Up Country

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The conductor led us through the crowded coach to seats vacated by two young Viet guys. I threw my suitcase on the overhead luggage rack, then sat with my overnight bag stuffed under my seat. Susan sat beside me on the aisle and squeezed her backpack under her legs.

The seat was wood, and it had enough legroom for an amputee. The width was okay for the two of us, but almost all the other seats had three people sitting in them, plus babies and kids riding laps.

We were on the right, so we’d have a view of the South China Sea at some point as we traveled north. There was no air-conditioning, but a few of the windows were open, and small fans mounted in the corners kept the cigarette smoke circulating.

I said, “Maybe we should have taken a car and driver.”

“Highway One can be a problem. Also, this is a good experience for you.”

“Thanks for your interest in my character development.”

“You’re quite welcome.”

I asked her, “What is the fascination here for all these young backpackers?”

“Well, Vietnam is cheap. Then you have sex and drugs. That’s pretty fascinating.”

“Right.”

“Kids talk to one another via e-mail, and this has become a hot place.”

“It was pretty hot when I was here.” I added, “It just seems a little incongruous for a totalitarian state to be so attractive to all these young tourists.”

“They don’t think like you do. Half of them don’t know this place is run by Communists, and the other half don’t care. You care. That’s your generation. That was your big boogeyman. These kids are into world peace through pot. International understanding through intercourse.”

“And your generation? What’s your take on Vietnam?”

“Money.”

“Do you ever feel that there’s something missing in your life? Like something to believe in or to live for beyond yourself?”

“That sounds like an antagonistic question, though maybe I need to think more about that.” She added, “We live in incredibly dull times. I think I would like to have been a college student in the Sixties. But I wasn’t. So, a lot of this emptiness and shallowness is not my fault, or the fault of my generation.”

“Do the times make the generation, or does the generation make the times?”

“I have a hangover. Can we make idle chitchat?”

We chatted about the landscape.

A cloud of cigarette smoke hung in the hot, humid air, and the rail felt as though it had been torn up by the Viet Cong and never repaired. How bad could Highway One be?

About sixty kilometers out of Saigon, the train made its first stop at a place called Xuan Loc, which I knew had been the location of the Black Horse Base Camp, headquarters of the Eleventh Armored Cavalry. I said to Susan, “The gentleman called K, whom we communicated with in your office, was stationed here in ’68.”

“Really? Why didn’t he come back here with you?”

“That’s a good question. He would have enjoyed Colonel Mang. They’re cast from the same mold.”

People got off at Xuan Loc, and people got on. Balance and harmony were achieved, and the train moved on. I said, “Xuan Loc was the site of the last stand of the South Vietnamese army before the fall of Saigon.”

Susan yawned and replied, “I’m too vapid and self-centered to care.”

I think I’d pissed her off. Or maybe it was the generation gap. I suddenly felt middle-aged.

It had been a long night and an early morning for both of us, and Susan fell asleep with her head on my shoulder. Within a few minutes, I, too, was asleep.

We both awoke as the train approached Cam Ranh Bay, about four hours from Saigon. I could see the huge bay, and also part of the former American naval installation, and some gray warships at anchor. Farther north on a peninsula that formed the bay had been the big American airbase. Susan was awake now, and I asked her, “Have you ever been here?”

She said, “No, no one comes here. It’s mostly off-limits.” She asked me, “Were you ever here?”

“Once. Briefly in ’72. I was on a military police detail to pick up a couple of soldiers who’d gotten into some trouble. We had to take them down to LBJ — that’s Long Binh Jail — outside Bien Hoa. Back in ’68, when Johnson was still President, we used to say about guys going to jail, ‘LBJ got you once, now LBJ got you again.’ Get it?”

“Is this in the history books?”

“Probably not.”

I looked out the window again. The American naval and air installations at Cam Ranh Bay were considered among the best in the Pacific at that time. After 1975, the Soviets were handed the whole complex by the new regime. I asked Susan, “Any Russians still here?”

“I’m told there are some left. But mostly the Vietnamese navy uses the place.” She added, “It’s a deepwater port, and it would make a great commercial port for container ships and oil tankers, but Hanoi has pretty much banned all development in the area. I don’t think you’d be allowed to visit the base unless you want to get shot.”

“That’s okay.” That was two places now — Bien Hoa and Cam Ranh Bay — where I couldn’t go home again.

The train stopped at Cam Ranh Bay station. Only a few people got off, and the people getting on were mostly Vietnamese sailors and airmen, and most of them jammed into the vestibule.

Susan took a half-liter bottle of water out of her backpack, opened it, and drank, then passed it on to me.

The train moved out and continued north.

Now and then I could see a bomb crater, a derelict tank, a few dilapidated sandbag bunkers, or a French watchtower. But mostly the war seemed to have been erased from the landscape, though probably not from the minds of the people who had lived through it, myself included.

Susan took a container of yogurt out of her bag and a plastic spoon. “Want some?”

I hadn’t eaten since the hamburger in the Q-Bar, but I’d rather starve to death than eat yogurt. I said, “No, thanks.”

She spooned the stuff into her mouth.

I asked, “Does this train have a dining car?”

“Of course. You go through the bar car, then the panoramic observation car, and you get to the dining car.”

I was hungry and light-headed enough to believe that. I noticed that everyone around us had brought lots of food and drink. I said to Susan, “I’ll have some yogurt.”

She put a spoonful of this white goo in my mouth. It wasn’t all that bad.

We finished the water and yogurt, and Susan wanted to switch places, but there was no room in the aisle, so she squeezed onto my lap, then I slid across to the aisle seat. I said, “Let’s do that again.”

She smiled.

Susan lit up an after-dinner cigarette and blew the smoke out a crack in the window. She had a copy of the London Economist with her, which she read.

A half-hour after we’d left Cam Ranh Bay, and about six hours after we’d left Saigon, the train began slowing down as we approached Nha Trang.

We came in from the west, and the landscape was spectacular with mountains running down toward the sea. Picturesque brick towers — which Susan said were Cham Towers, whatever that is — dotted the foothills. There was a huge Buddha statue in the hills to our left, and on a small hill ahead, overlooking the train station, was a Gothic-style Catholic cathedral, which I remembered.

The train slowed down and stopped at the station.

This was the last stop, and people grabbed kids, luggage, and packages, and headed for the doors as the mob on the platform fought to get in.

As we pushed toward the door, Susan said, “Just keep pushing. You’re the biggest guy on the train, and everyone behind us is counting on you.”

We finally popped out the door onto the platform.

It was cooler here than in Saigon, and the air was about a thousand times cleaner. The sky was blue and wispy clouds floated by.

Susan and I walked along the platform into the small station house, then outside where dozens of taxis waited for fares.

We got into a taxi, and Susan said something to the driver, who did a double take at her Vietnamese, then pulled away from the station. Susan asked me, “What do you remember about that R&R hotel?”

“It was toward the south end of the beach. It was a French colonial structure, maybe three stories. It could have been white, or maybe pale blue.”

She said, “Not bad for an old guy.” Susan spoke to the driver. He listened as he drove and nodded.

We passed through Nha Trang, which looked like many other seaside resort towns — white stucco buildings and red tiled roofs, palm trees, and climbing bougainvillea. The town was in better shape than I remembered it, when it was filled with military vehicles and soldiers. It had been a generally safe haven from the war, and I didn’t recall any major war damage, though now and then Charles would lob in a few mortar rounds from the surrounding hills. Also, the CIA had a big sub-station in Nha Trang, a sure sign that the place was safe and had good restaurants and bars.

Within a few minutes, the taxi turned south along the beach road. The beachside buildings to our right ranged from ramshackle to bright new hotels and resorts. To our left was the beach, miles of white sand, palm trees, beach restaurants, and turquoise water under a bright sunlit sky. The beach was crescent-shaped, and two headlands jutted out into the South China Sea from the north and south. Across the water were several intriguing-looking islands of dark green vegetation. Susan said, “Oh, this is beautiful.”

“It is.”

“Is this how you remember it?”

“I was here only three days, and I believe I was drunk the entire time.”

The taxi stopped, and the driver pointed and spoke to Susan. About a hundred meters beyond a concrete balustrade that ran along the road was a big, white, three-story stucco building with two wings jutting out from the main section. A blue and white sign read Grand Hotel.

Susan said, “The driver says this was one of the hotels used by the Americans during the war. It was called the Grand then, got a Communist name change to Nha Khach 44—which just means Hotel Number 44—and it’s now the Grand again. Look familiar?”

“Could be. Ask him if there’s a waitress named Lucy in the bar.”

Susan smiled, said something to the driver, and he drove in between two tall pillars, into a circular driveway, in the center of which was an ornamental pool.

The place did look familiar, including the veranda out front where people were sitting and drinking. I could almost picture Lucy waiting on tables. I said, “This has to be the place.”

The driver let us off at the front steps, we collected our bags from the trunk, and I paid him.

As the taxi pulled away, I said to Susan, “They might not have any rooms.”

“Money talks.”

We carried our bags up the wide steps, through a set of screen doors, and into the lobby.

The lobby was very run-down and sparse, but had fifteen-foot ceilings with crumbling plaster moldings, and an air of having once been elegant. Along the right-hand wall was a long counter with a keyboard on the wall, and behind the counter sat a young clerk, asleep in a chair. Susan asked me, “So, is this it?”

I looked through an arched opening off the left side of the lobby and saw the dining room, more faded elegance, and open French doors that led to the veranda. I nodded. “This is it.”

“Great.”

Susan hit the desk bell, and the clerk jumped like he’d just heard the whistle of an incoming round.

He composed himself, and he and Susan began the negotiations. Susan turned to me and said, “Okay, he says he has only expensive rooms left. He has two on the third floor. Each room has its own bath, and hot water in the morning. They’re big rooms, but big is relative here. He wants seventy-five bucks a night for each room, which is a joke, and I offered him two hundred each for the week. Okay?”

Last time I was here, the army paid, and this time, the army was still paying. I said, “Fine. You staying the week?”

“No, but I made a better deal for the two weekly rates. He wants dollars.”

I took out my wallet and began counting out four hundred dollars, but Susan said, “I’m paying for my own room.”

“Tell this guy I was here during the war, and they had hot water 24/7, and the place was a lot cleaner when the American army ran it.”

Susan informed me, “I don’t think he cares.”

We filled out registration cards and showed our passports and visas, which the guy absolutely insisted he had to hold on to by law. Susan gave him ten dollars instead.

We each gave him two hundred dollars, and he gave us receipts for a hundred dollars, which was interesting math. He gave us each a key, then hit his bell, and a bellboy appeared. The kid looked about ten, but he managed to get Susan’s backpack on and carry my suitcase up three flights of stairs. As we climbed the stairs, Susan asked, “Is the elevator broken?”

“The elevator runs fine, but it’s not in this building. It’s in that nice new place next door.” I added, “You can stay there, if you’d like. I have to stay here.”

“I know. I didn’t mean to complain. This is actually quite… charming. Quaint.”

We got up to the third floor. The hallways were wide, and the ceiling was high. Above each door was a screened transom to provide for cross-ventilation.

We came to my room, Number 308, and the kid went in with the luggage.

Susan and I followed. The room was actually big and held three single beds, as though it were still an R&R hotel for soldiers. Each bed had a wooden frame around it, from which hung mosquito netting. I remembered the mosquito netting from last time. Nostalgia is basically the ability to forget the things that sucked.

The plain stucco walls were painted a strange sky blue, and there was an odd assortment of floor fans, lamps, and cheap modern furniture arranged haphazardly around the large floor space. A paddle fan hung from the high ceiling, which was also painted blue.

The evidence that the Americans had once been here was a lot of electrical wiring in metal channels running along the walls to standard American electrical outlets, which now had adapters plugged into them to accept Asian-made appliances. Yes, this was definitely the place.

I said, “Well… not bad.”

Susan, trying to be a sport, said, “Great mosquito netting.”

I opened the louvered doors to the balcony, letting in a nice sea breeze.

We stood on the balcony, looking out across the front lawn, the circular drive, and the ornamental pool, to the palm-lined white beach across the road. I could see a lot of chaise lounges on the beach, but not a lot of people around.

Susan said, “Look at that water and that beach and those mountains and those islands out there. This was a good idea to come to Nha Trang. Okay, I’ll go to my room and unpack and get cleaned up.” She looked at her watch. “Let’s say drinks on the veranda at six. Is that okay?”

I said, “Make it six-thirty. I have to drop by the Immigration police station, and tell them where I’m staying.”

“Oh… do you want me to come with you?”

“No. I’ll see you on the veranda at six-thirty. If I’m late, don’t be overly concerned, but if I’m very late, then make inquiries.”

“Let them know you’re traveling with someone. They’re not as likely to try anything if they know you aren’t alone.”

“I’ll see how it plays. You may have noticed that there’s no telephone in the room. So, if I need to call you, I’ll have the front desk look for you. Let them know where you’ll be.”

“Okay.” She looked at her key and said, “I’m in 304.”

“I need to get some photocopies made.”

“Post office. Buu dien.”

“See you later.”

She left with the bellboy, and I stayed on the balcony, looking at the sea.

It was hard to believe that not so many days ago, I was on the other side of that water and across a wide continent.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I think I always knew I would come back to Vietnam. And here I was.

The sleepy desk clerk called a taxi for me. I went outside and within a minute one pulled into the circular driveway. I got in and said, “Buu dien. Le Bureau de poste. Post office. Biet?”

He nodded and off we went to the buu dien in the center of town, about a ten-minute drive. I told the cab driver to wait, and I went inside. For a thousand dong, about ten cents, I had three copies each made of my passport and visa, and three copies of Colonel Mang’s note.

I got back into my taxi and told the driver, “Phong Quan Ly Nguoi Nuoc Ngoi.” I guess I got that right because a few minutes later, we pulled up to the Immigration police station, instead of a bottled water vendor. The cabbie pantomimed that he’d wait down the block.

The police station was a modest stucco building with an open archway instead of a door. The waiting room was light and airy, and was populated with the usual suspects — backpackers and Viet-Kieus, trying to deal with bureaucratic stupidity and laziness.

This little police facility seemed a lot more informal than the forbidding Ministry of Public Security in Saigon, and there were bicycles in the waiting room as well as sand on the floor from the beach.

I presented photocopies of my visa and passport to a bored-looking policeman sitting at a desk in a small alcove, and showed him a copy of my note from Colonel Mang. He read it, picked up his phone, and called someone. He said to me, “Sit.”

I stood.

A minute later, another uniformed guy came into the room, ignored me, and took the note from the desk guy and read it. Then he looked at me, and said in passable English, “Where you stay?”

“Grand Hotel.”

He nodded, as though the Grand Hotel had already called and reported my presence, and most probably the presence of my traveling companion as well. I was also sure that Mang had alerted the Immigration Police to my expected visit.

The guy asked me, “You here with lady?”

“Meet lady on train. Not my lady.”

“Yes?” He seemed to buy this, probably because of the separate rooms.

The cop said to me, “You stay one week.”

“Maybe.”

“Where you go leave Nha Trang?”

“Hue.”

All this was going on in the waiting room with an interested audience of Aussies, Americans, and others.

The cop asked, “Lady go with you?”

“Maybe.”

“Okay, you leave passport and visa. Give you later.”

I was prepared for this and knowing firsthand that cops don’t like negative responses, I said, “Okay.” I took the photocopy of my passport and visa from the other cop’s desk and gave them to him, along with a five-dollar bill, which he quickly pocketed.

I said, “Have a good day.” I turned and headed for the door.

“Stop.”

I looked back at the cop.

He asked, “How you go to Hue?”

“Bus or train.”

“Yes? You come here and show ticket. You need travel stamp.”

“Okay.” I left.

The taxi was waiting down the block, and I got in. “Grand Hotel.”

The taxi headed south along the beach road. I recalled spending a lot of time on the beach when I was here, along with the other two guys in my room, both of whom were combat vets, but not from my unit. All of us had done something really brave and stupid to get this three-day R&R, and all of us had varying degrees of jungle rot, which was helped by the sun and salt water.

There were maybe a hundred guys in the Grand Hotel, and the place resembled a home for burnouts during the day. We slept too much, and we drank too much beer on the beach.

At night, the walking wounded came alive, and we’d stay out until dawn, hitting every bar, whorehouse, and massage parlor in town until the sun came up. Then we’d sleep on the beach or in the hotel, and do it all over again on night two, then again on the last night. Men came and went, and not everyone’s three days coincided, but you could tell the first-day guys from the third-day guys: Day One was sort of culture shock — you couldn’t believe you were here. Day Two, you drank and fucked your brains out. Day Three, with what was left of your brain, you drank and fucked even more because you were going back to hell.

Aside from some improvement in my jungle sores, crotch rot, and immersion foot, I rejoined my unit in much worse shape than when I’d left. Everyone did, but that’s what rest and recuperation is all about.

The taxi pulled into the driveway of the Grand and deposited me at the front steps.

Inside my room, I unpacked and showered in cold water. There was no soap or shampoo, but there was a towel, and I left the bathroom and dried off in the bedroom where there was some ventilation from the fan and the open balcony.

There was a knock at the door. I went to the door, but there was no peephole. I said, “Who is it?”

“Me.”

“Okay…” I wrapped my towel around me and opened the door.

Susan said, “Oh… did I catch you at a bad moment?”

“Come in.”

She came in and closed the door behind her. “How did it go?”

“It went fine.” She was wearing white slacks, a gray T-shirt that said Q-Bar, Saigon, and sandals. I said, “Don’t peek, and I’ll get dressed.”

She went out on the balcony while I put on a pair of black chinos and a white golf shirt. As I dressed, I related my brief meeting with the Immigration Police, mentioning that they knew we’d checked in together. I said, “Okay. I’m decent.”

She came back into the room, and I slipped into a pair of docksiders and said, “Let’s go have a drink.”

We got down to the lobby, walked through the empty dining room that had a service bar in the corner, and went out onto the veranda.

Only about half the café tables were filled, and we seated ourselves near the railing.

The sun was behind the hotel now, and the veranda was in the shade. A sea breeze blew across the lawn and rustled the palms.

The other guests were all Westerners, mostly middle-aged. The Grand Hotel was a bit upscale for backpackers, not quaint or charming to Japanese and Koreans who had money, and absolutely unacceptable to any class of middle-aged Americans, except maybe schoolteachers. I concluded that everyone there, except us, were Europeans.

It was very nice on this old-fashioned white stucco veranda with paddle fans overhead, the smell of salt water, the wide lawn, and the turquoise waters stretching out to the green islands. It would have been perfect if I had a drink, but there were no serving people around. I said, “I think we have to get our own drinks.”

“I’ll go. What do you want?”

“I’ll go,” I said, as I sat on my ass. Women understand that this is total bullshit, and Susan stood. “What do you want?”

“A cold beer. And see if they have any snacks. I’m starving. Thanks.”

She went through the French doors into the dining room.

I recalled sitting here almost thirty years ago, and I remembered when the female staff were plentiful and very attentive, thrilled out of their minds to be working here for the Americans while out there, their country was disintegrating, and their fathers, brothers, and husbands were bleeding and dying alongside the Americans who were so far from home; but here in Nha Trang, there was a sign outside the barbed wire that said Off-Limits to Death. Not a literal sign, of course, but an unspoken understanding that you were not going to meet a violent end in this place.

And for the infantrymen and the helicopter door gunners and the chopper pilots and the long-range patrol guys and the tunnel rats and the combat medics, and for all the guys who had seen what the insides of people looked like, Nha Trang was more than a haven; it was a reaffirmation that somewhere amid all this shooting and dying, a place existed where people didn’t carry guns, and where the day ended with a sunset that you knew you’d live to see, and the night held no terror, and the morning sun rose over the South China Sea and illuminated a beach of sleeping, not dead, bodies.

Susan came back without the drinks and said, “The waitress will bring our drinks.” She sat. “You’re in luck. The waitress is Lucy.”

“Great.”

An elderly woman came through the French doors carrying a tray. She looked about eighty, with a weathered face and betel-nut-stained teeth and lips, but she was probably closer to my age.

Susan said, “Paul, this is your old friend, Lucy.”

The woman cackled and put down the tray.

Susan said something to the woman, and they chatted. Susan turned to me and said, “She was a chambermaid here when she was a young girl, and this place was a resort for the French plantation owners. She stayed on when the Americans took it over as an R&R hotel, then in 1975 it became a Communist Party hotel, and now that it’s a public hotel again.” Susan added, “In 1968, she was a young cocktail waitress, and she says she remembers an American who looks like you who used to chase her around the tables, trying to pinch her ass.”

The old lady cackled again.

I suspected the last part of Susan’s story was not true. But to be a sport, I said, “Tell her she’s still beautiful — co-dep. And I’d still like to pinch her ass.”

The old lady laughed at co-dep before Susan could translate the English, and when Susan got to the ass-pinching part, the woman broke into a girlish laugh, said something, smacked me on the shoulder playfully, and trotted off.

Susan smiled and said, “She says you’re an old goat.” She added, “She also said, ‘Welcome back.’ ”

I nodded. Welcome back, indeed.

Nha Trang and the Grand Hotel and the old woman had escaped most of the war, but in the end, nothing escaped.

Susan had a gin and tonic, and I poured a bottle of Tiger beer into a plastic cup. There was a bowl of something on the table that looked like trail mix, but I couldn’t identify what trail it came from.

I raised my glass and said, “Thanks for your help and your company.”

We touched glasses, and she said, “Thanks for inviting me.”

We both got a laugh out of that.

We sipped our drinks and watched the sea. It was one of those perfect times when sun, sea, and wind were just right, the beer is cold, the hard day’s journey has ended, and the woman is beautiful.

Susan asked me, “What did you do when you were here besides get drunk?”

“Mostly lay in the sun and had some good food.” I added, “A lot of the guys were stressed out, of course, so we played a lot of cards, and most of us had jungle sores, so the sun and sea were good for the skin.”

She lit a cigarette and asked, “How about women?”

I replied, “Women, except for employees, were not allowed in the hotel.”

“Were you allowed out of the hotel?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, ha. And were you involved with anyone from home when you were here?”

“I was. Her name was Peggy, a good Irish Catholic Southie.”

She drew on her cigarette and looked out to sea. “And how about in ’72? Were you involved with anyone then?”

“I was married. It was a brief marriage, and it ended when I returned. In fact, before I returned.”

She thought about that awhile and asked, “And since then?”

“Since then I made two promises to myself — never go back to Vietnam and never get married again.”

She smiled. “Which was worse? Combat or marriage?”

“They were both fun in their own way.” I asked her, “And how about you? You’re on.”

She sipped her drink, lit another cigarette, and said, “I’ve never been married.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. Do you want a sexual history?”

I wanted to get to dinner before eight, so I said, “No.”

The old woman came by, and I looked at her as Susan ordered another round and chatted with her. She could have been Lucy, but Lucy existed in my mind as a happy, funny girl, who traded mock insults with the soldiers who were all in love with her, but she wasn’t for sale. Guys always want what they can’t have, and Lucy was the grand prize at the Grand Hotel. Assuming this old crone was not Lucy, I hoped Lucy had survived the war, married her Viet soldier boyfriend, and that they were happy somewhere.

Susan asked me, “What are you thinking about?”

“I was thinking that the last time I was here, you weren’t even born.”

“I was born, but not toilet-trained.”

The second round came, and we sat watching the sky darken. I could see lights in the thatched cafés and souvenir stands down on the beach. The breeze picked up, and it got cooler, but was still pleasant.

About halfway through our third round, Susan asked me, “Don’t you need to contact someone back in the States?”

“I was supposed to contact you in Saigon and say I’d arrived. But you’re here.”

She replied, “The hotel has a fax machine, and I faxed Bill at his office and his home and told him we’d arrived, and where we were staying. He knows to contact the consulate, who will contact your people.” She added, “I stood over the clerk while he faxed, got my original back, and ate it. Okay?”

“Good tradecraft. Was Bill surprised to get a message from you in Nha Trang? Or did you tell him about your trip when you called him from the Rex?”

“I still wasn’t sure I wanted to go with you at that point.” She added, “I haven’t gotten his reply yet.”

“If I’d gotten a message from my girlfriend that she went to a beach resort with a guy, I might not bother to reply.”

She thought about that and said, “I asked him to acknowledge receipt.” She added, “When Westerners who live here travel, they always tell someone where they’re going… in case there’s a problem. Also, this is official business. Right? So he needs to reply.”

“Or at least acknowledge receipt.”

“Actually… I was feeling a little… guilty. So I asked him to join us here.”

This sort of took me by surprise, and I guess my face betrayed that surprise, and maybe something else. I said, “That’s nice,” which was pretty lame.

She stared at me in the dim light. She said, “What I really told him was that it was over between us.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I just sat there.

She went on. “He knows that, anyway. I didn’t want to do it that way, but I had to. This has nothing to do with you, so don’t get an inflated ego.”

I started to say something, but she said, “Just listen. I realized that I was having more fun… that I’d rather be in the Q-Bar with you than him.”

“High praise, indeed.”

I saw that I’d interrupted a moment of true confession with my big mouth and said, “Sorry. I just sometimes get… uncomfortable—”

“Okay. Let me finish. You’re an interesting man, but you’re very conflicted about life and probably love. And part of your problem is that you don’t read yourself very well.” She looked at me closely and said, “Look at me, Paul.”

I looked at her.

She asked, “How did you feel when I told you I’d asked Bill to join me?”

“Lousy.” I added, “My face dropped. Did you see that?”

“It fell in your beer.” She informed me, “You’ve been giving me a hard time, and I don’t like that. You could have blown me off anytime you wanted, if you really wanted me gone. But instead, you—”

“Okay. Point made. I apologize, and I promise to be nice. Not only that… I want you to know I not only enjoy your company, I look forward to your company.”

“Keep going.”

“Right. Well, I’m extremely fond of you, I like you a lot, I miss you when you’re not around, I know if I let myself go—”

“Good enough. Look, Paul, this is an artificial situation, you’ve got someone back home, you’re here on important business, and this place is silently freaking you out. I understand all this. So, we’ll just compartmentalize these few days. Fun in the sun, and whatever happens, happens. You go to Hue, and I go back to Saigon. And, God willing, we’ll both find our way home.”

I nodded.

So we held hands and watched the night turn from purple to black. The stars over the water were brilliant, and the waning moon cast a sliver of light on the South China Sea. A boy brought oil lamps to each of the tables, and the veranda shimmered in lights and shadow.

I paid the bill, and we walked across the lawn, across the road, and down to the beach, where Private First Class Paul Brenner had walked a long time ago.

We picked an outdoor restaurant called Coconut Grove, set among palm trees and trellises.

We sat at a small wooden table lit with a red oil lamp and ordered Tiger beers. The breeze was stronger here, and I could hear the surf fifty yards away.

The menus came, and they were in Vietnamese, English, and French, but the prices were in American.

Most of the selections were seafood, as you’d expect in a fishing town, but for ten dollars, I could experience bird’s nest soup, which seemed to be an addition to the menu, since it was harvested only twice a year, and lucky for me, this was a harvest month. The nest was made of red grass and sparrow saliva, but the real selling point was that this delicacy was also an aphrodisiac. I said to Susan, “I’ll have the bird’s nest soup.”

She smiled. “Do you need it?”

We ordered a huge plate of mixed seafood and vegetables, which the waiter grilled at tableside over a charcoal brazier.

The people around us seemed to be mostly northern Europeans, escaping the winter. Nha Trang, which had been founded by the French, had once been called the Côte d’Azur of Southeast Asia, and it seemed to be making a comeback, though it had a long way to go.

We kept ordering more seafood, and the waiter was kidding Susan about getting fat. This was a very pleasant place, and there was magic in the night air.

Susan and I kept the conversation light, the way people do who have just had an intense talk that pushed the table limits higher.

We skipped dessert and took a barefoot walk on the beach, carrying our shoes. The tide was going out, and the beach was covered with seashells and stranded marine life. A few people were surf-casting, backpackers had lit fires on the beach, and couples strolled hand in hand, including Susan and me.

The sky was crystal clear, and you could see the Milky Way, and a number of constellations. We walked south, away from the center of town, along a widening beach where new hotels sat along the coast.

About half a mile down the beach, we came upon the Nha Trang Sailing Club, an upscale place where a dance was going on inside. We went in, ordered two beers, and danced along with a lot of Europeans to some terrible, loud Seventies music played by the worst band anywhere along the Pacific Rim — maybe the world. But it was fun, and we chatted with some Europeans and even switched partners now and then. A few of the men pegged me for a Vietnam veteran, but that’s as far as it went; no one, myself included, wanted to talk about it.

I don’t know if I was drunk, mellowed out, or just happy about something, but for the first time in a long time, I felt at peace with myself and my surroundings.

We left the Nha Trang Sailing Club after one A.M. and as we walked back toward the colored lights of the cafés on the beach, Susan asked me, “Is what you’re doing here dangerous?”

“I just need to find someone and question him, then go to Hanoi and fly home.”

“Where is this person? Tam Ki?”

“I don’t know yet.” I changed the subject and asked her, “Susan, why are you here?”

She took her hand out of mine and lit a cigarette. She said, “Well… it’s not as important or dramatic as why you’re here.”

“It’s important to you, or you wouldn’t be here. What was his name?”

She took a long draw on her cigarette and said, “Sam. We were childhood sweethearts, dated through college — he went to Dartmouth. We went to B-school together — you may have seen his picture in my office, the group shot.”

Harry Handsome, but I didn’t say that.

“We lived together in New York… I was totally crazy about him, and couldn’t imagine a world without him. We got engaged, and we were going to get married, buy a house in Connecticut, have children, and live happily ever after.” She stayed silent for a while, then continued, “I was in love with him since we were kids, and right up to the time he came home one day and told me he was involved with another woman. A woman at work. He packed his bags and left.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Well… these things happen. But I couldn’t believe it was happening to me. I never saw it coming, which made me wonder about myself. Anyway, I couldn’t get over it, and I quit my job in New York and went home to Lenox for a while. Everyone there was totally stunned. Sam Thorpe was the boy next door, and the wedding was all planned. My father wanted to do an autopsy on him while he was still alive.” She laughed.

We continued walking, and she said, “Well, I tried to get over it, but there were too many memories in Lenox. I was crying too much, and everyone around me was starting to lose patience with me, but I missed him, and I just couldn’t get myself together. Long story short, I looked around for an overseas job that no one else wanted, and six months after Sam left, I was in Saigon.”

“Did you ever hear from him again?”

“I sure did. A few months after I got to Saigon, he wrote me a long letter, saying he’d made the biggest mistake of his life, and would I come home and marry him. He reminded me of all the good times we had as kids — school dances, our first kiss, family parties, and all that. He said we were part of each other’s lives, and we should be married and have children and grow old together.”

“I guess the other thing didn’t work out for him.”

“I guess not.”

“And what did you reply to him?”

“I didn’t.” She took a deep breath. “He broke my heart, and I knew it could never be the same again. So, to save us both a lot of misery, I just didn’t answer his letter. He wrote a few more times, then stopped writing.” She threw her cigarette in the surf. “I heard from mutual friends that he got married to a girl in New York.”

We walked along the water’s edge, and the wet sand and surf felt good on my feet. I thought about Susan and Sam, and while I was at it, about Cynthia and Paul. In a perfect world, people would be like penguins and mate for life and stay close to the iceberg where they were born. But men and women get restless, they stray, and they break each other’s hearts. When I was younger, I thought too much with my dick. Still do. But not as much.

I asked Susan, “Would it have made a difference if he had come to Saigon, instead of asking you to come home?”

“That’s a good question. I went home once on leave, and I think he knew I was home, though by that time, I guess we both knew we couldn’t see each other again. But I don’t know what I would have done if he’d shown up on my doorstep on Dong Khoi Street.”

“What do you think?”

“I think that a man who did what he did, and who was truly sorry, would not have written a letter. He would have come to Saigon and taken me home.”

“And you would have gone with him?”

“I would have gone with a man who had the courage and conviction to come and get me. But that wasn’t Sam. I think he was exploring his options by mail.” She glanced at me. “Someone like you would have just come to Saigon without the stupid letters.”

I didn’t respond directly to that, but I found myself saying, “Cynthia and I live a few hundred miles from each other, and I’m not making the move, though I think she would.”

“Women will usually go to where the man is. You should think about why you’re not going to where she is.”

I changed the subject back to her and said, “You got away from what you were running from. Time to move on.”

She didn’t reply, and we kept walking along the wet sand. She threw her sandals onto the beach and walked into the water up to her knees. I waded in beside her.

She said, “So, that’s my sad story. But you know what? The move to Saigon was one of the best decisions of my life.”

“That’s a little scary.”

She laughed and said, “No, I mean it. I grew up real fast here. I was spoiled, coddled, and totally clueless. I was Daddy’s girl, and Sam’s sweetheart, and Mommy’s perfect daughter. I belonged to the Junior League, for God’s sake. But it was okay. I was happy.” She added, “I think I was dull and boring.”

“You certainly fixed that problem.”

“Right. I realized that Sam was bored with me. I never even flirted with other guys. So, when he said he was screwing this woman at work, I felt so betrayed… I should have gone out and fucked his best friend.” She laughed, then said, “Are you sorry you asked?”

“No. Now I understand.”

“Yeah. So, anyway, when I first got here, I was terrified, and I almost turned around and went home.”

“I know the feeling.”

She laughed. “My tour here can’t possibly compare to yours, but for me, this was a big step toward growing up. I knew if I went home, I’d… well, who knows?” She said, “I told you, you wouldn’t have recognized me three years ago. If you’d met me in New York, you wouldn’t have spoken to me for five minutes.”

“I’m not sure about that. But I hear you. So, is your character development nearly complete?”

“You tell me.”

“I told you. It’s time to go home. There comes a point of diminishing returns.”

“How do you know when that is?”

“You have to know.” I said to her, “During the war, the military limited the tour of duty here to twelve or thirteen months. The first year, if you survived it, made a man out of you. If you volunteered to stay, the second year made something else out of you.” I added, “At some point, as I mentioned in Apocalypse Now, you couldn’t go home, unless you were ordered to leave, or you went home in a body bag.”

She didn’t respond.

I said, “Look, this place isn’t so bad now, and I see the attraction, but you’ve got your Ph.D. in life, so go home and use it for something.”

“I’ll think about it.” She changed the subject and said, “We should take a boat out to those islands.”

We stood there in the water, and I took her hand, and we looked out at the sea and the night sky.

It was pushing 2 A.M. by the time we got to the hotel, and a guard let us in. There was no one at the front desk, so we couldn’t check for messages, and we walked up the stairs to the third floor.

We got to my room first, and I opened the door and checked for a fax message. There was none, and we walked to Susan’s room.

She opened the door, and there was a single sheet of paper on the floor. She went into the bedroom, turned on a lamp, and read the fax. She handed it to me, and I read: Your message received and transmitted to proper authorities. I am very hurt and angry, but it’s your decision. Not mine. I think you’re making a terrible mistake, and if you hadn’t gone to Nha Trang with someone, we could have discussed this. Now, I think it’s too late. It was signed Bill.

I gave the fax sheet back to her and said, “You didn’t have to show that to me.”

“He’s such a romantic.” She added, “Notice he didn’t bother to come to Nha Trang.”

“You’re tough on men. God knows what you’re going to say about me over drinks in the Q-Bar.”

She looked at me and said, “Anything I have to say about you, I’ll say to you.”

There was this awkward moment, and I looked around the room, which was much like my own. I noticed the snow globe on her night table and a few things hung in the open alcove. I said, “Did they give you any soap or shampoo?”

“No. But I brought my own. I should have told you.”

“I’ll buy some tomorrow.”

“You can have half my soap bar now.”

That wasn’t what I had in mind when I brought up the soap problem, and we both knew it. I said, “That’s okay. Well…”

She gave me a big hug and buried her face on my chest. She said, “Maybe before I leave. I have to think about it. Is that all right?”

“Sure.”

We kissed, and for a moment, I thought she already thought about it, but she broke away and said, “Okay… good night. Breakfast? Ten?”

“Fine.” I don’t like lingering good-byes, so I turned and left.

Back in my room, I took off my shirt and peeled off my wet pants and threw them on one of the beds.

I pulled a chair out to the balcony and sat with my feet on the wrought iron railing. I looked up at the starlit sky and yawned.

I could hear music from the beach and voices carried on the night breeze, and the surf hitting the sand. I listened for a knock on my door, but there was no knock.

My mind drifted back to May 1968, when I was here in Nha Trang, with only one worry in the world — staying alive. Like a lot of middle-aged men who have been to war, there were times when I felt that war had a stark and honest simplicity to it, an almost transcendental quality that focused the mind and the body as nothing else had done before, or would do again.

And yet, for all the adrenaline rushes, and the out-of-body experiences, and the incandescent flashes of truth and light, war, like a drug, took its toll on the body, the mind, and the soul. There was a point of diminishing returns, and a price to pay for spitting in the eye of Death, and getting away with it.

I stared at the stars and thought of Cynthia, of Susan, and of Paul Brenner, and of Vietnam, Part Three.

I got into bed and pulled down the mosquito netting, but I couldn’t sleep, so I played taps in my head: Day is done, gone the sun, from the lakes, from the hills, from the sky, all is well, safely rest, God is nigh…

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I got to the veranda at 10 A.M., and Susan was already sitting at a table with a pot of coffee, reading her Economist.

There were a few other people having breakfast, all Westerners, so I concluded I wasn’t under the eye of the Ministry of Public Security. I kind of wished I was because I had no anti-government activities planned for the day.

The great minds in Washington had scheduled this as a down week, the week in which Mr. Paul Brenner, Vietnam veteran, established his innocence as a tourist. This was standard tradecraft. Very short trips to faraway places always look suspicious to immigration and customs people. Similarly, visas applied for shortly before a major trip also look suspicious, as Colonel Mang indicated. But it was too late to worry about that.

I sat and said to Susan, “Good morning.”

She put down the magazine and said, “Good morning. How did you sleep?”

“Alone.”

She smiled and poured me a cup of coffee.

Susan was wearing khaki slacks, as was I, and a sleeveless navy blue pullover.

It was a beautiful morning, the temperature was in the mid-seventies, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

The waiter came, and Susan informed me, “They have only two breakfasts — Viet and Western. Pho soup or fried eggs. They don’t know scrambled, so don’t ask.”

“Eggs.”

Susan ordered in Vietnamese.

I asked her, “Did you have hot water?”

“Oh, I forgot to tell you. There’s an electric hot water tank above the toilet. Didn’t you see it?”

“I thought it was part of the toilet.”

“No. There’s a switch you turn on, and it heats about twenty gallons of water. Takes awhile. They turn off the electric to the tanks at 10 A.M.”

“I didn’t have any soap anyway.”

“We’ll go to the market later and get a few things.”

I asked her, “Do you think that when Bill contacted the consulate, he mentioned to them that you’d come along to Nha Trang?”

She lit a cigarette and replied, “I thought about that. On the one hand, he should have told them, if he’s serious about being useful to the consulate. On the other hand, they all know he and I are — were — dating, so maybe he’s embarrassed to tell them I took off with you.”

I nodded.

She asked, “Do you think you’d be in trouble with your firm if they discovered we’d made this trip together?”

I replied, “They would not be happy, but what are they going to do about it? Send me to Vietnam?”

She smiled. “Sounds like something you guys said when you were here.”

“Every day.”

“Well… I’m sorry if this winds up causing you a problem.”

“No problem.” As long as Karl didn’t rat me out to Cynthia. But he wouldn’t do that — unless it served a purpose for him.

The eggs came. Susan said to me, “I was thinking about what I told you about Sam, and why I’m here and all that. I didn’t want you to think that a man was the cause of me being here.”

“That’s exactly what I thought.”

“I mean, he was not the cause of me being here. I made that decision. He was the catalyst.”

“Got it.”

“I needed to prove something to myself, not to Sam. Now I think I’m the person I want to be, and I’m ready to find the right person to be with.”

“Good.”

“Tell me what you think. Be honest.”

“Okay. I think you got it right last night when you were drunk. I also think that you came to Vietnam with the intention of staying only as long as it took for you to make Sam interested in you again. If he’d come here to get you, you’d have gone back with him long before you proved anything to yourself. But it was important for you that he come and see that you could make it on your own. So, bottom line, this was all for a guy. But I think you’re beyond that now.”

She didn’t say anything, and I wondered if she was annoyed, embarrassed, or stunned by my blinding insights. Finally, she said, “That’s about it. You’re a pretty sharp guy.”

“I do this for a living. Not advice to the lovelorn, but I analyze bullshit all day. I don’t have a lot of patience for bullshit, or self-justification. Everybody knows what they did and why they did it. You either keep it to yourself, or you tell it like it is.”

She nodded. “I knew I could trust you to tell me what you thought.”

“The question remains, What are you going to do next? If you stay here, stay for the right reasons. Same if you go home. My concern for you, Ms. Weber, is the same concern I had for the guys I knew who couldn’t leave here.”

“How about guys who stay in the army all their lives?”

“You mean me?”

“Yes, you.”

“Point made. So maybe I know what I’m talking about.”

“Why did you come back?”

“They said it was important. They said they needed me. And I was bored.”

“What’s so important?”

“I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what — when I’m out of here, we’ll meet someday for a drink in New York, Washington, or Massachusetts, and I’ll tell you what I discovered.”

She replied, “Make it Washington. You owe me a tour of the city. But first, make sure you get out of here.”

“Did it twice already.”

“Good. Ready to go?”

“First, tell me how you knew I was working for the army.”

“Oh… I guess someone told me. I guess it was Bill.”

“He had no need to know that.”

“Then I guess it was someone in the consulate. What difference does it make?”

I didn’t reply.

She looked at me and said, “Actually, I wasn’t asked by Bill to do a favor for the consulate. They asked me directly. The CIA guy there. He gave me a very sketchy briefing. Mostly your bio. Nothing about the mission. I don’t know anything about that. Only a few details about you.” She added, “The CIA guy said you were army Criminal Investigation Division, and this was about a criminal matter, not a spy thing.”

“Who’s the CIA guy?”

“You know I can’t tell you that.” She smiled and said, “He gave me your photo, and I took the job right there on the spot.”

I asked her, “When did this take place?”

“Oh… about four days before you got here.”

The first time they sent me here, they at least gave me sixty days’ notice, a thirty-day leave, and recommended I make out a will.

I stood. “Is breakfast included?”

“If they don’t include soap, why would they include breakfast?”

“Good observation.” I called over the waiter and paid for breakfast, which came to two bucks.

We walked out to the beach road where about two dozen cyclo drivers were parked. They descended on us, and Susan picked two drivers, one of whom had an arm missing. We got in the cyclos, and Susan said, “Cho Dam.”

Her guy had the missing arm, and I said to Susan, “Ask him if he’s a veteran.”

She asked him, and he seemed first surprised at her Vietnamese, then surprised that anyone cared if he was a veteran. She said to me, “He says he is.”

As we rode up the beach road, Susan conversed with her driver, and I knew she was telling him that I was a veteran.

As our cyclos came side by side, she said, “He was a soldier here in Nha Trang, and he was captured when the Communists took the city. His entire regiment was imprisoned in the soccer stadium here, without food or water for many days. He had a wound on his arm that turned gangrenous.” She paused. “His comrades removed his arm without anesthesia.”

I looked at the driver, and our eyes met.

Susan continued, “He was so sick that he wasn’t sent to a re-education camp, so he was able to stay in Nha Trang with his family, and he recovered.”

I guess that’s the Viet equivalent of a story with a happy ending. Maybe I should stop taking cyclos, or at least stop asking these wraiths about their war service. I said to Susan, “Tell him I was proud to serve alongside the Army of South Vietnam.”

Susan relayed this to the guy, and he took his one hand off the handle bar and snapped a quick salute.

My driver was listening to all this, and he began talking to Susan.

Susan listened and translated, “He says he was a sailor at Cam Ranh Bay and had the chance to escape by boat as the Communists approached, but he left his ship to make his way back to his village outside Nha Trang. He was captured along the way by North Vietnamese troops and spent four years in a re-education camp.”

I said to Susan, “Tell him… America still remembers its South Vietnamese allies,” which was total bullshit, but sounded good.

So, we rode along the nice beach road under an azure sky, the smell of the sea in my nostrils, and the human wreckage of a lost cause propelling us on.

The street we were on dead-ended at a gated marketplace. We dismounted, and I gave each of the drivers a fiver, which made them very happy. At this rate, I’d be broke by next week, but I’m a sucker for a sad story. Also, I think, I was feeling some survivor’s guilt, which I’d never felt before.

We wandered through the market, and I got a chunk of mystery soap wrapped in tissue paper, and a bottle of American shampoo, whose brand, I think, they stopped making in ’68. Susan bought me a pair of Ho Chi Minh sandals, made out of tire treads, and I bought Susan a T-shirt that said Nha Trang is the lovely beach — Tell the dears at home.

Who writes this stuff?

Susan also picked up two silk blouses. She said, “This is cheaper than in Saigon. The silkworm farms and factories are in this area. I should come here to shop.”

“For the factories?”

She laughed.

We wandered around the outdoor stalls for about an hour, and Susan picked up a scented candle, a bottle of rice wine, and a cheap vinyl tote to carry the junk. Women love to shop.

We went to the flower section, and Susan bought branches of Tet blossoms tied with twine. She said, “For your room. Chuc Mung Nam Moi.”

We took cyclos back to the hotel, checked for messages, but there were none, then went to my room.

Susan tied the Tet blossoms to the mosquito net frame of my bed. She said, “This will bring you good luck and keep the evil spirits away.”

“I like evil spirits.”

She smiled, and we stood there a few seconds, looking at each other.

She asked me, “Do you want to go to the beach?”

“Sure.”

She took my soap and shampoo out of her tote and gave them to me. “I’ll knock on your door when I’m ready.” She hesitated, then left.

I got into my bathing suit, pulled on a gym shirt, and slipped into my brand-new Ho Chi Minh sandals.

I put my wallet, passport, visa, vouchers, and airline tickets in a plastic bag, wondering if the desk clerk would hold this stuff, or go to America with it.

I sat in a chair and watched a gecko crawl up the wall. I ran some stuff through my mind as I watched the gecko and waited for Susan.

Susan Weber. Probably she was what she said she was: an American expat businesswoman. But there were signs that she had a second job. In a country where our intelligence assets were limited, but our needs were big and getting bigger, it was common practice to recruit friends in the American business or expat community to do a little something for Uncle Sam on the side.

There were at least three agencies who did this kind of recruiting overseas — State Department Intelligence, Military Intelligence, or the Central Intelligence Agency.

And then there was American-Asian itself. The whole operation looked legit, but it also had all the bells and whistles of a CIA front.

The other question was Susan Weber’s fondness for Paul Brenner. You can fake a lot of things in life — women fake orgasms, and men fake whole relationships — but unless I was really losing my ability to read people, Susan was honestly taken with me. It wouldn’t be the first time something like this happened, which was why intelligence agencies instinctively distrusted their human employees and loved their spy satellites.

In any case, Susan Weber and Paul Brenner were on the brink of a sexual liaison that wasn’t part of the original script and could only lead to disaster.

There was a knock on the door, and I called out, “It’s open.”

Susan came in, and I stood.

She was wearing the Nha Trang T-shirt I bought her—tell the dears at home—and it came down to her knees. She had on sandals and was carrying her new tote.

She smiled and said, “Love your sandals.” She took a plastic cup out of her tote, filled with white powder. She said, “This is boric acid. You sprinkle it around your bed and luggage.”

“Then what? Pray for rain?”

“It keeps the bugs away. Specifically, cockroaches.”

I put the cup on my night table and we left the room. On the way down the stairs, I said, “I have all my valuables in this plastic bag. Can I trust these with the front desk?”

“Sure. I’ll take care of it.”

We got down to the lobby, and Susan spoke to the desk clerk. The deal was that we had to inventory everything, including Susan’s money and passport as well as my own stuff. As all this was going on, I said to her, “Mind if I snoop through your passport?”

She hesitated a second, then said, “No. Terrible photo.”

I looked at her photo, which, of course, was not that terrible, and I noticed that the passport had been issued from the General Passport Office a little over three years before, which was consistent with her arrival here. I looked at her photo and saw that her hair was much shorter then, and there was something very sad and innocent about her expression — but maybe I was just projecting because of what she’d told me. In any case, the woman standing beside me looked a lot more confident and assured than the woman in the passport photo.

I flipped the pages and saw that she had three entry stamps for the U.S., two for New York and one for Washington. That was not totally consistent with her claim that she’d never been to Washington — but it could have just been an entry point for a connecting flight to somewhere else, like Boston.

Her Viet visa stamp was different from mine, and was probably a work visa rather than a tourist visa. It had been renewed once, a year ago, and I pictured her at Section C of the Ministry for Public Security, two years into her tour, and giving everyone a hard time.

She’d also been to Hong Kong, Sydney, Bangkok, and Tokyo, which was either for R&R or business. Nothing tricky there. But the Washington thing stuck out.

I put the passport back on the counter, and the clerk gave us the handwritten receipt, which we all had to sign, and Susan gave him a dollar.

We walked across the road, and the beach was fairly empty. We picked two chaise lounges, and a hundred kids descended on us, carrying everything in the world we’d ever need. We took two chaise mattresses and towels, two peeled pineapples on sticks, and two Cokes. Susan passed out dong and chased off the kids.

I pulled off my gym shirt and Susan removed her T-shirt. She was wearing a skimpy two-piece, flesh-colored number, and she had an absolutely voluptuous body, all tanned and nicely toned.

She noticed I was glancing at her — staring, actually. I looked at the water. “Nice beach.”

We sat at the edge of our lounges and ate the pineapple on a stick.

As we ate, vendors came by, selling food, beverages, maps, silk paintings, Viet Cong flags, beach hats, and things I couldn’t identify. I bought a tourist map of Nha Trang.

We went down to the water, and Susan left her tote on the chaise lounge, which she said would be safe.

We waded out until we were standing up to our necks, and I could see brilliant tropical fish in the clear water. I said, “I remember big jellyfish all along the coast. Portuguese man-of-war.”

“Same at Vung Tau. You have to keep an eye out. They can paralyze you.”

“We used to throw concussion grenades in the water. It stunned the jellyfish, and hundreds of other fish would float to the surface. The kids would gather them up. They’d eat the squids alive. We thought it was gross. Now I pay twenty bucks in a sushi restaurant for raw squid.”

She thought about that and said, “Concussion grenades?”

“Yeah. They’re not fragmentation grenades. You throw them in bunkers or any confined space, like tunnels. Causes concussion. Somebody figured out that you can fish with them. They cost Uncle Sam about twenty bucks apiece. But it was one of the perks of the job.” I added, “Feeding people through high explosives.”

“What if you needed the grenades later?”

“You order more. Munitions is one thing we never ran out of. We ran out of will.”

We swam. Susan was a good, strong swimmer, and so am I, so we stayed out about an hour, and it felt great.

Back on the chaise lounge, as we dried off, the vendors returned. They could pester the hell out of you, but they didn’t steal anything because within a short time, they had all your money anyway.

Several young ladies approached with bottles of oil and hand towels. Susan said to me, “You haven’t had a massage since the Rex Hotel. Let me treat.”

“Thanks.”

We both got massages on the beach. I was feeling more like James Bond again.

We lay there on the chaise lounges; Susan read a business magazine with her sunglasses on, and I contemplated the sea and the sky.

I thought, someday I should come back here without any government involvement. Maybe Cynthia would like to join me, and we’d take a month and explore the country. But that presupposed that when I got out of here, I was not persona non grata, or persona in a box.

I looked over at Susan and watched her reading. She sensed me looking at her and turned to me. She said, “Isn’t this nice?”

“It really is.”

“Are you glad I came along?”

“I am.”

“I can stay a few more days.”

I replied, “If you go back to Saigon tomorrow, I think you can smooth it over with Bill.”

“Who?”

“Let me ask you a personal question. Why did you get involved with him if you think so little of him?”

She put down her magazine. “Good question. Obviously, the pickings are a little slim in Saigon. A lot of the guys are married, the rest are fucking their brains out with Vietnamese women. Bill, at least, was faithful. No mistress, no prostitutes, no drugs, no bad habits — except me.”

In retrospect, Bill Stanley didn’t seem to me, in my brief meeting with him, to be quite such a Boy Scout. There was more to Bill Stanley, and I needed to keep that in mind.

At 6 P.M., we packed it up.

Back in the hotel, we got our stuff from the desk clerk, and we arranged to meet on the veranda at seven.

I went to my room, showered in cold water and orange soap, and took a little siesta in the raw. I woke myself up at quarter to seven, got dressed, and went down to the veranda. Susan wasn’t there, but Lucy was, and she got me a cold beer.

Susan appeared a few minutes later, dressed in one of her new silk blouses, a pink one, with a little black skirt. I stood and said, “The blouse looks good on you.”

She sat and said, “Well, thank you, sir. You look all tanned and rested.”

“I’m on R&R.”

“I’m glad this is the R&R part of your visit.” She added, “I’m going to worry about you.”

I didn’t reply.

“I was thinking… I need to take a business trip to Hanoi. Maybe I can meet you there. Metropole. Saturday after next. Right?”

“How did you know that?”

“I snooped through your papers while you were snooping through my passport.”

“You should forget what you saw.”

“I will, except the Metropole, Saturday after next.”

“I’ll only be there one night.”

“That’s okay. I just want to be there when you arrive.”

This woman knew all the right words, and she was starting to get to me. I said, “Metropole, Hanoi, Saturday after next.”

“I’ll be there.”

We had a few beers until it got dark, then took cyclos into town.

We found a restaurant with a garden out back; a pretty hostess in an ao dai showed us to a table.

The air was fragrant with blossoms, and the cigarette smoke was carried away by a nice breeze.

We ordered fish because it was the only thing on the menu, and we talked about this and that. Susan brought up the subject of Colonel Mang, and I mentioned that I had reminded him that this was a new era of Vietnamese-American relations, and that he should get with the program.

Susan looked thoughtful, then said, “The last time we had an embassy in this country, it was in Saigon, and it was April 30, 1975. The U.S. Ambassador was on the roof of the embassy, carrying the American flag home, and General Minh was in the palace, waiting to surrender South Vietnam to the Communists. Now we have a new ambassador, this time in Hanoi, and we have some consulate staff in Saigon, including economic development people, looking for a nice building to set up shop when Hanoi gives us the go-ahead. This will be an important country for us again, and no one wants to see this new relationship screwed up. I’m talking billions of dollars in investments, oil, and raw materials. So, I don’t know why you’re here, or who actually sent you, but please tread lightly.”

I looked at Susan Weber. She had a better grasp of geopolitics than she’d led me to believe. I said to her, “Well, I know who sent me, though I’m not sure why. But believe me when I say that it’s not important enough, and I’m not important enough, to affect anything that’s already been accomplished.”

She replied, “Don’t be so sure of that. There are lots of people in Hanoi and in Washington who don’t want the two countries to have normal relations. Some of these are men of your generation, the veterans and the politicians on both sides, who will neither forgive nor forget. And many of these people are now in positions of power.”

“Do you know something I don’t?”

She looked at me and said, “No, but I sense something… we have a history here, and we’ve learned nothing from that history.”

“I think we have. But that’s not to say we’re not going to make new mistakes.”

She dropped the subject, and I didn’t press it. It seemed to me that her concerns were those of a businessperson. But there was more to this than business; if it was just business, and an unsolved murder, then our new ambassador in Hanoi would now be talking to the Vietnamese government asking their help in finding the witness to an American homicide case. So, this was about something else, and whatever it was, Washington wasn’t telling Hanoi; they weren’t even telling me.

After dinner, we took a stroll down to the beach and walked the beach back to the hotel. The subject of Vietnam did not come up again.

Upstairs, I walked Susan to her room and went in. There were no messages left on the floor, and no clear signals to me from Ms. Weber. I said, “I had a nice day.”

“Me, too. I’m looking forward to tomorrow.”

We arranged to meet again for breakfast at 8 A.M.

She said, “Don’t forget boric acid and the hot water heater.”

Back in my room, I sprinkled the boric acid around my bed and my luggage. A really first-rate hotel would do that for you.

The sun and sea had knocked me out, and I was half asleep as soon as I hit the bed.

My last thought was that I didn’t recall seeing the snow globe on Susan’s night table.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I got to the veranda before Susan, found a table, and ordered a pot of coffee.

It was another perfect day in Nha Trang.

Susan appeared, dressed in yet another pair of cotton pants, green, this time, with a white boat-neck pullover. That backpack must have been bigger than it looked.

I stood, pulled out her chair, and said, “Good morning.”

“Good morning.” She poured herself some coffee and said, “Last night I dreamt of you.”

I didn’t reply.

“We were in the Metropole in Hanoi. I’ve stayed there, so I could visualize it. It was very real.” She laughed at me. “We had cocktails, dinner, and danced in the hotel lounge.”

I said, “Let’s try to do that.”

The waiter came by, and we ordered Breakfast Number One, pho.

She said, “I could turn this place into at least a two-star hotel for American servicemen who stayed here. The R&R Grand. Hooker Night in the Full Metal Jacket lounge. I’ll make Lucy the hostess. What do you think?”

I didn’t reply.

She said, “That was a little insensitive. Whatever you did to get here wasn’t funny. I do apologize.”

“Forget it.” In fact, it wasn’t funny, and I couldn’t forget it. I said, “Battle of the A Shau Valley, May ’68. You should look it up someday.”

“I will. But I’d rather you tell me about it.”

Again, I didn’t reply.

The pho came, and I sipped it with my coffee spoon. I asked Susan, “What exactly is in this?”

She was sipping out of her bowl, and replied, “Well, it’s the national dish. It’s basically noodles, veggies, and broth seasoned with ginger and pepper. You can add a little uncooked chicken, or pork if you’re rich. The hot broth cooks the meat and veggies.” She added, “When in doubt about the sanitation, order pho because they have to get the water hot enough to cook the meat, so you know the water is sterilized.”

“Good tip.”

She said, “Hey, I make a mean pho. I’d love to cook it for you someday.”

I said, “That would be nice. I make chili.”

“Love chili. I miss chili.”

We had another cup of coffee. I said to Susan, “I didn’t see the snow globe on your night table.”

She thought a moment, then said, “I didn’t notice… I’ll check when I get back to the room.”

“You didn’t move it?”

“No… the maids are usually trustworthy, if you put a few dong on the bed for them.”

“Right. So, what’s the plan for today?”

She said, “Well, I had the desk guy book us a boat, and we’re going to explore the islands. I thought it would be nice for our last day together. Bring a bathing suit.”

I paid for breakfast. Still two bucks.

We went up the stairs, and when I got to my room, I said to Susan, “Check for that snow globe.”

I went into my room and put my swimsuit on under my last pair of clean khakis. I decided to go with my Ho Chi Minhs instead of my docksiders. As I was ready to leave the room, I noticed, on my nightstand, the snow globe.

This thing gets around.

I went down to the lobby, and a few minutes later, Susan appeared with her tote. She said, “I can’t find the snow globe.”

“That’s okay. It’s in my room.”

“How did it get there?”

“Maybe the maid got confused. Let’s go.”

We went outside where a taxi was waiting for us. Susan said to the driver, “Cang Nha Trang.”

The taxi drove out to the beach road and turned south. Susan said to me, “That’s not possible.”

“What?”

“How the snow globe got in your room.”

“Well, the thing gets around.” As we drove, I told her the story of the snow globe from Dulles Airport, to Colonel Mang’s office at Tan Son Nhat, then to my room at the Rex.

She didn’t say anything for a long time, then said, “That’s… I can’t believe that. Someone was in my room.”

“Why do you find that hard to believe? Do you think you’re in Lenox? It’s a police state. You may have noticed.” I added, “If we had phones, they’d be tapped. And there may be bugs in the rooms, and the boric acid won’t help.”

She stayed silent, then nodded. She asked me, “But what’s the point of the snow globe?”

“I guess it’s just Colonel Mang playing mind games. He should be keeping a low profile, so we don’t think about things like bugs in the room. But he’s amusing himself.”

“That’s a little sick.”

“Maybe it’s a slow week at the Ministry of Public Security.”

The road followed the long, crescent-shaped beach, and we passed the Nha Trang Sailing Club, then a few kilometers farther, there was a sprawling new resort of red tiled villas, whose sign said Ana Mandara. It looked as if it had been floated in from Hawaii.

A lot of money was pouring into this country, not only in Saigon, but also the hinterlands, from what I could see from the train, and here in Nha Trang.

As we got closer to the docks, I saw a cluster of nice old villas, set on three lush hills right on the beach. “Look at that.”

Susan asked the driver about the villas, and she translated, “Those are the Bao Dai Villas, built by the last emperor of Vietnam and named after his humble self. It was his summer home. Then, it was used by the South Vietnamese presidents — Diem and Thieu. The driver says you can rent a room there, but a lot of Party officials use the place, and Westerners are not always welcome.”

“Hey, I can party with the Party.”

“Is that head injury bothering you today?”

We continued on the beach road toward the southern headland, which ended at a big squat hill. At the base of the hill was a picturesque village, and across the road, I could see boats around a long wharf that jutted out into the South China Sea.

We pulled up to the foot of the wharf, I paid the driver, and we got out. It wasn’t much of a facility, and most of the boats looked like pleasure craft, if your idea of pleasure isn’t too well defined. There were also a few fishing boats, all painted a midnight blue with red trim, like all the fishing boats I’d seen in Nha Trang. It must be a local custom, or the only paint available.

We walked onto the wharf where about twenty guys were offering to take us anywhere we wanted to go. How about the Potomac River?

Susan was looking for a particular guy, and she called out, “Captain Vu? Captain Vu?”

Amazingly, everyone there was named Captain Vu. We finally found the real Captain Vu, and he led us to his boat, which was not a pleasure craft, but actually one of the blue and red fishing boats. It looked like a sturdy craft, about twenty-five feet long, with a low stern, a high bow, and a wide beam. Sort of like a cartoon tugboat. We all got aboard.

There was a small wheelhouse set amidship, made mostly of glass windows, and a fishnet hung along the port side of the boat.

Captain Vu spoke a little English and said, “Welcome on board man and lady.”

The boat smelled a little fishy because it was a fishing boat, and what else was fishy was why the desk clerk hadn’t gotten us a pleasure boat. Obviously the clerk and Captain Vu were related, or in business together. I said to Susan, “This is a fishing boat.”

“Isn’t it great? A real Nha Trang fishing boat.”

“Right.” Some people need to experience everything. At my age, I try to experience as little as possible. Been there. Six times. Done that. Twelve times.

Captain Vu showed us a chest of ice, beer, water, and soft drinks. He said, “For you.”

Captain Vu smoked and was delighted that Susan smoked, too, and they fired up a couple of Marlboros. The captain spread a nautical chart on the engine housing, and he and Susan looked over the chart and chatted for a while.

Susan turned to me and said, “We can probably visit four or five islands.”

“Let’s make it four.”

“Okay. The last island I wanted to visit is called Pyramide — still has a French name. It also has a nude beach.”

“Make that five islands.”

“I figured.” She spoke to Captain Vu, and he chuckled.

I suggested, “Make Pyramide the first island.”

He understood this and laughed louder.

Anyway, a kid of about fourteen was on the wharf, and he helped us cast off, then jumped on board. The kid said he was named Minh, after the great leader, Ho Chi Minh. I showed the kid my sandals, and he approved.

Captain Vu went into the wheelhouse, and a minute later, the engine kicked over, coughed, and caught. Minh and I shoved off, and we were on our way.

There were two plastic chairs in the stern, and Susan and I sat. I looked in the cooler beside me and found a liter of bottled water, which we shared.

The sea was calm, and Captain Vu opened the throttle a little. We headed southeast, toward a small island.

Susan had the chart on her lap and said to me, “That island there is Hon Mieu — South Island. There’s a fish farm there. Want to see it?”

“No. Where’s Pyramide Island?”

“The next island is Hon Tam, then Hon Mot, then we’ll go to Hon Cu Loa — Monkey Island, then the big mountain island of Hon Tre, which means Bamboo Island.” She gave me the chart. “Take a look.”

“Where’s Pyramide Island?”

“It’s on the map, Paul.”

“It’s called a chart. Where’s that island?”

“North.”

“Right. I see it.” Of course, it was the farthest away. I folded the chart. Well, something to look forward to.

Our first port of call was Hon Tam, where there was a small resort. We rented two kayaks and paddled around awhile. We also had a beer at the resort and made a pit stop.

Then, on Hon Mot, we rented some snorkeling gear and spent an hour looking at brightly colored tropical fish and incredible coral reefs in crystal clear water. I also watched Susan Weber underwater, who had on another skimpy bathing suit, this one white.

Then on to Monkey Island, where these obnoxious monkeys harassed a lot of stupid tourists. One of them — the monkeys — tried to lift my wallet, and I thought I was back in Saigon. Another one, obviously an alpha male, hung by his toes from a branch and grabbed Susan’s boob. And he hadn’t even bought her dinner.

These disgusting monkeys had absolutely no fear of people, and that was because no one had ever broken one of their necks. You only had to break one neck, and the others would get the message.

Anyway, we bid adieu to Monkey Island, and I insisted that we skip Bamboo Island because I didn’t want to miss Pyramide Island, though I didn’t say that. I said, “There’s bubonic plague on Bamboo Island. Read about it this morning.”

Ms. Weber didn’t seem to believe me. She said something to Captain Vu, and he took a new heading.

I asked, “Where are we going?”

“Oh, I thought we’d call it a day. It’s pushing 3 P.M.”

“What happened to Pyramide Island?”

“Oh… right. Do you still want to go there?”

“Yes. Now.”

She smiled. “That’s where we’re headed. You’re so basic.”

Susan sat back in her chair and lit a cigarette. The wind was blowing through her long hair, and she looked very good. She said to me, “When I first met you, I had the initial impression you were a little repressed.”

“I was.”

“Then I realized you were just putting on a cool act.”

“I was being professional.”

“Me, too.”

That, I thought, depended on her profession.

Within half an hour, I spotted land dead ahead. Captain Vu turned to us from the open wheelhouse. He pointed and said, “Hon Pyramide.”

We approached this tiny island from the west, and Captain Vu pulled back the throttle while the kid got out on the bow to look for coral reef and sandbars. I could see a long dock extending out from the shore, and there were about a dozen boats of all types and sizes tied up there.

Pyramide Island indeed looked like a pyramid with steep rocky sides that sloped up to a blunt point at the top. There were people rappelling down the rocks for some reason.

Captain Vu pulled alongside the dock, and cut the engine while Minh and I jumped out and tied the boat.

Captain Vu came out of the wheelhouse, and I said to Susan, “Ask him what those people are doing on the rocks.”

Susan asked him and said to me, “This is one of the islands where they collect the sparrow nests for bird’s nest soup.” She added, “The higher the nest, the bigger erection you’ll get.”

“You made that up.” I said to Susan, apropos of nothing that was being discussed, but something that was on my mind, “Ask Captain Vu if he’s seen any Russian warships while he’s been out fishing.”

She hesitated a moment, then asked him. He replied, and she said to me, “Not so much anymore. But they still come into Cam Ranh Bay now and then. Maybe once a month.”

“Ask him if he’s seen any American warships.”

She asked, he replied, and she said to me, “Lately he’s seen a few. Why are you asking?”

“Just curious.”

Captain Vu gave us directions to the nude beach and said to me, in English, “You like.”

We took a few Cokes, put them in the tote, and told Captain Vu we’d be back at sunset. The kid wanted to come along, but Captain Vu wanted to fish, and he needed the kid for the nets. Minh didn’t look happy.

Susan and I walked along the dock to the shore and turned onto a trail that cut through the brush along the shoreline.

We didn’t say much as we walked, and I think we were both a little tense about this. I mean, swimming in the raw is not that big a deal, but with someone you’ve not seen naked before, it could be a little awkward.

After about fifteen minutes, the trail curved around a rock formation, and on the other side of the rocks, about fifty yards away, was a beautiful sandy cove beach nestled in the cliffs of the pyramid. There were about fifteen women on the beach and in the water, all naked.

Well, there were men, too, but who cares? Susan and I stopped a moment, and she said, “I guess my information was correct.”

“Who told you about this place?”

“An expat in Saigon. I thought he was kidding, but I checked with the desk clerk, who said yes, though nude swimming is forbidden.” She looked around at the cliffs, the sky, the sandy beach, the turquoise water, and the trees near the shoreline. She said, “This is beautiful.”

We walked down the sandy path to the beach where people were swimming and sunning. There were about thirty of them, all Caucasians, except for one young Vietnamese couple.

The beach was only about fifty meters long and about that wide. The rocks formed a sort of amphitheater around it, making it very private, except for the guys on the ropes way up on top of the rock pile who were looking for bird’s nests.

Susan and I found a flat rock on the sand where she put her tote.

The closest couple was about twenty feet away, lying face up on a blanket.

I said, “Well, time for a swim.” I took off my shirt and kicked off my sandals.

Susan pulled off her shirt and sandals, too, and took her slacks off and laid them on the rock.

I peeled off my bathing trunks, and Susan took off her bikini top. Then she slid her bottom off and threw it in the tote bag.

We stood there a moment, naked in the sunlight, and it felt good.

Her bathing suit hadn’t left too much to my imagination, but my imagination wasn’t as good as the real thing. She had a well-trimmed bikini cut.

We walked across the beach, down to the shoreline. The women ranged in age from about twenty to fifty, and there was not a bad body among them. I wondered if I should include any of this in my post-mission report.

We stood at the edge of the beach and the gentle surf washed over our feet. The sun was to our front, hovering over the hills behind Nha Trang, whose shoreline we could see about twenty kilometers away. The sun sparkled on the water, and the sky was filled with gulls.

We just stood there and took this all in — nature at its most beautiful, surrounded by total strangers who, like us, were naked and without a sign of worldly goods, and whose station in life was completely irrelevant and totally unknown on this one sunny afternoon.

A very nice-looking woman of about forty was coming out of the water, and she walked toward us, clearing her eyes and nose of water. She said to us in accented English, “Good temperature. No jellyfish. Very safe.”

Susan said, “Thank you.”

“Americans?”

“Yes.”

“Not many here. Mostly Europeans and Australians. I am from Sweden.”

Even stark naked, we looked like Americans. Must be my circumcision.

So, we stood there and chatted with this nice lady, and her husband joined us, and we talked about where we were staying, about restaurants, Nha Trang, and Vietnam in general. The funny thing is that after a few minutes, you forget that everyone is naked. Well, maybe not forget, but you keep good eye contact.

The guy said to me, “May I ask if you were here during the war?”

I replied, “I was.”

“How does it seem to you?”

“Pleasant. Peaceful.”

“War is so terrible.”

“I know that.”

He waved his arm to take in the beach and sky and said, “The whole world should be like this.”

“It was,” I reminded him. “Garden of Eden. We blew it.”

They both laughed. The woman said, “Well, have a pleasant stay.” And off they went.

Susan said, “They were nice.”

I replied, “Yours are nicer.”

She laughed.

We dove into the water, then swam along the beach and explored the rocky cliffs. There’s something very different about swimming in the nude. We swam for about half an hour, then came back toward the shore.

We walked in the water until we were up to our chests, then stopped. I turned Susan toward me, and we put our hands on each other’s shoulders and stood looking at each other. We wrapped our arms around each other and kissed. Our hands slid down to each other’s butts, and I pulled her close and felt her pubic hair against my penis.

She broke away and took a deep breath. She said, “Let’s go lie on the beach.”

I replied, “You go. I need some time to let down the periscope.”

She smiled, turned, and walked onto the beach.

I watched her as she strode across the sand, and she had a beautiful walk.

She stopped along the way to talk to the Vietnamese couple, who were sitting on a rock under a tree. They were smiling and nodding away.

Periscope down, I walked onto the beach toward Susan, who was now lying on the sand with her head on the tote.

I knelt beside her, and she looked up at me and smiled.

She flipped over and handed me a tube of suntan lotion from her tote. “Can you do my back?”

“Sure.” I spread the lotion on her back, then over her buttocks and down her legs.

She said, “Oooh, that feels good.”

I massaged her neck, shoulders, back, and butt.

She said to me, “I’ll do your back.”

I lay on my stomach, and she sat on my butt with her knees straddling me as she massaged the lotion into my back.

She said, “Hey, do you want to take some pictures?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I want to remember this day. I have an idea. We’ll get someone to take our picture together, and we’ll hide our faces.”

She stood and walked over to the Vietnamese couple and spoke to them. The guy came back with her, but the girl seemed shy and stayed on the rock under the tree. Susan introduced me to Mr. Hanh, and I stood and shook hands with the young man. She gave Mr. Hanh her camera, and Susan and I stood close together with our arms on each other’s shoulders, and our hands covering each other’s faces. Mr. Hanh thought that was funny and took a picture while he giggled. For the next shot, our other hands covered each other’s pubic area. This was all a little silly and maybe a little kinky. I’m from South Boston.

We thanked Mr. Hanh, who bowed and went back to his companion. I asked Susan, “Will they develop these in Saigon?”

“No, they won’t develop nude shots here, and if they do, they’d be all over Saigon in two days. I’ll send the film to my sister in Boston. Is that okay?”

“Sure. If I ever meet her, we’ll have something to talk about.”

Susan laughed.

We sat cross-legged in the sand and cracked open the Coke cans. I said, “And what will you tell your sister about the pictures?”

She replied, “I’ll tell her I met a wonderful man who was here on business, and we spent some beautiful days in Saigon and Nha Trang, and he went home to Virginia and I miss him.”

I didn’t know what to say, but I managed, “I wish things weren’t this complicated.”

She nodded.

The sun was behind the Nha Trang Mountains now, and the dying light silhouetted the land against the dark blue sky. The water, too, had become darker and no longer sparkled. A fleet of blue and red fishing boats were making their way through the twilight back to Nha Trang. I looked around and saw people getting dressed and leaving the beach.

There were a number of places out there on the mainland, not too far from here, where I came close to death. And if I’d died here, I wouldn’t be on this beach with this woman, and I would not have lived long enough to see this country at peace. If there was a heaven for the men who died here, it should look like this.

We got dressed and walked back to the boat.

We arrived at Cang Nha Trang after dark, and I gave Captain Vu his fee and a nice tip, plus a fiver for Minh as compensation for missing the nude beach.

There were a few taxis at the wharf, and we took one back to the hotel.

Upstairs, we went to Susan’s room, opened the French doors, and let in the sea breeze.

She turned off the lamp and lit the candle she’d bought at the market. I opened the bottle of rice wine, and we poured some into two plastic cups. We touched cups and drank. There was music coming from the beach café across the road, Fats Domino’s “Blueberry Hill,” which would not have been my first selection for this moment, but my CD player was in Virginia.

Susan said, “Let’s dance.”

We put down our wine, kicked off our sandals, and danced to “Blueberry Hill.”

This was fun, and I like some non-sexual foreplay, but I was a little tense, and very worked up.

The music changed to Johnny Mathis’s “The Twelfth of Never,” and this is my all-time favorite slow dance song.

We danced close, and I could feel her breath on my neck. She put her hands under my shirt and caressed my back. I did the same on her back, and unhooked her bikini top.

We pulled up our shirts and danced, bare chest to breasts. She slid her hands down the back of my pants, and I did the same, cupping her buttocks tightly.

We didn’t finish the dance because suddenly we were into each other’s clothes, which were all over the room in about five seconds.

We practically dove into the bed, and she pulled the mosquito netting down around us.

We kissed hard, and our hands were all over, and our bodies were thrashing around in the small bed.

Finally, we got it under control, and we lay side by side and held each other for a while, then our hands started to roam. She was very wet and I was very hard.

I got on top of her and slid in easily.

We made love, then fell asleep exhausted in each other’s arms.

I woke in the middle of the night with Cynthia on my mind and Susan in my bed. I also thought about Karl, what lay ahead, and what awaited me back home.

This mission had gotten off to a bad start at Tan Son Nhat Airport, and when that happens, you’re supposed to abort before you crash and burn. But this mission had become a personal journey, and if that included an unhappy ending, I was prepared for that, too.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

In the morning, with the sun rising over the South China Sea and a breeze coming in through the open French doors, we made love again.

We showered together and lay naked in bed until about ten, then got dressed, went down to the veranda and had coffee.

Everything looked the same as the last two mornings, but the world had changed for me, and for her, I think.

We both understood that she wasn’t going back to Saigon while I was still in Nha Trang, but I was very firm about her not accompanying me to Hue. I said to her, over coffee, “Hue is the start of my official business here. We got away with this, but if you went with me to Hue, Washington would go ballistic.”

She replied, “I understand that. But I will see you in Hanoi.”

Susan wanted to sightsee, so we hired a car and driver and went to the Oceanographic Institute. We saw a bunch of fish in an aquarium, and thousands of dead sea creatures preserved in glass jars. It’s places like this that could use a direct hit from an artillery shell.

In the afternoon, we visited the Cham Towers in the area, slightly more interesting than the pickled fish in the jars. Susan had a brochure, and informed me, “The Cham people were Hindus, and they occupied this area from the seventh to the twelfth centuries before they were conquered by the ethnic Vietnamese coming down from the north.”

“Fascinating.” Would I be doing this if I hadn’t gotten laid?

There was a Cham Temple complex called Po Nagar where the statues of the Hindu gods and goddesses were very erotic, and this place was kind of interesting. There were sculptures of these huge penises called lingas, and vaginas called yonis, and one of the yonis had a water fountain gushing out of it. You don’t see stuff like this in a Catholic church.

We spent part of the afternoon exploring the countryside, including an enchanted spot called Ba Ho where three waterfalls fell into three pools in a secluded forest. As we sat by the waterfalls with our feet in the water, Susan studied my guidebook and said to me, “I know you like nude beaches, so I’ve found another.”

I replied, “I hope you don’t think that’s all I want to do. I loved the Oceanographic Institute.”

“I know you did. But you can also learn something at a nude beach. Let’s go.”

We got into our car, and Susan directed the driver to a place called Hon Chong, which is a big stone promontory jutting out into the South China Sea.

From the top, we had a spectacular view of the headlands to the north, and Nha Trang to the south. The sun was over the mountains to the west, and the South China Sea was blue and gold. “Very nice,” I said.

She led me to what appeared to be a huge handprint in a big boulder. She said, “This handprint was made by a drunken giant male fairy as he fell on these rocks.”

“Takes a lot of rice wine to get a giant fairy drunk,” I said.

Susan continued, “He was ogling a female fairy bathing in the nude, down there on Fairy Beach.”

I looked down the mountain and saw the beach, but I didn’t see any female fairies, nude or otherwise.

Susan said, “The giant got up, ran down to the beach, and captured the female fairy. Sort of like what happened to me yesterday.”

That wasn’t the way I remembered it, but I know when to keep my mouth shut.

“Despite his aggressive behavior, they fell in love and began a life together.”

“That’s nice. And lived happily ever after?”

“No. The gods were angry at them for what they had done.”

“Did the gods live in Washington?”

“Some place like that. The gods sent the male fairy off to a re-education camp.”

“Bummer.”

“Right. But the female fairy waited for him for centuries.”

“Good lady.”

“Yes. But she was heartbroken, and thought he would never return. So she lay down and turned into stone. See that mountain?” She pointed to the northwest. “That’s called Nui Co Tien — Fairy Mountain. That peak on the right is her face, gazing up at the sky. The middle peaks are her breasts, and the peaks on the left are her crossed legs.”

I looked, and yes, you could imagine a reclining female with her legs crossed.

Susan said, “One day, the male fairy returned to this spot and seeing what had become of his lover, he slammed his hand down over his old handprint, where he’d first seen her bathing on the beach. He was so grief-stricken, he died, and he, too, turned to stone.”

I didn’t say anything for a while, then commented, “Sad story.”

“Almost all love stories have a sad ending.” She asked, “Why is that?”

I replied, “I think when the affair begins illicitly, and when everyone around the lovers is hurt or angry… then the affair is going to have an unhappy and probably tragic ending.”

Susan looked off at Fairy Mountain. She said, “More importantly, though, the lovers stayed true to each other.”

“You’re a romantic.”

She asked, “Are you the practical type?”

“No one ever accused me of being practical.”

“Would you give up your life for love?”

“Why not? I’ve risked my life for less important things.”

She gave me a kiss on the cheek, took my hand, and we walked down the mountain.

That night, we went to the new resort called Ana Mandara that we’d seen on the way down to the Nha Trang docks, and we had a first-rate dinner of Westernized Vietnamese food. The place was owned by a Dutch concern, and the clientele was mostly European, but there were a few Americans as well.

A nice combo was playing at poolside, and we had a few drinks, danced, talked, and held hands.

Susan said, “After dinner at the Rex, I went home that night floating on a cloud.”

I replied, “I think I felt the same way.”

“You sent me away. What if I hadn’t come back?”

“Weren’t you told to stick close to me?”

She replied, “Only if you wanted my company, or needed something. If not, I was supposed to disappear. But I wasn’t going to do that. I was going to phone you. Then, I decided to just come back and join you for dinner.”

“I’m glad you did,” I said, but I recalled thinking at the time that it wasn’t as spontaneous as Susan was suggesting. Then there were the inconsistencies in the Bill Stanley story, and a few other things that didn’t quite add up. The elephant grass swayed, but there was no breeze; the bamboo clicked, a little closer now.

We left the Ana Mandara, and walked back to the Grand Hotel. We’d kept both rooms, but Susan’s room was the one where I slept.

We made love and lay close together on our backs in the bed, surrounded by the cocoon of the mosquito netting, the bed garlanded with branches of Tet blossoms, the orange-scented candle flickering, and the boric acid on the floor.

We watched the paddle fan spin lazily overhead. A breeze blew in from the open balcony, and I could smell the sea. The next day, Friday, was to be our last full day in Nha Trang, so I said to her, “Have you arranged transportation back to Saigon?”

She was running her foot over my leg. “What?”

“Saigon. Saturday.”

“Oh. The trains stop running Saturday. That’s Lunar New Year’s Eve.”

“How about a car and driver?”

“I’ll try to arrange that tomorrow.”

This didn’t sound like a definite plan. I asked, “Will that be a problem?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I’ve never tried to travel around Tet.”

“Then maybe you should leave tomorrow.”

“I’m not leaving early. I want to spend as much time with you as possible.”

“Well, me, too, but—”

“How are you getting to Hue?”

“I don’t know. But I need to be there.”

She said, “Every plane and train has been booked for months.”

“Well… maybe I should also leave tomorrow.”

“You should if you want to try to buy yourself a place on the train.”

“Could I get a car and driver tomorrow?”

“We’ll try. If all else fails, there’s always the torture bus. No reservation required. Just buy a ticket at the terminal, and jam yourself in. All you need are elbows and dong.”

“What do I do with my dong?”

“Dong. Money. Stop being an idiot.” She said, “I took a bus once, Saigon to Hue, just for the experience, and it was an experience.”

“Maybe we should see about getting out of here tomorrow.”

“Yes, that’s what we should do first thing tomorrow.”

Part Two. She informed me, “I was supposed to go to a Tet Eve house party with Bill.”

I didn’t reply.

She said, “Everyone we know will be there. Americans, Brits, Aussies, and some Catholic Viets.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Well, I’m certainly not going now. I’ll just stay home and watch the dragon dances from my window.”

“You’ll thank yourself in the morning.”

“My housekeeper will be with her family, of course, and most of the bars and restaurants are closed, or open only by invitation. So, maybe I’ll just warm up some pho and get a bottle of rice wine, put on a Barbra Streisand album, and get to sleep early.”

“Sounds horrible. How about the Beach Boys?”

“I suppose I could go to the party, but it would be awkward.”

“Would you like to go to Hue with me?”

“Oh… that’s an idea.” She crawled on top of me and said, “You’re such a sweetheart.”

“And you’re trouble.”

“What are they going to do to you? Send you to Vietnam?”

She kissed me, my linga got longer, and we made love again. It was less than an hour since we’d done this, and I hadn’t had my bird’s nest soup today. This was fast becoming like my last R&R in Nha Trang, except then, I was a lot younger. I pictured myself meeting Karl in Bangkok on crutches. At least I was tanned.

She fell asleep in my arms. A strong wind had come up, and I could hear the surf crashing. I couldn’t get to sleep, realizing that I was up to my tanned butt in official trouble, and getting in deeper.

I thought about the cautionary fable I’d learned on Hon Chong Mountain. No one could say I hadn’t been warned.

The world is not always kind to lovers, and in the case of Paul Brenner and Susan Weber, we had really pissed off the gods.

Susan was right that we had to leave tomorrow rather than Saturday, which was Lunar New Year’s Eve. But she knew that all week.

I was certain that Susan Weber was ready to go home, if I took her home. But she never once said, “Let’s get out of here.” She said, “Let me go with you wherever you have to go.”

And that brought me to three possible conclusions: One, she was bored, finished with Bill, and was looking for an adventure and challenge; two, she was madly in love with me and didn’t want to leave my side; three, she and I were on the same assignment.

One, all, or any combination was possible.

That aside, I think we both understood that if we parted here in Nha Trang, we might never meet in Hanoi, or anywhere; and if we did meet in Hanoi, it wouldn’t be the same. My journey had become her journey, and her way home had become my way home.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Early Friday morning, we went to the government travel agency, Vidotour, but like most government agencies, they were closed for the holiday. In fact, aside from food and flower shops, the town was starting to shut down.

We went next to the train station, but this being the last day that any trains were running until the following Friday, we couldn’t even buy a standby ticket. To make matters worse, even if we bribed our way on a train, the ticket or bribe was only good to Da Nang where we’d have to go through the process again, or get stranded in Da Nang.

As we left the train station, Susan asked me, “Why did they send you here during the Tet holiday?”

I replied, “It’s not as stupid as it seems. I need to find someone in his native town or village.”

“Oh. Well, he should be there.”

“I hope so. That’s the only address we have.”

“Tam Ki? Is that the village?”

“I don’t think that place exists. It’s another place whose name I’ll get in Hue. After Hue, I need to go to this place. But you will not—repeat not — go with me.”

“I know that. I’ll stay in Hue. Then I’ll get myself up to Hanoi and meet you.”

“Fine. Meanwhile, we need to get to Hue.”

“Money talks. I’ll get us to Hue.”

We walked around town with the tourist map that I’d bought on the beach, but the two private travel agencies were closed.

As we walked, I looked for a tail, but I was fairly certain we were alone. After some inquiries on the street, we found a mini-bus-tour office that was open near the central market. The guy behind the counter was a slicky boy with dark glasses and the instincts of a vulture. He smelled money and desperation the way a carrion-eating bird smells impending death. Susan and he slugged it out for ten minutes, then she said to me, “He’s got a tour group leaving here at 7 A.M. tomorrow. They arrive in Hue about 6 P.M., in time for Tet Eve. When do you have to meet your person?”

“Not until noon the next day — New Year’s Day. Sunday.”

“Okay. He says there are no actual seats left on the mini-bus, but we can sit in the doorwell or someplace. Plenty of room for our luggage. Fifty bucks each.”

“What kind of tour group?”

She asked Slicky Boy, then said to me, “They’re French.”

“Let’s walk.”

She laughed.

“Tell him he has to pay us.”

She actually translated this to Slicky, and he laughed and slapped my shoulder.

I said, “Ask him if he has a car and driver available today.”

She spoke to him, and he looked doubtful, which meant, “Yes, and it’s going to cost you a fortune.”

Susan said to me, “He has a man who can drive us to Hue, but because of the holiday, it will cost us five hundred dollars.”

I said, “It’s not my holiday. Two hundred.”

She spoke to Slicky, and we settled on three hundred. Susan said to me, “He says the driver and the car aren’t available until about 6 P.M.” She added, “By car, we can make it in seven or eight hours if we leave about six when traffic gets light. That will get us in at one or two in the morning. Is that okay?”

“Sure. We can sleep in the hotel lobby if there isn’t a room available.”

“All right… you understand that night driving isn’t that safe?”

“Neither is day driving around here.”

“Right. I’ll tell him to pick us up about six at the hotel.”

I took her aside and said to her, “No. Tell him we’ll come here. And tell him we’re going to Hue”Phu Bai Airport.”

She nodded and passed this on to Slicky Boy.

We left Slicky Boy Tours and found an outdoor café where we got coffee.

I said to Susan, “You did a great job. I was getting a little concerned about getting out of here.”

“For that kind of money — about a year’s salary — you can get what you want. As my father used to say, ‘The poor suffer, the rich are slightly inconvenienced.’ ” She looked at me and said, “If we have three hundred dollars, we must have more. And it’s a night drive. So don’t fall asleep.”

“I already figured that out. That’s why I’m still alive.” I added, “If we don’t like the looks of this tonight, we have the mini-bus in the morning as a backup.”

She sipped her coffee and asked me, “Why didn’t you want the driver to pick us up at the hotel?”

“Because Colonel Mang doesn’t want me using private transportation.”

“Why not?”

“Because Colonel Mang is a paranoid asshole. I need to go to the Immigration Police and show them a ticket to Hue. You said I could get a bus ticket.”

“Yes. The ticket is good for any time, Nha Trang to Hue. So the police won’t ask what bus you intend to take. Hue is about 550 kilometers from here, and that could take ten to twelve hours by bus, so my guess is the last bus for Hue will leave here about 1 P.M., to arrive in Hue about midnight.”

“So, if I was really taking the bus, I’d need to leave soon.”

“That’s right. And you’d have to check out of the hotel soon.”

“Okay.” I stood. “Bus station.”

We paid the bill, left, and walked to the main bus terminal.

The bus terminal was a mass of impoverished humanity, and I didn’t see a single Westerner there, not even a backpacker or a schoolteacher.

The lines were long, but Susan went to the front of the line and gave a guy a few bucks to buy my ticket. Susan asked me, “One way, or round-trip?”

“One way, observation deck, window seat.”

“One ticket for the roof.” The Viet guy bought the ticket, and we left the teeming bus terminal.

Susan said, “The ticket agent said there’s a noon bus, and a one P.M. bus.”

We walked toward the police station, and I said to Susan, “You stay here. By now, they know you speak Vietnamese. I do better with pidgin English.”

She said, “More importantly, if you don’t come out of there, I’ll contact the embassy.”

I didn’t reply and walked to the Immigration police station.

Inside was a different guy behind the desk, and I presented him with Colonel Mang’s letter, which he read.

The waiting room was nearly empty this time, except for two backpackers sleeping on benches.

The Immigration cop said to me in passable English, “Where you go now?”

“Hue.”

“How you go Hue?”

I showed him my bus ticket.

He seemed a little surprised, but I had the five-dollar ticket so I must be telling the truth. He asked me, “When you go?”

“Now.”

“Yes? You leave hotel?”

The guy knew I was checked in until tomorrow. I said, “Yes, leave hotel today.”

“Why you leave today?”

“No train to Hue tomorrow. No plane. Go bus. Today.”

“Yes. Okay. You go to police in Hue.”

I said sharply, “I know that.”

“Lady go with you?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. We talk.”

He asked, “Where lady now?”

“Lady shop.” I looked at my watch and said, “I go now.”

“No. You need stamp.” He produced the photocopies I’d given to them when I arrived, and he said, “I stamp. Ten dollars.”

I gave him a ten. He stamped my photocopies, and wrote something on the stamps. I think they make this up as they go along.

I left before he thought of anything else.

I looked at the stamps and saw that the guy had handwritten Hue — Century over the red ink, so he already knew where I was staying. He’d also written the time, 11:15, and dated it.

I met Susan down the street, and she asked me, “Any problems?”

“No. Just another round-eye tax.” I showed her the photocopies with the red stamps on them and asked, “What are these?”

She looked at them and said, “These are the old internal travel stamps you used to need years ago.”

“Cost me ten bucks.”

“I buy my own rubber stamps for five bucks.”

“Bring them next time.”

She said to me, “So, you’re staying at the Century Riverside. That’s where I stayed when I was in Hue.”

“Well, that’s where you’re staying this time. But we’ll try to get separate rooms.”

We took a taxi back to the Grand Hotel. As we drove along the road, Susan asked me, “If I weren’t here, would you have gotten a Viet girl to stay with you at the hotel all week, or had a different one every night, or picked up a Western woman at the Nha Trang Sailing Club?”

There didn’t seem to be a correct answer among the choices. I said, “I would have spent more time at the Oceanographic Institute and continued with the cold showers.”

“No, I mean really.”

“I’m involved at home.”

Silence.

I’m good at this stuff, so I said, “Even if I wasn’t involved with anyone, when I’m on an assignment, I never do anything that can complicate or compromise the mission. But in this case, you’re sort of part of the team — as I very recently found out — and therefore I felt I could make an exception.”

She replied, “I’m not part of the team, and you didn’t know anything about that in Saigon when we decided to come to Nha Trang together.”

I didn’t recall making that decision, but again, I know when to shut up.

She continued, “So, if you’re on an assignment with a female co-worker, then you might consider a sexual or romantic involvement. That’s how you met what’s-her-name.”

“Can we stop at the marketplace for a leash?”

“Sorry.”

We arrived at the Grand without any further conversation.

At the front desk, there was a fax for Susan on Bank of America letterhead. I said, “Maybe your cyclo loan has been approved.”

She read the fax and handed it to me. It was from Bill, of course, and it read: Washington firm absolutely insists that you return to Saigon as soon as possible. They need to talk with you via e-mail. On a personal note, I would have no objection if you wanted to come to the Vincents’ party, Tet Eve. We can be civilized about this, and perhaps discuss our relationship, if any. Need a full response.

I handed the fax back to her.

She said to me, “It’s your decision now, Paul. These are your bosses.”

I said, “This is directed to you, not me.”

“Oh. Well, I have no bosses in Washington. I did the favor for the American consulate in Saigon. End of story.”

I wasn’t so sure of that, but I said, “Fax Bill that you’re going with me to Hue.”

She got a piece of fax paper from the desk clerk and wrote on it. She handed it to me, and I read: Mr. Brenner and I are headed to Hue. Inform his firm of same. Will return to Saigon sometime week after next. Regards to the Vincents from me, and my regrets.

Susan went into a small back room with the desk clerk and came out a few minutes later. She said to me, “I told the desk clerk we were checking out today, and we needed a taxi in half an hour to take you to the bus station and me to the train station.”

We climbed the stairs, and I said, “Dress for adventure.”

We were downstairs in the lobby at noon, both dressed in blue jeans, polo shirts, and walking shoes. We checked out, and Susan led me into the dining room. We found Lucy waiting on tables on the veranda, and Susan pressed some money into her hands. The old woman thanked us profusely. She said something to Susan, who said to me, “She said she doesn’t remember you, but she remembers the American soldiers who were… very high-spirited and… crazy, but who were always kind to her. She wishes us a safe journey.”

“Tell her I will always remember the kindness and the patience of the young ladies here who made our time away from the war so pleasant.”

Susan translated, the old woman bowed, then we held each other’s shoulders and kissed, French-style, both cheeks.

We went back to the lobby, got our bags, and went outside, where a taxi was waiting for us.

Susan said, “That was very nice. What you said to each other.”

“We’re old friends. We went through a war together.”

The driver put our bags in the trunk and off we went.