Once an Eagle (132 page)

“And then came Palamangao, and the invasion, and the pivoting movement, which I imagine you've heard something about. Samuel had, as I say, these fixations and furies. Well, to make a long and highly complicated story less so—there is nothing simple about battle, no matter what armchair genius may advance the thought—he failed to get away with the maneuver. The Japanese hit him in great strength, and naturally he started screaming for reinforcements. Fair enough. Only the unpleasant part of it was he claimed that they should have been his
all along
—that I, his commanding officer, had no right to use them on the other flank of the operation, and he had the effrontery to radio me—”

It was astonishing: he had been running along at full speed, almost as though he couldn't check himself if he'd wanted to … and now, unbelievably, he had stopped. Dead. He could not go forward. He could not think what came next.

He blinked in surprise. The Undersecretary was still listening to him with that faintly scholarly, mournful air, his mustaches drooping; Graulet was staring at him in consternation. He felt tears come to his eyes. Ridiculous. It was ridiculous! He had the slow, drifting, naked dream sensation of an actor caught mindless and unsupported in the vast stage glare, before an astonished and accusatory audience. He coughed into his hand, squeezed his eyes shut. What in God's name had happened? And still he could not remember what he had been going to say.

“General,” Graulet was saying gently, “you mustn't torture yourself over that grim time, it will only upset you …” His long, triangular face, his colorless eyes were suffused with just the proper concern and deference. “Don't go over it again, General. Damon was simply succumbing to the pressure of the breached line when he sent those radios to SPANNER that afternoon. He was simply afraid he'd be overrun, and he panicked.”

Good boy. He knew, then: he'd read it. Good boy. Massengale held his forefinger and thumb pressed to his eyes. Now he remembered, he had it all again. “Silly,” he murmured aloud. “The events we never really put behind us, the emotional undertow that's always there, looping up around our ankles … Well, it turned out all right, of course,” he said with his old smile. “We won in a walk, as the saying goes; the battle and the campaign and the war, and went into proud Nippon. And then Samuel and I went our separate ways: MacArthur never thought very much of him. But of course I kept in touch. You meet people who served with old comrades, or you hear things at the club. You know how it goes. And now Samuel seemed to go into his third phase. It started—I guess it started—with a post-VJ Day speech to his hometown in Nebraska, which provoked a typically Damonesque flurry. What I call the Utopia complex: man is good, his instincts are noble, the world would fuse with the Elysian Fields if everybody would just step forward and join hands. You're familiar with this gestalt, I presume—even some of your eminent colleagues in State have not been completely immune …”

The Undersecretary smiled his scarcely perceptible, mustache-obscured smile; his teeth leaped into view like a nervous rabbit's.

“But I trust you'll take all that yowling and howling on the part of Beemis and Paul Bannerman with a good deal of salt,” he went on. “All that about Samuel's being a Red, and so forth. Nothing could be further from the truth. Of course he's always been a maverick, a wild man—eating out of iron pots with coolies, defending perennial stockade types, the downtrodden, crossing swords with his superiors. But he's not a renegade. It's a case of misplaced loyalties, excessive sentimentality, the echo of those early years.” He smiled fondly. “Samuel feels people are good because he wants them to be. A pleasant failing, but a la-mentable one. Like this Hoanh-Trac. Now you know and I know he's a shrewd, tough, self-seeking old bandit who wants to advance his own personal position here in Cau Luong any way he can. I know for a fact that he has political ambitions—his nose was badly out of joint when Vu Khoi took over last summer …”

For several minutes he elaborated on the nice intricacies involving the quasi-military coup that had ousted Prince Vouna Sai and his clique, while he watched his visitor with covert care. The food and drink—especially the drink—were having their effect. Kimh had topped off his meal with pêches flambées and Cognac. The Undersecretary sat just as erectly as before, but the candid gray eyes looked dense and vague; perspiration was beading the high, narrow forehead below the wisps of hair. How easy it was to play on the vanities of the Eastern Seaboard! For all the centuries of authority, of grace and bestowal, their slender blood nonetheless yearned for the reassurance that they
were
able, they
were
tough-fibered and forceful, capable of the pitiless decisions that engendered triumph. Realists, in short.

“Realism,” he said aloud, and snorted. “It's so fashionable to kick that term around now, isn't it? To equate it with cynicism, savagery, inhumanity … The fact is, war has come to us here in Khotiane. And since it
has
come, since it has been forced on us this way, why not let it work to our advantage? prepare us for the conflicts that lie ahead?”

The war would be expanded, he knew in his heart of hearts; it had to be expanded because it was the only logical step in the national pattern. The consumer market was nearing saturation, industry was hamstrung by costs and labor demands, the balance-of-payments deficit was becoming serious. All this liberal talk about war no longer serving as the instrumentation of policy was so much claptrap. In actual fact, a massive intervention in Khotiane was just what the doctor ordered, if only Washington had the brains to see it: here was John Hay's “splendid little war” revived in midtwentieth century, the perfect extension of the American martial tradition—a war the populace need not commit itself about, supported by big industry and the universal military obligation—now legalized and perpetuated—carried on at the far end of the world, and with little or none of the risks of a big power conflict. In some ways it was even preferable to the China venture …

“It's hard to avoid the conclusion that we are drifting,” he said aloud. “Drifting into recession, drifting into complacency, stagnation, timidity. The country lacks unity, cohesion, a sense of destiny. There's a very real question as to whether participation in an ideological conflict like this one here in Khotiane might not serve as a partial and much-needed mobilization of the nation's resources, as a focus for American concerns, economic and psychological, you know? …”

He stopped and sipped his Cognac. He would go no further than that; see what it elicited. That was the weakness of most military men—they never could resist uttering the additional word that brought the roof of the temple down on their bullet heads. That fellow Walker was a glowing example, with his loony covenants with Almighty God. MacArthur was his own worst enemy—he should never, never have issued that unfortunate statement about its being a new and dangerous concept that the soldier owed his primary allegiance to his country and the Constitution rather than to those who temporarily exercised the authority of the Executive. Disastrous. From that moment on MacArthur was dead as a political power in America. It was all right to think it, but he should never have said it aloud. And Patton—!

The Undersecretary had glanced at his watch. “Good heavens, it's after three. Well after.” He got rapidly to his feet, and his assistants followed suit. He removed his glasses and delicately patted his brows and mustache; his broad French collar was stained. “It's a tribute to your eloquence and cuisine, Courtney. But I must run.” Moving toward the entrance he said, “If American participation in the Khotianese conflict were to be expanded, can you give us assurances that the Chinese Communist government will not actively intervene?”

“Categorically,” Massengale answered. “The most significant information our Intelligence has secured out here over the past three years is the knowledge that China will not march in such an eventuality. Of that we're certain.”

The Undersecretary nodded, the glasses' stem in a corner of his mouth. “That was, of course, the contention of MacArthur's headquarters before the Yalu operation …”

“That is true. But the situation is not at all analogous. I'm sure Frederick Brokaw will bear me out on this.”

“What do you feel would be the position of our SEATO allies?”

“I believe they would support it wholeheartedly. Especially the Philippines and Australia.”

The Undersecretary nodded. “That's interesting. Would you work up a memorandum on this for me on my way through again?”

“I'd be happy to do so.”

“And thank you very much for the most royal repast, Courtney. I haven't eaten like this since my salad days in the embassy in Paris.”

Massengale took his hand. “I'll tell Kimh—he'll be overjoyed.”

“I'm very grateful to you for the extensive briefing.”

“My pleasure entirely.” Massengale swung open the door. “God speed, Mr. Secretary. I will hope for your rapid and successful return …”

 

In Tuyet's room
he lay on the broad, low bed and frowned at the ceiling. It was a quiet time of day. Far below in the street he heard two voices calling, then silence. Indolently he turned his head and watched Tuyet who was bent forward doing her nails, her lovely lacquered profile so delicate it seemed that the faintest gesture, the faintest sound, would shatter it. Aware of his gaze after a while, she turned and looked at him and smiled—the quick, childlike, empty smile of the Khotianese. A simple people. He sighed. Her body was slender, almost breastless, suggestive of some very fragile, beautiful young boy, but her lips were full and moist in the soft saffron light.

His rage had subsided; he felt in its place a gross, immovable weight, like a physical obstruction in the defile of his mind. He had lost; when he had been so certain. That credulous, stubborn, sentimental fool Damon. After all these years. The deep apocalyptic assault he'd dreamed of, that giant thrust into the heartland of China, would not come about. Not for a good long while, anyway. With luck they might ease their way into large-scale participation here, but that was not what he sought. He was facing retirement unless he could secure the post of Chief of Staff or some other executive intercession. That swine Velanger—he and that wretched little clique of his had blocked him. Now he could only reach it through a thunderbolt, some dazzling coup that would rivet attention on him out here, ten thousand miles from that blasted Pentagon.

Of course there was politics: he could go to the conventions, make the rounds and sound out the committeemen and ward heelers, the grubby, venal souls who carried on the errant business of the Republic. But he doubted if he would ever be able to stick it. An appointment, yes—such as Marshall had got, and Maxwell Taylor before the Administration had recalled him to active duty; but to curry favor with the flabby-faced men and strident, aggressive women …

Or he could go up to the old home at Rensselaer, listen to the snow stinging the storm sash, hire himself a housekeeper and tread out the dreary round of an old man's regimen, assembling his papers, writing letters to the editors of the New York papers. But he could never endure that after this—not after Fort Myer and Paris and Reina Blanca and Cau Luong: what he could not bear, he knew, was to fall back into obscurity, into solitude—

There was a distant boom, then another: muffled, stealthy, persistent. Artillery, up near Hua Ngai. What were they firing at? He opened his eyes. Tuyet had put down her stylus and brush and was gazing at the sea. She was so still. A longing urgent as breath swept over him. He said: “Tuyet.”

She looked up, her flaring cheekbones and short, broad nose accentuated by the sun's low rays.

“Come here,” he said in French. “Come to me.”

Obediently she rose and came over and sat on the edge of the bed. There was in her movements the small, fastidious grace of a cat. “Will there be a film tonight?” she asked softly.

“I don't see why not.” He put his hand on her thigh, her belly, feeling the young, firm flesh under the light chartreuse fabric; and a faint tremor of rage, of desolation, shook him.

“What is the matter?”

“Nothing. Nothing is the matter.”

“Oh.” She looked down at him, neither kindly nor fearfully. A simple, receptive look. Children, they were all children. But no matter what he did, in the end he always had to ask her.

“Serve me,” he said in French.

Slowly, with infinite grace she undressed—he insisted on this although there was no actual need for it—and kneeling beside him began the ministration he needed now with the desperate, resurgent hunger of an opium smoker. He raised his head: he needed to watch her. It was sweet, the control of another being, the possession of this supine form, maculate flesh serving him, dependent on him, only him; it was this that was sweet, seething, tensing, caught in tumbling orange and indigo light that spread swiftly, tightened, released in joy, in joy, in spurting flaccid loss.

So brief.

It was so trivial, so brief. But it was what he had to have, now. He had to, he didn't quite know why … The urgency was gone, as usual. Its fulfillment was only for himself, that was paramount—but he could only enjoy that fleet fulfillment if he were with another. That was what was humiliating even while it gave him gratification—the need of another.

He looked up at her with utter hatred. “How strange it is,” he said in French. “You have no sense of shame about it, have you? None at all …”

“Why should I?” She seemed merely surprised. “It is what you want. It is what you enjoy.”

They said she was of good family; her parents had been killed in an air raid by the French. Her brother was in the North now, with the Hai Minh. She had been the lover of a Khotianese colonel who had been shot or exiled or imprisoned—purged, anyway—when Vu Khoi had taken over; she never spoke of him. Emptily he watched her dressing, her lithe, slender legs slipping into her trousers.