Up Country

  The jeep came to almost a complete stop and watched us pass by. I counted to five, then threw the motorcycle into gear and accelerated. I also killed the lights, which actually made the fog easier to see through. I got up to eighty KPH, which was much too fast for the road or the bad visibility. I was basically flying blind, trusting in my nonexistent luck, and my sense of how this road was turning. To her credit, Susan said nothing, showing how much she trusted me, or maybe she had her eyes closed.

  I kept looking in the rearview mirror, but I didn’t see any yellow fog lights behind us.

  Within half an hour, we drove out of the fog, and I could see a stretch of curving road running through forested hills.

  I’d never been in such a godforsaken place, even during the war, and I could see that there wasn’t any room here for misjudgment; one misstep was all it would take to end this trip.

  I got into third gear, and we continued on through the forest. I looked at the gas gauge and saw that we were near empty. I had counted on being able to buy some overpriced fuel from a passing car or truck if I ran out, knowing that all vehicles carried gas cans and probably siphons. But I seemed to be the only idiot on the road, except for the army jeep, and I didn’t think he’d sell me gas.

  I heard the engine cough, and I switched over to the reserve tank.

  Susan heard it, too, and asked, “Are you on reserve?”

  I nodded.

  She didn’t offer any advice or criticism of my fuel management.

  At about the point where the reserve tank should have been empty, I saw some cleared land and a few huts up ahead.

  Within a few minutes, we were in the small junction town of Tuan Giao, where Route 6 turned north toward China, and another road headed south toward Dien Bien Phu.

  I saw a sign that said Et-xang, and I said to Susan, “We’re French.”

  We both took off our Montagnard scarves and leather hats and stuffed them into our jackets as I headed toward the sign.

  We ran out of gas before we got to the so-called service station, and Susan and I pushed the motorcycle the last hundred meters.

  The et-xang place consisted of a muddy lot and a crumbling stucco building inside of which were bottles and cans of gasoline of all sizes, shapes, and volume.

  The proprietor was an old Viet wrapped up like it was snowing, and he smiled when he saw two Westerners pushing the BMW through the mud. This could be Slicky Boy’s father.

  Susan said to the old guy, “Bonjour, monsieur.”

  He replied, “Bonjour, mademoiselle,” being very kind about her age.

  There wasn’t much else to say; the guy had no trouble figuring we were out of gas, and he began funneling fuel into the BMW tank from various containers. He’d hold up a finger or two or three and say in French, “Litres,” as he poured. He reached forty liters by his count, more than the tank held, and I cut him off.

  The price was the equivalent of about a buck and a half a liter, which was expensive for Vietnam, but I wasn’t sure where the hell we were anyway, so I paid him in dollars.

  It was 6:15 P.M., and the sun was starting to set behind the mountains to the west. The distances in this part of the world weren’t long, but the traveling times were deceptive. We’d come close to a thousand kilometers, which should have taken maybe eight hours on a real road, but had taken us two twelve-hour days, and we weren’t even there yet.

  The next day, Thursday, was the official end of the Tet holiday, though in reality it would run through the weekend. But I had this thought that we’d find the village of Ban Hin, and the house of Tran Van Vinh, only to be told, “Oh, sorry, you just missed him. He’s on his way back to Saigon where he lives now. He manages the Rex Hotel,” or something like that.

  Susan said to me, “It’s nice to see you smiling again. What are you thinking about?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Whatever makes you happy, makes me happy.”

  “If I had anything in my stomach, I’d puke.”

  “Don’t be mean to me.”

  “Get on.”

  We mounted up and headed south. I saw a concrete kilometer post that said Dien Bien Phu, 81 KM.

  We were Western tourists now, on our way to see the French equivalent of Khe Sanh and the A Shau Valley, the Viet version of Yorktown, Thermopylae, Armageddon, and dozens of other Last and Final Battlefields that were in reality only a prelude to the opening shots of the next war.

  And as for my pistol-packing, cigarette-smoking friend behind me, I needed to figure out if I had a guardian angel back there, or something more dangerous. Guns are like bugs; if you see one, there are more. Or, to be more trusting, maybe Ms. Weber’s last round of true confessions was the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

  The road was bad, so she put her arms around me. I was still pretty pissed off, but there’s nothing like hunger and fatigue to take the piss and vinegar out of you. This lady could ride, and she could shoot, and she talked the talk, and I had enough enemies in these parts to worry about, so I patted her hand.

  She rubbed my stomach and asked, “Are we friends?”

  I replied, “No, but I love you.”

  She kissed my neck. I was reminded of a very big cat with very long fangs licking a captured antelope before snapping its neck.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  About forty kilometers from Dien Bien Phu, the road deteriorated instead of getting better as it approached the town. What is wrong with this place? There was not one reflective arrow or reflective anything, the ground mist was getting heavier, and it was diffusing the headbeam, and I was starting to get disoriented.

  Susan said, “Paul, let’s stop and sleep here.”

  “Where?”

  “Here. On the side of the road.”

  “I can’t see the side of the road.”

  We pushed on, averaging about fifteen KPH, and the bike was wobbling at the lower speeds. About two hours later, pushing 10 P.M., a valley suddenly opened up on both sides of the road. The grade began a downhill descent, and within fifteen minutes, the road came into a wide, open plain. I couldn’t actually see much of the plain, but I could sense it, and I could see lights scattered around. There was a break in the clouds now and the weak moonlight and starlight reflected off what I thought was a lake, but then I recognized it as a series of rice paddies. Back in ’68, there were a lot of valleys in ’Nam nicknamed Happy Valley, meaning that GIs on patrol in the hills were happy to see the valley. This was Happy Valley.

  The road curved sharply to the right, and there were huts on both sides. It took me a while to realize I was in the town of Dien Bien Phu. I saw a lighted sign to my left that said Nga Luan Restaurant, and to my right was a place called the Dien Bien Phu Motel. This was all like an apparition, and I thought I’d gone over a cliff and was now in Viet heaven. I said, “The Dien Bien Phu Motel looks like a winner.” We drove up to the motel office in the middle of a long stucco building and dismounted. I stretched and discovered that none of my muscles were connected or working. I actually had trouble walking to the reception office, and I thought I was going to fall on my face. I couldn’t even peel off my leather gloves.

  Before we went inside, Susan said to me, “They’ll want our passports and visas, and they don’t take no for an answer in the north, nor will they take ten bucks instead.”

  “So, we’re Americans. Doesn’t make us bad guys.”

  She said, “Eventually, our names will be sent to the Ministry of Public Security in Hanoi, and there’ll be a record that we were here.”

  “I understand. But I think we’ll be in Hanoi before our names are. We’re on the last leg of this journey, but if you want, we can sleep under the stars.”

  She thought a moment, and I could see the trained professional now, weighing the risks. She said, “Let’s get a room.”

  “Take it for four nights so they think we’re hanging around awhile.”

  She replied, “They’ll take our passports until we check out, so
when we check out tomorrow, they’ll know we’re gone. This is a police state.”

  “Right. But make it four nights anyway, and that’s what will be reported to Hanoi. You go in. They don’t have to see me.”

  “They do. Did I mention this was a police state?”

  We went inside the small reception area. A middle-aged woman behind the counter was reading a newspaper.

  Susan asked for a room in French, and the woman seemed surprised that we were checking in so late. She and Susan exchanged bad French, a little English, and a few words of Vietnamese. We had to produce our passports and visas, which the woman insisted she had to keep.

  For ten American bucks a night, we got the key to Unit 7. My lucky number.

  We left the reception room, and I wheeled the motorcycle to Unit 7 at the left end of the motel. Susan opened the door and said, “The lady said put the bike in the room, or we’ll never see it again.”

  I pushed the motorcycle into a small room and left it near the foot of the twin bed.

  The place had a small bathroom and one night stand, one lamp, and a clothes pole hanging on chains from the ceiling that looked like a trapeze for sexually adventurous couples.

  We took our backpacks out of the saddlebags and put them on the bed, then Susan went into the bathroom, turned on the electric water heater, and washed her hands and face in cold water. She then went to the door and said, “The lady said she’d get something for us to eat. Be right back.”

  She left.

  I sat on the bed and took off my running shoes, then peeled off my wet socks. I got my leather jacket and gloves off and put the Colt .45 under the pillow. I looked around. I knew, somewhere deep down inside, that this place was awful, but at this moment, it looked to me like the Ritz-Carlton in Washington.

  Susan returned with a bamboo tray on which were bamboo containers that when uncovered revealed soggy meat dumplings. She put the tray on the bed. Also on the tray were bowls of cold rice, chopsticks, and a bottle of water.

  We knelt at the side of the bed and ate the meat dumplings and rice with our fingers. It took about thirty seconds to get the stuff down, and we killed the water in less time than that.

  Susan commented, “I guess you were hungrier than you thought.” She added, “The meat was porcupine. No joke.”

  “I wouldn’t care if it was dog.”

  She smiled and put the tray on the floor, then stood and took off her wet, muddy clothes. As she was undressing, she said, “The reception lady was very surprised that we’d come in over the mountains at night on a motorcycle.”

  “So was I.”

  “She said this is the latest she’d ever checked anyone in, and she was about to turn out the lights and leave. We may have aroused a little suspicion.”

  “Whatever we do here seems to arouse suspicion.”

  Susan replied, “I think we’re okay now. She said there are some Westerners in town, though most of them come later in the season.”

  “This place has a season?”

  She put her hands on the clasp of her bra, then looked at me as if to say, “Is it all right if I get naked in front of you? Or are we no longer lovers?”

  I stood and unbuttoned my shirt. Susan unclasped her bra and threw it on the motorcycle, then slipped off her panties.

  Susan asked me, “You want to kill some time while the water is heating?”

  Well, as pissed off as I was, Dickie Johnson was not at all angry. In fact, he was happy, and he and I were about to have an argument. But my big brain was nearly dead with fatigue, and little Dickie’s brain had slept for the whole ride, so I was no match for his insistent demands. I peeled off my shirt, pants, and undershorts as Dickie stretched.

  We stood there in the lamplight, and our faces were dirty, except for where the goggles and scarves had been, and our bodies were covered with a damp sweat and who knew what else after two days without a shower.

  She turned down the sheets, which had a reddish cast from what must have been heavily iron-oxidized water.

  Susan crawled into the bed, rolled on her back, and motioned for me to come to her. I got into bed, Dickie pointing the way.

  I got on top of her and slid right in. I mean, I couldn’t even walk or control the movement of my limbs, and my backbone felt as if I’d made a parachute jump with seventy pounds of field gear and tangled shrouds into a concrete pit; but I wanted to get laid. Amazing.

  So, Dickie was home where he wanted to be, but I couldn’t get the old in and out going. Susan sensed this and moved her hips up and down.

  I think we had simultaneous orgasms, or maybe simultaneous muscle spasms, followed by a brief period of unconsciousness. When I woke up, I was still on top of her. I got out of bed and shook her awake.

  I practically carried her into the bathroom and turned on the shower. There was a sliver of soap on the sink, and we got in the small fiberglass stall together. We let the tepid water run over our bodies, then dried off with small hand towels.

  We staggered back to the bed and flopped down side by side. Susan yawned and asked me, “Did we have sex?”

  “I think so.”

  “Good.” She yawned again and said, “Are we friends?”

  “Of course.”

  She stayed quiet for a while, and I thought she was sleeping. I turned off the lamp.

  In the dark, she asked me, “Where’s the gun?”

  “Under my pillow. Leave it there.”

  She stayed silent for a while, then said, “Everything I told you about my personal life is true.”

  “Good night.”

  “The other stuff . . . well, what choice did I have?”

  “I don’t know. Sweet dreams.”

  She stayed quiet, then said, “I have a photo pack with me, Paul.”

  This woke me up. I asked, “A photo pack of the victim?”

  “Yes. And of the possible murderer.”

  I sat up and turned on the light. “And?”

  “And that’s it. They’re both young men, in uniform, and the photos are not captioned.”

  “Where are the photos?”

  “In my backpack.”

  I got out of bed and opened her backpack at the foot of the bed. I completely emptied it out on the bed, finding no second pistol, which made me feel better.

  I found the photo pack, a vinyl-bound and plastic-wrapped album that held single shots on each page. I took the album to the lamp and held it under the light. I started flipping through the pages, and the first ten photos, in color and black and white, were all of the same man in various uniforms— khakis, stateside fatigues, green dress uniform, and even one in a blue formal uniform. In some photos, the guy was bareheaded, and in some he wore a helmet or the appropriate headgear for the uniform. I could see from the rank insignia that the guy was a lieutenant, and he wore the crossed rifle insignia of an infantryman. In one photo, he was in jungle fatigues, and I could make out the shoulder patch of the First Cavalry, and the patch of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam. He was about twenty-five, maybe a little younger. He had sandy hair, cut short, big innocent eyes, and a nice smile.

  I knew, even without the rank, that this guy was not the killer; he was the victim. He looked like a lot of guys I’d known in ’Nam who had something in their smiles and their eyes that told you they wouldn’t be around long. Truly, the good died young, and everyone else had a fifty-fifty chance. I imagined that these photos came from the man’s family.

  The second group of about ten photos showed a guy with captain’s bars. He, like the other guy, wore the crossed rifle insignia of the infantry, and in a few photos, he wore jungle fatigues with the same two shoulder patches as the lieutenant.

  I studied this man’s face, but my eyes were blurry, and my mind was half asleep. Yet, there was something familiar about his face, though I couldn’t place the face in the proper context, and nothing was jelling—except that I knew the face.

  In one photo, the captain was in a green dress uniform, and with
the tie on, the face looked more familiar. He was a rugged-looking man, with dark hair, cut military short, dark, piercing eyes, and a smile that was put on, but could pass for sincere.

  On his green dress uniform, I could make out two rows of ribbons, and I recognized most of them, including the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, like my own, but also the Silver Star, which showed bravery above and beyond the call and so forth, plus the Vietnamese Service Medal, indicating, like the medals for bravery, that this photo was taken post-Vietnam. This guy also had the Purple Heart, but since he was in uniform, post-’Nam, it was not a disabling wound. Whoever this guy was, he’d come home in honor and glory, and might still be alive, if he hadn’t gone back to ’Nam and run out of luck. Of course he was alive; that’s why I was here.

  I stared at the photograph of the captain in his green uniform, and I looked into his eyes, which seemed to be far away, like the eyes of a man whose mind was elsewhere. Whoever this man was, someone in the CID and/or the FBI thought he was a murderer.

  I flipped through the photos again, and this time I concentrated on the uniform nametags that were visible in some of the photos. Not one of the nametags was readable, and I had the distinct impression the photos had been retouched to blur the names. Interesting.

  Susan asked, “Do either of them look familiar?”

  I made eye contact with her and replied, “No. Why should they?”

  “Well . . . I thought we discussed that one of them might now be famous.”

  I didn’t respond to that, but said, “Maybe our witness can identify one or both of them, though it’s a long shot.”

  I put the photo pack on the night table. I needed to sleep on those photos, and maybe it would come to me. I had the feeling that Susan could put name captions on both those men.

  I turned off the light and fell into bed.

  Susan was saying something, and I could hear a sentence that began with, “Tomorrow,” and ended with “conclusion,” which was a good place for me to pass out.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO