The Tears of Autumn (18 page)

“Were those your men who followed us across the river?” Christopher asked.

The Truong toe’s eye sockets were filled with shadow; when he turned his face toward Christopher, he showed as little expression as an animal. “Now you waste a gesture,” he said.

“Let me explain something to you,” Christopher said. “What I said to you about Diem was honest—I thought him a great man in his way and I regret his death. I
would
tell you who killed him, if I knew.”

The priest was scratching his skin now with great violence, as if he was glad heroin had given him this evidence that his nerves were alive. “And in exchange for this worthy intention,” he said, “all you want is for us to confess the murder of an American President and a plan to destroy the American army with heroin.”

“Briefly, yes.”

“Then you’re a fool. What do you think this is—a film? We tell you everything, you escape with the truth, the world is saved. I believe you’re insane.”

“Then you should be frightened,” Christopher said. “We’re alone in this room. You are old. Even if I have no weapon, which is illogical, I could kill you both with my hands before anyone came. You don’t seem to be afraid of that.”

The Truong toe moved his face into the light. “Nothing is gained by this,” he said. “Why exchange these threats?”

“It’s useless,” Christopher said. “I want to ask you a question. If I’m right, and your family arranged such a colossal revenge as the murder of Kennedy, what is the point of keeping it a secret?”

The priest threw his arms wide and began to speak; the tic was moving in his cheek again. He subsided when the Truong toe raised his palm. The Truong toe kept his eyes fastened on Christopher’s face.

The Truong toe said, “Go on.”

“You are the head of the family,” Christopher said. “What do you want for it?”

“That it should continue,” the Truong toe replied.

“No—that it should rule. You had power when Diem and Nhu were killed, and Can was put into prison. How long did it take you to achieve that? The whole length of the family’s life. Are you content to wait another hundred generations for another Diem?”

The Truong toe made a brusque movement of his fingers, as if to summon the words from Christopher’s mouth.

“If you kill a man for revenge, and he does not know why he died, and no one knows,” Christopher said, “then what have you accomplished? Your own emotional release—and what use is that?”

The priest began to reply, but the Truong toe silenced him with another gesture.

“Say what you mean,” the Truong toe said.

“I mean you have everything to gain and nothing important to lose by letting yourselves be identified as the assassins of Kennedy.”

The priest had begun to sweat and tremble. He reached into his pocket with a fluttering hand and produced an envelope of heroin. With his eyes fixed on Christopher, he drew the white powder into his nose. After a moment he was quiet again.

The Truong toe returned his attention to Christopher. “That’s certainly a novel idea,” he said, his dry lips opening in a faint smile.

“It’s logical,” Christopher said. “To complete the act, you must be discovered. There may be a certain elegance in killing an American President with ignominy—using a man who appears to be a lunatic so that the assassination will be regarded as a bit of random madness. But it accomplishes nothing.”

“Accomplishes nothing? The man is dead.”

“But not his policies. When Diem was killed, he and Nhu were desperate to end American influence in Vietnam. They had no chance. But you do. Let it be known that Kennedy was shot in Dallas in revenge for the death of Diem and Nhu, and there will be such revulsion in the United States against Vietnam that you won’t see an American face in your country, or an American ship in your harbors, for a generation to come.”

The Truong toe flicked open his clenched hand as if releasing a bird into flight. “You’d give this country to the Communists?”

“Why not?” Christopher said. “Diem and Nhu were prepared to do so. At least the Communists are Vietnamese. Some of them are members of your family.”

The Truong toe relaxed on his divan, steepled his fingers, tapped their ends together. The priest spoke to him in rapid Vietnamese. Christopher watched the Truong toe’s impassive features and the priest’s face, one side of it as unreadable as the Truong toe’s and the other side in spasm. “Kill him tonight, in the street, anywhere,” the priest was saying. “No, he can do no harm,” the Truong toe replied. Christopher realized the old man knew he understood Vietnamese.

“Mr. Christopher,” said the Truong toe, speaking the name for the first time, “I’m curious—how did you come to hear the name Lê Thu?”

“Nguyen Kim mentioned it. He seemed to think it would be a great joke to use it as an introduction to you.”

“And you thought it had great significance—that it symbolized this assassination you think we carried out?”

“I didn’t know,” Christopher said. “That was one of my questions.”

“You’ve translated the name, I understand. It means ‘the tears of autumn.’”

“Yes—if it’s a code name it’s poetic, but insecure.”

“And you wish to know the name of our relative in the North Vietnamese intelligence service?”

“Yes.”

“That is all you require to prove our guilt, and rid our country of the Americans, who, as you suggest, will destroy it for reasons of their own policy?”

“Yes.”

As Christopher and the Truong toe spoke to each other, they smiled—more broadly with each question and answer. After hearing Christopher’s final reply, the Truong toe laughed, a string of dry barks like the cough of a man who has swallowed smoke. His laughter was a compliment. Only a clandestine mind like Christopher’s, free from values and concerned with nothing but the results of action, could have conceived the proposal Christopher had just made. The Truong toe had the same sort of mind. He was delighted to encounter another brain so like his own.

“We’ve heard a good deal about you since yesterday, Mr. Christopher,” he said. “It all seems to be true. This really is a most clever provocation. I have no idea what purpose your masters think it will serve, but you may give them my answer. It is this: your hypothesis is absurd. How could we touch a Kennedy? They live in another dimension of power.”

“Murder requires very little power.”

“No, no, no. Mr. Christopher, Lê Thu is just a name. You will search in vain for any relative of ours who is a secret agent of Ho Chi Minh’s. We accepted the death of Ngo Dinh Diem and Ngo Dinh Nhu—we are weak, Mr. Christopher. How could we do what you think we’ve done?”

Christopher rose. “Very well,” he said. “I’ll go on with my work.”

“What bravado,” the priest said. “You want what—admiration? You’re mad—I’m more convinced of it than before.”

The Truong toe stood and took Christopher’s cold teacup from his hand and he drank from it with a smile. Christopher had not touched the tea. “You are not lacking in caution,” the Truong toe said. “I have something to give you.”

He reached into a pocket of his pajamas and brought out a gray envelope. Christopher opened the flap and looked at the photograph it contained.

It was a picture of Molly, smiling into the camera in surprise, a lock of her hair drawn tight between her thumb and forefinger. Half of Christopher’s face showed in the photograph. It was the picture Nguyen Kim had taken in Rome after they had had lunch together.

The Truong toe looked steadily into Christopher’s eyes. “You may have that print,” he said. “I believe Kim has the negative.”

Christopher felt a stab of panic. The Truong toe watched it flicker in Christopher’s face. He bowed slightly. His brown scalp showed like shined leather through his thin hair.

2

No one interfered with Christopher as he left. The Truong toe showed no surprise when Christopher opened the door into the front of the house instead of going back through the darkened warehouse.

He moved through small rooms that smelled of burnt joss and cooking. There were no windows, only a streak of lamplight sifting through a series of doors leading to the front of the house. Christopher moved quickly through the dim rooms; there was almost no furniture, nor any sign of Nicole or any other Vietnamese. In one of the rooms a withered Chinese woman sat in a large wing chair, staring at an oil lamp that burned on a low table in front of her; she paid no attention to Christopher.

He heard the noise of the street on the other side of a door, and opened it. Stepping into the crowd, he was borne along through the choked street until it opened into a larger thoroughfare. He searched the horizon for the glow of Saigon’s lights. Finding his direction, he set off for the place where he had parked the car.

The crowd, mostly Chinese, was still very think but he stood head and shoulders above it, so that he could see into its depths. One side of the street was lighted by shop fronts; the other, running along the blank backs of godowns, lay in deep shadow.

He saw the first Vietnamese with his face in the full light of an open doorway; his expression had not changed since morning. Christopher looked for the other, and when he did not see him at once, knew that he must be behind him.

He turned around and saw that the crowd had parted. The second Vietnamese stood with his feet apart, poised like a diver on the balls of his feet. He was lifting a pistol with a steady sweep of his arm, wrist locked, both eyes open, mouth relaxed. Christopher recognized the technique. He leapt sideways toward the darkened half of the street. The gunman moved his arm instead of his whole body, and lost his aim. Two soft-nosed bullets hit the wall to Christopher’s right. Two more rounds gouged shallow holes in the concrete. The gunman ducked behind the parked car, expecting return fire.

Across the street, the Vietnamese Christopher had seen first had a revolver in his hand; he was motioning people out of his way. The crowd made no special noise; people moved away from him in both directions to make room for the shooting. Christopher ran back the way he had come, past the parked car with the gunman hiding behind it. The crowd did not see him coming until he was well within it, running with his knees bent and his head bowed so that he was not much taller than the small people who surrounded him.

Christopher looked behind him. One of the Vietnamese was running after him at an easy trot, his long pistol held against his thigh, his head turning alertly from side to side. Christopher saw the other man move in the shadows by the warehouses. The two Vietnamese moved well as a team, like terriers used to hunting together. The crowd drifted toward the lighted half of the street.

Pushing bodies aside, Christopher plunged through the door of an apothecary’s shop. A young Chinese looked up in surprise, then shouted in anger as CL ristopher went through a beaded curtain at the back of the store. A family of Chinese sat around a low table, playing cards. Christopher walked over the table, scattering the cards, and into another room. A window stood open in one wall. Christopher climbed through it, scraping his back on the sash. He fell into a space between two houses. The ground was littered with broken glass, and the passage was so narrow that there was no room for his shoulders. He moved through it sideways as quickly as he could toward a strip of light at its end.

One of the men who had killed Luong stuck his head out the window, braced his pistol against the sash, and took careful aim. Christopher turned his face toward the gunman, threw his arms into the air, gave a loud wordless roar that scraped the skin in his throat, and fell to his knees. The gun wavered as a spot of bluish flame blinked at the muzzle. Christopher did not hear the round go by, and he thought it might have struck him. He felt no pain.

He staggered into a bright street and saw a canal shining at the end of it. A young Chinese grasped his arm roughly and glared suspiciously into his face. Christopher smiled at him and struck him under the chin with the heel of his open hand; the boy’s light body was lifted into the air by the blow, and he landed in the opposite gutter with his neck twisted. A knot of Chinese gathered around Christopher, shouting angrily, and followed him as he walked rapidly away.

The Citroen was parked in the shadows in the next block. Christopher headed for it, pushing the chattering Chinese roughly out of his way. There was no sign of the two gunmen. He was fifty yards from the car when two of the Chinese, young men with angry faces, realized that it belonged to Christopher. They broke out of the crowd and ran ahead. One of them opened a knife and knelt to slash the tires. The other darted around the Citroen, still screaming in a hoarse voice. He snatched at the door handle, and as the door began to swing open, Christopher remembered that he had locked it.

He fell to the ground with his arms around the two people closest to him. Afterward, he thought that he remembered the flash of the explosion lighting the flat face of the Chinese boy and the blast lifting the boy’s thick black hair so that it stood on end. The noise was a long time coming. Before he heard the explosion, like the slap of a heavy howitzer, he saw the whole body of the car swell like a balloon full of water. The glass blew out and one door cut through the crowd like a great black knife.

Concussion sent blood gushing out of his nose. He could hear nothing except a high ringing in his ears. All around him, mouths opened in noiseless screams of terror. He lay where he was with his eyes open.

In a few moments a policeman wearing a lacquered American helmet liner leaned over him and spoke. Christopher pointed to his ears and said, “I’m deaf.” He heard nothing of his own voice but felt its movement over his tongue. The policeman pulled him to his feet and led him toward the end of the street. He would have been killed by the fire truck that roared up behind them if the policeman had not pulled him out of the way.

3

“All I have to do is say the word and they’ll slap a murder charge on you,” Wolkowicz said. “Ten witnesses saw you break that Chinese kid’s neck.”

The Vietnamese police major had withdrawn when Wolkowicz arrived. Christopher’s passport and a sheaf of Polaroid photographs of the bombed Citroen were spread over the top of the policeman’s gray metal desk. Wolkowicz’s face was bleached by the strong fluorescent light in the ceiling, his beard blacker than usual against his pallor. Christopher’s hearing was returning, but his ears still rang, and Wolkowicz’s voice sounded thin.