charles Showalter on any kind of operation. He wasi a superior, that’s all. Showalter displayed no illusions, none tainted him, that’s why they liked each other. That’s why Fest trusted him. Stay another week, stay another day—of course they’d stay, he was a superior. Meg too—even after two weeks with cords going out the window from her kitchen outlets, three guests running down the hot water and wetting all her towels, Dora complaining about Langley, holding forth in her fluent English about American idiots, young Claude nibbling out of her fridge, talking about school and sports because Meg was beautiful and because she listened—Meg too: Stay a while, we love it, it’s rather lonely here in the sandy woods. Two weeks along, Meg’s smiles turned brittle, mixed with invisible perspiration. The stress brought out her strength and grace, and seemed to underscore her intelligence. Charles took Fest to the cape’s Atlantic edge, only the two of them, to show him a beach house he thought of purchasing. Fest praised it but wouldn’t have lived there. The panes ratded in a relentless wind and the surf ate at the shore only yards from the supporting posts. Showalter stood on his future balcony before his future Adantic, his gray locks snatched up in all directions like a poet’s. “There’s some business in Saigon. I’d like to put you on it. It’s a hurry-up job.”

“In Saigon?” “Or the environs.” The Philippines, and now this. And why send him across the world

on a single operation when whole armies crawl over the region? “It’s ten thousand miles to there,” Fest said. “That’s nearly accurate.” “Are you assigning me to the Phoenix Program?” “It’s not Phoenix, and it’s not ICE-X. We don’t want our people to

know about this.” “It’s quite a sensitive target, perhaps.” “I guess,” Showalter said in a way that meant he thought it, perhaps,

not so much a sensitive target as a senseless operation. “He’s been prom

ised our protection.” “I see. How much more can you tell me?” “Nothing. We’ll talk more in Langley. When we’re back on the

clock: ‘Will I hear from my people first?” ‘Consider that you’re hearing from them now. ‘No need to check about that.” ‘No need. And-Dirk.” ‘Yes, Charles.” It’s a war. Go ahead and use a gun.”

He now possessed a.380 automatic, a very American and warlike weapon. With it he could probably put together three-inch groups at forty feet. Beyond that range he found it unpredictable. Not quite as good as the sumpit, the blowgun. But how would he know until he aimed and fired?

No team, no discussion of scenarios, no drilling with the weapon.

Why couldn’t they have given him U.S. documents here in Saigon, official passports with genuine Vietnamese visas? Why stop in Hong Kong for German ones?

Because the documents were forgeries. The BND had no part in this. Yet Showalter had more than implied BND endorsement. Without the invisible stamp of the BND he was nothing more than a criminal.

There was a line. He’d crossed it. But the Communists had crossed it too. Criminals? In China, in the Ukraine, they’d done more killing than the criminal Adolph Hitler would have permitted himself even to contemplate. That couldn’t be said aloud, but it had to be remembered. Sometimes, perhaps—in order to grapple with such an enemy—one crossed to his side of the line.

His own cowardice revolted him; it hurt him physically, in his stomach. If he’d gone to Berlin in the summer instead of to New England … If he hadn’t avoided a last moment with his father, who didn’t love him … Just the same, I stand beside you. Old Father, you fought the Communists, and I fight them too.

Ski p Sands rode out of Saigon on Route One in a commercial van and caught a ride to Cao Quyen with a motorbike hauling a tiny trailer full of eight-foot boards, this latter leg taking nearly two hours.

Halfway along, he was surprised to see the colonel’s black Chevy coming the other direction, and he waved both his arms, nearly losing his perch behind the young cyclist. Too late. The Chevy went on. Sands recognized Hao but couldn’t see his passengers.

At the villa he found a white Ford sedan parked out front. The colonel waited inside, on the divan in the parlor, sipping from a coffee cup and looking at a book.

“Where’s Trung?”

“Gone,” the colonel said. “We had to get him out of here.” He couldn’t understand his own crashing disappointment. Moving

the double for a few days was what he would have suggested himself. “Where did he go?” “I don’t believe I can tell you.” “All right, I agree, as a temporary measure—” “It’s not temporary. It’s over.” “You’re shutting it down?” “It’s over for you. As far as your participation.” “But why?” “Quit acting the fool.” Skip had no response. “Sit down, Skip. I have some things to say to you.” Apparently the colonel had brought some mail: a couple of envelopes

on the coffee table. “Is that my mail?” “Take a seat, please.” He sat in the facing chair. “What’s the book?” His uncle turned up its face: The Origins of Totalitarianism. “Hannah

Arendt.” “The woman who reported from the Eichmann trial.” “When I can’t sleep, I read. And I haven’t slept in an impressive inter

val, my man. Not a wink. Hold this book in my hands and watch the words go by.” He let the pages fall open and read aloud: ‘… in the final stages of totalitarianism an absolute evil appears absolute because it can no longer be deduced from humanly comprehensible motives.’ ” He tossed the book onto the table. “There’s something to shrivel your balls on every page. These Jews are obsessed. As well they should be. Obsessed with their fate. But… they’re telling the truth about what we’re up against. Absolute evil.” The colonel’s cup, he saw, held black coffee. He might be sober—

Skip smelled no liquor—but he seemed quite drunk. ‘Tour Aunt Bridey wants a divorce from me.” Skip said, “But she’s Catholic.” “Nobody’s Catholic anymore. Not really. I haven’t been to Mass in

years.” “And so—have you lost your faith in God?” ‘Tes, I have. Haven’t you?”

sure.

The colonel drew a breath deeply, as if he would sigh, but he only

stared at Skip. “Mr. Trung, I admire you,” he said. Skip looked over his shoulder. They were alone. “She wants a divorce? She actually said that?” “She left McLean when I did. Last year. Year before last. The year be

fore Tet. Do you remember how we used to mark time as since JFK’s

assassination, and now it’s since Tet?” “And she told you then?” “She told me, but I didn’t believe her. Now I do. She’s engaged an at

torney and instituted a suit for divorce. Good for her. I won’t contest the

thing.” “Did she give any reason?” “God knows she has reasons enough.” “But specifically?—or it’s none of my business.” “She says I’m in this war to run from my failures in life. And she’s

right about the running. I’m here because I won’t go back to my homeland. Go back to what? A bewildering place full of left-leaning feminine weirdos. What if I do go back? What then? Retire to North Carolina and die and get a forty-foot bridge over a creek named after me. Anyway, she’s right. A war with absolute evil is one hell of an excuse to turn your back on the rest of it. So she’s divorcing me.”

“And it’s got you down,” Skip said, “it’s really got you down.”

Now the colonel let himself sigh deeply. “A lot of trouble around here lately. My own load of crap, this business with Trung … your mother and all. I’m sorry … Skip, I’m sorry.”

“About my mother? Or about the trouble in general?”

“About all of it. About your mother, sure … About whatever part of it I can be blamed for. Which is most of it. But none of us are going to come out of here any too happy. We’ve lost this war. We’ve lost heart.”

Speak for yourself, Skip had an impulse to say, but recognized it in

stantly as reflexive optimism. He said, “Do you want a drink?” “No, I don’t want a drink.” “All right.” “You go ahead.” He called for Tho. The colonel said, “Mr. Tho made coffee and I

sent him home.” Skip went to the kitchen and poured himself a shot and drank it off in a single pull. He poured another and returned to his seat to face his uncle, all his movements weakened by dread. He saluted with the glass. This second swallow brought tears to his eyes, and the colonel said, “That’ll straighten your hairs!” with such brittle falseness he himself seemed brought up short by it. He sat with his coffee cup in his grip, squinting, against what light Skip couldn’t say, as the day was nearly down… “I would not be comforted by angels,” he said.

Skip was aware of feeling as a child before an adult—before his mother, for instance, in her fits of loneliness —of wanting only to get through the moment, waiting to hear, That’s all, you can go, waiting for an end to this violating intimacy.

For many seconds his uncle stared as if they’d never met before. “Did you hear Nixon’s inaugural address?”

“No,” Skip said. “Parts of it.”

“He talked about keeping commitments, preserving our honor—not about winning. Not about the future of Vietnam or the future of the kids we see around here. Nixon. I don’t care what he says, you can see it in his eyes: he’s played the whole game out in his mind, play by play, and we lose. That’s how he sees it. Who did you vote for? The Democrats?”

“Nobody. I forgot to get a ballot.”

“I’ve always voted with the Democrats, this time reluctantly. Humphrey would have pulled us out even quicker, I think. The big boys see the big picture. So we lose. In the big picture it doesn’t matter. When it comes to geopolitical balance, just the fact we’ve fought the war is enough. For the United States it’ll all be fine in the end. But I’m not fighting for the United States. I’m fighting for Lucky and Hao and folks like your cook and your housekeeper. I’m fighting for the freedom of real individuals here on this ground in Vietnam, and I hate to lose. It breaks my heart, Skip.”

“You think we’ll actually lose? Is that what you think, ultimately?”

“Ultimately?” His uncle seemed surprised by the word. “Ultimately I think … we’ll be forgiven. I believe we’ll wander in the darkness for a good long time, and some of what we do here will never be made right, but we will be forgiven. What about you? What do you think, Skip?”

“Uncle, we’re in a mess. A mess.”

“Half the Agency stayed out of this war. I as much as offered you Taipei, Skip. I could have made it happen.”

“I don’t mean the American effort here. I mean us, we, you, me, these other guys. We’re in trouble with our own outfit.”

“Really? That’s fine. I’ve never felt any loyalty to organizations, Skip. Just to my comrades-in-arms. You fight for that guy on your right and that guy on your left. It’s a cliché, but clichés are mostly true.”

“I feel that too.” “Do you?” “I mean about who you fight for. I truly do.” “Will … what were you doing in Saigon?” ‘Tes,” Skip said, “that’s what I was telling you.” “No, you weren’t.” “I mean I started to.” “Then finish, okay?” ‘Tes. Rick Voss sent a note out in the mail packet. He wanted to see

me. I thought I’d better go. So …” He wished he hadn’t added, like a schoolboy, the last dangling word.

The colonel made as if to get up but instead remained there, caught in his own tides, rubbing at his face with his fingers. “I had dinner with Pitchfork the other night. I don’t think we passed two words of conversation. Just sat there on the terrace of the Yacht Club letting the river go by. Didn’t talk. Didn’t have to …

“One day in the camp, in Burma, in Forty Kilo, there in Burma, when I was down with a fever and it was assumed I would die, he gave me an egg. Boiled it and peeled it and fed it to me bit by bit. One of the finest things anybody’s ever done for me. An act of profound generosity. But he doesn’t remember it. Thinks it must have been somebody else. But it was him. I remember who it was. Anders Pitchfork gave me an egg.

“To outlive those terrors together and then just to sit and share a meal at a place like the Yacht Club, to share a bit of comfort—you have no idea. It’s better than when my little daughter, little four-year-old Annie, would reach up with her little hand and—walking along holding my little girl’s hand, Will, and I’d look down and see her looking up at me. The love among comrades is that intense.

“And all I can say is, Fuck Rick Voss. Fuck Voss for what he’s done. I can’t do anything else. I can’t show him even a hint of what he’s missed. He’ll never know. All I can do is say, Voss: Fuck you.”

Sands waited to be sure he was finished. “Colonel, you and I are friends.” The colonel said, “Yes, Skip, you and I are friends.” “We’re together in this.” The colonel lifted his coffee cup and held it in both hands. “You told

Voss everything, right?” “I did?” “Didn’t you?” “We had lunch.” “What did he ask about?” “I think he was curious about where I’ve been, but I didn’t give him a

chance to ask. I’m too confused, to tell you the truth.” “And did you leave him to enjoy a similar state of confusion?” ‘Tes, sir, I’m pretty sure I did. There was another guy, Crodelle.” “I don’t know him. Crodelle?” “RSC.” “Who else?” “Nobody else was there. We had lunch. But I saw the German.” “What German?” “The guy from San Marcos. And Mindanao.” “The so-called attaché? From the BND?” “Wherever he’s from, he’s in Saigon now.” “Then something’s up. All the more reason to get Trung out of here.

The German was with Voss?” “No. I saw him earlier, before the lunch.” “The German.” “Right. He was alone. He may have nothing to do with us.” “If he’s not with us, he’s against us.” He looked hard at Skip. “Let’s

just assume that about everybody.” “I haven’t given anything away.” “What were you doing with Voss?” “We had lunch, lunch, lunch, that’s all.” “This man Crodelle. What did he want?” “He’s after your head. All our heads.” “And they let you go?” ‘Tes, sir.” The colonel got up decisively as if in need of something but only stood by the window looking out at the yard, his knees locked, stringy calves outlined against the back of his slacks, big belly jutting forward, both hands way back on his hips, on his rump, nearly on his spine. An old man’s pose. Hard, sharp breaths. Suffocating with great emotion.

Skip said, “I sort of felt a certain sympathy on Voss’s part.”

“No, you didn’t. Don’t be fooled. With all respect to Rick Voss’s mother and with hope for the fate of his soul, that man is a goddamned son of a bitch.”

He sat down again on the divan and hiked the cuffs of his slacks. Brushed invisible crumbs from the fabric over his thighs. “Skip, listen to me. There’s no traveling side by side in the narrow places. In the narrow places you climb alone. It has to be enough to believe there’s somebody behind you.”

“I’m right behind you.” “No. I think you’ve already started the process of saving your own ass.

Go ahead and finish. Save yourself.” “Uncle …” “I think I’ll head back to the States. I was called back weeks ago.” “I know. Crodelle told me.” “I’ll do my best to keep you out of it.” “Uncle, stay here.” “I’ve put my hand to the plow. No turning back.” “I mean here, right here, the villa. They don’t know about this place.” “If they know anything, they know about this place—because you

told them.” “They never asked me. They only talked about Cao Phuc. As if they thought I was based there.” So you say. “They don’t know about Cao Quyen at all. Nothing. Whoever

snitched us, he hasn’t told them.” “Skip, I think it was you.” “Uncle, no, no, no.” “Then who? Not Storm.” “I wouldn’t think so. But I don’t know.” “No. He wouldn’t feel the pressure. He’s a monkey. That’s what we

like about him.” “Hao?”

“Hao’s a good man. And Trung’s his friend. Never happen.”

“What about Minh?”

“Lucky? He doesn’t seem positioned to be pressured either. And I’ve known him since he was a pup.” “Then why do you accuse me? You’ve known me all my life. My father was your brother.” “I can’t explain it, Skip. There’s just something about you. You have no loyalty at all.”

“Uncle. Colonel… I didn’t betray you.”

“Am I just a fool?”

“Uncle,” Skip said, “I love you. I would never do such a thing. I do love you, Uncle.”

“That may be right. That may just be right. But love and loyalty are two different things.” He gazed at Skip with a terrifying need in his eyes. “What do I think ultimately, finally? I think a young man finds his fortune in war. And I’m goddamn glad you made it, Will.” He sat back comfortably and sighed. “Talk to my ass: my head aches.”

Sands’s duties—though he had none—prevented him from attending the colonel’s memorial services, neither the one for the family two weeks later in Boston nor the military one the following month in Bethesda, Maryland. The colonel had been stabbed to death in Da Nang by a prostitute—the colonel’s throat had been cut by the brother of his Vietnamese mistress on the Mekong Delta—the colonel had suffered tortures unto death or been assassinated by enemy agents—so the story of his passing evolved through a series of reports into something not unrespectable.

When Sands learned of it he was out behind the villa watching three young boys harry a water buffalo from its rest in a mudhole across the creek. One kicked at its rump with the heel of his bare foot while the other two stung its spine with small switches. The ox, or the indications of it, its nostrils, its rack of horn, the bony hips and the peaks of several vertebrae, made no move. A woman, their mother, someone in authority, appeared from the blossoming bougainvillea above them and tempted the beast with a swatch of greens, and like some geologic fact it developed massively out of the ooze. Sands had heard a vehicle’s engine, and slamming doors. He realized it after the fact. Going toward the house he met Hao and Minh coming out to find him. Hao clutched several items of mail. Something in the way Minh held himself back, some mournful acknowledgment of a need for privacy between his elder and the man of the house—and Skip asked, “What is it?”

“Mr. Skip, maybe it will tell you that the colonel is dead.” “Dead?” “It’s bad stuff. We heard it from Mr. Sergeant. He passed me a letter

for you.”

Without any power of speech Skip led them to the dining room and the three sat down at the table. One of the envelopes came minus a stamp. He cut it open with the blade of his Boy Scout pocketknife.

Skip-Some boys from the Top Three Floors dug me out of a hole to ask questions. Looks like the worst kind of news. They say the colonel’s gone. He didn’t make the mission.

Somebody put his lights out but they don’t know who. So they say.

That’s all I’ve got. I’ll get more. As soon as we find out who and what I’ll pass you the word and I swear to Fuck I will get dirty as hell. I will drink the motherfucker’s blood.

BS Storm

“I don’t believe it. I cant believe it.” But he believed. “Mr. Jimmy said it.” He sought for words and heard himself say, “Mrs. Diu is making lunch.” Neither Hao nor Minh replied. “Where’s Trung?” Hao said, “He’s on the Mekong. We took him.” “Does he know about this?” “Not yet. Minh will go there.” “I can give you some money for him.” “Just a little will be good.” “All right.” “Mrs. Diu is—have you eaten? I’ll tell her. Some soup. I’ll tell her.” In amazement at the power of tiny necessities to surmount such a

moment, he ordered that soup and rice be brought to the table. His guests ate slowly, and as quietly as possible, while Skip ignored his meal and opened the other two envelopes, which in fact contained three letters, and a poem:

Jan. 30,1969

Dear Skip,

Pastor Paul here, from the First Lutheran Church here in Clements. I hope I can call you “Skip” and I hope you don’t mind if I write you a few words about your wonderful mom. I’m sitting at my desk right now, and she used to visit me and sit in the chair right beside it. I can almost say she’s here right now, at least in spirit. I just came from her service. To discover how many people she’s touched, how many lives she’s enriched, in her very quiet and modest way, is truly inspiring.

I haven’t met you, but your mother was a woman very dear to us at the church. She wasn’t always a Sunday person, but she visited me once or twice a week at the office. She came in the afternoon just to say hi and chat, and often asked me about the sermon I was preparing for the next service. When the conversation turned to what I was thinking and what I was going to say, it generally meant I could expect to bring something more heartfelt to my congregation the following Sunday. She just naturally contributed in that kind of way. So although I call her not a Sunday person, she was present with us many Sundays in spirit. And her spirit abides.

In the last three months or so your mother was very spiritual. She seemed to have a spiritual turning. She seemed to sense something, it was almost as if her spirit sensed that her journey was turning for home. I hope I’m not forward to say this, or sort of “out of line,” as the kids say.

I’m enclosing this note with something she was about to mail you. I found this folded and ready to mail. The envelope wasn’t sealed, but it’s addressed to you, so I’m pasting on a stamp and sending it on. (I didn’t read it.)

Paul Conn iff, Pastor Clements First Lutheran Church (“Pastor Paul”)

Dear Son Skipper,

It’s Sunday today. I read a poem in the Kansas City Times Sunday section by a poet who died six years ago, and I never heard of him. I would clip it to send to you but I want to keep the printed version, so I’ll copy it out and you’ll have to read it in my handwriting.

I’ve written you three or four letters I had to throw away, because I thought they’d sound discouraging. I know you’re doing what you feel is best for your country. I hope so anyway. I hope you aren’t just stuck. People can get stuck in things and not find the right way to get themselves out. And there I go again. That’s enough of that.

I have two doctor appointments on Monday and Thursday next week. They love to give you tests. Nothing serious. But ever since the change-of-life I’ve had little problems. You get good medical attention there, don’t you? I’m sure they provide the best.

Okay, here’s the poem. It doesn’t rhyme, and to get the feeling of it you have to read it several times over and over. I warn you it’s kind of sad.

THE WIDOW’S LAMENT IN SPRINGTIME

by: William Carlos Williams (1883–1963)

Sorrow is my own yard

where the new grass

flames as it has flamed

often before but not

with the cold fire

that closes round me this year.

Thirtyfive years

I lived with my husband

The plumtree is white today

with masses of flowers.

Masses of flowers

load the cherry branches

and color some bushes

yellow and some red

but the grief in my heart is stronger than they for though they were my joy formerly, today I notice them and turn away forgetting. Today my son told me that in the meadows, at the edge of the heavy woods in the distance, he saw trees of white flowers. I feel that I would like to go there and fall into those flowers and sink into the marsh near them.

I warned you! It’s very sad! So I won’t send it. I read it and I sat by the window with my hands in my lap. I cried so hard the tears fell on my hands, right down on my hands.

And I thought, well, that is a poem. A poem doesn’t have to rhyme. It just has to remind you of things and wring them out of you. Thinking of you, Mom

Dear Skip,

I guess you’ve heard the worldly life drags down the spiritual life. That’s what everybody tells us. What they don’t seem to realize is that it works the other way round, and that the spiritual life ruins the worldly life. It gives every pleasure a bad aftertaste. The only thing that feels right is the pursuit of God, although that doesn’t always feel pleasant, or even natural.

So one minute I want to be a natural woman, and ten seconds after I’ve been one, behaved like one, I want to run away to God. Whom I don’t like that much. I like you better.

But I have to seek God’s will. God’s will for me is whatever’s in front of my feet to do. Romance isn’t part of it. Running off for an affair. Running off to Cao Quyen—

Do you get the message? Maybe you do. Maybe you don’t.

I could say more but I’d just be repeating myself in different words. Kathy

P.S.: I flipped a coin and I’m addressing this note to the name William Sands. Maybe you’ll get it and maybe you won’t.

He examined the envelope. The letter had come through the American

post office in San Francisco. Goodbye to the women in his life. And so much else. “Are you sure the colonel’s gone? Dead?” he asked Minh. ‘Tes. If he was living, I can still feel him.” Minh set down his chop

sticks and touched his breast gently to indicate where. “I know what you mean.” “Colonel is dead. My heart can feel it.” ‘Tes. Definitely. I feel it too.” Skip turned his eyes anywhere, to the tiles of the floor, the walls, the

cobwebbed vents in the eaves, seeking a clue as to the character of coming days.

Everything he looked at was suddenly and inexplicably smothered by a particular, irrelevant memory, a moment he’d experienced many years ago, driving with fellow undergraduates from Louisville to Bloomington after a weekend holiday, his hands on the wheel, three in the morning, headlights opening up fifty yards of amber silence in the darkness. The heater blowing, the boozy odor of young men in a closed car. His friends had slept and he’d driven the car while music came over the radio, and the star-spangled American night, absolutely infinite, surrounded the world.

O n the morning of March 17, a day before his Aunt Giang’s birthday, Viet Nam Air Force Captain Nguyen Minh sat with a bowl of noodles at one of the many tables under the awning at the big bus station in the Cho Lon neighborhood of Saigon. He was hungry. They were delicious. He shoveled them at his face with the chopsticks and sucked them down, wiping his chin with a white handkerchief after each mouthful.

The steaming pots of rice and shrimp, all these buses, all this diesel smoke, the horns were driving him crazy … Perhaps he felt the tiniest bit more sensitive because he didn’t like going home.

Two U.S. noncoms sorted out the Vietnamese infantrymen patrolling the Cho Lon bus station. They’d doubled the patrols since last May’s Communist offensive, coming just five months after the big Tet push. The two sergeants gathered with the patrol commander and went down on their haunches to converse. Minh’s people squatted on flat feet, their arms around their knees.

Now the colonel was dead over a month. Minh hadn’t seen him much during the past year, but the colonel had remained, for him, a great fact. Without the fact of the colonel looming between his sight and these Americans, they stood up clearly as empty, confused, sincere, stupid —infant monsters carrying loaded weapons. The idea that they fought on anyone’s side was foolish.

On the bus he chose a window seat and opened the glass a bit and buttoned his shirt at the neck. The vehicle left the city on Highway Seven, a good road, American-built, past donkey carts, cyclos, small three-wheeled vans, past paddies where buffalo dragged furrows in the mud with single-blade plows and where herons and egrets jutted from the shoots of nearby sections already planted, past women selling petrol in glass jars, past stone ovens in which kindling smoked, turning to charcoal for the kind of cooking his aunts and cousins even now probably labored at in preparation for Aunt Giang’s birthday feast. His Uncle Hao wanted him to settle the question of ownership and rental of the house there, a matter that had lain for years, but now his uncle was suddenly anxious that it be finished with. And he had to speak with the man Trung, send him to Saigon.

And why ride a bus?—His uncle still had use of the black American Chevrolet, they could have driven together in the car. Because his uncle was a coward whom Uncle Huy would chop up with his teeth. Hao had avoided his brother-in-law on the last trip. Dropped off the man Trung, settled him in a room above a café, and a month now Trung had languished there a stranger, if he hadn’t run off.

Minh disembarked at the roadside and bought a roll and a cup of tea in a store whose proprietress remembered him and asked about his family and said the water taxis were running again these days, but not many.

The ville lay two miles down the brown river. He walked. After the city, things smelled different here. The reeking water. The smoke from the burn piles of deadfall and trash had the odor of legend, the chicken droppings, even. Everything carried him off—where? To here. But not to this moment. Here he had fished from the back of a buffalo while beside him Brother Thu had held the string of a kite surging in the winds above … even then their lines plumbing opposite depths. One to high school and the air force, one to the monks.

He saw little traffic on the water. An old woman with an old woman’s mashed-in face poled past in a skiff keeping to the shallows, every push of the pole threatening to steal her last breath.

Minh walked under a gray sky, sorrow biting at his throat. He stepped into a banana grove and tore off three of the fruits and ate, tossing the peels in the water as he and Thu had done in a better world.

He imagined his brother burning—he often did—Thu’s body in the flame, dreadful pain outside, going up his nostrils and in. And then as a monkey holds two branches for an instant, lets go of the first and clings to the new one, he was no longer the body, but the fire.

Lap Vung was more than just a ville. An extensive pier, a market, several shops, everything the same, all of it.

He found Trung Than taking his lunch at the cafe’ s only table. The daughter of the proprietor sat across from her guest without food herself, staring at him, her face empty.

“Hello.”

“Hello.”

“Is your room all right?”

“Come and see.”

They went out and up the stairs at the side. At the landing overlooking the back, Trung said, “The room is small. Let’s talk here.” “Good.” “I shouldn’t stay here any longer. There’s VC activity here. By now

the cadres must have been told about a single male making a vague agri

cultural study.”

“Hao wants to see you.”

“He’s here?”

“In Saigon. He’ll meet you there tomorrow.”

“Will I travel with you?” “No. Tomorrow morning go to the highway and take the earliest bus to Cho Lon. Hao will meet you at the depot.”

“As long as I leave here. That girl wants to marry me. Every day she serves me lunch and asks what I studied out in the countryside. It’s a crazy lie. Too vague. I stay up all night reading, and in the morning I dress, take breakfast, and go out to sleep in the fields till noon.”

“Are you afraid?” “I’m thinking of the mission.” Minh believed him. “Mr. Than, the colonel has died.” Trung said, “Would you like a cigarette?” “Thank you.” They smoked for a minute while Trung deliberated and at last said,

“He was your friend. It’s sad for you.” “It’s sad for me, and it means your operation won’t be completed.” “Something else. Another operation.” “Hao will take care of you.” “What is the plan you have in mind for me?” “My Uncle Hao has arranged a meeting. Hao has instructed me.” “Do these instructions come from the other American?” “Skip Sands? No.” Trung was silent. “What’s the trouble?” Trung tossed away his cigarette and composed his face and ignored

the question, but Minh knew the trouble. Trung had settled his mind, marched across the bridge, and found the colonel dead on the other side.

“Mr. Than, I believe my uncle has several American contacts. I know your friendship is strong. Hao will look out for you. Hao will take care of you.” He knew he shouldn’t be talking like this, but the man’s strength aroused pity.

Minh left the double to his fate and took the path along the old canal. Ahead of him an old man jerked a water buffalo along by its nose ring, and Minh followed, the animal lurching in a jungle rhythm, full of fellow suffering. The same thick smoke from the trash piles, the same thatched houses, and then his uncle’s home with its orange clay shingles tarnished with mildew, the low gate left open, the meter of cinderblock topped by green ironwork, pointed fleurs-de-lis topping the rusty bars — rustier now—the waist-high chain-link dividing this household from the neighbors’ on either side, the front garden with its small wooden shrine and a dozen or so ornamental Bong Mai trees, said to bring good luck, but they hadn’t, and the same pillared front porch of shiny tile a shade of gray-violet he still found very soothing.

As he came through the gate three children ran from him as if he had a gun. He slipped his feet from his shoes and removed his socks and placed them by the entrance before walking through the house.

Two girls, cousins he didn’t recognize, worked at washing clothes in a cauldron over a fire out back. Aunt Giang was cooking in the kitchen shed. The children’s yelling brought her to see, and she came across the yard wiping her hands on her shift and took his wrists in a strong grip.

“I told you I’d come.”

“No, you didn’t tell me!”

“I wrote you a letter.”

“That was a long time ago! I believe you now.”

“I kept my promise.”

“I’ll wake your uncle.”

His aunt led him into the parlor and left him. The same shrine in its sky-blue box atop the same black lacquerware chiffonier, taller than he by a couple of feet. Mirrors painted with geometric designs spangled the shrine’s inner surfaces. Beside it the same huge candelabra, bowls of fruit, long sticks of incense in a brass burner shaped like a lion, an array of small votive candles, and a small Bong Mai tree growing in a vase, perhaps the same Bong Mai from his childhood, he couldn’t be sure.

His uncle came from the good bedroom, the one inside the house itself, looking sleepy and harmless, skinny and brown, hardly changed at all, buckling the belt of his long pants and buttoning his dress shirt and saying nothing. Aunt Giang followed, patting her husband nervously on the head. A small head, a round face, his features rushing toward its middle. As ever, he maintained a blank expression.

They all three sat on the tiled floor barefoot, drinking tea and eating candy from a big golden plastic bowl modeled after a king’s fairy-tale crown. Aunt Giang asked him about his love life and his prospects for marriage, about the air force, about the great General Phan, and never about her brother Hao. Uncle Huy hardly spoke. Minh saw no need to mention the house, the unpaid rental. After so many years away, he could only be back because Hao had dispatched him here on business.

After half an hour Uncle Huy said, “What about the food?”

“I’m going,” his wife said, and they all three got up from the floor.

Uncle took him around by the paths and introduced his nephew proudly to people Minh had known since childhood. Everyone asked why he wasn’t in uniform today, the anniversary of his aunt’s birth. At the home of Huy’s youngest brother the women left them alone while several male relations gathered to greet the returning pilot. This brother, Tuan, though called Minh’s uncle, was not Minh’s blood. Tuan seemed to have changed. Nothing about him was right. Maybe he’d suffered a stroke. On his right side he looked melted—eyelid, shoulder, his right leg seemed to cave at the knee. His left eye seemed propped wide open. Maybe he’d been wounded. The VC, according to the Americans, operated all over the Mekong ever since the Tet push, though Minh wasn’t so sure. Perhaps his Uncle Tuan was VC. Minh didn’t mention his disability. No one did. The men smoked cigarettes and drank tea from demitasse cups. When one of the men asked Minh about his aunt and uncle in Saigon, Uncle Huy interrupted Minh’s polite description of their happiness: “He rents me a house without land. I have to rent land from old Sang. Sang gets forty percent of my crop. And Hao thinks he suffers.”

They went back to the house, and Minh lay down for a nap in the bed of his childhood.

He woke up confused. Somewhere a descendant of the roosters of his childhood yodeled like a strangled infant, and for a second he thought it was dawn. The voices of children laughed and called. The family had arrived—it must be late afternoon. The room, tin-roofed, of rough boards, was more window than wall, and he swept the bed net aside and sat up to see, meters away, the monuments covering two of his great-uncles. In this bed he’d slept with his little brother. The sheets smelled new and clean but they covered the same bedding and its musty tang of old perspiration and feathers, and overhead was the same baking galvanize under which he and Thu had come to live when their mother had died, in the family that wasn’t their family. To be outsiders had made them close as only children are close, without any sense that time could shake them loose from one another.

At 5:00 p.m. Minh’s Uncle Huy called the family together in the front room.

They waited while he lit candles at the shrine out front of the house, moving among his avocados and kumquats, past the neighbors’ pants and blouses and T-shirts drying on colorful plastic coat hangers on the chain-link fence. He offered his obeisance, came into the front room greeting no one, and went through the house to stand out back before the grave monuments, and afterward came back in and placed two pillows on the floor at the head of the parlor. He crossed his legs and lowered himself to sit straight-backed before them all. The others, the children, the aunts, the cousins, the family of which he was the head, sat against the walls, the littlest ones just beyond the bounds of the room, circling the two porch pillars with their backs against them, like prisoners tied to trees. The family listened without a word. It was Minh whom he addressed. “My sister and my sister’s husband have always been unfair to this family,” he said. “You, also, are unfair to this family. Your father went to high school while I plowed and harvested. When he died they called it a sickness that he got from visiting the mountains, but I believe it was a direct blow from the spirit of our father, who died of his labors rather than give up the rice paddies where his son, my brother, your father, should have worked instead of going to high school. My sister married your Uncle Hao, a businessman, in order to give her sons a life in the city and an education in the schools and make them ready to prosper. Her husband, Hao, had no use for this house. His father left it to him. My sister’s husband, Hao, never lived here. He visited as a child, and then he stopped coming when his grandparents died. Then this house was empty. Then Hao’s father died. My sister’s husband, Hao, is the last of that family. He had no sons to prosper after him. He has no family anymore. He calls us family, but treats us like horses and buffalo. The people you see here in this room looked after this house for my sister’s husband, Hao. This house would have crumbled and washed away in the monsoons, the vines would have broken the walls, nothing would be standing now if not for our labors every day. Do you see the pads on my hands? Do you see my wife’s crooked back? Did you see my wife brushing the dust from the walls this morning after she walked to the paddies and back? Did you see her cooking you a wonderful meal to share with all of us? Do you see the table laid out? Can you smell the delicious soup? Look at the chicken, the dog, the fruit, and smell the steam from the rice—do you see the sweat on her face from the steam? Everyone you see in this room works every day like that so the rest of you can live in the city. We do not pay rent. That is our arrangement with my sister’s husband, Hao. My sister’s husband told us our care for the house paid the rent. We’ve all worked more than we should have. Instead of working like horses and buffalo we should have paid rent and let the building fall to pieces around us. I am planning to set fire to this building. I will burn this building down. This man Hao sends you to tell me I have to buy my own house, and you come without any honor or love for your family to give me his message. This is a time of wars. We have nothing to count on but our family. You are a person without love, without honor, the son of a thief who robbed me of my chance at education and the lackey of a thief who robs this family of our home. Everyone here will die when I burn this building that is not a home because he steals it. Your aunt made you a wonderful meal. Eat a meal under this roof and then go back to the city and tell the man my sister married that he has no family except his wife because this building is ashes, and every one of us is dead.”

His uncle uncrossed his ankles and rose to his feet, his hands folded before him.

Minh said, “Thank you, Uncle.”

Uncle Huy clapped his hands together and proceeded to the table and picked up a china plate from the stack. The others followed him in silence, filling their plates or bowls from the massed fruit, the steaming rice and the soup, the shreds of dog and chicken.

Some of the children were too small to have understood the speech. They ate fast, left their bowls on the floor, ran in and out of the yard laughing, returned for more food. Older children began to play too. The adults talked of other things, first out of graciousness and embarrassment, then with true interest, finally with a certain enthusiasm. The young women sang songs. His uncle suggested to Minh that perhaps he could tell Hao the house and it occupants had been destroyed by an American bomb. Minh thanked him once more.

When he woke the next morning, his uncle had already gone to the paddies. Minh had coffee with his aunt and some cousins, one by one embraced them all, and set out along the path beside the canal toward the road to the city, where he’d have to explain to his Uncle Hao that getting money out of Uncle Huy looked like more trouble than it was worth.

Ski p on his knees at an open footlocker, lifting out the troughs of card files—a musk of paper and glue, slight nausea, anger, those many months with these odors in his mouth, all of it a waste—and found the Ts and flicked through the cards by their edges and plucked out three entries in his uncle’s block printing:

ToS

A pillar of smoke stood above the Ark like a cedar tree. It brought such a beautiful perfume to the world that the nations exclaimed, “Who is this that cometh out of the wilderness like a tree of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, with all the powders of the perfumer?” Song of Solomon 3:6

ToS

And I will give portents in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and palm trees of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. Joel 2:30,31

ToS

“cloudy pillar”—Exodus 33:9, 10. literal—”tree of smoke.”

Six weeks now in the Villa Bouquet since the colonel’s death, a state of disarray and pointless aftermath, a newflavor to his imprisonment. Hao came once a week with magazines and cards of sympathy for the death of Beatrice Sands. No movement from RSC, or whoever Crodelle worked for, as to the question of Skip’s participation in a doubtful scheme. Surely with the principal schemer dead and gone, some sort of pardon approached. He waited for Hao to bring a summons. No word from anyone in power.

Sands thought it fitting, in the meantime, that he compile notes for some sort of biography for the Agency’s Studies in Intelligence organ, something more extensive, more deeply illuminating of Colonel Francis Xavier Sands than the single-paragraph death notice in Newsweek’s “Milestones” ten days ago. He sat at the desk in the upper room occupied lately by the colonel’s double agent Trung and opened a notebook to a blank, lined page. What did he know that Newsweek didn’t? Bits from here and there. His Aunt Grace, who’d married into the family, said they were Shaughnesseys out of the County Limerick, and why his great-grandfather Charles Shaughnessey had elected himself a Sands, and whether, actually, he’d even been a Charles, had never come to light. Charles had arrived in Boston on an American ship, because everyone did, Aunt Grace had explained, because planes, she informed young Skip, weren’t invented then; maybe the new immigrant had come ashore with the crew and presented himself as an American citizen, borrowing the name of the captain. He’d worked on the docks, married as soon as he could, fathered two children, a girl and a boy, and died in his thirties having seen no more of the country than Boston Harbor. Fergus, his son, Skip’s granddad, had worked harder than Charles, made more children—Raymond, Francis, and William, and then two girls, Molly and Louise—and lived longer, into his fifties. The three boys had all attended the St. Mary’s grade school, and here the family’s history, as Grace retailed it, had become mainly the history of Francis, the middle brother. Francis had been expelled for unnamable mischief and banished for a couple of years to a public school also unnamable, then returned for high school to St. Mary’s, where he played line positions on the football team, behaved honestly, studied hard, and gained admission to Notre Dame. By his plunge and redemption Francis had rendered himself a bold figure, the one to watch, the one to follow, the one who fell on his face and got up and headed for Notre Dame.

The colonel’s own reminiscences weren’t histories, but merely anecdotes. They didn’t constitute a biography. He’d entered Notre Dame, if Skip remembered correctly, in 1930 or ‘31. Again good grades, a freshman tackle for Notre Dame during Knute Rockne’s final year as its football coach. Of Rockne he hadn’t told much, and Skip had gathered the famous coach had paid no attention to the freshman squad. Francis had moved to the first squad halfway through his sophomore year. He’d graduated high in his class, having done nothing, up to this point, to distinguish himself from any number of strong, earnest young men, save in his education, which placed him beyond the obvious choices of his lowermiddle-class Boston origins —the docks, the police force—but which he seemed to shed with his graduation gown, striking out after adventures.

Whatever Francis had met with to make him a madman and a hero had found him sometime, Skip concluded, between 1935 and 1937, a period of biographical darkness. Apparently he headed west. Skip had heard mention of freight cars and hobo camps, mention of a rodeo, a Denver whorehouse, a prison term, a brief mysterious marriage —most of this from Skip’s mother Beatrice, none of it from the colonel himself. More than once, however, the colonel had alluded to experiences with aircraft—engine work for barnstormers and crop dusters, work around airfields and hangars, nothing he seemed to think worth elaborating on—and to some association with Chinese laborers in San Francisco during this same period, when Japan was making war on their homeland. Whether some person among the fliers or some event involving the Chinese had caught him by the head and pointed him toward the rest of his life Skip simply didn’t know; at the end of 1937, however, young Francis, now about twenty-six years old, had returned to Boston, found work at the docks, and enrolled at the City College for night courses designed to assist in passing the army air force’s aviation cadet exam. He entered the army, trained in Tennessee on Stearman biplanes and in Mississippi and later Florida on low-wing Vultee Valiants, and by 1939, with a rank of captain, was flying P-40 Warhawk fighters and training, when he might have slept, for larger aircraft, including bombers.

In 1938 he married Bridghed McCarthy, a childhood friend. By 1940 he had a daughter, Anne, and a son was on the way—Francis Junior, who drowned in the summer of 1953 while sailing in a race from Boston Harbor to Nantucket. Not once had Skip heard his uncle mention the tragedy.

Early in 1941 Captain Sands resigned from the military under an arrangement among the Chinese, the U.S. government, and the paramilitary Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company to fly, along with nearly a hundred other American pilots, as a mercenary for the Republic of China Air Force in Claire Chennault’s American Volunteer Group, known as the Flying Tigers, with a mission to protect the Burma Road supplying Chinese troops. Each American volunteer was promised eventual reentry into the military at his former rank and paid $600 a month in salary and $500 for each Japanese plane he shot down. Here the captain flew his P-40 on over a hundred missions, and earned his share of the bounty. However, in December 1941—days after the death of his own brother at Pearl Harbor—having offered to replace a comrade down with malaria as pilot of a modified DC-3 on a parachute run of British commandos, among them Anders Pitchfork, the captain had been surprised on the return trip by fire from a rare Japanese antiaircraft battery and had crashed in the paddies, but not, he claimed, until the second wing had been shot off. Despite help from the locals, he’d been captured by the Japanese and forced—along with Pitchfork, also captured, and sixty-one thousand other prisoners —into labor on the Siam-Burma railroad: sickness, beatings, torture, starvation. Once he’d been given an egg. Inexplicably placed on a ship out of Bangkok for transfer, perhaps to Luzon, possibly to Japan itself, the captain had escaped overboard off the coast of Mindanao by a terrible ruse. A fellow prisoner had gone mad during their confinement in a nearly airless hold belowdecks, and their captors had promised to shut the hatch and suffocate them all if his cries didn’t cease. Captain Sands, chosen among them by lot, had strangled the man to death. Escape was forbidden; those left behind would be punished; but the captain, having soiled his soul in aid of the others, demanded the right to make an attempt by having himself handed up through the hatch along with his victim’s corpse. If the Japanese threw him overboard for dead, as he hoped, his escape would go undetected. The ruse worked. Though weakened by a year’s mistreatment and hard labor he swam for miles, subsisted for weeks in the jungle, and lived for two years in a series of island villages in the Sulu Sea before managing to get space on a freighter that took him to Australia. Immediately he rejoined the U.S. Army Air Corps and returned to Burma for secret aerial missions, often with British commando units. He earned impressive citations, rose rapidly in rank, and came out of the war a colonel, the colonel, the iron figure that had broken the hammers.

The colonel viewed violence as inevitably human and warriors as peculiarly blessed. The peacetime military must have galled him. Not long after the war the promotions stopped. Another dark patch. For a career officer an end to steady advancement was a bad sign, tantamount to firing. The specific cause of his trouble with the military—the transgression or infraction, the misstep—never found its way into his record, but the general why of it was plain enough. The colonel knew how to lead, but he couldn’t follow.

As Skip understood it, the colonel had applied to the CIA as soon as Truman had formed it in 1947, but was passed over for several years, during which he’d served on many southern air force bases, an interim that had warped his Boston accent into something unique and hardened his drinking habits. The Agency took him on in the early fifties, a latecomer among that first generation, an outsider without any OSS background but with loads of experience in Southeast Asia, over which Red China was rising. On to the Philippines, Laos, Vietnam, and, sometimes, at the beginning, in Malaya with Anders Pitchfork and the Malay Scouts, just for fun—always in a quasi-military role, generally outside the scrutiny of Langley, focused as it was on Eastern Europe and the Soviets.

On Luzon he’d worked extensively with Edward G. Lansdale combating the Communist threat there, the Hukbalahap guerrillas. The prison camps had shaped his character: belief in himself, learning on the run, fighting without thought of surrender, the stuff of heroes. Lansdale had shaped his methods: trust the locals, learn their songs and stories, fight for their hearts and minds. Curiously, perhaps mysteriously, the colonel seemed to have had no contact with General Lansdale while in Vietnam.

Vietnam had been the colonel’s apex, and his undoing. Left to himself there he might have won the campaign single-handedly, but now the Asian threat was taken seriously, Langley paid attention, Congress took a hand. He was vocally bitter that the promised elections were canceled, the promised reunification postponed. As the U.S. Army arrived in stronger force, it found the colonel waiting. The Green Berets hadn’t succumbed to him—too broad in his focus, maybe, the sources of his authority too hazy. He made himself indispensable to certain helicopter assault groups, then, in 1965, to the Twenty-fifth Infantry. The King of Cao Phuc. Psy Ops. Labyrinth. And the Tree of Smoke.

More than anything else, the colonel’s time with Lansdale in the Philippines had determined his vision. Won over by the power of myth, he became one himself, somewhat in life but especially in his death. According to Nguyen Minh, the young pilot the colonel had called Lucky, the colonel kept a wife in or near Binh Dai, a ville on the Mekong Delta. After the colonel’s capture and death at the hands of the Vietcong, his body had been returned to the ville either as an example to others or in honor of the manner in which he’d withstood his final torments— delivered to his widow with its digits, eyes, and tongue torn away and all its bones broken. The people of this ville, which had once been a Catholic parish, buried the corpse in the earth of the chapel yard—the chapel itself had been mainly bamboo and nothing by then remained of it—in a casket of thick rough-cut mahogany sealed with tar. Immediately afterward, before the concrete slab could be poured to anchor it, the rains came, days on end, very rare this time of year. Under the downpours, with no roots to hold it together, the freshly churned red earth of the burial pit turned sufficiently liquid that three weeks after it was hidden in the ground the coffin heaved to the surface, and Colonel Sands came back from the underworld. The villagers pried the lid and found a beautiful black-haired American pilot with his fingers and toes intact, a naked young Colonel Francis unblemished, unmolested. They surrounded him with stones, pierced his vessel with holes to let the water in, and sank him again in his grave. Still it couldn’t hold him. More rain, the canal nearby had climbed its banks and delved away the barren churchyard and scooped up the colonel in his casket. It was witnessed on its way down the Hau River; they saw the coffin in An Hao, Cao Quan, Ca Goi, heading out the Dinh An mouth into the South China Sea.

Jimmy Storm, immediately as he’d heard the rumor, had traveled to this ville. He’d found a woman who seemed to have been the wife of an American, and the villagers escorted him to this American’s grave site. It lay apparently undisturbed. But as for who rested there, how long, and all the rest of it—Storm had gone alone, none of them spoke English, their French was bad, his French was worse—he left knowing nothing. And Skip had this account through veils upon veils, through Hao, from Minh, who’d directed Storm to the village with the grave.

Skip, however, had word from Aunt Grace, as well as the assurance of Newsweek, that the colonel had been buried in Massachusetts—without military honors, in accordance with his wife’s wishes. Skip preferred the myth. It told the truth. In this world his uncle had stood out grandly, even more so set against the landscape of his own imaginings. Skip regretted the role handed him at the end, that of traitor to the rebellion. At the end the colonel had sought reasons not just for an operation gone wrong, but for the breaking of his own heart, had looked for betrayal at the very center of things in the shape of some classical enormity, and what could have been more enormous, more darkly Roman, than betrayal by one’s own house, by his nephew, by his own blood? A soul too wide for the world. He’d refused to see his downfall as typical, refused all collaboration with the likes of Marcus Aurelius: “You may break your heart,” the old emperor had written, “but men will go on as before.” He’d written himself large-scale, followed raptly the saga of his own journey, chased his own myth down a maze of tunnels and into the fairyland of children’s stories and up a tree of smoke.

The summons came in a reusable interdepartmental envelope addressed to him care of Psy Ops, eight weeks after the colonel’s death. Lunch again, Voss again. Sands expected Crodelle too.

He asked Hao to leave him at the traffic circle near the river and walked several blocks to the Continental and entered perspiring heavily. In the lobby, Rick Voss sat in an elaborately carved and japanned chair. Unaccompanied.

Voss stood up and shook Skip’s hand with a certain weariness, as if he’d walked here himself over rivers and mountains. “I’m sorry about the colonel.”

“He was something.” “God, yes. And I’m sorry.” “So am I.” “We all are. Lately we are one sorry bunch.” It was only 11:00 a.m. Sands said, “Are you hungry yet?” “Let’s call this a prelunch. I wanted to get ahead of things here.” “Ahead of things? Why don’t I like the sound of that?” “I need to eat a little crow.” “No need. Should we sit down?” “Hang on. We’ve got about five minutes.” “Where are we going?” “Let me talk, will you?” “Sure. You bet.”

“Thanks. Thanks. Look,” Voss said, “here’s the speech. From the minute I heard the colonel was gone, I’ve been feeling like a royal piece of shit. Some folks think he was a swashbuckler, a Neanderthal. Not everybody shares that opinion of him. Some of the bunch think he was a pretty great man. I didn’t start out one of them, but that’s where I ended up. And this is an apology, for the little it’s worth. I was wrong to pass along that draft of his article. First of all, it wasn’t really his. I wrote ninety percent of it, and I didn’t mind making him look bad. And I think I passed it along just to curry favor with some people who didn’t like him, who I now believe to be absolute assholes. And I am fucking sorry, Skip.”

“Apology accepted.”

“Well, look,” Voss said, “here’s the problem. That article set the machinery in motion. So now he’s gone, so—let’s hope that’s enough, right? But the machinery has to do some chewing before this business winds down. Things just have to complete their run. Can’t cut it short. So you’re being called back to Langley.”

“Do I interpret that as an order?” “Correct. We’re sending you home.” “Okay. Will Station want to talk to me first?” “I suspect you’ll get a little going-over.” “I’m not really attached to Station. I’m Psy Ops.” “You’re in-country, that’s all. You’re in this theater of ops. They’ll

want everything before you give it to Langley.” “Who’s They?” “Terry Crodelle.” “Sounds like a party.” “He wants a polygraph.” “You bet. Whatever’s most helpful,” Skip said.

Skip guessed most of the equipment on the conference-sized table comprised the polygraph machine. A microphone on a stand faced him, beside it a large tape recorder. Skip watched the revolutions of its reels, one fast, one slow. Beside the tape recorder rested Crodelle’s green beret. Crodelle wore the battle dress uniform of the Special Forces, a captain’s bars on his collars.

“Well, this is, I think, is—I don’t know what it is.” “It’s what?”

“I said I don’t know.” “You said you had a thought.” “A thought?” “You said you thought you knew what it was.” “When did I say that?” Crodelle thumbed a lever on the tape recorder and found the place,

Skip’s voice saying Well this is I think is—”there.” “That’s just—I’m stuttering.” Captain Crodelle paused and stared a few seconds before saying,

“Good enough. Very good. Just checking.” He held down a button while depressing a lever and the reels began

again. “Are you actually Special Forces? Or is it a costume?” “It’s a uniform.” “Whose store is this?” “We’re with the RSC, more or less.” “I thought the RSC was Manila.” “It’s a temporary shop.” “And you’re a real live soldier.” “Come on.” “I did come on. I came. Fm here. The question is, where are you?” “Sometimes you’re behind the desk, sometimes you’re in the field—

but this stuff, this Tree of Smoke, it’s neither desk nor field. It’s some

where out in the jungles of romance and psychosis.” Crodelle stopped

the recorder and said, “Your shit is a mess,” and started it again. “It was just a hypothetical exercise. A scenario. Psychological warfare.” “Jousting with terms. You’re not going to help yourself.” “Captain, I’m not here to help myself. I’m here to help you.” “How are you covered here in Five Corps? What’s your name?” “I’m using my own documents.” “No cover.” “It’s just me, fellas.” “I want you to clarify a few terms for me from this article entitled —

well, no title. But clarify a few terms.” “By all means, to the extent I’m able. If it helps.” ” ‘Insulation’—that just means sticking your fingers in your ears when

somebody issues an order.”

“That’s a simplification, but that’s the gist of it.” “Basically cutting oneself out of the chain of command.” “Again, that’s simplifying.” “Without chain of command, what we get is feudalism. Now, of

course we speak figuratively of bureaucratic fiefdoms. But in this instance we believe the fiefdom to have been actual. We believe your uncle, the colonel, to have been the fief.”

Skip said, “I believe we’ve reached a linguistic impasse.” “I’m as much as suggesting renegade activity.” “I believe we’re staring into a linguistic abyss.” “The ‘mobilization-loss dichotomy.’ ” “The what?” “Mobilization hyphen loss.” “Oh! for goodness’ sake. ‘Move it or lose it.’ He says it all the time.

Said it, that is.” “Without chain of command what you get is warlordism. He was run

ning his own little agency.” “And the phrase ‘move it or lose it’ proves that?” “The article proves that he considered it his duty. He was running his

own operations branch—assassinations in Mindanao, for instance. And

his own private, personal double agent right here.” “Where?” “Here? You know—little place called South Vietnam?” “What double agent?” “Skip —I don’t mean you!” “Now you’re making me sick. Literally ill.” “We aren’t accusing you of treason.” “Then what? If there’s an accusation, tell me what it is. Don’t tell me

what it isn’t.” “We just want a name. If it’s the name we already have, then you’ll have verified it.” “Give me the name you have, and I’ll give you the verification if I

can. “Skip. You work—for us.” “Yes, I do. And proudly, but—” “Well then, Skip.” “You can understand my reluctance.”

“No, Skip, I can’t.”

“From where Fm sitting, the area you’re delving into, the parameters, if any—it all seems a little amorphous. I feel an obligation to get assurances from you we’re going to keep things… in the arena of relevance.”

“Assurances? What? Me no speakee.” “I don’t want to jeopardize overlapping interests, let’s say.” Crodelle again stopped the reels. “What interests?” “If any.” “What a load of shit.” “That’s just what Fm thinking.” “All right. Fuck.” Crodelle frowned, stared at the floor for a good

thirty seconds before raising his head again. “I’m willing to drop this line. Just assure me, you assure me, that no unauthorized operation is in process.”

“It was a hypothetical exercise. If it were actual, it would actually be

over. You have my assurance of that.” “It’s all over.” “As over as it would be if it never existed.” “All right. Let’s stop giving each other headaches.” Crodelle resumed

the recording. “As for this hypothetical exercise in psychological warfare code-named Tree of Smoke. In our last conversation, you and I talked about some files.”

“Files?” “Where are the colonel’s files?”

‘ “Files.” “The data apparatus for Tree of Smoke.” “Where are you getting all this?” “What a silly question.” “I don’t know about any files.” “What a silly answer.” “Describe what you mean. I’m here to help.” “What bullshit.” “I’d say the bullshit’s all yours.” “His three-by-five collection.” “Oh. Yeah. Those were archives. I don’t know where they got to.” “When did you last see the material?” “In the PI —I was cataloging some of it, then he took it away. Check

with the RSC up there. Maybe somebody knows. Check at Clark Field. That’s where I last saw the stuff.” “Voss saw those footlockers here. In Saigon. At the CIA bungalow right after you arrived.” “That can’t be true. Or it’s very doubtful. They were taken off my

hands at Clark.” “They were here.” “Then they were shipped here after they were taken off my hands.” “Skip. What kind of career path do you believe yourself to be follow

ing?”

“Kind of a corkscrew one. Pointing down. Can I tell you about the files? The files were archival in nature, very out of date, of no current interest. If I had them I’d have no reason to hide them, no motive. If I had them, I would turn them over to you immediately.”

“You know what I like about your style? We catch you lying and you

forge right ahead.” “Hook me up. I’ll pass.” “Oh, we’ll hook you up.” “I’ll pass. Get to it.” “And a UA.” Skip said nothing. “A urinalysis?” “Oh. That’s fine.” “Lot of narcotic use in Five Corps. Can’t tell who might be caught in

the snares.” “Bring me a jug and I’ll piss in it.” Crodelle stopped the recorder, stood up to lean over it and grip its

cord and pull the plug from the wall. The plug came flying at his face and he dodged it and hesitated, blinking, before he sat back down to say, “Skip, I don’t believe this. I’ve never seen anybody fuck himself so thoroughly and so completely. And for no good reason. What’s the point?”

“I don’t know, man, there’s just something about you that pisses me

off.” “You’re pretty good at this. I wish you were working for our side.” “I’m not going to touch that crap.” “Excellent. Let’s meet the machine. I’ll be back.” He went out, leav

ing Sands alone.

Within seconds Sands heard activity in the hall. Escorted by a black civilian, Nguyen Hao passed the open doorway. For ten minutes Sands sat alone at the conference table with his thoughts banging against nothing.

Crodelle came back with a middle-aged man, apparently civilian, and introduced him as Chambers, the technician. “Chambers has been doing this longer than any of us have been telling lies.”

“Is that true?” “Twenty-plus years,” Chambers said. “Fm down the hall if you need me,” Crodelle said, and went out

while Chambers sat next to Sands and peered beneath the table. When he sat up again he said, “YouVe been polygraphed before.” “Yes. One time. What’s under the table?” “Just making sure it’s unplugged.” “Oh.” “This is the dry run.” “Oh.” “So you’ve been polygraphed. Just the once?” ‘Tes. For clearance.” “All right, now, this exam. We’ll probably be taking you through the

same steps you went through when you were polygraphed originally for your security clearance. What we’re after is minimal exam-created stress. In other words, ha-ha, relax, buddy.”

“I’m relaxed.” “Sure you are. So, okay. Couple questions.” “Okay.” “Have you been schooled in methods for evading the truth while be

ing polygraphed?” “I’ve been told. Not schooled. I’ve just—it’s been mentioned.” “You haven’t been trained, using an actual machine.” “No. Never.” “After the session, you’ll be examined physically. We’ll check

your tongue for signs you’ve been biting it, palms for nail marks, and so on.”

“I’ve heard about those things, but I don’t remember when you’re supposed to use them. Whether it’s when you’re lying, or when you’re telling the truth, or—”

“Have you been schooled in techniques for slowing your breathing, staying calm under stress, that kind of thing?”

“Not for these purposes. Not schooled. Just—’Keep a tight asshole when the guns go off, breathe shallow when your heart beats too fast/ that kind of thing.”

“So, first step: This test consists of twenty questions. I have the questions here, and you will read them silently to yourself. We do this in order to eliminate any reaction of surprise from the graph. Do you understand the purpose of seeing the questions in advance of the test?”

“Yes. We’re eliminating reactions of surprise.”

Chambers opened his manila folder and handed it over. The questions were typed on a single sheet of paper bound to the inside cover by a paper clip. Sands looked them over.

“At this point, is there anything you need clarified about the process?”

“Will there be more tests? Subsequent to this one?”

“Oh, right, good. The exam itself consists of four tests, each with different questions, although some questions may be repeated in subsequent tests or in all four tests. Sorry. I forgot to say that. Anything else you need clarified at this point?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Anything you need clarified at any point, just ask. Now. In order to familiarize you with the procedure in advance, I’m going to hook you up without turning on the machine. The machine will not be operating. Do you understand that the machine will not be operating?”

“The machine’s off. Yes.”

“When the machine is operating, this scroll will be moving along, and these three needles will move up and down to create lines across the graph.”

“I understand.”

“I’ve got to ask you to remove your shirt, please.”

Sands complied and laid his shirt across the arm of his chair.

“And the watch. Just lay it on the table. Are you right-or left-handed?”

“Right.”

“Will you place your right arm here on the table, please? Lay it out flat.” Chambers wrapped a blood-pressure cuff around Sands’s bicep. “We’ll record blood pressure, and breathing, and galvanic skin response. If you’ll lean forward, please.” Sands leaned forward and Chambers wrapped a beige rubber tube around his chest and joined its ends to

gether with a small metal clamp. “Too tight?” “No. I don’t know. You’re the technician.” “These clips go on your fingertips here. That gives us skin tempera

ture.” After the finger clips, Chambers touched the attachments gently, the cuff, the tube, the clips, making small adjustments, and sat back in his chair. “Comfortable?”

“Definitely not.” “Well, nobody ever is. You’ve read the questions, correct?” ‘Tes.” “To you some of them seem stupid, probably, and some seem irrele

vant. Others seem obviously true or obviously false. That’s how we get a reading of your response to different categories. I’m just assuring you it all makes sense.”

“I understand.”

“Very good. At this point in our dry run, I’m going to read the questions to you so you hear them in my voice and we eliminate the random stress of any surprises. You don’t answer the questions. I just read them. You can stop me at any time to discuss any question.” Chambers picked up his manila folder and opened it on his lap. “Ready?”

“Begin.”

“Is your name William Sands? … Were you born in Miami, Florida?.. Do you know the whereabouts of footlockers containing the files of Colonel Francis Xavier Sands? … Did you graduate from Indiana University?”

“Excuse me.” “Yes.” “I have two degrees, a BA from Indiana and an MA from George

Washington. So I wouldn’t know exactly—” “Okay. Bachelor of Arts from Indiana University, correct?” “Correct.” “All right. The question will read as follows: Do you have a Bachelor

of Arts degree from Indiana University?” “Okay.” “Okay. The queries continue as follows: Do you know Trung Than? …

Are you the nephew of Colonel Francis Xavier Sands? … Am I wearing a shirt with short sleeves? … Do you enjoy telling lies?”

“Wait.”

“Yes.”

“The one about whether I’m a nephew—I assume I’m someone’s nephew whether they’re living or dead.” “Hm. You know what? I have to check on that one. Excuse me.” Chambers stood and left the room, taking with him the manila

folder.

Sands waited and watched the door left open, past which he now believed any of his acquaintances might be seen drifting, Minh, Storm, Trung, his mother, uncle, father, a parade of ghosts.

When Chambers returned he said, “We’ve changed two queries. I’ll continue with my little recital here, and then you can read it all to yourself again, okay?”

“Yes. Okay.”

“Do you know the whereabouts of Trung Than? … Were you born in the month of December? … Are you stationed in Cao Phuc, South Vietnam?.. Do you know the whereabouts of files compiled by Colonel Francis Xavier Sands? … Have you ever met a man named Trung Than? … Do you have a son named John? … Are the lights on in this room? … Has Trung Than ever been a VC operative? … Did you ever witness Trung Than having direct contact with Colonel Francis Xavier Sands?.. Do you know where the colonel’s files are at this time?.. Do you have a master’s degree from George Washington University? … Do you know the probable whereabouts of the colonel’s files? …

“That’s it. Let’s get you unhooked.” As Chambers removed the cuff and chest tube and finger clips and Sands slipped his arms into his shirtsleeves, Chambers said, “I’ll leave the query sheet with you for a bit. Look over the questions again while I excuse myself again.”

Sands sat looking over the questions without seeing them.

“If you button your buttons,” someone said, “we can go to lunch.”

Crodelle and Voss stood in the doorway with something of the air about them of older brothers who’d just paid his fare at a brothel.

“What?”

“Lunchtime.”

“Lunch?”

“It’s two-fifteen,” Crodelle said. “Are you hungry?”

“You mean go out?”

“Yeah. The Rex or someplace. Let’s go to the Rex.”

“All right.”

“All right?”

“Fine with me.”

“It’s a lull. You’ll read better if you hear the questions and then forget about them awhile.” “Forget about them. You bet.” He followed them down the hall past the marine sergeant and the

digit pad and the electric lock and up the stairs.

Before descending the steps outside, Crodelle stopped to place his green beret on his head and get it snug. The beret-flash was one Sands hadn’t seen before, black and white and gray, edged with yellow. They walked toward the concrete traffic barricades and Skip said, “Your hair’s a little long for uniform, isn’t it?”

“I’m not often in uniform.”

“What’s your insignia there,” Skip asked, pointing at his beret-flash.

“JFK Special Warfare Center,” Crodelle said.

“Where’s that located?” Skip asked, and as they stepped beyond the barricades he took off running, pounding along in a full-out sprint until he came up against a cross street, heading right, continuing along the path of least resistance. Where a woman guided her two children into the motor traffic he slowed to a walk and joined them and they threaded themselves through the deranged flow of small vehicles to the other side, and he ran again, following a series of right-angle zigzags through the city for half a mile, not once looking back. On Louis Pasteur he took to the park under the massive trees and adopted a pace he’d learned in the Boy Scouts of America, fifty paces walking, fifty paces jogging.

He observed the activity of the streetside beyond the trees and saw no one but the denizens of Saigon, gripped by a lust for survival, making their way through the moments. To reach here he must have leapt over sandbags and in and out of the street, must have paused, reversed, dodged left and right like a linebacker, and knocked some of these fine people to the pavement, but he kept no impression of any of it.

Coming out of the park he hailed a cab and collapsed perspiring in the backseat and sent the driver to the Cho Lon depot. This late in the day the buses had probably already stopped running. Until they started

again in the morning he’d take refuge in a barroom. Or in a temple or a church. A whorehouse, an opium den. A fugitive, a traitor. His cordovan shoes stank of the gutters he’d run through. He cranked the window down. He regretted having to miss the exam. Of the questions they’d prepared for him, he saw one as relevant:

“Do you enjoy telling lies?”

“Yes,” he would have answered truthfully.

Generally Dietrich Fest took his lunch at a soup place on the far side of Tu Do Street, the big thoroughfare a couple of blocks from the Continental. For supper he’d found better places, nothing with a German flavor but good enough that he worried about his weight. By now he was familiar with every restaurant he could walk to. He didn’t like the taxis. He dealt more easily with the cyclo boys.

He used the message drop in the Green Parrot’s lavatory only once — to change the location of the next drop. He chose a restaurant across the plaza from the Continental where he could watch the people going in and out. Only Major Keng used the drop.

He told the management his room was too small, and they moved him to another on the western side that got too much sun in the afternoon. That night he put the air conditioner at its coldest setting, and by morning its labors were muffled and its vents clogged with frost. He called downstairs to complain. Two workmen arrived and said if he set the controlling dial at medium the ice would melt and the machine would work better. They went away talking to one another in a language he found twangy, shrill, grating, a kind of buzzing whine.

He’d planned on a couple of weeks in Saigon. He’d been here almost two months.

Every few days he came to the management with a reason to move to another room.

His target lodged in a room in a mixed Chinese-Vietnamese neighborhood at the edge of the Cho Lon District. Across the street from the site of completion, a single shop sold fabric

and perhaps also made women’s dresses. On that side the rest of the block presented closed doors and a couple of alleyways in which noisy women and children appeared to pass most of their daily lives: crates for tables and boxes for chairs, fuming hibachis and leaking wooden tubs and lines of washing. Fest could watch a little, but there was no café on the street, no excuse for his presence. He stood next to the fabric shop as if waiting for someone.

The hotel’s entry matched every other wooden door on the block. Next door at street level the owner ran his business in a glass-windowed office and kept charge of the rooms upstairs. Major Keng had referred to this man as “a trouble agent.” Alone, smoking a cigarette with an air of tender introspection, the trouble agent sat between two electric fans positioned on the counter expertly so as not to disturb his papers. Fest could only guess at his profession—broker, lawyer, lender—identified as it was only by Chinese characters painted on his windows. While Fest stood across the street watching, a man arrived clutching a pasteboard portfolio under his arm and sat in a chair before the counter with his knees pressed together and his package in his lap, handing over documents one by one.

After ten minutes Fest felt conspicuous and left the neighborhood.

By their fourth meeting Fest had determined that communication with the Americans ran in only one direction. Possibly all commo had ceased. In any case Major Keng had no method of getting back to the Americans with Fest’s concerns. Either that or Keng simply didn’t care about the operation.

“I do not like our scenario. It has too many contingencies.”

“There are always problems.”

“I went to view the location. It’s difficult. I’m not able to keep an eye. There is no café on the street and no rooms for rent where I can take up an outpost. I can’t be sure of my ground.”

The major frowned. “Mr. Reinhardt. Parlez-vous Français?”

“No.”

“Your English is not so clear to me.”

“When I enter the room, I must be sure he’s alone.”

“He’s alone.” The major was smiling. “He is unarmed. He was brought to the location by a contact he trusts. He’s not going to stir from it until he is told. This contact has given us the keys. One to the street door, one to the room.”

“Then give me the keys, please.” “It’s better if I give them four days from now.” “Do you have the keys?” “I will have the keys four days from now.” “When is the time for completion?” “One week from now.” “Can you put some people to watch the location? We must be sure of

our ground.” “What do you mean? He can’t go out. It’s the only safe place for him. That is his belief. You can be confident.” Little brown clown. You tell me to walk through a closed door with a

gun in my hand and be confident. “May I make a suggestion?” “Of course, Mr. Reinhardt.” “Let me take him outdoors, away from his room.” “Take him? Do you intend to kidnap?” “Call him to a meeting in a location we can monitor. Perhaps his

contact can arrange it. We’ll monitor in advance of the meeting. Then the ground is ours.” The major pursed his lips as if considering the angles. “It makes

cleanup perhaps difficult.” “The site must be cleaned?” “Not by you, Mr. Reinhardt! That’s all in place. Everything is in

place, Mr. Reinhardt.” “You’re saying it’s too late to change the plan.” “We shall go forward with confidence.” On the way back to his room he stopped at a stall in the square and,

without bargaining over the price, bought a large English dictionary of some two thousand pages. At the Continental’s desk he asked for his valuables from the safe, and the clerk brought his Vietnam Air Lines flight bag. Upstairs he took the equipment from the bag and turned the room’s radio up loud. It was 2:00 p.m.; the U.S. military station delivered the news of an imminent journey to the moon. He affixed the silencer to the pistol, placed the dictionary in his bathtub, and fired four shots into it from a distance of one meter.

The first unblemished page was numbered 1833. As he’d expected, at close range the weapon would produce an exit wound. More nonsense. I ask for a twenty-two, and you bring me a howitzer. I can’t call Berlin, while astronauts aim at the moon.

The phones worked, he’d gotten through, his father was dead.

Two years he’d waited to hear it, yet the news had absolutely stunned him. The old man had won his way forward breath by breath through so many ailments it hadn’t seemed possible he’d ever be stopped. Nothing in particular had beaten him. He’d died in his hospital room while napping after breakfast. On the phone his mother had sounded tired but otherwise unaffected.

He’d called Dora as well, and he’d broken down weeping as he told her of his father’s death. “I’ll call again soon. The phones are working.” It must have sounded as if the good news about the telephones had broken his heart.

Because a Chinese travel broker ran this four-room hotel, Trung assumed Chinese businessmen used the establishment.

Daytimes the street outside was noisy, and after 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. fairly quiet—distant traffic, distant jet fighters, helicopters much closer, over the city itself. He’d never before stayed in a rented city room. He had possession of a key to the street entrance and a key to his own door, both attached by a string to a scrap of wood with the numeral 1 scratched into it.

The door on the street opened onto a narrow stairwell leading up into a narrow hall with high ceilings and plaster walls and two rooms on each side and a bathroom at the end of it—a sink; a tub; a toilet that flushed when he pulled a chain. In the mornings he heard feet stomping along the hall and his neighbors running the water and hocking and spitting in the bathroom and at night he heard the man next door coughing and treading from his bed to the window to spit down into the alley.

The place was wired for electricity. At the top of the stairwell and also in the ceiling above the bathroom hung fluorescent tubes that burned all night, but his room had none. He had a butane lantern, a thin mattress on a bamboo frame, a circular, domed bed net, and a small square table on which rested the lantern, a box of wooden matches, and a large clamshell for an ashtray.

Each night he took his supper at a café one street over and bought food to last him through the following day. Hao had given him money and told him to stay indoors as much as possible until the Americans, probably within a week or so, accomplished their arrangements. But he had to make this outing every day. He wouldn’t deprive himself. He’d been in Saigon four days.

He didn’t have to be told to keep out of sight. If anybody recognized him it was over. The cadres understood him to be visiting family in Ben Tre for the Tet celebrations, for only a few days; he’d been out of touch now almost two months. No explaining such an absence, no lie would spare him a “workout”—hours of group discussion, until more than anybody else in the room you yourself believed you’d crossed the line, and you demanded to be punished. He’d make sure the Americans understood this problem. Maybe the Americans knew other turncoat VC who could devise a story—he couldn’t imagine what, a bout of illness, or a wound—and vouch for his whereabouts during his absence.

I won’t have rice again today. Noodles, if they still have the hoisin sauce. They had it yesterday, but I used the last.

These past few weeks, first in the room above the café on the Mekong, now in the room above the travel broker’s, had been a form of incarceration, but under conditions happily very different from what he’d learned to think of as prison. In the cell in Con Dau he’d slept on a stone floor with a dozen other men, sometimes on a concrete slab to which his ankles had been shackled. The guards patrolled on catwalks crisscrossing overhead— pissing down on them sometimes, or tossing offal from a bucket. The cell itself had been not quite long enough for two men end to end, about half that in width. The prisoners had all looked out for each other, nothing but death could separate them from the cause. Then the end of the French, liberation, the journey north by ship, and the kolkhoz, the communal farm—the citizens of the Collective Future, generally tense, sometimes erupting, always desperate, living in stupidity, anger, and submission. The citizens of the future had found little to say to him. He was older and had come in by all Three Gates—prison, blood, self-denial—each a stage deeper into the lie that trapped them all. And the last gate, the one that didn’t get a number: renouncing friends and relatives, the gate to true imprisonment. Once you mix in your blood, your strength, and your days, then you belong to the cause. But betrayal is the main thing.

The happiest days of his life had been those spent coming down out of the Truong Son Mountains, ambling homeward in good weather after the weeks of climbing through rain on the uphill northern side, after the plague that had nearly killed him, after the camps of deserters all shivering with fever, after the grave mounds of piled boulders bristling with sticks of incense or dug up and scattered and the corpses chewed to pieces by hungry tigers, and now the easy downhill journey toward Ben Tre, the breath of the south in his lungs, the sunshine falling in shafts through the jungle’s canopy, and the flowers with his mother’s name. But I entered a land where my mother was dead and all the others pretended not to be. My legs carried me over the mountain, but I never got home.

Betrayal had fueled the trip out. Betrayal would bring him back.

In his olive bathing trunks, bare-chested, Sands sat in the wicker chair on the small back porch taking the breeze from the creek and drinking something made with sugar and coconut milk and things he probably didn’t want to know about. All this trash smoke, the creek’s stench wrung his stomach, the bugs were driving him crazy. Screeching cicadas. Tiny winged creatures flailing at his face.

He heard a vehicle coming up the lane and recognized the sound as that of a military jeep.

Four days since his getaway, and no one had come until now. The gods ground slow. Or they realized he’d fled without a plan, without money, leapt from the window into the wild night, and what—loitered in the dark, waiting to be arrested.

When he heard the jeep’s brakes out front he got up and entered the house.

This time of day, with the heat, Skip hung mosquito netting over the front door and left it open. He watched through the open doorway as Jimmy Storm, in fatigues and a brown T-shirt, let himself through the low gate and walked up the steps.

Sands pulled the netting aside and let it drop closed behind his guest. Storm clutched a bundle of mail against his chest. He did not say hello. “Voss is no longer a contributor.” “Pardon?”

“He didn’t make the mission.” “You’re saying he’s what, he’s—” “Tagged and bagged. He fucked the monkey.” With his free hand Storm hit Sands with an uppercut deep to the so

lar plexus. His lungs emptied, his diaphragm seized, nausea blinded him. He collapsed forward onto his knees, and then the side of his head smacked down onto the tiled floor.

He came to some form of consciousness, breathing again, as Storm

prodded his ear with the toe of his canvas boot. “I could kick my foot through your head now, you know?” “I know,” Sands managed to say. He tossed things down one at a time into Skip’s face, first reading

each one: “Here’s your Newsweek. Here’s your Time. What’s this?—

fucking Sports Illustrated.” “Storm-” “You’ve got us in a skinny little crack. You’ve got us in a real tight lit

tle fuck.” “Storm-let’s talk.” “What makes you think I’d talk to you? What makes you think I’d dis

cuss the game with a pogue rolled up on the floor in a fetal ball? —Is that what they taught you in unarmed combat school?”

As a matter of fact, the student was advised when tackled by a gang to curl the skeleton around the vital organs and “pray for the cavalry.” Not, however, when downed by a lone attacker. A man solidly on the ground could find an advantage over a man balanced on one leg while kicking, so went the wisdom. Sands didn’t care to test it.

“And don’t say you did what you had to do. That’s bullshit. Just say

you did what you did, man. Just say you did it.” “I haven’t said anything,” Skip said, “about doing anything.” “You and me have to talk on some other level, man, because you

won’t get down. You won’t get down. This is what’s happening. So fuck.”

He was kicking Sands in the head as he spoke. “Are you done? I’d like you to be done.” “Yeah. I’m done. No, I’m not done.” He kicked Sands twice in the ribs. He turned to leave, got as far as the door, and came back. “Do you think I really give a fuck? So we lose this war, so what? Will

the little kiddies of America be going to Uncle Ho High School and memorizing the Gettysburg Address of fucking Lenin? Will Charlie be raping our women in the streets? Fuck no. The whole thing’s bullshit, man. Win or lose, we’re gonna be fine. But we’re here. You and me and these other assholes. It’s our shit to deal with. So why the fuck not? The all-important underlying reason is, ‘Fuck it, let’s just do it.’ Either you understand that or you don’t.”

“Yeah. That was more or less my uncle’s theory.” “The colonel’s alive.” “He is?” “Isn’t he?” “No.” ‘Tes, fucker.” “That’s just bullshit.” “Yeah, it is. But you don’t get it. That’s exactly what runs the reactors.

The fragrance of bullshit.” “Are you going to let me get up?” Storm sat on the divan, breathing hard. “Fine, I’ll just lie here. I’m tired.” “You put down what we’re doing. To you, Psy Ops is baby food. I’m

telling you, man, this is where it’s won or lost. In the realm of bullshit. It doesn’t matter how bad we kick their asses on the battlefield or vice fucking versa.”

“The colonel’s dead.” Storm said, “Yeah. You are a pogue. You just stay here all curled up like a piece of popcorn in your little womb. Your traitor-incubator.” By painful stages Sands got himself standing and made his way to a

chair and collapsed again. “How are you feeling, Skipper? Like shit, I hope.” “Jimmy.” “Yeah.” “Is Rick Voss dead?” “Very very much so.” “Did you … You killed Rick Voss?” “No, fucker. The VC killed Rick Voss. Somebody shot down his heli

copter. They think. Anyway, it went down.” “Rick Voss is dead?” “Everybody aboard. Poof.”

“What was he doing in a helicopter?” “Diddling around like a dick, like always.” “Jesus Christ. He had a wife and kids.” “Well, he don’t no more, Jack. Pretty soon some other guy’ll have

‘em. That’s how the shit goes.”

Voss had a little girl, Skip remembered. He leaned forward and retrieved his coconut drink from the table and held the cold glass against his pounding cheekbone.

“So, little Skippy. Where were you last Thursday?” “Saigon.” “Where else?” “Taking a polygraph.” “Yeah. You sure were.” Sands leaned forward in his chair. He kept his.25caliber Beretta in a

dresser drawer upstairs and had an impulse, momentary but almost irresistible, to go up and get it and shoot Jimmy Storm in his face. When the wave had washed over he felt weak to the point of paralysis. He put his face in his hands. “Listen. Are you leaving, or not?”

“Yeah, I’m going. I just came to let you know karma turned your good

buddy to soup.” “Jesus Christ. Poor Voss.” “Yeah, Poor Voss. I wish I could be the one to tell his wife. I hope he

had beautiful little kiddies. I hope he thought about them while he was going down.”

Suddenly Sands clutched up some ice cubes from his drink and flung them at his face. “Aah, shit,” Jimmy said. “I’m sorry. Come on, throw some more.” His eyes cried out for it, for punishment. “The first time I saw you I thought, This guy is looking fucking sketchy. Sifting through ashtrays for a snipe. He’s got that how-do-I-get-your-wallet look. He’s here on a kiddie-cruise. He’s here to play Spooks and Gooks. You came here to troll the drag and show off your fucking hot rod.”

“If you’re all done stomping me, I’d like you to leave.” “Stomping? Fuck you. Right now the colonel is being tortured. Right

now they’re breaking every one of his bones.” “Jimmy. Goddamn. Come on.” “You remember how he ditched the Japs in World War Two, man?—

he played fucking dead.”

“Good for you. Keep the legend alive.”

“I’m not the motherfucking voice of r< ason. I soak shit up, I process it, I feel the facts. It’s visceral. There’s no’ enough of that going on around here.”

“Jimmy, the colonel died. And everything fell apart.”

“What did he say? What did he say a thousand times? ‘How do we get bogus product credibly into the hands of the enemy? Specifically into Uncle Ho’s hands?’ Scenario one: through a double who so-called steals phony documents. Number two: use a real live American, a plant who gets himself captured. But his favorite idea was using both. Coming from separate sources, you enhance the credibility level.”

“Jimmy. Focus.”

“No, man, this makes too much sense. It’s just too lined up and laid out. He faked this shit, and he didn’t tell us. He’s on a mission, and we’re fucked. We can’t help him. Something cold is happening, extremely cold. And we’re the niggers.”

“Why would he pull a ruse without letting us in on it?” “Why? Because you’re a fink. And a pogue. And a queer. I should

screw you in the ass.” “Focus, will you focus? Who told you they picked me up?” “I know things.” “Hao told you.” “Fuck you.” “Storm-it’s Hao. It’s Hao.” “What about him?” “The rat. The fink. It’s Hao.” “Fuck you. Nice try.” “Jimmy, it’s Hao.” “Watch your karma. Behold your karma. Observe while it eats you

slow-motion from the toes up, fucker.” “They polyed me at the Language School. Hao was there.” “Bull—shit.” Storm took a second to consider the assertion. “Right at

the party?” “No, but I saw him in the hallway.” “Maybe he’s taking classes.” “They’ve got a store in the basement. RSC or somebody. Hao walked

past the door while I was sitting there. They wanted me to see him.”

Storm regarded him for some seconds. The human polygraph. “What did I tell you? This is a rocknroll war. Motherfuckers do not understand that shit.” He stood up and wiped his face with the hem of his shirt, exposing the reddish legs and green skirt of a hula dancer tattooed on his chest. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“Leave Hao alone. He’s just staying alive.”

“Yeah. Fuck. This place is Disneyland on acid. Have you taken that shit yet? Acid?”

“Haven’t had the pleasure.”

“Stay away from it, Skipper. You’re too flaky.”

H e had a location. He had access to it in the form of two keys. He had a weapon, a timetable, and a point of last resort. He lacked what he needed most.

He had no team. Too much had been left to him. He had to watch the drop point because he didn’t trust his own handlers, and he had to do what he could to monitor the site. Even if there were three of him, his cursory training in surveillance probably wouldn’t serve. He was, in plain American, only a “triggerman.” He operated the weapon.

The target had spent almost a week at this location. Fest surmised that unless the target had his meals delivered he would sooner or later have to go out for food, and probably in the dark. In any case, nightfall was the only time for observation. A shadow among shadows. Nothing last night, at least not before ten or so, when Fest had given up his post. He came a bit earlier this evening, at sunset, and walked around the block waiting for darkness that would hide a stationary figure.

Duskfall had little effect on the life of the alleys. If anything the children howled more loudly, and the men, sullen or noncommittal, back from wherever they spent the daytimes, seemed by their presence to make the women even more shrill. Fest missed his comparatively quiet family. Dora talked too much and Claude perhaps talked foolishly, but not in tones that rivaled the noise of city traffic. Fest missed his family altogether. Why not?—the old man’s death had made him mawkish and philosophical. Atfirst the news had rocked him, but he’d quickly adjusted to a loss so long expected. A few days later sorrow attacked him again as he realized the old man was still dead. As if some part of him had believed his father could die and later one could visit him and talk about it.

He’d determined not to regard this operation as some sort of sentimental monument to his father’s anti-Communism. An operation so unprofessionally structured and unnecessarily hazardous would stand as a ludicrous memorial to a man who’d seen his duty clearly and lived by it.

As he circuited the block a fourth time and came around the corner he saw a man leaving the rooming house by the street door.

This had to be the one. Others he’d seen coming out had worn dress slacks and shirts or, in the case of a couple of old men, the long shift and loose pantaloons of comic-book Chinamen, and more importantly they’d moved where they wanted, crossed the street, if that’s what they wanted, immediately on coming out of the place. This one wore jeans and a T-shirt and kept close to the walls, in the shadows, until he reached the end of the block. As he crossed at the corner, Fest began walking. The target continued up the perpendicular block and Fest turned the corner in time to see him turn right at its end. Fest broke into a trot, keeping close to the walls himself. As he took the same right, he slowed to a walk. The man was only twenty yards ahead. Now they traveled on a street parallel to the one the man lived on. He turned into a lighted entrance. Fest continued past it and saw him sitting at a table in a café talking to the papasan. When Fest reached the next cross street he turned around and walked by the café again. The man sat inside with a bowl and chopsticks and a teapot.

Fest walked briskly to the corner, turned left, and broke into a trot again. He had the keys in his pocket.

At the end of the block he crossed the street, stood in a shadow, and observed the windows along the second story of the rooming house. None on this side were lighted. In the distant sky beyond, the orange tracers streaked upward. The show came nightly, a kind of parody of the aurora borealis. The noise of helicopters and jet engines came and went. The general din of the city floated over from busier streets. A couple of cyclos passed, and pedestrians, but the block, except at the lurid alleyways, was quieter than most of Saigon this time of night.

He took out the gun from the belly holster under his shirt and the silencer from his trouser pocket and fitted them together. He needed no weapon now, but tomorrow night he would have it in his hand from this point forward. He perspired heavily. Tomorrow night he’d bring two handkerchiefs and thoroughly dry his palms before handling the equipment.

At the street door he held a key in his left hand and the gun in his right and gave the key a try. He’d chosen the right one. He placed it in his left back pocket and went inside. He left the door unlocked. Under a naked fluorescent tube dotted with insects a narrow stairwell led upward. He tried a switch on the wall to his left, produced a couple of seconds of total darkness, and raised the switch. The light flickered back to life. He took the second key from his front pocket and climbed the stairs without muffling his steps, like any patron, and inserted the key into the lock of the first door on the right. It opened inward and rightward. He pushed it wide and stepped back and sideways, holding the gun ready. The interior was dark, as he’d expected. He heard no sound from within. Across the room a single window faced the wall of the adjacent building.

He worked the door open and closed. As it passed about sixty degrees of arc its upper hinge whined. The door lock, too, could use some oil, but he hadn’t thought to bring any—didn’t they know he was only the triggerman?

Leaving the door open, he stepped inside. Without light from the hallway it would be impossibly dark, and yet in order to complete the operation he’d have to put out the hallway lights before entering. He felt the wall either side of the door for a switch and found nothing. He holstered the weapon and took his penlight from his shirt pocket to send its small circle about the room—no switch on the wall, no lamp in the ceiling.

A narrow bed with a mosquito net knotted above it, a table with a lantern and a large seashell resting on it. On the floor beside it, a folded pair of pants and a T-shirt, a knapsack too, which he rifled quickly—two books, a pair of boxer undershorts. He lifted the thin mattress and through widely spaced supporting boards ascertained the floor beneath the bed was bare. He lay on his side and shone his light on the undersides of the boards and the small tabletop —nothing secured in either of those places. He got to his feet.

He went about the room with the penlight, feeling the plaster walls, studying the floorboards in particular, looking for any loose ones.

The pane of the single window was raised, the building outside so close he could touch it. God knew what lived in the narrow space between. He put his hand out and felt below the sill. Nothing affixed to the wall outside, no cache of any kind.

There was absolutely no other place to keep a weapon. Either the man carried one on his person, or he had none, as Keng, the major, had promised. As for something improvised—if the man woke he might use the table, or the seashell, which seemed to serve as an ashtray.

He’d been emphatically assured the man was unarmed. But anybody could buy a knife. Or carry a length of rope for a garrote. By the glow of the penlight he made a careful examination of the mattress. Discolored at one end, probably where the head would rest.

The problem, as Fest saw it, was that a prudent man, and on top of that a man made sensitive by stress and strain, would wake at the slightest sound and rise from bed and ready himself for anything.

Insane simply to walk through a door. Assuming he could get up the stairs noiselessly, still too much depended on the man’s sleeping while Fest turned the key.

Why not take him now?

In ten or fifteen minutes the man would come through this door, having finished his supper. He could kill him and go directly to the Armed Forces Language School to explain he’d been forced to improvise. Adapt and improvise, the bywords of the trade.

But until forced, one sticks to the plan of operation, or its semblance, or its shreds. He’d always kept to the plan. And no plan had ever failed him.

Major Keng had stressed that it must come tomorrow night, precisely at 2:00 a.m. One hour later the site would be cleaned, the body disposed of. Apparently that part of it was fixed. He had to work around it. Fest resented that the scenario seemed to center on the cleanup operation rather than on the actual killing.

But suppose tonight the man ate quickly—suppose he’d already finished, suppose he came up the stairs, imagine right now he stands in the doorway—I’d kill him. And if I choose to wait here fifteen minutes, and that very thing happens? What difference whether the moment was selected by prudence or forced by circumstance?

Again he went over the walls and the floorboards, aware of taking longer than needed, inviting a change in plan, daring fate, the target’s fate. But the man took his time, apparentiy savoring his excursion—who wouldn’t?— and in five more minutes Fest closed and locked the door behind him and descended the stairs with the gun pressed against his right leg, as he would tomorrow night, and exited onto the street. He put away the gun and locked the door behind him without glancing around and walked directiy across the street and waited in the shadow of the fabric dealer’s entrance.

He’d waited fifteen more minutes when the target returned along the opposite side and went through the building’s street door.

Fest recrossed the street and stood at the narrow space between the buildings to watch the windows above him. Less than a minute after the little man had entered, a small glow in the nearest window gave way to a brighter one as the man lit his lantern.

That was the right window. He had the right man.

Suppose tomorrow night the man went out for supper and died as soon as he returned, rather than at two in the morning? Suppose the body lay in the room for several hours, rather than sixty minutes? Rigor mortis might present a problem for the disposal team, but Fest doubted it. The trade-off in assurance of completion made the change well worthwhile—the difference between entering a pitch-black room in which anything could be going on, or waiting in a pitch-black room for a man who thought it was empty.

At this time tomorrow he’d come again. If the man went out, Fest would greet him when he returned.

Trung Than sat on the bed finishing a warm Coca-Cola. Without a clock or a watch he knew only that it was later than 3:00 p.m., not by much. A full two hours before the dusk came and released him.

He tried sitting straight-backed on the bed and attending only to his breath, only to his breath.

Holding still, when I want to act, and letting my impatience be crushed, is a thrill that feels almost illicit because of the slight nausea it includes. Like stolen brandy. When Hao stole the bottle from the old man’s hooch. The old man hid it in the ashes of the stove because his wife was dead and he never cooked for himself. Almost half of it left in the bottle, and we drank it all without even rinsing away the soot, and with black hands and black faces we walked on a cloud, singing wonderful songs. The master laughed. He always called me the Monk. The master thought I’d stay.

In those days he’d known how to sit still. He’d learned to live a good part of each day in the silence under the world. Now the world lived in his mind, it colonized his solitude like a virus, thoughts crawled, shot, rained through his meditation, and every one pierced him.

He tried meditating on his knees on the floor, but that only slowed the passage of time. It was still light, still well before 5:00 p.m., when he heard feet on the stairs and a knock at the door and unlocked and opened it to find the sharp-faced, feline American sergeant standing before him.

“Double-oh-seven! Remember me?”

He moved forward as he spoke, and Trung stepped aside but didn’t shut the door until the American gestured that he should. “How goes it, brother? Still laughing?” Trung recalled his name was Mr. Jimmy. “Oh, yeah,” Mr. Jimmy said, “it’s like jumping into a shit-pile of diseased spiders and I love it.”

Embarrassment caused Trung to smile.

“Where’s Hao?” The American looked at his watch. “The fucker’s not here, is that the message for today?” Mr. Jimmy strode four paces to the window, put his hands on the sill, and stuck his head out to look down the narrow space toward the bit of street visible to him. He turned to Trung. “Well, I hate to inject a negative strain. I’m not gonna say it yet. But I’m gonna say it: that little fucker isn’t coming. Which means we are either partially fucked or completely fucked. You got another Coke?”

“No, thank you.”

Mr. Jimmy crossed the room again and sat beside the door with his back against the wall and one leg straight and one knee raised. Apparently he meant to stay. “You smoke?”

“I like cigarette.”

He went into his shirt pocket and lit a cigarette and tossed Trung the pack and the lighter. “Marlboro.” ‘Yeah. I’m trying to think. So let’s shut up.” Trung got up and locked the door and sat on the bed smoking, dipping his ash down the neck of his empty Coke bottle.

“When I take the last drag on this mother, that’s it. I get the fuck out, or I’m here for the duration.” The sergeant drew deeply on his cigarette. “Fuck it. Fm here for the duration.”

They finished their cigarettes in silence and Trung dropped his into the bottle while the sergeant placed his own under his heel and ground it into the floor. At that point Trung realized he hadn’t offered him the ashtray, or used it himself.

“Listen, guy. Is Hao your friend?”

“Hao is my friend.”

“Good friend?”

“Good friend.”

“True friend?” Mr. Jimmy clasped his hands together tightly. “True like right down the line and all the way to hell?”

Trung felt he perhaps comprehended the question. He jutted his lips and held out his palms and shrugged his shoulders, the way he’d seen Frenchmen do.

The sergeant leapt up, but he wasn’t leaving. He came to Trung with the cigarette pack outstretched and the disease of terror in his eyes. “Double agent? What a fucking joke. In the shit-bucket of South Vietnam, every living thing is double.”

Trung accepted another cigarette but raised his palm and shook his head at the sergeant’s lighter. He set the cigarette on the table.

“You probably figure I snapped my twig. I’m with you there. I have to agree. But I’m still listening to my own shit, comrade, because it’s the only thing happening.”

“Mr. Jimmy. Please speak slowly.”

“Do you speak English?”

“A little bit. Number ten.”

“We are not getting through to each other. No commo, savvy? I don’t have the names for the entities in your language. You have all the names. You got it concerning your basic whereabouts. What you don’t understand is how it all floats in a region that’s completely basically dislocated from natural laws. That is, all the laws do apply inside Vietnam. But from the rest of planet Earth, those laws don’t apply to Vietnam. We are surrounded by a zone or a state of dislocation, and you kind of graduate up from knowing the names around here to being able to suck up from that zone. You suck up from that zone around us and they cannot touch you.”

Trung listened closely, trying to feel the man. He sensed panic and

anger. “What, please?” “Who can’t touch you?” “What?” “Everything that’s got its shitty fingerprints which I can see smeared

all over you and glowing like a motherfucking, Bozo-the-Clown goddamn target. Every bad fucking thing. So suck up from the zone, Agent 99. Shit’s about to rain.”

He sensed fear and bravado.

“And—the colonel—the process, okay, dig—you’re a participant. You’re a contributor. This is a thing. We’re part of it. The colonel, man. The colonel.”

“Colonel Sand.” “Very much boo-coo Colonel-san. He’s jerking the strings, and we are

dancing like one-legged women.” “Okay,” Trung said hopelessly. The sergeant made his hand resemble a mouth opening and closing

rapidly. He placed it to his ear. “Hao told me. Hao. A man will kill

Trung. Un homme. Assassiner.” If Hao said it, it could be trusted. “Tonight?” The sergeant stood and thrust his wrist at Trung’s face and pointed at

the dials of his watch. “Two a.m.” “Two o’clock.” “Oh two hundred.” “Two o’clock morning.” “Unless the little double-fucker’s set us both up to get DX’d by a whole

team or something. But I’m not gonna run around nowhere like a squirrel on a wheel about it—or—fuck yes, yes, I am, let’s not bullshit each other. But I’m not leaving. I do not intend to boogie. What comes is the coming thing. I just look on it like whatever madness takes a dump on me, it must be a lesson, man, a lesson some random-ass sadistic Hitler-God wants me to learn. That’s why I don’t like it. Because I don’t like learning, I don’t like school, I don’t like lessons. The idea of discipline scares the crap out of me and pisses me the fuck off. But Hao said he’d meet me here at four p.m. with money, and Hao lied in his teeth. Hao is one absent motherfucker. Hao is nobody’s friend. That little Gook is a straight-out demon. I would’ve snapped his neck and fucked his corpse if

his wife hadn’t been home. And he knew it. But it was a semi-public situation. Fuck, I should’ve done her too … Yeah. So this is a weapon.” He lifted the hem of his shirt and took an automatic pistol from his belt. “Special delivery for Senor Mister Trung.”

Trung stepped back and raised his hands slightly.

“No, man, no. Fuck! Learn English, will you?” He held the weapon out sideways, turning it this way and that. A Vz 50, of Eastern European make.

He went to stick his head out the window again. He jammed the gun in his belt and lit another cigarette and tossed the match over the sill. “All right, fuck, yes, okay,” the sergeant said, “look. I’d like to ambush this fucker down in the street, but I don’t know who the fuck he is. We don’t know shit till he knocks on the door. We’re dealing through the dark. Situation normal.” He smoked and looked around the room at nothing in particular. “No fucking pillow. I envisioned a pillow. Fuck! Don’t you have any pillows?”

“Mr. Jimmy. Please speak slowly.”

“We have to make this thing quiet. Pillows. Quiet.” He mimed the gun jerking in his hands while he placed a finger to his lips and made a sound: “Ssshhhh.”

A knife, then. Trung clenched a fist and thrust it at him.

“Where’s your dagger, man? Show me your stuff.”

Trung shrugged.

The sergeant dug in his pocket to produce a clasp knife. “This is maybe a three-inch blade.” He opened it. “It’s got a spoon and fork too, man. Afterward we can eat him.”

Trung held out his hand for it.

Trung laid the open knife beside him on the mattress. He held out his hand. “Weapon.”

The sergeant drew the gun from his belt and handed it over with a certain air of relief. Trung ejected the clip, cleared the chamber, and thumbed out the bullets onto his mattress: nine 7.65-millimeter rounds, counting the one from the chamber.

“That’s a reliable Communist weapon. VC-type weapon. Boo-coo bucks.” Did he indicate he wanted money for it? Trung determined any statement less than clear was best ignored. Sitting on the bed, he reloaded

and inserted the magazine, cocked a round into the chamber, and depressed the safety. When the hammer fell, the little sergeant jumped and said, “Fuck me!”—apparently he didn’t know about a decocker safety. The gun, therefore, didn’t belong to him.

Trung ejected the magazine and placed the gun, magazine, and chamber round on the table.

“Excellent. The secrets of the machine.”

“Quiet,” Trung said, and tried French: “Silence.”

“You got it. We’re fucking bilingual here.”

He handed the sergeant the empty Coke bottle.

“That’s not the kind of deal I make. Way too lopsided.”

Trung laid the gun on the mattress and picked up the knife and ripped a half-meter-long gash in the mattress. Setting the knife aside, he plucked tufts of kapok from the tear and pushed them down the Coke bottle’s neck with his fingers while the sergeant held it. “Silence.”

They spent forty-five minutes rigging a muffler for the pistol, attaching the stuffed bottle to the muzzle of the gun using four small bamboo splints from the bedstead and strips of bedsheet and mosquito netting. The young sergeant sweated a great deal. He removed his flower-print shirt. A large incredible tattooed illustration of a woman in a grass skirt covered his bare chest.

They laid the muffled weapon on the mattress. It resembled a great cocoon from which emerged, backward, a small pistol rather than a moth. Trung tried in many ways to get the idea across: “One silence. One. Seulement. Only one.”

“I get it.”

Trung determined how he’d deploy the weapon, supporting the muffler by one hand mittened with his own T-shirt. He would have to do this left-handed. He positioned himself to the left of the door with his back to the wall and practiced his movements.

“You are a nasty little fucker. Jesus Christ.” Mr. Jimmy seemed excited and happy. Trung knew the feeling, had experienced it strongly before operations in the early days. Even at this moment a little of it sparked in him.

Trung stood to the left of the door with his back against the wall and his left hand raised and its forefinger pointing. “I. Me.” He stepped forward, brought the finger down to the level where the man’s head should be, jerked it once, and stepped back three paces. He repeated the motions, pointing at his feet and making particularly sure the sergeant understood exactly where his movements would take him.

“You. Mr. Jimmy.” Trung moved to stand with his back to the wall at the right of the door, reached out with his left hand, and pulled it open, stepping once to his right in the process; then stood frozen: “Arrętez. Stop.”

He put the sergeant against the wall in the same position and had him go through the movements to open the door wide and get out of the way of fire and stop cold.

“Gah-damn,” the sergeant said. “I’m gonna need to get fucked-up

drunk after this shit.” Trung shrugged. “I’m a thinker, man. I’m not an assassin.” Before Trung began the drilling in tandem, he made sure one more

time: “I …” He put a fingertip to his temple. “La tęte. One.” “Yeah. La tęte. One shot.” “You …” He opened the door. “C’est si bon.” It seemed possible to Trung that if they crosscut the head of the bul

let it might not exit the skull and make a lot of mess. Did the sergeant want no trace afterward? The question was too complicated to ask in grunts and signs. If their fortunes permitted, they’d deal with the mess when the time came.

Can I depend on this man?

At bottom, Trung doubted the sergeant. If he failed to control his movements, there was no small chance Trung might put a bullet in the man who’d come here to save him. He made certain the sergeant knew he must take one step when opening the door and move no more.