Better Times Than These (51 page)

THE
RIVER
BLINDNESS

32

“P
lease shut the door and sit down,” the man behind the cluttered desk said. He turned from the window, through which he had been gazing across the red-tile rooftops of the lovely and once-tranquil city of Nha Trang, and rising, motioned Kahn toward a battered wooden chair.

He was a thin, hawkish man, shorter than Kahn, with dark curly hair and thick black-rimmed glasses set low on his nose, over which he peered like a fighter fixing his opponent, chin tucked down, eyes moving from side to side to take in as much as possible. “I am Captain Gore,” he said.

Kahn collapsed into the chair miserably as Gore flipped through a large brown folder for the papers he wanted, muttering, “Kahn, Kahn, Kahn” to himself. Kahn had been chewed out so many times in the last few days he was beginning to flinch at the mere mention of his name.

“Saw the Judge Advocate this morning, right?” Gore asked.

“I saw him—he gave me this . . .” Kahn handed Gore a sheaf of mimeographed papers.

“Already sent me a copy earlier,” Gore said. “Did you read it?”

“I read it.”

“Is there anything in it you don’t think is fair?”

“A couple of things.”

“Like what?” Gore said, looking over the rims of his eyeglasses.

“Like number four—and maybe number two,” Kahn said.

Gore glanced at the papers.

“Number four is crap; no way they can hang you for failing to take adequate safeguards to protect prisoners when you weren’t even there. Number two I don’t know about . . . They’ll have trouble proving it, though, if what you told the investigating officer is correct.”

“It is,” said Kahn.

“Even so,” Gore said, “I don’t have to tell you you’re in a lot of trouble. Once you make a false statement, then the whole goddamn report is suspect—and you can bet they’re going to make as much of that as they can.”

“I told him,” Kahn said, “just what I told the other guy.”

“The investigating officer?”

“Yeah, that guy.”

Gore studied the papers a few seconds longer, then got up and sat on the windowsill. Behind him, Kahn watched a truck convoy rumbling down the dusty tree-lined street, packed with fresh replacements. They were eagerly taking in the sights—the schoolgirls in their flowing white
ao dais,
the cyclo-boys passing in their pedicabs. Some of the soldiers waved and called out, and there was a look of innocence in their faces, and inquisitiveness, as though they were tourists passing in a bus.

Captain Gore regarded Kahn dourly.

“Let me start by saying this: this whole affair is shocking and disgusting if this investigation report can be half-believed. If I had my way, I would be trying this case instead of defending it.” Then Gore looked over the glasses a little more hopefully. “But there are certain things about the way it’s being pushed that bother me.

“One of them is that they’re determined to hang all of you. Some of those fools probably deserve it, but a few don’t and you might be one of them. Anyway, whether you know it or not, they’re gunning for you—mostly because of your boy, whatshisname . . . Brill. You heard what happened to him, I suppose?”

“They said he’s a psycho case or something,” Kahn said.

“More than that,” said Gore. “He’s been diagnosed as mentally incompetent to stand trial. Right now he’s on his way back to the States to get discharged. He’s completely out of it. If that hadn’t happened, it might not be so bad for you, but the way it stands now they want an officer’s ass and you’re it.”

“Great,” Kahn said.

“It’s not funny,” Gore said. “The Commanding General of Two Corps is in a goddamned fit. He’s scared to death the papers’ll get hold of this, and he wants to move fast so they don’t. That doesn’t help you or the other guys.”

“I don’t understand,” Kahn said. “You mean Brill’s not going to be tried at all?”

“You’ve got it,” Gore said.

“But how the hell can they not . . . he’s the one . . .”

“Look, military law is very complicated. When a member of the Armed Forces commits a crime against a civilian in a foreign country he’s tried by the military. That’s so U.S. soldiers get the protection of our own Constitution. If this had happened in civilian life back in the States, they probably would have held Brill in an institution until he was fit to stand trial—and he would stay there until he was—even if it took fifty years. Trouble is, the Army doesn’t have institutions for that kind of thing. Being mentally incompetent doesn’t mean he’s insane—or even that he was when he did this. It just means he isn’t up to assisting in his own defense. It could be a temporary thing or last for the rest of his life. The Army doesn’t want to chance being stuck with him for that long.”

Kahn shook his head. “Well, there’re about ten men who were standing there watching when—”

“Doesn’t make any difference,” Gore cut in. “As of now he isn’t guilty of anything because he hasn’t been tried and convicted, and it’s just easier for them to get rid of him.”

“That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard of,” Kahn said.

“Listen, that’s the way it is. Right now, you’re the next available scapegoat—and I gather you aren’t exactly innocent in all of this yourself, so we’d better concentrate on getting you the best deal possible.”

“Yeah,” said Kahn, “like ten years in the stockade.”

“Let’s level with each other,” Gore said, leaning against the sill. “I’m a damned good lawyer. I graduated top of my class at UCLA and was on the verge of making a lot of money before I had to come into the Army. I’ve been a prosecutor, and I conducted defenses in which I’ve walked people out of courtrooms who did a hell of a lot worse things than what you did. If this wasn’t the Army, your case would never get to trial. But it is, and it’s going to, so you’d better tell me everything you know, as honestly as you can, so I can figure some way to get you off the hook. Besides,” he said with a twinkle, “most you can get is five years and a dishonorable discharge.”

Kahn spent the next two hours telling Gore what had happened. He began with his return after the firefight in Happy Valley and seeing the bodies of the girls from the helicopter and his conversation with Brill and what had occurred the next day when Colonel Patch arrived and saw the bodies too. Gore occasionally interrupted with a question.

“Did he seem overly surprised?” Gore asked. “I mean, did he bring it up first?”

“Not right away,” Kahn said. “We talked about a couple of other things for a minute and then he asked about it.”

“What exactly did he say?”

Kahn thought for a moment. “He said something like ‘By the way, what are all those bodies out there?’ and I told him what Brill told me—that a male prisoner had gotten loose and shot the two girls—and he said, ‘Well, how the hell did that happen?’—I believe those were the words he used—and I told him just what Brill told me.”

“What did he say then?”

“He shook his head and said, ‘That’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever heard of.’ ”

“And nothing more?”

“No, that was it. We talked about other things and he boarded the chopper and took off.”

“What other things?” Gore asked.

“He and I had sort of an argument.”

“About the girls?”

“No—about getting off that goddamn hill. We’d already been probed once and mortared—I figure they were just registering; but he wasn’t having any of it.”

“So he never mentioned it again—about the bodies?”

“Nope,” said Kahn. “Not until he called me in after they found out what happened and started reading me the riot act.”

“And you say you considered that ‘Making a Report’?—just what you said to him that day after it happened?” Gore said testily. “You call that proper military procedure?”

“Look, if I did everything the way The Book says I’d either be dead or in the stockade by now—or at least relieved of my command . . .”

“You’re already relieved of command, and you might wind up in the stockade anyway,” Gore retorted. “The Army takes a pretty dim view of raping and murdering teen-age girls. As the officer in charge, you—”

“Listen,” Kahn said fiercely, “I never even saw those girls alive—but I’ll tell you this: they weren’t nice little schoolgirls like you see walking around here; they were goddamn VC—caught red-handed, and they’d as soon have killed you as looked at you—and if you think those men didn’t know that—”

“Okay, okay.” Gore waved him off.

“No, damn it, let me finish!” Kahn shouted. “You can sit on your fat asses back here and drink Kool-Aid and tell me I’m an animal or something—so maybe I am, because I’ll tell you this: I don’t feel one goddamn thing for those girls. Not one little twinge. I’m not saying it’s right—but I don’t feel anything, nothing! And those guys who did this—and I know them because they’re my men—and they’d sweat their asses for me—they didn’t feel it either, so lay off the morality crap!”

Kahn was flushed and straining forward at Gore. The lawyer peered down over his glasses and said nothing for a few moments, and Kahn leaned back in his chair and looked out the window.

“You cooled off now?” Gore asked finally.

“Yeah,” Kahn said. He studied his shoes.

“You’re right,” said Gore; “closest I get to the shooting is the five-o’clock salute gun. But I’ll tell you something. The kinds of questions I’ve been asking you are baby talk compared to what Mr. Carter Fox, the Judge Advocate, is going to put you through. That court will be regular Army, and they’re not going to feel sorry for you because you’ve been in combat. They are going to go by The Book, and The Book doesn’t provide that as an excuse. You get what I’m saying?”

Kahn nodded dismally.

“Listen, maybe you’ve got a right to be sore,” Gore said gently. “But keep it with me—not with them. From now on, you and I have no secrets. Now, how about let’s mosey on over to the Air Force Base club and have a drink and you can tell me the rest there.”

“So much brass around here you have to be at least a brigadier to get a jeep,” Captain Gore said apologetically as they stood trying to thumb a ride to the airfield that lay on the outskirts of the city.

Seconds later, two privates on their way to the motor pool picked them up, and they bounced along a busy thoroughfare beside the bay; past white sparkling beaches dotted with off-duty soldiers and civilians basking or swimming in the late-afternoon sun. The opposite side of the road was lined with lovely stucco villas with red slate or tile roofs, cool beneath spreading mahogany trees. Once the summer places of elite Vietnamese families, they now served as living quarters for American officers, some of whom could be seen lounging and drinking beer on the wide front porches. Farther on, they passed a row of dingy bars and nightclubs all with American-sounding names whose spelling was thoroughly wrong and inconsistent. Gore waited until the privates in the front seat began a conversation of their own before reopening the subject.

“When did you first know about this thing?” he asked.

“I’m not sure, really,” Kahn said. “I know that sounds crazy, but, well, I guess I knew something was wrong the minute I got back and saw the bodies. You just don’t come across two dead girls without thinking something is wrong. Then I suppose after what Brill said—that some of the guys had ‘messed around with them’—I suppose I had an inkling of the rapes, anyway. He suggested we try to play it down.”

“How did he suggest that?”

“Well, he said we might just bury them and forget about it.”

“What did you say?”

“Understand,” Kahn said, “I was pretty beat. We’d just come back from . . . a pretty long afternoon. I said, I forget exactly what, but something like ‘I don’t want to do anything now. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.’ I wanted to wait till I had a clear head to find out what . . . what it was.”

“Did you have any idea they had been murdered?”

“Not then—I didn’t know what the hell had happened.”

“Ummmmmmmm,” said Gore. The jeep was jerking along a side street clogged with Vietnamese riding bicycles. The driver was cursing at them and blowing his horn furiously.

“When did you first know it—or maybe I should say, when did you first suspect it?”

“I guess it was the next day, after Colonel Patch came out. By then I had just about put it out of my mind—I suppose I was trying to, anyway. We had a lot of things to do. I told you the colonel wanted me to move the whole laager down the hillside, and he started making us run those goddamned patrols again too.”

The jeep was weaving in and out among the bicycles, and both privates in the front were yelling at the riders. A fender of the jeep touched the rear end of one, and the man on it tumbled into the dirt. Apparently unhurt, he picked himself up and mounted the bicycle again, silent, but with a dark, angry look on his face. The jeep drove on.

“That afternoon,” Kahn said, “a guy from Brill’s platoon came up and asked if he could see me for a minute. I was checking positions and asked him what about, and he said, ‘The girls.’ And I said, ‘What about them?’ and he said, ‘Do you know what happened?’ I told him that Lieutenant Brill had filled me in, and he just stood there looking at me, and finally I said, ‘What is it you want to say?’ and he said, ‘Well, I don’t think he told you the truth.’ ”