For the Sake of All Living Things (94 page)

“I’m so tired,” Vathana said. “And...”—she thought to tell her about Kosol but instead said—“...there’s so much to do.”

“
Saye
, Angel. Tomorrow. Tomorrow things will be better.”

“Sophan.” Vathana’s chin furrowed, her mouth quivered. “I’m so afraid.” Again her eyes filled with tears.

“Afraid?”

“I’m going to die. In childbirth. The soldiers are going to kill the children.”

“What soldiers? What birth?”

“No soldiers,” Vathana blubbered now, and Sophan held her. “It’s a feeling. I can’t shake it. What will happen to them if I die? They’ll be orphans. Teck...he’ll never...what if Samnang becomes a soldier?”

“There, there.” Sophan squeezed Vathana to her. “He’s a long time to go before...”

“And...I think I’m...again...pregnant.”

“You’re...”

“Oh Sophan! I don’t even know by whom. Maybe Kosol. Maybe Captain Sullivan. Oh God, what will I do?”

“You’ll love the baby, Angel, eh?”

“Of...Yes. Of course.”

“So! It makes no difference by whom, eh? If the father were a prince or a peasant, by now the war would take him and you’d raise your child yourself. Ah, Angel, but with me, too.”

“Sophan, you must think I’m a very terrible girl.”

“No Angel. I don’t think that.”

“A very stupid girl.”

“No Angel. No.”

“Last year three men wanted me. Wanted to marry me. Or with Teck, wanted to remarry me. Now none. No one. No one. No one would think to have me....”

5 February 1973—Sithan had brought the orders. Team SA-3 was to disband. They had terrorized the capital city for an entire year; now larger game, the orders did not indicate whom, was being sought.

“You’ll go back east,” Nang said. One by one the team members had left. By midnight only Nang and Rin remained.

“Yes. You’ll go north, eh?”

“Yes. I think. Only I’m to rendezvous near Oudong. That’s all it said.”

Rin studied Nang’s eyes in the dim light of the single candle. “They’ve renewed attacks in the North. Be careful.”

“Ha!” Nang scoffed. “What can get Met Nang, eh?”

Rin smiled. “I don’t think of FANK rifles,” he said. “I think of warped thought.”

“Warped...” Nang straightened his back, increasing the distance between himself and Rin.

“You know”—Rin changed his tone—“we never did get that spoiled brat Pech Chieu Teck.”

Nang scratched his forehead, looked down at the candle flame. “He was afraid to leave his mother’s house, eh? How could we get him?”

“Ah, someday, my friend. Someday we will, eh? Sar thinks you failed.”

They sat in silence. Nang thought briefly about being a great teacher, then about the liquidation of the hooligans, the new Khmer Viet Minh cadre sent to Kampuchea by Hanoi, the Khmer who’d sold their bodies and souls to the yuons. He did not ponder any particular thoughts but simply allowed them to come and go. His mind fell on warped thought—not analyzing it but tasting its sour taste in his mouth. Other tastes, bitter tastes, produced shallow thoughts yet deep emotions. He thought of the
thmils
who’d shot off his fingers, of the imperialists who’d dropped the napalm which he’d used to purify himself but which had disfigured him, made half his face ugly; he thought of Soth who’d betrayed him, of the boys—what were their names?—who’d humiliated him in his youth by stripping him. He thought of revenge. It was not enough to knock off a few evil ones here and there. Someday, he thought, someday Rin—he addressed his teammate in his mind—we will carry the fight to the yuons and, maybe, to America. We’ll disfigure them. We’ll disfigure their land.

At sixteen Nang was a full yothea, a cadreman of the Krahom, a provisional member of the Kampuchean Communist Party. He’d been trained, indoctrinated, baptized in battle. He’d proven resourceful in the most adverse conditions, he’d led troops against superior forces, he’d spied, informed, instigated riots and organized an entire city’s fifth column. And he’d terrorized the capital. Yet he did not feel fulfilled, sated, even competent. In him, as there had been for years, yet now growing even wider, was a void, an abyss which demanded filling yet was unfillable. He wanted revenge—fulfilling revenge even though at some level he knew revenge would never be fulfilling.

“You must go now,” Rin said. Nang looked at him but did not rise. “All this talk,” Rin warned, “these speeches against our allies, take them with a grain of salt, eh?”

“You think it’s warped thought, eh?” To Nang, his own voice sounded different, eerie, challenging.

“They’ve a system for justifying any thought,” Rin said as if the voice from Nang had been normal. “That’s why I say to you, be careful. You know who the enemy is, who he’s not. Don’t let them infect your thinking.”

“The yuons,” Nang whispered harshly, “you know they killed my father. The Sihanoukists too. KVM! Rumdoah!
Thmils
! All are evil.”

“No, Nang.” Rin also whispered yet his muted words were condescending. “Viet Namese are not evil. Chinese are evil. Americans are evil. I was trained in Viet Nam. You didn’t know that, did you?”

“Then you’ve gone to them. In your mind. Only your body is Khmer.”

“No.” Rin’s conviction was strong. “I’m as Khmer as you. Too much self-righteousness, Nang, leads to fanaticism. Too much rigidity without principles, it too leads to fanaticism. Don’t be someone’s fool. They’ll use you and throw you away.”

“If they use me as I wish to be used...”

“Someday, my friend,” Rin injected, “someday you’ll need me. Someday I’ll be useful to you and you’ll come to me. You ugly Watercrow, when you understand that, you come and I’ll help you.”

Two days later, near Oudong, Nang rendezvoused with the escort team taking Met Sar’s mobile headquarters nearer the new battle zone. Afternoon light was dying in clouds of dust stirred from the dry earth by lethargic winds. Yotheas sat idly, only their eyes piercing from the red-checked kramas bandana-wrapped over faces, hair, ears. Without words, without greeting, Nang joined the armed, dust-covered elite protecting Sar’s bunker; without words, thinking that he, Nang, should have been the director of the camp where this inert rabble had been trained.

Sar was in a panicked and foul ranting mood subjecting members of the Center to sprayed spittle, to spattered sweat each time he slapped his forehead. “Betrayed,” he swore. “They have left us open to this!” He stamped to the wall. “Just like Geneva 1954. They’ve sold out the Kampuchean revolution. They’ve...” In his anger his lips sputtered. “And that fornicating curly-haired dog—who the fuck does he think he is telling the world the cease-fire extends to Kampuchea! De facto! Kissinger! Ha! Seven days! Seven days they did not bomb! If we stop fighting! Get the yuons to quit Kampuchea and we’ll explore a ceasefire.”

“Met Sar...” Met Yon rose from the field table where they sat. His wispy voice and frail countenance belied his persuasive powers. Sar turned a calculated sneer upon the gray-haired old man, yet Yon, meeting the high general’s stare with the porosity of a sieve, was unintimidated. “This cease-fire, it calls for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Kampuchea, eh?” Sar gritted his teeth, snorted. “It prohibits foreign armies from moving through Kampuchea, eh?” Yon, of all the members of the gathered headquarters, was calm, efficient, well prepared for the meeting. Only Sar ranted.

“So,” Met Dy asked without conviction, “you say it is nothing more than an attempt to have us lay down our arms and rob us of total victory, eh?”

“Damn it, yes.” Sar steamed back to the table. “The yuons have cut off all supplies. They say join the cease-fire. Shit! We sent them a request to dismantle their bases and clear out.”

“This should be a time of joy,” Met Meas, the scribe, said. “At last, the Americans will leave. What is FANK without American support?”

“
You
”—Sar’s face widened immensely in caustic fury—“
stupid
”—he raised both arms—“
fucking
”—slammed both fists down on the table—“
idiots
! Don’t you understand! We can’t agree to a cease-fire. If we did the yuons would overrun Kampuchea within a year. American disengagement! That’s the damned
sellout.
If we don’t agree to the cease-fire, the Americans will concentrate on Kampuchea! It’s yuon criminal egoism. We’ve been set up for annihilation! Either way! Attack. We must
attack
! We must achieve quick victory or the stinging red ants will take it from us.”

Sar sat. He breathed a heavy sigh as if this venting had purged his pent spleen. His body seemed to settle, to spread over his chair. In a most rational and patient manner he said, “Met Sen, you have a detailed report, eh?”

“Yes,” answered the new security chief.

Sar looked about the table. “Let Lon Nol take the blame when the cease-fire collapses. The people already...rightfully...hate him. Or let Sihanouk. We have a tape of his speech, eh?”

Sar’s aide, Nim, sheepishly raised his arm. “Here.” He hesitated. “Should I play...”

“Just tell them.”

Nim ran a finger down the transcript to the proper point. Sar’s rancor had unnerved him. “ ‘Never, never will I enter into negotiations with the treacherous Lon Nol clique,’ ” he read. “ ‘Our future shall be determined by the resistance operation in the interior.’ ”

“How does the interior resistance now stand?” Sar asked.

Met Sen answered. “All factions combined control seventy to eighty percent of the land, perhaps forty percent of the population.”

“Do we have the maps?”

“Here,” Nim answered.

As he unrolled them Sar looked to Met Dy. “Within sixty kilometers of the capital,” the personnel chief said, “we’ve seventy dispersed battalions—nearly twenty-five thousand armed stragglers. We have an additional one hundred battalions spread from Battambang to Takeo to Stung Treng. With six more battalions in training, our forces, because of excellent utilization and economy, have reached nearly sixty thousand. That does not include the militias of Rumdoah and
mekong
.”

“And then how many?”

“One can only estimate. The figure changes rapidly. Perhaps two hundred thousand.”

“A quarter million, eh?” Sar smiled. Met Phan, the tactician and strategic planner, plunked an elbow on the table, dropped his head into his hand and scanned the map. “Then we have the ability to achieve victory,” Sar said. “All we need is the will.”

Phan cleared his throat. Eyes turned to him. “A comparison of our forces”—he smoothed down the curling map and overlay before him—“with those of Lon Nol’s over the entire area does not show any areas of numerical superiority. In order to obtain proper advantage we will need to abandon the Northwest, pull troops from the South and Southwest. We dare not pull troops from the East or Northeast.”

“Why not?” Dy asked. He pointed to heavy concentrations of symbols in Kratie and Svay Rieng Provinces. “We’ve more troops there than...”

Phan cut him short. “We can’t attack. Not yet. Not a major offensive.”

“Why?” Sar sat forward, his body condensing.

“When an army launches a frontal attack on a civilian population”—Met Phan spoke with the tone of a university professor—“it tends to strengthen the society. Lon Nol’s support will increase. The people’s determination will increase. The way we are spread, the way we must remain spread...we cannot guarantee victory. It would be better to continue the political offensive, to increase terrorism. We should use every conceivable backdoor maneuver. The people’s will withers and we are victorious without all-out assaults.”

“FANK is rotten to the core.” Sar snarled. “If we do not launch the offensive the NVA...”

“A city at a time,” Phan injected. “Gauge the American response. If Kompong Thom falls within a week, if the United States remains...”

“If we do not attack, the yuons will grasp control.”

“We need them.” Phan was adamant. He did not want Sar to railroad them into a decision. “We still rely on NVA artillery. Their tanks and artillery will be a decisive element in any offensive.”

Sar banged his fist on the table. “We will rely on no one.” He turned to Nim. “That landless johnny is in Preah Vihear, eh?”

“That’s as reported,” Nim said.

“Have we reached him? Have our messengers told him we’ve been abandoned by Hanoi?”

“There’s been no word.”

“That NVA-KVM puppet,” Sar seethed. “Just as Lon Nol’s a valet of American imperialism, Sihanouk’s an agent of Viet Namese expansionism.” Sar pushed back from the table. He pointed at Meas, then at Dy, at Yon, at Phan. “The will to attack, the will to break the enemy...Each of us must harbor a burning rage toward the enemy. Sihanouk awaits word from Hanoi. They wish him to keep the war going for their benefit. He publicly rejects negotiation and tries to draw the people from us.” Sar turned to Nim. “Tell them. Tell them what has happened in the East. Tell them the true situation.”

Nim shuffled the reports.

“ ‘The NVA,’ ” he read, “ ‘at least in the second military region of the South, is exhausted. They cannot attack east or west. The South Viet Namese are spread thin and have no reserves. Their Airborne and Marine Divisions are mired in the North. They also cannot attack. From Bu Ntoll up past Duc Co and up to the triborder we have a secure flank. For the moment.

“ ‘What is disturbing,’ ” Nim continued, “ ‘is the amount of men and materiel on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. They have never been so well organized. The NVA 559th Transportation Group now has fifty to eighty thousand workers and combatants. There are two pipelines being extended from Mu Gia all the way past An Loc with lines into A Shau, to Duc Co and to Tay Ninh—one, a twelve-inch gasoline line; the other, a four-inch oil line. Also, they’ve begun a massive road-paving operation throughout the Laotian panhandle.’ ”

“Road paving?!” Meas was astounded. “How many trucks...”

“Sixteen, eighteen thousand,” Nim reported.

“Now,” Sar snapped smartly, “do you understand?! If we do not win quickly, the yuons will return in force! But, right now, they are occupied with rebuilding. For the moment all Sihanoukists are vulnerable. Now, we can attack. I have ordered a doubling of the assault on Kompong Thom. Now, come up with a plan to take the capital!”