Up Country (9 page)

I glanced at the letter again:
the captain ran out of the building
. Tran Van Vinh, smart survivor that he is, doesn’t move until nightfall, then he goes down to the body of the lieutenant, has some water, which is his first priority, then takes the dead American’s C rations, and rifle, and also his pistol—probably a Colt .45—his wallet, and “other items from his body.” Such as what? The dog tags undoubtedly. This was a big prize for the enemy and was proof that you’d killed an American, and it got you a piece of fish or something. But as Sergeant Tran Van Vinh noted, if he were captured with any American military items, he’d be shot, Geneva Convention notwithstanding. So, he had to decide what to do with these items, these war trophies.

Maybe he kept them, and maybe, whether or not he was still alive, they were proudly displayed in his little family hut somewhere. Maybe.

So, what was missing from the translation of this letter? The phrase
and other items from his body
may have been substituted for Vinh’s actual words.

But I could be reading too much into this, and maybe I was more suspicious than I needed to be. A little suspicion and speculating are good; too much and you start to outsmart yourself.

I realized that we were almost on the ground. A few seconds later, the 747 touched down, rolled out, and taxied toward the terminal.

I
nside Terminal Two of Seoul’s Kimpo Airport, I passed quickly through Passport Control and Customs.

I’d actually been stationed in Korea over twenty years before: six months at the DMZ, six months in Seoul. It was okay duty, the Koreans seemed to like their American allies, and the American soldiers in return behaved reasonably well. I had only a single homicide case involving a Korean citizen, three rapes, and a bunch of drunk and disorderly cases. Not bad, really, for fifty thousand guys in a place they didn’t want to be.

I passed into the Main Terminal, which was huge and cavernous, with a mezzanine level that ran around all four sides.

I had a four-hour layover, and my baggage was checked through to Ho Chi Minh City, or so they said at Dulles.

There seemed to be a lot of noodle shops and snack bars around, and the whole place smelled of fish and cabbage, which brought back a lot of memories of twenty years ago.

I noticed a big digital clock on the wall and saw it was 15:26, and the day, in English, said Friday. In fact, almost everything was subtitled in English, so I followed a sign that said
Airline Clubs
.

The Morning Calm Club was on the mezzanine level, and once inside, I gave my ticket to the young lady behind the counter. She smiled and said, “Welcome to the club. Please to sign book.”

I signed the register, and I noticed she was staring at my ticket. She said, as I expected, “Oh, Mr. Brenner, there is a message for you.” She rummaged around behind the counter and handed me a sealed envelope with my name on it.

“Thank you.” I picked up my overnight bag and went into a big, well-appointed lounge. I got myself a coffee, sat in a club chair, and looked at my message. It was a telex from Karl, and it said:
It’s a go—All instructions from Mr. C. remain—Narrowing down names in personnel files here—I may see you in Bangkok—Honolulu a possibility—Have a safe and successful trip—K.

I put the telex in my pocket and sipped my coffee.
It’s a go
—great news.
Honolulu a possibility
. What the hell did that mean?

I went to the club’s business center and used the shredder to destroy Karl’s telex, my e-mail to Cynthia, and the Tran Van Vinh letter. I then made two photocopies of my visa and passport, put them in my overnight bag, and went back to the lounge. I found a day-old
Washington Post
and skimmed through it.

I guess I was a little annoyed about Karl’s
Honolulu a possibility
, and the vagueness of that remark. Had he spoken to Cynthia? Did he mean Honolulu was okay with him, but Cynthia was undecided? Or did he mean Honolulu was a possibility depending on what happened in Bangkok? And what the hell was going on with Cynthia? Karl is so fucking insensitive he didn’t even mention if he’d spoken to her.

I was getting myself pissed off, which was not the way to go into an assignment.

I found myself drifting in and out of a sort of half-sleep, and these unexpected images passed through my mind: Peggy, Jenny, Father Bennett, my parents, the shadow of the priest behind the confessional curtain, St. Brigid’s, my old neighborhood and childhood friends, my mother’s kitchen and the smell of cabbage boiling in a pot. It was all very sad, for some reason.

T
he Vietnam Airlines flight from Seoul through two time zones to Saigon was uneventful, unless you counted the events that were going on in my head.

In any case, the food, service, and drinks were good, and it seemed strange to be sitting in Business Class of a modern Boeing 767 owned and operated by Vietnam Airlines. People I knew who’d gone back to Vietnam in the 1970s and ’80s reported that the Vietnam Airlines equipment was all Russian Ilyushins and Tupelovs, scary aircraft, and the pilots, too, were mostly Russian, plus the food and service sucked. This seemed to be an improvement, but we weren’t on the ground yet. In fact, there seemed to be a problem regarding the weather, specifically a typical Southeast Asian tropical rain squall.

It was about 11
P.M.
, and we were already an hour late, which was the least of our problems at the moment.

I was in the window seat, and I could see the lights of Saigon through the breaks in the weather, and it seemed to me that if you could see the ground, you should land the damned airplane.

Again, I recalled my first government-paid trip to Vietnam in November 1967. I was flying Braniff that time—a military-chartered, psychedelic yellow Boeing 707, out of Oakland Army Base, complete with pretty Braniff stewardesses wearing wild outfits. The stewardesses were a little wild, too, specifically one named Elizabeth, a patriotic young lady, whom I’d met at a USO dance in San Francisco a few days before I flew to ’Nam.

Regarding my vow to Peggy to be chaste for a year, I guess I didn’t get
off to a very good start with Elizabeth. The future then was looking a little uncertain for me, and I was able to justify nearly anything. But maybe I shouldn’t try to justify any of it three decades later. You had to be there.

Regarding the Braniff flight, who but the Americans could send their armed forces into war on a luxury jetliner? It was bizarre, and it was ultimately cruel. I think I’d have preferred a troopship, which was a slower transition from peace to war, and which at least got you into the habit of being miserable.

I don’t know what happened to Elizabeth, or to Braniff for that matter, but I realized that a lot of long-forgotten stuff was starting to come back, and there was a lot more to come, most of it much less pleasant than Elizabeth.

The guy next to me, a Frenchman, had been ignoring me since we boarded, which was fine, but now he decided to talk and said in passable English, “Do you think there is a problem?”

I took my time answering, then said, “I think the pilots or the airport are making a problem.”

He nodded. “Yes, I think that is the case.” He added, “Perhaps we have to go to another airport.”

I didn’t think there was another airport around that could accommodate a 767. Thirty years ago, there were any number of military airfields with runways that stretched forever, and the military pilots then had beaucoup balls, as we used to say. On the downside, you had to dive in fast to avoid the little guys with the machine guns who wanted to win an extra bowl of rice for smearing you across the landscape.

Despite the turbulence, and our proximity to the airport, and despite FAA regulations that didn’t apply here anyway, two flight attendants came by, one holding a champagne bottle, the other holding fluted champagne glasses between her fingers.

“Champagne?” asked the bottle holder with a nice French pronunciation. Cham-pan-ya.

“Oui,” I said.

“S’il vous plaît,” said my French friend.

The two flight attendants were impossibly young and pretty with straight, jet black hair to their shoulders. Both wore the traditional ao dai: silk floor-length dresses with high Mandarin collars. The yellow dresses had slits up the sides to their waists, but, alas, the young ladies also wore the modest white pantaloons to distinguish themselves from the bar girls on the ground.

The Frenchman and I each took a glass from the fingers of the second
flight attendant, and the first poured half-glasses of bubbly as the aircraft bounced. “Merci,” we both said.

Unexpectedly, the Frenchman touched his glass to mine and said, “Santé.”

“Cheers.”

The Frenchman asked me, “You are here on business?”

“No, tourism.”

“Yes? I have a business in Saigon. I buy teak and other rare woods. Michelin is also back for the rubber. And there is oil exploration off the coast. The West is again raping the country.”

“Well, somebody has to do it.”

He laughed, then added, “In fact, the Japanese and Koreans are also raping the country. There are a lot of natural resources in Vietnam that have never been exploited, and the labor is very cheap.”

“Good. I’m on a tight budget.”

He continued, “The Communists, however, are a problem. They don’t understand capitalism.”

“Maybe they understand it too well.”

Again, he laughed. “Yes, I think you are correct. In any case, be careful. The police and the party officials can be a problem.”

“I’m just on vacation.”

“Bon. Do you prefer girls or boys?”

“Pardon?”

He pulled out a notebook from his breast pocket and began writing. He said, “Here are some names, addresses, and phone numbers. One bar, one brothel, one exquisite lady, and the name of a good French-Indochine restaurant.” He handed the note page to me.

“Merci,” I said. “Where should I start?”

“One should always begin with a good meal, but it’s very late, so go to the bar. Don’t take any of the prostitutes—choose one of the bar maids or cocktail waitresses. This shows a degree of savoir faire.”

“ ‘Savoir faire’ is my middle name.”

“Don’t pay more than five dollars American in the bar, five in the brothel, and twenty for Mademoiselle Dieu-Kiem—she’s part French and speaks several languages. She’s an excellent dinner companion and can help you with shopping and sightseeing.”

“Not bad for twenty bucks.” That’s what Jenny got thirty years ago in Georgia, and she only spoke English.

“But be advised, prostitution is officially illegal in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.”

“Same in Virginia.”

“Vietnam is a series of contradictions—the government is Communist, totalitarian, atheist, and xenophobic. The people are capitalists, free-spirited, Buddhists, Catholics, and friendly to foreigners. I am speaking of the south—in the north, it is quite different. In the north, the people and the government are one. You need to be more careful if you go to the north.”

“I’m just hanging around Saigon. See a few museums, catch some shows, buy a few trinkets for the folks back home.”

The Frenchman stared at me a moment, then sort of blew me off by picking up a newspaper.

The PA came on, and the pilot said something in Vietnamese, then French. Then the co-pilot, who was a round-eye, said in English, “Please return to your seats and fasten your seat belts. We’ll be landing shortly.” The flight attendants collected the champagne glasses.

I looked out the window and saw arcs of green and red tracer rounds cutting through the night sky around Saigon. I saw incandescent flashes of outgoing artillery and rockets, and red-orange bursts where the shells and missiles landed in the rice paddies. I saw these things with my eyes closed, thirty-year-old images burned into my memory.

I opened my eyes and saw Ho Chi Minh City, twice the size of old Saigon and more brightly lit than the besieged wartime capital.

I sensed the Frenchman looking at me. He said, “You have been here before.” It was more of a statement than a question.

I replied, “Yes, I have.”

“During the war—yes?”

“Yes.” Maybe it showed.

“You will find it very different.”

“I hope so.”

He laughed, then added, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”

I listened to the hydraulic sounds of the aircraft as it made its approach into Tan Son Nhat Airport. This was going to be, I knew, a strange journey back into time and place.