The Vets (Stephen Leather Thrillers) (12 page)

Another guy whom Lehman got on with well was a computer programmer from Cleveland, a big, beefy, bearded man called Joe Stebbings who swore blind that he remembered Lehman lifting him off a hill near Khe Sanh. Lehman didn’t remember and when Stebbings described the operation it sounded like any one of a hundred. That was something else Lehman had quickly noticed about the group – the preponderance of facial hair. Stebbings wasn’t alone in hiding his face behind a bushy beard and moustache. Cummings didn’t have a beard, but Lehman guessed that was because his wife insisted that he stayed clean-shaven, and Lewis didn’t have one either. But of the ten men in the group, half of them had beards, and not just neat trim ones, or closely clipped moustaches; the beards worn by the vets were big and bushy as if they were trying to lose themselves behind a mass of hair. Lehman noticed, too, that the ones with beards also tended to be the ones who wore sunglasses even inside the hotel, as if they didn’t want to be looked in the eye.

Two were from Atlanta: Lorne Henderson and Arnold Speed, and Lehman had rarely met two such laid-back characters, even among the airheads of southern California. It was as if the war had taken every bit of aggression out of them and left them placid, almost docile. Henderson carried a Nikon camera and Speed was never without a Sony camcorder and they spent hours wandering around with wide eyes, taking pictures of each other.

Another guy with a beard was Eric Horvitz. On the rare occasions he removed his sunglasses, Lehman could see that he had the thousand-yard stare, eyes that looked right through you even when he was smiling, dead eyes that had seen too much at too young an age. Lehman had had a beer with Horvitz in Bangkok and there had been a conversation, of sorts, made difficult by the fact that Horvitz preferred to keep his answers monosyllabic. To Lehman it felt as if Horvitz wasn’t used to the company of other human beings; it was almost as if he resented them intruding into his world. Lehman had told him that he flew choppers, but when he asked Horvitz what he’d done in Nam the man just looked at him coldly and said, “I was just there, that’s all.” He didn’t say it viciously or nastily, just in the same matter-of-fact way that he answered all of Lehman’s probing, the way an adult would deal with questions from a child who was too young to understand why the sky is blue or why dogs wag their tails when they’re happy. There was a tension about Horvitz, but it wasn’t that he was highly strung, it was the tension of a leopard stalking a herd of antelope. He appeared relaxed, almost nonchalant, but every movement seemed to have a purpose and each time Horvitz entered a room, people would check where he was and what he was doing: like prey knowing that the predator was around but uncertain what to do about it, anxious not to draw attention to themselves. If Lehman had been asked to sum up Horvitz in one word, that word would have been “dangerous”.

Dangerous was also the description that could be applied to another bearded member of the group, the youngest, a guy from New Jersey called Larry Carmody with a hook for a hand and a major chip on his shoulder. Carmody seemed to be a mass of tension. He was argumentative and garrulous and he annoyed the hell out of Lehman. Apparently he had been a helicopter doorgunner and when he found out that Lehman was a pilot he tried to befriend him, slapping him on the back and wanting to talk about “the good old days”. The good old days, it turned out, were the times when Carmody had been flying low over the rice paddies of Vietnam shooting water buffalo and the occasional farmer, shooting them and laughing about it. If it hadn’t been for losing his hand, Carmody would probably have really enjoyed his war and would have been as happy to go back as the salesman from Seattle.

The last member of the group was, like Lehman, close-shaven, and was almost certainly the oldest. Lehman would have guessed that the man was in his fifties, tall and lean with short grey hair. He was almost as reticent as Horvitz, but that seemed to be because he was more interested in watching and learning than in giving his opinions. He seemed intelligent and thoughtful, and had alert eyes, keen and watchful like a hawk on the wing. He was a pilot, he told Lehman, and had come on the tour to see at ground level the country he used to fly over thousands of feet in the air. He didn’t say as much, but Lehman got the impression that he also wanted to see the sort of people he’d been dropping bombs and napalm on all those years ago. His name was Joel Tyler.

The tour had started with a twenty-four-hour stopover in Bangkok. The Australian girl who had handled the Thai end of the trip had arranged a get-together in the hotel coffee shop and given them a briefing on what to expect when they got to Ho Chi Minh City and afterwards Lehman, Lewis, and Tyler had gone out for a quiet beer. The salesman from Seattle had wanted to take them to the red light area but the three had refused, saying they were all jet-lagged and wanted an early night.

Lehman had heard horror stories about the airports in Vietnam, how petty bureaucracy and red tape meant delays of several hours and a myriad of forms to be stamped, but it turned out to be even quicker than when he flew into the States. The standard of English was better, too.

Immigration consisted of a quick look at his visa and a pleasant smile, and Customs was nothing more than two signatures on his three forms and a few questions about currency from a pretty girl in a green uniform with a peaked cap perched on the top of her head and huge shoulder boards that made her hips look all the more slight. The girl caught him by surprise; he expected them all to be plain and drab as befitted a communist regime, but she was young and very pretty with purple eye-liner and pink-varnished nails that would have done credit to a Las Vegas showgirl. She waved him through without even checking his luggage and wished him a pleasant stay, which is more than had ever happened to him when he arrived at Los Angeles. Twenty minutes after their Thai Airways Airbus A300 had landed they were all out of the Customs hall and in the main reception area, where it first hit home that they really were in a Third World country. The heat was wet and stifling, worse even than it had been in Bangkok, and the crowd formed an almost impenetrable wall. There were so many people there that Lehman couldn’t believe for a minute that they were all there to meet arrivals. Most of those waiting were poorly dressed, and many looked the worse for wear, a sign of a bad diet and lousy health care. The faces were smiling, though, and there were flashes of gold teeth. Every second mouth seemed to have a cigarette in it. There was chatter, too, and laughter, as if the airport were a good place to hang out if you didn’t have a job or anything else to do on a hot April afternoon.

Tyler appeared at Lehman’s shoulder. He was wearing gold-framed sunglasses and looked for all the world like a CIA agent searching for a contact. Both men were towing Samsonite suitcases and had shoulder bags bearing the name of the company that had arranged the tour and they scanned the crowds looking for their tour guides. A small Vietnamese woman in a white blouse and a black skirt spotted their bags and waved a small cardboard sign bearing the name of their travel company. Her name was Judy, she said, and she welcomed them all to Vietnam. At first glance and from a distance she looked like a schoolgirl, barely five feet tall with shoulder-length black hair and a slim, boyish figure, but when Lehman got up close he could see that she was older, probably in her mid-forties. She shepherded them into a minibus and introduced the driver, a man called Hung.

“Well Hung?” laughed the salesman from Seattle. He clapped the man hard on the shoulder and looked round to make sure that everyone got the joke.

Judy gave them a guided tour as Hung drove the bus through the streets to their hotel. The roads were packed with motorcycles and mopeds which buzzed in and out of the crowds of cyclists. The bicycles all seemed ancient, and few had working brakes. Many of the bikes carried passengers, often wives hanging on to their husbands’ waists or small children sitting on the crossbar and hanging on to the handlebars with their little hands. There were young girls with floppy hats to protect them from the sun and evening gloves stretching up to their elbows, wearing the traditional
ao dais
silk blouse slit up the sides.

The cyclos were still around, Lehman noticed, the three-wheeled pedal-powered taxis that carried one passenger, two at a pinch. Sitting in a cyclo was one of the best ways to see Saigon, Lehman knew, half sitting, half lying, with nothing in front of you but your feet as the driver powered his way through the traffic. It was like being in the front of a sled. Or a helicopter on an attack run.

There were some new cars around, mostly Japanese models, but the trucks all seemed to have been around for decades. Lehman could see none of the big-finned American cars that he remembered from his days in Saigon, and there were none of the yellow and blue Renault taxis that used to rattle around. In fact, he couldn’t see taxis anywhere.

Most of the life of Saigon seemed to be lived on the streets, much as when Lehman had last been there more than twenty years earlier. But the city now was a shell of its former self. Lehman had half expected to find it in war-torn ruins like some Asian version of Beirut, but the damage was a result of neglect rather than explosives. The very fabric of the buildings appeared to be falling apart: paintwork was peeling, plaster crumbling, wood rotting, and little or nothing was being done to hold back the creeping decay.

“Look what they’ve done to this fucking place,” sneered the salesman from Seattle. “Look where communism gets you. Right?”

“Right,” agreed Carmody from the back of the bus.

Henderson was clicking away with his Nikon and Speed was filming him taking photographs. Tyler was sitting next to Horvitz. He was talking quietly, with Horvitz nodding occasionally.

The shops they drove past were almost all open to the sidewalk, without windows or doors, and most had men and women sprawled idly on old leather chairs, fanning themselves with pieces of cardboard or sitting in the breeze of an electric fan. There were shops selling food, second-hand tools, cheap clothes and shoes. There were unexpected shops too, selling Japanese colour televisions, stereo systems and brightly coloured refrigerators. Lehman even saw one shop which seemed to sell nothing but electric guitars. The best-maintained buildings seemed to be those belonging to the banks. On the sidewalks were a plethora of small businesses, food stalls selling noodle soup or French bread sandwiches, wooden cases on stools full of Vietnamese and American cigarettes, and bicycle-repairers squatting on the kerb with the patient gaze of vultures, waiting for tyres to burst or chains to break.

The bus pulled up in front of their hotel and as the group climbed out of the air-conditioned interior and into the stifling heat five Vietnamese men in turquoise sailor suits and berets with white pom-poms began unloading their cases. They had been booked into the Saigon Floating Hotel which was moored at Me Linh Square and the owners had insisted on continuing the nautical theme through to the staff uniforms.

“Hotel used to be in Australia, at Great Barrier Reef,” Judy explained as they strolled along a covered walkway towards reception, the sailors following behind, pushing the bags on a large trolley. “They tow it here to Ho Chi Minh City. Now it is the best hotel in Vietnam.”

According to the itinerary they’d all been given in the States, the first few days were to be spent at Vung Tau, a beach resort some 75 kilometres to the south of Ho Chi Minh City. Lehman had flown to Vung Tau during the war. The US Army had a big camp there and it had been the place where the CIA had trained Vietnamese commando teams.

After Judy left, Lehman asked if anyone fancied a walk around town before dinner. Tyler agreed, as did Horvitz, Lewis, Cummings and his wife, and Henderson and Speed, and they all arranged to meet an hour later in the lobby after they’d showered and changed.

Lehman was down first, followed by Peter and Janet Cummings. Horvitz and Tyler came down in the lift together, still deep in conversation. Lehman wondered what the former pilot and the man with dead eyes had to talk about.

Lewis was the last to arrive and he appeared out of breath, apologising profusely and wearing a shirt that would have done credit to a Hawaiian beach barbecue, a swirl of reds, blues and purples on which were superimposed swaying palm trees and windsurfers.

Lehman put on his sunglasses. “Hell, Bart. I didn’t realise we were dressing for dinner,” he said.

The black man laughed and punched him on the shoulder.

“Let’s go,” he said.

They walked out of the hotel and turned along Ton Duc Thong Street, the Saigon River on their left. Cyclo drivers kept ringing their bells and touting for business but Tyler waved them away. A group of bare-chested boys and girls – though it was difficult to tell them apart they were so young – ran across the road and then danced around them, chanting, “
Lien Xo! Lien Xo!
”

“What are they saying?” Janet Cummings asked.

“They’re calling us Russians,” Tyler explained. “I suppose most of the Caucasians they meet are from Russia, technical experts and advisers. It’s only recently that Westerners have been allowed in.”

“And we probably all look alike to them,” said Lewis.

“Bart, the only black Russian I know is a godforsaken drink,” said Lehman and they all laughed.

The kids continued to call out “
Lien Xo!
” in their sing-song voices and passers-by smiled at the group. The smiles seemed good natured, and Lehman got the feeling that the people of Saigon were glad to see visitors from America in their country once more.