A Dangerous Friend (26 page)

So I don't know what to do, Sydney said.

I have a thought, Pablo said.

Claude thinks there's a possibility they might consider an exchange or some quid pro quo. That's assuming our captain is alive. Claude wasn't specific. Maybe he was only guessing.

They don't do business that way, Pablo said. They never have. They're back-of-the-head people. You think you see through them and then you understand that you're looking at a mirror; reading your own thoughts. They're patient. They're stubborn. I think you could offer them an atomic bomb and an airplane to deliver it and they'd think about it for a month and say, No, not until you evacuate. Not until every last infantryman is back in California. Then we'll think about your offer.

Risk-benefit, Sydney said.

Pablo tried again. He liked Sydney Parade, a man eager to learn but often attracted to the wrong lessons. He said, Listen to me, Sydney. They don't think in terms of benefit. They're concerned with winning, only that. We like to think of them as the inscrutable face of Buddha. We believe that if we discover what animates them, we can outsmart them. But it's all beside the point. They don't care if they outsmart us or not. Outsmarting is not what they do. Fighting is what they do, and they do it well. They've been doing it for a very long time with only the back of their heads to guide them. It's the life they've chosen. They respect it. It's the reason they exist, I suspect. They believe they are in harmony with the universe. They hear its heartbeat. As good Communists they are never plagued by doubt; and in that way they remind me of Dicky Rostok. Marxism is a kind of natural law. When they die, they will die as honored men, welcomed by their ancestors. They have a plan and they will adhere to the plan no matter what we do or don't do. We're irrelevant to them.

You're a pessimist, Pablo.

Pablo shook his head sadly and shooed away a fly that had lit upon the brim of his Panama hat, no doubt one of the ancestors visiting, a signal of approval. To believe the revolution would be defeated by Western arms was to believe in the modern world, the superiority of Western virtue and Western spirits, and he knew no Vietnamese who did. They all had their bags packed but they had nowhere to go. He watched Mrs. Han sweep the sidewalk in front of her shop; then he had a sudden image of Captain Smalley underground, wet, wounded, insects feeding on his wounds. He was hurting. He was cold. Captain Smalley did not appear to be a resourceful soldier, and the longer he was in the bush, the worse it would get. If Smalley was still alive, it was a miracle from heaven.

There's a way, Sydney said. We just have to find it.

Pablo decided to speak more slowly. He said, They don't like negotiating, Sydney. They tried it twice in Switzerland and it didn't get them what they wanted. Switzerland was very far from Vietnam. They were outmaneuvered by white men in double-breasted suits. In 1945 they tried to enlist the friendship of the United States. That didn't work, either. So they believe they are alone in the world except for alliances of convenience like the one they have with the Soviet Union. They looked at their circumstances and decided on a strategy of unconditional victory, no matter how long it took them or how many died. Any other strategy was unworthy. And the American government decided to oblige them. Am I being clear?

You still haven't answered my question, Sydney said.

What have you told Rostok?

Nothing yet, Sydney said.

Will Claude talk to me?

I doubt it, Sydney said.

You have to be careful with Rostok, what you say to him. He isn't careful with information. Pablo opened his mouth to say more, how you never knew Rostok's angle-of-the-day, how he always had a subtext that was more important than the text, how he let his love of intrigue get the better of him. But he had made these observations before, so he did not make them now.

Probably I should take what I know to the military and let them handle it. They're entitled to the information.

He's their man, Pablo said.

Their responsibility, Sydney agreed.

They have the ways and means, Pablo said, and did not add that the means were too much and the ways too limited.

And I have to protect Claude.

That you do, Pablo said. He's taken risks.

And meantime, that poor son of a bitch Smalley is somewhere in the rain forest—

Dead or alive, Pablo said.

Claude thinks there's a chance he's alive.

Pablo thought a moment, remembering something his wife had said a few nights before. He was suddenly uneasy. At last he said, We would need evidence. In the absence of evidence, take it to the military. Tell Rostok later. He's tied up anyway with that friend of his, the Washington character, the assistant secretary.

Undersecretary, Sydney said, smiling because Pablo had no sense of rank or precedence.

There's nothing you or I can do, Pablo said. Nothing Rostok can do. Nothing Claude Armand can do. Give it to the military.

All right, Sydney said.

I know the man to go to. He's discreet. He's not a fool.

Let's go, then.

Pablo threw some bills on the table and picked up his hat. The sun was peeking through the sheet of cloud, a kind of fluorescent glow. The city did have its own animal charm, the swish and slither of some creature of the underworld, lawless, unpredictable. He watched the cigarette girls approach two Americans who had emerged from the Caravelle Hotel across the square, journalists from the look of them. They were blinking in the light and reaching for their wallets. Their shirt pockets bristled with pens.

Then Sydney's hand was on his arm. My God, he said, that's Dede Armand right there. He pointed at a Western woman disappearing into a taxi. Before he could say anything more, the taxi was gliding away in heavy traffic toward the river. Sydney could see her silhouette in the rear window.

The lady asked me to give you this, the waiter said, and handed Sydney a thin manila envelope.

How did she know where to find me? Sydney said.

The waiter shrugged and drifted off. The cab disappeared.

Well, Pablo said. Someone did.

Sydney opened the envelope and looked at its contents, a single sheet of paper.

This changes everything, he said.

Sydney and Pablo were drinking coffee at the oval mahogany table at Group House when Rostok arrived, his Scout spinning into the driveway, scattering gravel. He had been given bodyguards, four slender Nungs in camouflage gear who carried Swedish K submachine guns. The Nungs spilled from the car, brandishing their weapons at the startled gardeners. Rostok watched the show, then growled some cryptic order that caused the Nungs to retreat to the shade of the plane tree. One stood at attention while the others began to break down their weapons. Rostok hurried inside the villa. Sydney and Pablo heard him loudly issuing instructions to the secretaries. Then he was in the conference room, rubbing his hands and chuckling.

Had him for an hour, one on one. He wanted it that way, Syd, tête-à-tête with no third parties. He's a good man, knows how to listen, knows what he doesn't know, always plays the hand he's dealt. Now he's with the general in the general's jet, heading to some godforsaken firebase in Three Corps, more briefings with the charts and the bar graphs...

Rostok poured coffee.

...one major for each chart, one lieutenant colonel per bar graph.

But I got him first, Rostok said.

One on one, sixty uninterrupted minutes. Sorry again, Syd. But it was his call.

He went to the door and called for George Whyte, but George wasn't there, an urgent errand in Cholon. Rostok cursed. Whyte was never around when you needed him. Whyte was always off on some always-urgent mission and wasn't it odd that these missions never failed to occur when he, Rostok, needed something done without delay, in this important instance an exact accounting of the annual budget, how much spent, how much on hand, how much in the pipeline—and the Top Secret wish list because the wish list was about to come true, thanks to the progress made this morning one on one with the undersecretary, who understood the situation at once. Rostok stopped then and took his usual place at the head of the table, smiling sardonically.

And I'm being promoted to brigadier general.

How can you be a brigadier general? You're not in the army.

That so, Pablo?

That's so, Ros.

Equivalent rank, Pab. I'm counselor of embassy as of eighteen hundred hours today. So that I can talk to those bastards at MACV eye to eye on a level playing field.

Congratulations, Pablo said.

General, Sydney added.

Sarcasm does not become you, Syd, Rostok said.

Ros, we have some information, Sydney began.

But Rostok wasn't listening. He was staring out the window, watching his Nungs fieldstrip the Scandinavian furniture.

And I have some other news, he said, this news not to leave this room. It looks like sometime next year the President of the United States will pay us a visit. Talk to the troops, it'll be a morale booster. Maybe for him, too, right around the time of the midterm elections. It'll be a snap visit, no advance warning, and I can promise you that Llewellyn Group will be significantly involved. In the planning.

And the last thing, Rostok continued. The undersecretary was briefed this morning on the efforts to find Captain Smalley. He didn't hear anything positive and he was triple pissed because the boy's uncle is a friend of his and asked him personally to find out what he could and put the heat on, highest priority, et cetera et cetera. Simple truth. They don't know where he is. Captain Smalley has vanished. Hard for them to explain to the undersecretary that while South Vietnam looks small on a map, it's a big country when you're on the ground. Everything looks alike. And the suspicion is they live underground. They're underground men.

What's their plan? Pablo asked.

They don't have one. They're running patrols.

They have no intelligence at all?

They have plenty of information, because they're paying for it. I don't know that I'd call it intelligence. They have numerous reports, Smalley sighted here, Smalley sighted there. Smalley bound and blindfolded, led away in the direction of the Parrot's Beak. Smalley seen in village A en route to village B. Smalley in a whorehouse in Danang. Smalley in an opium palace in Cholon. Smalley dead, Smalley alive. They don't believe any of it and they're right not to, but they check each report, try to verify what they can; and they come up empty.

CAS involved?

Unofficially, Rostok said.

I think I know where he is, Sydney said.

Rostok looked up. Where is he?

Tay Thanh district.

Alive?

I don't know that.

Where'd the information come from?

I have a map, Sydney said. Delivered this morning on the terrace of the Continental Palace Hotel.

Who delivered it?

A waiter; Ros. In a plain manila envelope.

Let me see it. Give it to me now.

Sydney slid the envelope across the desk. Rostok took the paper from the envelope and peered at it, turning it first one way and then another. He was silent, obviously making no sense of it. At last he said, It doesn't look like a map to me. It looks like one of those x-marks-the-spot things you got when you were a kid, find the. buried treasure. A box of Fig Newtons.

You have to know the district, Pablo said. He walked around the table and laid the map on its surface so they could all see it. That's in the vicinity of a string of hamlets called Song Nu. A river connects them. And trails about wide enough for an ox cart. It's not territory we consider secure. In fact, we consider it under the control of the VC. You approach it by this road—and here Pablo jabbed a fat thumb at the map—and go in by the river or the trails. No one knows very much about Song Nu. There's no reason to know anything about it. Some Cao Dai in there.

Who are the Cao Dai? Ros asked.

Religious sect, Pablo said. They have four saints, Christ, Buddha, Marx, and Victor Hugo. Peaceful people for the most part. Serious, mysterious people.

Rostok raised his eyebrows. Victor Hugo?

Victor Hugo. He's one of the minor saints, along with Jeanne d'Arc.

Rostok pointed at a scribbled sentence on the map. What does this mean.

Roughly, "Come and get him."

A challenge?

I don't think so, Pablo said. I think it's a straightforward invitation. Smalley is here. Come and get him.

Rostok was still staring at the map that made no sense to him. Do you think it's genuine? You have no idea how many characters have come tumbling over the transom at MACV, claiming to know where Smalley is or where he was or who has him and what they intend to do with him.

No one's asked for any money, Pablo said.

Where did the waiter get it?

He didn't say, Sydney said.

Rostok looked out the window at his Nungs. They had finished fieldstripping their weapons and were now dozing in the shade of the plane tree. The gardeners worked around them, collecting leaves when they weren't leaning on their rakes. Lazy bastards, he said to no one in particular. Then, to Sydney: Do you know where he got it?

No, Sydney said.

Why did he give it to you?

No idea, Sydney said.

We're on the same team here, Syd, Rostok said.

So let's see, Rostok went on. You and Pablo are sitting on the terrace of the Continental Palace and a waiter walks up and hands you a map disclosing the location of the most wanted infantry captain in Indochina and walks away without a word, not even waiting for a tip. And why does he choose you? Why not the ambassador? Why not the commanding general? Why not me? Why was it you, Syd?

They know I'm the representative in Tay Thanh. Why not?

What does Claude Armand have to do with this?

Nothing, Sydney said.

I think it's his map, Rostok said.

It isn't, Sydney said evenly.

Pablo said, I think it's genuine. And it isn't Armand's. Isn't the question, What are we going to do with this information?

Take it to MACV, Rostok said.