The Tunnel Rats (39 page)

'Head for Ben Sue, then I'll show you.'

A policeman blew a whistle and held up a white gloved hand to stop the traffic. Chinh braked hard, throwing the Americans forward. 'You want to go down the tunnels?' said Chinh. 'Better you go to Cu Chi., Many tourists go there. Lots of fun.'

'We don't want to go to the Cu Chi tunnels,' said Bamber, as hundreds of bicycles rolled by. 'We want to go further north. And we want you to wait for us.'

'How long?'

'Ten hours. Maybe longer.'

Chinh clicked his tongue. 'Where you go?' he asked.

'That's not your problem,' said Bamber. 'You drop us, you wait for us, you drive us back to Saigon.'

The policeman blew his whistle again and Chinh put the taxi in gear and edged forward.

'Okay,' said Chinh. 'You the boss.'

May Eckhardt drove through a small village where women were using hoes to spread rice along the roadside so that it would dry in the baking hot sun. Several of the women looked 278 STEPHEN LEATHER up as she went by - it was still unusual to see a woman behind the wheel in Vietnam. May accelerated as she reached the outskirts of the village, veering over to the wrong side of the road to give a wide berth to a cart being pulled by two massive water buffaloes, their spreading horns at least six feet wide. The cart was piled high with sacks of rice, grains of which dribbled from the sides of the cart. Rice splattered against the Isuzu like rain, then she was past the cart and powering down the dusty road. Rice paddies stretched on either side almost to the horizon, lush and green, and young men stood knee deep in the canals that ran around the rice fields, fishing with nets that they threw like lassos.

In the far distance she could just make out the three motorcyclists and she slowed down. There was no need to get too close. She knew exactly where they were going. Her hands were light on the steering wheel, caressing rather than gripping, and she hummed softly to herself.

Jim Bamber unzipped his holdall and took out a green plastic map case. He unfolded it and held it up so that Wright could see it. It was hand drawn in black ink, the paper yellowing at the edges.

'This is a Defense Department map?' asked Wright. 'They let you have the original?'

'Yeah, I was surprised, but I guess they've got copies,' said Bamber.

The map was in five parts, each a sheet about two feet square. The top sheet showed features of the landscape - hills, a river, several small villages - and there were several crosses marked on it. In the top right-hand corner of the map was a compass showing north.

'This area was called the Long Nguyen Secret Zone,' said Bamber. 'It covered both sides of the Thi Tinh River. The Iron Triangle was about fifteen miles south, here.' He pointed at the map.

'And the crosses?'

1 'Tunnel entrances,' said Bamber.

'I thought there was only one way in?' said Wright.

Chinh pounded on his horn. From the moment he'd left the outskirts of Saigon he'd insisted on using the horn every time he came up behind a cyclist, letting them know that he was about to overtake. The constant noise irritated Wright, but despite several times asking him to stop doing it, Chinh persisted.

'There are entrances all over the area,' said the FBI agent, 'but they're not all connected. That was one of the reasons the army found it so difficult to close them down.'

He flipped over the first sheet, which also had a compass in the top right corner. Written across the top in capital letters was 'FIRST LEVEL'. The map had black crosses that coincided with the crosses on the first sheet.

'This is where the entrances lead to,' said Bamber. 'See what I mean? They're not all connected.'

The various entrances were linked by a network of tunnels. Some of the tunnels simply ran from one entrance to another, apparently connecting firing points, while others ran to larger rooms. Scattered across the map were four red crosses. Wright tapped one of them.

'What do they represent?' he asked.

'Hatches that lead down to the second level,' said Bamber. I He flipped the sheet over. Underneath was a map marked I 'SECOND LEVEL', with matching red crosses on it. The second level contained much larger rooms and fewer tunnels. Wright peered at the notes that had been made alongside several of the squares that denoted the different rooms.

'A cinema?' he said in amazement.

'Yeah, they used to show propaganda movies underground. And they had dance troupes that used to tour around giving performances, poetry readings, the works.'

'And this,' said Wright, pointing at the map. 'This is a well?'

'That's right. They could draw their own water without leaving the tunnels. They had water, food stores, supplies of fuel. They could live down there for months.' He turned the sheet. 'This is the third level. They only discovered one way down, so much of the third level is unexplored.' He 280 STEPHEN LEATHER pointed at a blue cross. 'And this is the only way down to the fourth level.'

'The fourth level? I thought you said there were only three.'

Chinh slammed on the brakes and swerved into the middle of the road. Wright and Bamber were thrown apart and the map tore. Chinh pounded his horn: A flock of more than a hundred white ducks with bright orange bills scattered across the road. Two young Vietnamese boys with long canes jogged after the birds, shouting and waving. Bamber inspected the damaged map. It was only a small rip.

Chinh swung the car back on to the right side of the road. He twisted around in his seat and sniHed apologetically. 'Roads bad up country,' he said.

'Sure are,' agreed Bamber. Ahead of them loomed a truck piled high with boxes of fruit. Bamber pointed at the truck and raised his eyebrows. Chinh turned around and narrowly avoided crashing into it. Two women riding bicycles piled high with firewood watched open mouthed as the car flashed by, missing them by inches.

Wright reached over and turned to the last page of the map. There were only two chambers drawn; a large one linked by a short length of tunnel to a second, smaller, room. The only writing on the sheet was the words 'FOURTH LEVEL'.

'That's obviously where they're going,' said Bamber. 'It must have been important to be so far underground.'

'How far below ground is this?' asked Wright, tapping the page.

'Fifty-five feet, I guess.'

Wright sat back and closed his eyes. He rubbed his temples with the palms of his hands. He could feel the pressure building behind his eyes, the prelude to a major headache. 'O'Leary mentioned booby traps,' he said.

Bamber folded up the sheets and slotted them back into the map case. 'Don't worry,' he said. 'I'll be ahead of you. If there are any problems, I'll come across them first.'

Problems sounded innocuous; problems sounded like small obstacles that could easily be overcome. O'Leary hadn't said THE TUNNEL RATS 281 problems, he'd said booby traps. 'What sort of problems?' asked Wright.

'Punji sticks in pits.'

Wright opened his eyes. 'What?'

Bamber smiled easily. 'Nick, we'll be following Doc and the rest. They've been down there already, they'll have exposed any traps.'

'You can't be sure of that.'

'They're almost fifty years old. You think they'd be putting their lives at risk if they didn't think they could handle it?'

'Maybe,' said Wright, unconvinced. 'Is there anything else I should worry about?'

Bamber put a hand on Wright's shoulder. 'It's going to work out just fine,' he said reassuringly.

Wright looked out of the window. They drove through a small village, on the outskirts of which was a school, little more than a long single-storey building and a dusty playground surrounded by a waist-hjgh metal fence. Groups of young children in blue and white uniforms lined up in front of an open doorway while a teacher carried out a head count. It reminded Wright of the orphanage in Bangkok, and the basement where Eric Horvitz had died. He wondered what it must have been like, dying in a cold dark place, tortured and killed, begging for mercy and receiving none. He shuddered.

Doc pulled in at the side of the road and took a map out of the holdall strapped to his petrol tank. Hammack and Ramirez stopped their bikes either side of him. Doc flipped up his visor and studied the markings on the map. He checked his milometer and ran his finger along the thin line that represented the road they were on. He looked across the rice fields to a lone hill, a bump in the landscape that was much the same shape as the conical hats that the peasants wore.

'Much further?' asked Ramirez, using his sleeve to wipe away the red dust which had coated his visor.

'About an hour,' said Doc. 'Then we leave the road. There's a track that leads to the river. According to the map it's three miles from this road. Once we reach the river, we should be able to find the entrance.'

'You think we'll be able to find it, after twenty-five years?'

'We'll find the rock formation. That won't have changed,' said Doc. 'And then all we've got to do is to find the rock that we put over the hatch. It's not going to be a problem, Sergio.'

Hammack rubbed his arms. 'My arms are going numb,' he complained. 'Makes you miss the old Hueys, doesn't it?'

'You'll be telling us next that you miss the war,' said Doc.

Hammack shook his helmeted head. 'No fucking way,' he said.

Doc put the map away. 'Okay?' His two companions nodded. Doc put the bike in gear and roared off.

While Gerry Hunter waited for the woman in the registrar's office to call him back, he went over to make himself a coffee. He picked up the wrong mug by mistake, then realised with a jolt that it was Cliye's. He stared at the chipped white mug with its map of Australia on one side and a grinning kangaroo on the other, wondering what to do with it. It was too personal to throw away, but he didn't want anyone else to use it. He took it back to his desk. He still expected Clive to walk into the incident room at any moment, cursing the London traffic or the weather or the canteen food or whatever it was that was annoying him that day.

Hunter picked up his telephone and dialled Anna Littman's number. Even as the phone rang out, Hunter wasn't exactly sure what he was going to say to her, and when she answered the words tumbled out in a rush.

'Anna, look, this is Gerry. I know this is crazy and I know you'll say that I'm clutching at straws and that I'm making something out of nothing, but is it in any way possible that Clive's death wasn't an accident?'

For several seconds she didn't speak. 'Gerry, you know what I'm going to say,' she said, her voice a concerned whisper.

'I know, I know. I want to feel that I'm doing something, I want to have someone to blame, I can't accept that sometimes shit just happens. I know the drill. I get it all the time, Anna, people who've lost their nearest and dearest and who aren't prepared to accept that it was an accident. They're convinced that it was an arsonist and not a faulty electrical heater or that someone tampered with the brakes and it wasn't just carelessness that sent the car off the road. I know, Anna, I'm not stupid.'

'No one said you're stupid, Gerry, but you've just lost a close, personal friend. More than that, a partner, someone who trusted you and relied on you. It's only natural that you're going to feel guilty.'

'I know all about survivor guilt, too, Anna.'

'So what do you want me to tell you? That Clive's death wasn't an accident?'

'Is it possible?'

'God, Gerry, how long have you been in the job? Anything's possible, you know that. But just think what that would mean. Someone would have had to have got into Clive's flat and forced him to drink the best part of a bottle of whisky, then forced him to throw up and choked him to death. Does that sound at all likely to you?'

Hunter put his hand up to his forehead. 'No, of course it's not likely. But is it possible?'

Dr Littman sighed. 'Yes, Gerry. It's possible. It's also possible that I'm really a visitor from another planet and that you're going to win the lottery this weekend. Anything's possible. But do I think that there's any likelihood that Clive was murdered? No, Gerry. I don't. You're going to have to let it go. Grief is all well and good, it's part of the--'

'-- healing process, I know. I know. That's not what this is about.'

'What is it about, Gerry?'

Hunter considered her question. He wanted to tell her about Bamber, a man pretending to be an FBI agent. He wanted to tell her about the missing video cassette, about the ace of spades being 284 STEPHEN LEATHER a death card, but he knew that it wouldn't make any sense to her. It barely made any sense to him. 'I don't know, Anna. It's been a bad week.'

'Do you want to come around and talk about it? I serve an excellent coffee.'

Hunter ran his finger down- the kangaroo on Clive's mug. 'Thanks, Anna, but I'll be okay.'

'My door's always open,' she said. 'Hell of a draught, but what can you do?'

Hunter laughed. When he replaced the receiver the phone rang almost immediately. It was the woman *m the registrar's office, apologising for the delay in getting back to him.

'May Hampshire graduated in 1986, with first-class Honours,' said the woman.

'Hampshire?' queried Hunter. He'd been expecting an Oriental name.

'She was the only May in Computer Science, and I checked from 1980 right up to last year, just to be sure,' said the woman. 'The date of birth matches so there's no doubt that it's the girl you're looking for. Oh, you're worried about the name? I wondered about that because you said she was Chinese. Her photograph was on file and she's definitely Oriental. Very pretty girl.'

'Do you have her address?'

'I do. It's in Sale, just like you said. Her parents are Peter and Emily Hampshire.' The woman gave Hunter the full address and a telephone number. Hunter thanked her and cut the connection.

He sat staring at Clive's mug, thinking over what Anna Littman had said, wondering if she was right when she suggested he was suffering from survivor's guilt. He shook his head. No, there was a nagging doubt that wouldn't go away, no matter how dispassionately he thought about his partner's death. The missing video couldn't be explained, not unless someone else had been at Clive's flat. Then there was the Vietnam War connection: the movie, Eckhardt's war service, and the ace of spades death card. All were somehow linked, he was sure of that. He needed to talk to May Eckhardt, to find out what she knew of her husband's wartime experiences.