The Shadow of Arms (13 page)

“I don't think a Vietnamese woman would get involved in a deal like this.”

Toi chuckled, nodding.

“What's so funny?”

“In Da Nang you have women from all over the world. They range from fifteen to five hundred dollars.”

“Why is that funny?”

“It's your attitude that's funny. Women come in all shapes and sizes, but once you've done it, they all look the same. Once at the Hotel Thanh I did it with a big blonde built like you wouldn't believe.”

“I'm not interested.”

“It was lousy. I paid a good three hundred dollars, and I felt like I was inside a giant sponge.”

Yong Kyu remained cold and distant.

“What I'm saying has to do with information,” Toi continued. “Listen carefully, Corporal Ahn. If it's a Korean woman, she's probably hooked up with a Vietnamese.”

Yong Kyu stared at him without speaking.

“It's plain as day. GIs, they'll sleep with anyone, but not with high-priced dancers or women from third countries. I told you, it's all the same down there. White, black, yellow, I say, there's no difference. To the white men, however, the yellow people like you and me are different. GIs sleep with the cheapest Vietnamese women, just like they drink a beer and crush the empty can before tossing it away. The black market dealings for the Vietnamese women are usually cigarettes or chocolate. That is what the women get paid. The Americans refuse to mix black market dealings with their whoring. Dealing contraband is one thing, and buying a woman is something else. If the woman involved in this case is a Korean, I bet she's got some connection with a Vietnamese. Understand what I'm saying?”

“No, not yet.”

Toi abruptly stopped talking. The car was passing smokestacks on the way across the bridge leading downtown. In the distance across the bay you could see Monkey Mountain, called Bai Bang in Vietnamese. It was like an island jutting out of the water. Yong Kyu wondered where all the monkeys had gone. Bulldozers had cleared the jungle away, and in its place a vast headquarters compound, heliport, and naval harbor had been constructed. Had the monkeys fled into the dense forests of the Central Highlands? Ahn Yong Kyu already guessed what Toi had been getting at, but he did not know why he had clammed up and what he was waiting for.

“Go on, tell me. I still don't quite understand.”

“Tell you what?”

Then Toi grinned brightly. For a second he turned his eyes and then shoved his mirrored sunglasses right under Yong Kyu's nose. On the glossy metallic surface of the lenses Yong Kyu saw his own face distorted into a grotesque shape. They were the kind of glasses that hid the mood of the wearer. Perfect for the scalding heat in Vietnam.

Barely suppressing a fleeting urge to punch Toi in the face, Yong Kyu calmly asked, “Why is it that a Korean woman is so likely to hook up with a Vietnamese?”

“Ah, that much I could've told the captain earlier. I thought of it from the start.”

“What do you want, anyway?”

“Easy does it, man,” Toi said, chuckling. “You'll uncover a very good dealing connection.”

“Has that happened before?”

“Yes, when I worked for the American forces.”

Yong Kyu grew tense. “The conditions are the same, sure. But it varies depending on the kinds of deals.”

“With your help, I'm confident I can get to the core of these deals in three days.”

“Go on.”

“I told you. This Korean woman of yours, she's hooked up with a Vietnamese. The Vietnamese like foreign women. They've lived colonized for a long time, so they like foreigners. The guy's an officer, that's my guess. His post, near Da Nang. Not a combat officer.”

“Sounds good. One thing I don't get, though. Why would such a man need a woman as a front, and a foreign woman at that?”

“Ha, ha, you don't understand, do you? It means he's not in this for the money. A man like that can have as many big deals as he wants. That's the key point. This is a petty gift kind of thing. Think about it. If she's one of yours, there's no doubt you'll interfere. But you'll never touch the core of the black market. Why? Because the dealings of the Vietnamese forces are sacred. Same with the American forces. Too many headaches and too much trouble. Endless complaints and accusations from civilians pour into the Vietnamese high command. The superiors in the investigative headquarters either have the man in charge transferred or issue orders suspending the investigation. It's the same with AID
8
loans, advisory group funding, and even with the foreign private contractors. You don't get it. Perhaps you won't get it until the end. So much the better for you. For after all, this is our country and this is our war. We are the masters of the house. You people just serve your time and go back home.”

Yong Kyu gulped down the saliva in his throat. “So what is this war of yours about? The Americans and we came here for no reason?”

“You people have no part in it. This is an American taxpayers' war.”

“Cut the bullshit. For six months I was crawling in the mud where you've never been.”

Toi glanced at Yong Kyu then turned away and spat, apparently angry. “I've lived twice as long as you. So I know life. I'm from a family of merchants who have made their living in the Le Loi markets for three generations. All merchants have a good understanding of world affairs, big and small. Once there was a merchant who saw a man violently beating his wife, so he went into their house. He beat the husband for the sake of the wife. Then the brothers of the husband all came out and they beat the merchant. Then the merchant called on his neighbor for help. His neighbor knew that the merchant would reward him, so over he came too to intervene in the family fight. So? Have I said enough?”

Yong Kyu said nothing. Their Land Rover was pulling inside the headquarters compound of the American naval base.

Footnote:

 

 

9

A flock of doves soared up through the palm trees. Dozens of trucks rolled in and out of the heart of the Quang Nam Province government. In the center of the yard in front of the building, where a fountain had bubbled during the French colonization, the national flag was flying from a pole. A decapitated statue displayed its awkward, naked form. The iron-barred front gate was permanently closed, fortified with sandbags that ran along the edges of what used to be flowerbeds.

Two heavy machine guns had been mounted on low watchtowers behind sandbag walls twice as tall as a man. Fully armed guards sat upright and attentive at two other spots. Out in front of the barbed wire barricades additional bunkers were manned by soldiers with automatic weapons. In the square directly in front of the building a pair of armored personnel carriers were on standby. When the director left for the day, one of the armored personnel carriers escorted him and the rear of his personal convoy was protected by two armored Jeeps equipped with .50 caliber machine guns. The provincial government building was now nothing but a fortress. Each window was covered with metal mesh to repel grenades. The terraces were practically sealed off by sandbag walls. A security force the size of a company was on rotation duty day and night.

Originally, in the early colonial period, the structure had been the home of the French governor. The architecture was in the southern French style, with orange-colored tiles adorning the roof and each level of terracing and neatly trimming the windows. Exotic ivy still crept up the walls to the highest windows, which at one time had been hung with shutters. Geranium pots perched on windowsills here and there. But the walls were ordinary plaster painted white. From a distance, the coarsely textured walls made the building look like a villa on some Mediterranean seashore. The only ugly intrusions on this idyllic scene were the sandbags, the machine gun nests, and the armored personnel carriers.

The iron gate on the side of the provincial government building stood wide open and a soldier was directing the truck traffic in and out. When they entered, the trucks drove into the front yard and made a loop around the flagpole, heading around to the back of the building. Once in the back and unloaded, the trucks made a U-turn to go out through the same gate and then sped off in the direction of the beach.

“What's all that ruckus about?”

The question startled the lieutenant and he jumped up from the desk where he had been busy typing. He went over toward his superior, Major Pham Quyen, who was gazing down through the window with his hands clasped behind his back.

“God-damned fertilizer,” the major spat.

The lieutenant did not bother going all the way to the window and instead returned to his desk and flopped back down in his chair.

“Today is the day, sir.”

“Ah, what a pain. . . .”

Quyen stretched. As his solid shoulders extended, the back of his crisply pressed American jungle uniform grew so taut that it looked about to rip at the seams.

“It's already lunch time,” he muttered, glancing at his watch. “Still no word from the general?”

“No, sir. He stayed at Bai Bang last night, sir.”

Quyen understood. General Liam, a military high commander and the military governor of the province, had a villa on the beach at Bai Bang. It was on the northeast shore of the cape that the Americans called Monkey Mountain, overlooking Da Nang Bay. That the general had spent the night in Bai Bang meant that his arrival would be postponed until after the siesta hour.

“Did you notify the general that a dedication ceremony is to be held today in An Diem?”

The lieutenant hesitated and frowned. “. . . I'm not permitted to communicate with Bai Bang, sir.”

“Call him.”

The lieutenant's pleading look made Major Pham Quyen impatient and angry. “Call him, I said! We got a message from AID and the advisory group. The general must attend the ceremony today.”

“Yes, sir.”

The lieutenant cautiously rang the switchboard and when the other party was on the line, Quyen snatched the telephone.

“Ah, it's me. Has the general been up? What? Not yet? Sure, all right, I know. I'm coming. Yes, it's a very important matter.”

Pham Quyen banged down the receiver in a rage. “Damn, I'll lose my lunch hour again. Hey, hand me that cartridge belt.”

“Are you planning to go to Bai Bang, sir?” the lieutenant asked, handing him a pistol holster and a leather ammunition belt that had been hanging on the wall.

“Yeah, I've got to drag the old man out. We have to make a living, don't we?”

He was about to leave but paused to give an order to one of the second lieutenants. “When they finish with the fertilizer, the cement will be arriving. Verify the quantities and countersign the invoices.”

“Sign, sir?”

“Right.”

“After that, there will be no more storage space left, sir.”

“No need for you to be worrying about things like that,” Major Pham Quyen said with a smile.

When he came outside, the trucks were still circling in and out around the building. He adjusted the fancy silver buckle on his holster belt, took out his gold-framed sunglasses, and put them on. Within a few seconds, a fierce-looking late-model US Army Jeep rolled up in front of him. It was a convoy escort Jeep, fully equipped for battle. The front windshield was lowered flat onto the hood, and the top was covered with loose pieces of olive-colored nylon for camouflage. A pivoting machine gun was mounted on the rear of the Jeep was. It was manned by a slim soldier wearing the maroon beret of a Ranger with an M16 slung over his shoulder.

Major Pham Quyen got into the front seat. Whenever the olive drab sedan of the general was on the street, escorted by an armored personnel carrier and followed by a Jeep like this one blazing its headlights, every vehicle of the Allied Forces pulled over. Every officer who had any nodding acquaintance with the general would jump out of his vehicle to give him a salute. That kind of battlefield protocol looked ridiculous on the streets of Da Nang. At the sight of such a solemn parade, however, some civilians might actually feel that their governor, the man behind the walls of that castle, that fortified island in a sea of slaughter and provocation, was protecting their lives, lives for which the future promised no certainty.

As the Jeep pulled away, the driver asked, “Where to, Major?”

“Bai Bang, and hurry.”

“Shall I use the siren, sir?”

“No, just flash the emergency lights.”

The Jeep drove at full throttle, showering faint glints of colored light on the sunlit streets. Other vehicles either stopped or waited for them to pass. As they were about to turn past the smokestacks onto the bridge, a long column of dusty military vehicles came into sight from the left.

“What shall I do, sir?” the driver quickly asked.

“Just cut through the convoy.”

If they waited for the parade to pass, the general would have time to get up and go somewhere and the day would be wasted. They saw the lead Jeep in the US Army convoy stop suddenly. An officer got out and pointed at them, shouting something indiscernible. Major Pham Quyen waved and passed by them.

“What a nutcase.”

The major might have seemed naive, even stupid. But Pham Quyen was known throughout the second ARVN headquarters as a master strategist. He had graduated from a university in Saigon and from the Army Military Academy in Na Trang. He was fluent in both French and English. Even as a cadet he had stood out from his peers. He'd gotten his reputation at school after an incident: he had supported the opinion of an American advisor, a lieutenant colonel in the US Army.

The advisor was explaining textbook passages on usage of ponchos during the rainy season and on the importance of mosquito repellant for prevention of malaria. One of the brighter students challenged the text:

“Rub-on mosquito repellant doesn't work here. In the central region, the rainy season runs from September to March and it's not constant rainfall; it rains and clears up several times a day. Rub-on repellant just gets washed off in the heavy showers, and then as soon as the rain stops, vicious jungle mosquitoes come out and attack. So, even if it may work in America, that kind of repellant is useless here. Instead, malaria preventatives are needed. Also, the standard-issue rain ponchos aren't good for jungle ambushes. The sound of raindrops on a poncho is louder than drops falling on the ground. The enemy would hear us coming. Instead of a poncho, we should use thin vinyl capes.”

This raingear was exactly what the Viet Cong used. The advisor was in a difficult position. He had come to teach operational tactics, but if his instructions were deemed inept, then America would have a hard time training these Vietnamese and marshaling them in accordance with the American doctrines of warfare. But just then Pham Quyen raised his hand and stood up to speak.

“The counterarguments raised lack objectivity for the situation here in Vietnam. Our combat consists of searches by day and ambushes by night. The only thing moving at night is the enemy. As for firearms and artillery, we have the best in the world. Given our superior firepower, such discussions on the ideal raincoat are pointless. If the enemy discovers us first, we can take them out with an artillery barrage or air support before they slip away. The same goes for the mosquito repellant—if it washes away, we'll just rub it on again. We can always make more.”

The reasoning was so straightforward and confident that it made the doubts raised by the other cadet's incisive questioning sound defeatist. The brilliant young officer attracted the attention of the advisor, who quickly appointed Pham Quyen to the liaison staff. He was marked as a Vietnamese who thought like an American, and that was exactly what the US Army liked to see. Promotions came rapidly and soon he was recommended to General Liam. Whatever the general wanted, Quyen always anticipated it in advance.

Resistance was strongest and most concentrated in the Central Highlands, and so it was a major focus of US Army concern. They had unlimited support for their pacification and resettlement campaigns there, and the entire command structure for managing and implementing these projects fell under the jurisdiction of General Liam as the military governor of Quang Nam Province. During the planning process, the US Agency for International Development only had an economic veto power. As the chief secretary to the governor, Major Pham Quyen was the man who took care of everything. But all the general did was sign off on documents and listen to reports on the results of specific initiatives. He placed total trust in Pham Quyen.

The Jeep was entering Bai Bang. The area was lush with vegetation: shrubs, broadleaved trees, tropical flowers. The long road went out a finger of land toward a steep cluster of mountains that jutted up from the sea like a raised fist. With the road gate closed, there was no entry to or exit from the compound. The Jeep passed through the main gate to the US Naval Headquarters without being stopped and searched and turned right into a narrow alley.

“Go slow,” ordered Pham Quyen.

There was stone breakwall about twenty-five or thirty feet high to the right of the road and the waves that broke against it shot white foam into the air. The asphalt was dirty in some places. Barbed wire had been strung from the upper edge of the breakwall in certain spots. A searchlight from a high tower shone intermittently. The other side was completely different: fragrant flowers, birds singing and flitting about. There was not a single monkey to be seen anywhere on Monkey Mountain.

Then the road curved landward and went up a steep grade. On the sunny hill the trees grew sparse, and then all of the sudden they were gone entirely. The forest had been bulldozed and grass planted. The road wound past the new golf course. On the beach side there were three watchtowers with searchlights and machine guns at the top of their ladders. A guard sat idly in each tower. The Jeep did not turn into driveway but went on to the parking lot some ways away.

A solid-looking two-story brick building on the edge of the slope was the general's villa. The windows were all tinted dark blue. Behind the house was a tiled swimming pool. Farther down the slope on the right were the guards' quarters and a large storehouse, and behind that stood a tennis court encircled by a white fence covered in wire mesh.

The first time Pham Quyen had visited Bai Bang he was awestruck. He had even taken his boots off so he wouldn't get dirt on the carpet. But the general traveled to Saigon for several days for a meeting with the president at Independence Palace soon after that, and then Quyen became very comfortable in the villa. He even made it his own, bringing a woman with him and spending a three-day vacation there. He popped the general's champagne, and even used the general's bed. The Chinese cook, Chap, dressed up in the general's robe with its embroidered dragon in Qing-dynasty style. Quyen had spent about two thousand dollars to use the villa during his sojourn. The money had, of course, gone to buy the complicity of the cook, the butler, and the guards. Whenever Liam went to Saigon, Quyen stayed at the villa. He wasn't trying to make fun of his superior or get the man in trouble. Even if Liam were to find out about it, he would not be shocked; the briefcases filled with mint cash that Liam always took with him on his trips were travel expenses that Quyen had gotten together for him.

As Quyen approached the porch, the guards standing at either side of the entrance to the villa aimed their rifles at him. But they were smiling. The manager of the villa, a staff sergeant, took the gun belt Quyen had unfastened and handed to him. Then he rang the doorbell for the visitor, and inside it sounded like a temple gong in the distance. A middle-aged man in a white cotton jacket straightened his clothes and then opened the door. Quyen casually walked in. The entire back wall of the main room was glass, so it seemed to open directly onto the sea. Mounted on the wall was a buffalo head, along with an old shotgun and the like. Directly below there was a Buddhist altar, several half-burnt sticks of red incense in the bronze incense burner. These furnishings were a familiar sight for Quyen. There were also several reproductions of paintings and an enormous military-issue air conditioner that didn't fit with the rest of the room.