A Dangerous Friend (17 page)

They know what they're doing, Sydney said.

Do you think so?

He shrugged. He had no idea what they knew or didn't know.

Claude smiled and pointed at the doorway. Who was that?

A friend. Rostok.

You didn't invite him in.

He'd ask for the rent money.

He works for you?

I work for him.

I know who he is, Claude admitted. He's around, here, there, and everywhere. Dede has seen him in the market. And I thank you again.

I like him, Sydney said loyally. But probably this isn't the time to make the introductions.

He's not CIA, is he?

No, he's not. And I'm not either.

Claude looked at his knuckles, nodding, suddenly distracted. When the telephone rang he rose to answer it, but the barman arrived first, spoke a few words, and shook his head. The Frenchman settled back into his chair.

She wasn't due for another six weeks, he said abruptly. Still, he had the nursery all arranged and an amah to help out. My mother sent us some baby things from Comminges. And Dede's friends in America sent books about babies. How to feed the baby. How to rock the cradle. These are strange things to learn from books, no? He paused expectantly, watching the telephone. She was so excited, arranging the nursery. It's a pretty room, the big window gives out onto the garden where Dede's bird feeders are. The deer come to graze and farther out you can see the rubber trees. It's a peaceful spot with southern light all day long, shaded in late afternoon. It's a wonderful place for children.

You were planning to stay on at the plantation, then?

Of course, Claude said. Where else would we go? This war can't last forever. It's impossible. It's not logical. What more can you do that you're not doing? And with everything you've done so far, you're still losing. The Vietnamese are laughing at you.

Sydney sipped his drink, taking his time about it. Claude had the common myopia. He had been in the Far East too long. He did not appreciate the immensity of America, its industry, its restlessness and sprawl, its impatience, its confidence, its anger and its desire. He was not aware that this was only the beginning of the war. All that had gone before was prelude. America was irresistible. This was the twentieth century eye to eye with the fifteenth, the arsenal of the modern world in joust with the bare knuckles of a rural peasantry led by an antique born in the Edwardian Age who had spent his youth making pastry swans for Chef Escoffier in the afternoon and wandering London's gray crabbed streets in the evening, dreaming his exile's dream of revolution. The coming battle would consume all South Vietnam. There would be no sanctuaries, no region immune from it. Claude's American wife would understand this if Claude didn't.

What do you mean, laughing at us?

Something absurd about it, something—and here Claude shrugged futilely.

Listen, Sydney said. He leaned forward and lowered his voice. He described what was on order, the inventory of the struggle to come, four reinforced infantry divisions before the end of next year, another aircraft carrier, as many as four more air wings—and as he recited the data he realized how colorless it was. You had to see the arsenal with your own eyes, the lethal beauty of the ships and the reptilian menace of the aircraft, all but invulnerable to enemies; and then he remembered the VC infantry on their bicycles, rice socks hanging from their shoulders. To witness was to believe. Sydney added that two billion dollars had been appropriated for reconstruction, roads and bridges, ports, airfields, clinics, schools. He told Claude nothing more than had been in the newspapers but Claude seemed surprised at the numbers. Judging from his expression, he suspected that Sydney was pulling them out of the air, American propaganda.

You and your wife don't want to be here, Sydney concluded.

They'll never give up, you know.

They won't have to. There won't be any of them left to go on. No army, no fighters.

You can't do it.

It has to be done, Sydney said with a vehemence that surprised him. We made commitments. We promised to do it. We said we would do it and we will.

It's hard to believe, Claude said.

Believe it. Go away for a few years, and when you come back South Vietnam will look like—California! Vietnamese only wanted what good Americans wanted—a full stomach and domestic tranquillity, an opportunity to go about their affairs unmolested. They were a subtle people whose politics shifted with the tides. They believed in magic and astrological signs. They were fatalistic. They were poised as acrobats, always moving in the direction of the net. But they could not fail to notice the progress made, it was everywhere to see. Indochina was the great test of American character. This had been true in all the other wars and it was true in this one. Anyone who sat on the sidelines would suffer a lifetime of regret, shame was not too strong a word—

Claude was listening intently, waiting for the voice of the Jacobin, the one who swept all reason before him. He waited for the fanatic but what he heard was an earnest imperialist who believed in California. This American was surely right to see the Vietnamese as aerialists, not that he had ever met one. If he ever did, he would understand that there were no nets in South Vietnam. Yet this was also true. Americans were easy to underestimate. They almost asked for it, begged and pleaded to be underestimated in order that victory, when it came, would be sweeter.

Sydney said, In a few months the war will become general. You and your wife will have to choose sides.

You sound like one of those intelligence people.

It's not a threat. I'm afraid for your safety.

Well, Claude said, and smiled. Stop them bombing my rubber trees, then.

I can do that. I'll need something in return.

There's nothing I can give you.

Information, Sydney said.

Claude thought a moment. The information the Americans needed was in front of their own eyes; but probably they were the sort of people who did not trust what was in plain sight. He said, I can understand about pride, it's like an affair of the heart. But I don't understand why you care so much. What does Vietnam matter to you? Who wants it? Is it your capitalists? The munitions industries? Do you think there's oil here?

Sydney did not think the question worth a reply. He said, This is only the beginning.

We'll see, Claude said. I think you'll be out in a year.

At that, Sydney laughed. No chance.

Claude looked at his watch. You should leave now.

Why?

It's best for you to be in Tay Thanh before dark. The road is dangerous now.

The road is secure, Sydney said confidently. Rostok had seen to that.

Claude rolled his eyes. Some nights it is, and other nights it isn't. Tonight it isn't.

Do you know something I don't know?

Claude waited a moment before answering. I have no specific information, he said. The VC do not inform me of their battle plans. But I have lived here a very long time. After a while you have an instinct for things.

We prefer evidence to instinct, Sydney said.

Do you think you are in a court of law?

Those boys at the market, Sydney began.

Local cadre, Claude said.

You know them?

I see them around. I see policemen, too. I see your army. As I said, I've lived here a long time.

One of them was armed, Sydney said.

They did not harm my wife, did they? This was a statement, not a question. Claude rose and they shook hands. Nor you. They did not harm you. They had every opportunity. You were an unarmed American, yet they allowed you safe passage. Perhaps—and here he made a little gliding motion with his hand—Americans are not so important to the situation. Perhaps you are the tip of the iceberg, with nine-tenths invisible beneath the surface; and it is the nine-tenths that controls.

Sydney did not know what to say to that.

I thank you again for what you did, Claude said. I think you saved my wife's life. I am very grateful. I think you are making a terrible mistake in this war, but that is not my affair. In any case, my wife and I will remain here. We will have more children, and they will grow up on the plantation. I wish you good health, Sydney. And now I must go. I have no information to give you.

Every day now when Sydney woke, he thought of the Armands and heard Claude's voice. "They did not harm my wife..." He thought their conversation hallucinatory in its disharmony, the Frenchman refusing to believe what was in front of his eyes. It was the United States that was nine-tenths beneath the surface. But it was also true that in the Cercle Sportif reality took another form and color, that of seductive nostalgia. The reassuring bartender the gin and tonic with its quartered lime, the sounds from the pool and the tennis courts. The war was far away. War's reminder was mechanical, the chug of helicopter gunships and the acrobatics of jet fighters, or the bicycle caravan on the Tay Thanh road.

A week later Sydney called the hospital to ask after Dede Armand, but whoever answered the phone claimed to speak no English and hung up. The day after that he asked Pablo Gutterman to inquire, using his private sources, and Pablo reported back that she had been discharged, healthy but weak. She had gone home to the plantation. Her husband had taken her home. Why do you want to know? I had a tip, Sydney said vaguely.

"I have no information to give you." Sydney took Rostok aside to explain the encounter and its unsatisfactory conclusion; he said nothing about the Cercle Sportif. He described Claude Armand, muscular, rangy, dressed in a khaki shirt, canvas trousers, and gumboots. He was often bemused. He had the looks and bearing of a colonial planter, meaning he walked into rooms as if he owned them, friendly with the help. An attractive man, Sydney said. I was drawn to him and tried to give him what advice I could, none of which he accepted; and he did not accept an offer to collaborate, either. He was well spoken with excellent English and fluent Vietnamese, droll when he wanted to be.

No question he knows things, Sydney said.

But whatever they are, he's not telling.

He evidently loves his wife very much and is not too shy to say so; not too shy to describe the nursery they had furnished and the life he envisioned with his children. He believed he could live between the lines as he always had, and if his twins had lived, they would be between the lines also. The war was a nuisance that would go away sooner rather than later.

I give you Americans a year; he'd said.

But he lives in a different Vietnam than we do, Sydney went on. His Vietnam is governed by his trees and by the seasons, weeding and plowing in April and May, planting in June and July, tapping the latex during the dry season. I have no idea how many trees he has, nor how many laborers. I was told that it takes one laborer to tend one hundred and fifty trees, so if we discover the number of trees we'll know his workforce. Sydney watched Rostok write a few words in the notebook he always had with him.

I don't know what good that will do us, Sydney said. And I have no idea of the precise location of the plantation.

We probably ought to leave them alone, he added.

Unless we can persuade his wife to see the plain light of day.

Really, I doubt if they can help us. They don't know much. They know less than they think they do, Ros.

So why not stop bombing his rubber trees?

But Rostok did not think that would be practical.

Finally, and with reluctance, Sydney described the scene in the market, Dede Armand in pain, the young VC with his carbine, the boys arguing—and when he looked up they were already across the field and disappearing into the forest. Armand's wife did not seem frightened, only in pain and nervous about the American clinic. She insisted on the hospital in Saigon. She issued her instructions and took it for granted that she would be obeyed. She behaved like a colonial, too.

But Claude knew the VC. He said they were local boys, harmless. He spoke of them as if they were friends, or anyway not enemies. I confess I don't know what to make of the Armands.

They are mediocre people, Rostok said.

A
T
TEN
they gathered around the oval mahogany table in the former dining room of the whitewashed villa in the near suburbs of Saigon, an hour's drive from Sydney's house in Tay Thanh. A patchy lawn surrounded the house and a low wall surrounded the lawn. Bougainvillea grew at the base of the wall. Gardeners tended the bougainvillea when they weren't leaning on the wall, gossiping and looking into Nguyen Phan Street at the traffic, or feeding mice to Tom J., the indolent python in the wire cage on the rear lawn. At lunchtime the gardeners collected under the giant plane tree next to the front gate, the tree a souvenir of one of the gallant French admirals who had arrived with the fleet in the 1850s, and stayed on for a time as proconsul. He had caused the tree to be brought from a grove at his country house in Normandy. He wanted something to remind him of home.

The men around the table rarely looked out the windows, thrown open to the air and protected by curvy wrought-iron bars. They were absorbed in the documents in front of them, statistics concerning rice deliveries, vaccinations, dikes, schools, roads and bridges, along with after-action reports from the military, intelligence summaries from CAS, embassy appraisals of political conditions in the countryside and, naturally, the press scrapbook from USIA. They had been instructed to read the dispatches carefully, though in practice they rarely did; enough difficulty trying to construct a narrative from the statistics in front of them.

From Washington material arrived by pouch or by cable, important personnel changes in the government and additional rules and regulations owing to congressional action, and always a thick stack of classified requests—"action this day"—from the Pentagon and the White House, inquiries into the most minute business, the status of the market at some forgotten hamlet in Hau Nghia province or the condition of the road network in the Camau mangrove swamp or the children's brass band at Ban Me Thuot, the instruments donated by the Junior League of Cleveland. Did they get their saxophones? Many of these requests came to Llewellyn Group because Rostok was known to have a quick reaction time; request today, answer tomorrow. Added together, all these statistics were intended to give a reliable estimate of the situation. How went yesterday's struggle for the hearts and minds of the population? Are we better off today than we were yesterday? Fresh proposals, please.