Tree of Smoke (26 page)

“I’ve heard nothing about this.”

“Your colonel has. Surely he’s heard rumors. But I’m telling you it’s not a rumor. Everyone can feel it. It’s coming.”

“He’ll want to debrief you. A few days’ interrogation. It’s standard.”

“Don’t expect me to be stupid.”

“Forgive me.”

“I’m the one controlling the process. I have to be.”

“As you say.”

“I need time before I give him something specific, something he can confirm.”

“All right.”

“I need time. I’m not ready to cross.”

T
he neighborhood roosters crowed for the third time. Trung had just the frailest dawn by which to make his way out of Hao’s neighborhood—fruit trees, dirt yards, wood homes, fluorescent lights glowing in the kitchens of the early risers, a sewage ditch winding down among the yards. He envied his friend this simple peace.

When he reached the thoroughfare he paused to light his cigarette butt and watch a couple of baker’s boys on their bikes, gliding by in the silence with the morning’s bread.

He remembered walking arm in arm with Hao at just such an hour in quite another universe: reeling and wild, two lads too drunk on purloined rice brandy to care how Master might punish them. Remembered precisely the size and color of that night’s moon and the unbounded friendliness of the young world, and their voices singing an old song: “Yesterday I followed you down the road…Today I chose a flower for your grave…”

A
t lunchtime on January 2, his first full day in-country, Skip Sands waited for his uncle at the Club Nautique beside the Saigon River. Junks and sampans and shanties choked the opposite bank downstream, but not much moved on the brown water. He studied the menu, all appetite gone, and played with his utensils and listened to a loud miscellany of birdcalls, some of them almost sentimentally musical, others angry. Sweat trickled down his spine. His eye fell on a patron at the next table, an Asian man with an incomprehensibly large black growth descending from his scalp and covering the nape of his neck. Across from this man sat a woman with a monkey in her lap. She scowled, the monkey gave her no cheer, the menu made her unhappy.

A single very loud blast—mortar? rocket? sonic boom?—caused a lot of consternation. The monkey lunged to the end of its leash and danced from side to side under the table. Several patrons stood up. The tables went quiet, and waiters gathered at the railing to peer up the river toward downtown. Someone laughed, others talked, the dinnerware clinked again on the porcelain, the moment resumed.

Colonel Sands was just entering the terrace and said, “My boy, settle yourself.”

The colonel had traveled by chopper from Good Luck Mountain, so Sands understood. Red mud speckled his canvas combat boots and his cuffs, but he wore street clothes and looked alarmingly usual, as if all he cared about were the local sights and the golf. Already he had an amber highball in his hand.

Sands took a seat across from him.

“Is everything good? You’re stashed at the billet.”

“Yes.”

“When did you get in?”

“Last night.”

“Seen anyone from the embassy?”

“Not yet.”

“What are we having today?”

“Colonel, let me start right out by asking you something about San Marcos.”

“Before we eat?”

“I need to clear something up.”

“Sure.”

“Were you passing orders to the major?”

“The major?”

“Aguinaldo? The major?—the last time we saw each other.”

“Right. The Del Monte House. San Carlos.”

“San Marcos.”

“Right.”

“Aguinaldo? The Filipino?”

“Yes. The Filipino. No. I wasn’t running any Filipino.”

“What about the German? Was he yours?”

“It’s the Political Section in Manila runs everybody. I’m not the Political Section. I’m just a sick dog they can’t force themselves to shoot.”

“All right. Maybe I won’t press it.”

“No, no. You’ve started, so don’t quit. What’s the problem?”

“Maybe I’m out of line.”

“Come at me. We work together. Let’s get it done.”

“Fine. Then what about Carignan?”

“Who?”

“Carignan, sir. The priest on Mindanao.”

Now, he sensed, his uncle appreciated how serious he was. “Oh, yes,” the colonel said. “Father Carignan. The collaborator. Somebody put him out of his misery.”

“Which somebody?”

“If I remember right, that operation originated with the Philippine Army command. That’s how we understood it from the report.”

“I wrote the report. I rode a donkey all the way to the VOA substation near Carmen and sent a coded report to Manila to be forwarded to you, as instructed. And I only mentioned the local army—barely mentioned them.”

“I believe it was a Philippine Army operation. And I further believe it was run by our friend Eddie Aguinaldo. And we had every reason to believe that this Carignan was involved in the transfer of weapons to and among Muslim guerilla groups on Mindanao.”

“The priest was killed by a dart. A sumpit, they call it.”

“It’s a native weapon.”

“I’ve never seen one except in the hands of that German at the Del Monte House.”

“I see.”

“You weren’t running the German.”

“I’ve said I wasn’t.”

“That’s good enough for me.”

“I don’t care if it is or it’s not.”

“Fuck you, sir.”

“I see.” While the colonel considered a reply and ran a finger, a trembling finger, around the rim of his highball, Skip wilted. He’d armored his soul for this assault. But he hadn’t expected to strike flesh. “Well,” the colonel said, “I’m repeating myself, but what’s the problem?”

“I just worry,” Sands was able to say.

For the moment the colonel said no more. Skip’s fire was out. Why hadn’t he known he could hurt this giant? So ignorant of these older men: Why don’t I have a father?

The colonel said, “Look. These things happen rarely, but they happen. Somebody’s name gets mentioned by more than one source, somebody gets a notion, somebody issues a report, somebody wants an adventure—you know how that one goes, don’t you?—and pretty soon there we are. That you’ve witnessed this kind of cock-up will turn out to be an invaluable experience, Skip.”

“I’d say I was more than just a witness.”

“My point is you see the power of the beast we’re riding. Take care how you prod it.” His bulldog face seemed to speak of a special sadness. He sipped from his drink. “Are my files secure?”

“Yes, sir, they are.”

“How did you like Monterey?”

“Unbelievably beautiful.”

“Order me a hot dog in Vietnamese.”

A waiter was pouring water. Sands spoke with him. “He says it’s buffet-style, please be his guest.”

“Remarkable. But I did understand ‘buffet.’ And you met Hao Nguyen.”

“Hao? Oh, right.”

“He picked you up at Tan Son Nhut. Did you speak Vietnamese to him?”

“Yes, sir, I did.”

“Are you hungry?”

“I might order off the menu.”

“Skip.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are we going to feel bad about talking frankly to each other? Because I don’t want that. We can’t have it.”

“All right. I appreciate that.”

“Good.” The colonel took himself to the buffet.

When he rejoined his nephew he carried a bowl of crab in a white sauce; he sat down and forked and swallowed several bites, hardly chewing. He took a slug of his drink. “What about Rick Voss—Voss? Was he at the house last night?”

“Rick Voss? No.”

“You’ll meet him soon enough. Too soon.”

“I met him at Clark before I left. He came looking for me.”

“He did?”

“Mainly to ask about you.”

“And what was the line of inquiry?”

“He wanted to talk about an article you’d submitted to the journal.”

“I don’t give a curse for some of these young pups coming up. Present company excepted.”

“I hope so.”

He thought he heard his uncle sigh. “I tell you, Skip, the world has turned and carried me into the dark. I got a letter from your cousin Anne just last week”—Anne the colonel’s daughter—“and she’s taken up the anthem of the college leftists, can you believe it? She writes, ‘I think you should look at the motives of our government in Vietnam.’ She’s dating a beatnik, a mulatto. Her mother was scared to tell me. I had to hear about it from your Uncle Ray. ‘The motives of our government’? Jesus Christ. What better motive can the government have than to defy Communism at every turning?”

Skip remembered Anne Sands squatting flat-footed on the sidewalk in a checkered sun suit, bouncing a tiny red ball and scooping up jacks from the pavement; he could summon effortlessly the picture of Anne skipping rope, braids flapping, devoting herself to chants and flying foot-work. To hear of her letter made him angry, but her loss of patriotism was secondary—her offense was in passing beyond the clichés of girlhood…A mulatto beatnik?

“Now,” the colonel said, “let’s cheer up, and meet someone.”

He pointed to this someone as he approached, a skinny young man in army fatigues from the waist down, yet sporting a colorful box-cut madras shirt, open and displaying his olive undershirt.

“Sergeant Storm,” Skip said.

“You know him?”

“He met me at the airport last night.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” the colonel said. “Jimmy, sit down. Do you want a drink, either of you?”

Skip said no and Jimmy said, “American beer.” Skip was seeing Jimmy for the first time by daylight. A sun-browned face and bright, small, earnest eyes, the same color as Skip’s own—categorized on his IDs as “hazel.” He had spectacular tattoos and a couple of teeth. Stenciled on his undershirt:
STORM B.S.

The colonel signaled for a waiter and ordered a beer and a highball and said, “Well, now, here’s a respectful gesture: Jimmy’s buttoning his shirt for us. I think you’re committing a brig offense with that shirt.”

“I’m fashionably insane.”

“And you’re appearing in public with your pant legs unbloused.”

“I’m not in uniform.”

“I think that’s the offense.”

Storm said, “Did you eat already, Skipper?”

“Not as yet,” Skip confessed.

“Skip says you were there to welcome him last night. I thank you for that.”

“Not a problem.”

“And Skip says he met Voss. Voss found him at Clark before he even got here.”

“Don’t ruin my beer with funny talk,” Jimmy said.

“Voss asked him about an article I’ve been working on.” To Skip the colonel said, “I’ve withdrawn that piece. It lacked an organizing theme, to say the least. I was just flailing at the pond of my notions with a fat paddle and going in circles. Making much spray. What did he talk about?—Voss.”

“I kind of shook him off before much got said.”

“Did he describe the article?”

“No, he didn’t. Can I get a look?”

“Why don’t you help me write it?”

“I don’t know. If I see the draft—”

“If I can find the draft. It was a garbled mess. I picked it up after a year in a drawer, and I couldn’t follow my own ideas.”

“Well,” Jimmy said, “that’s what you get for spending a year in a drawer.”

“Look, I didn’t submit that draft to the journal. Voss undertook that on his own.”

“Isn’t that overstepping?”

“Goddamn right it’s overstepping. It’s an act of sabotage. What else did he say? I mean at Clark.”

“Well, let’s see,” Skip said. “He talked about your interest in a football game.”

“Notre Dame–Michigan State. Incredible game. Very instructive. I’m trying to get some film of it and work up a lecture. I’d like to take it around to the troops. Morale in this theater is dismal. The land itself sends up a scent that drives you crazy. Skip, it’s not a different place. It’s a different world under a different God.”

“This is getting to be a regular philosophical obsession,” Jimmy said.

Skip said, “Philosophical obsessions win wars.”

“Touché,” Jimmy said.

Sands said, “Touché?”

“How’s the French coming?” the colonel asked.

“I’m always at it,” Sands assured him.

“Skip and I got to reminiscing,” the colonel said. “I haven’t briefed him.”

Jimmy said, “Can I get some of this chow first?”

“Go to it. I’ll visit the gents’.”

Both men excused themselves, and Jimmy soon returned with a plate in one hand and a large bread roll in the other. While Storm tried to eat, Skip quizzed him in the Agency’s sweat-room style: let your man have a cigarette, but ask questions so fast he can’t smoke it.

“Where are you from, Jimmy?”

“Carlyle County, Kentucky. Never going back.”

“Your name is B.S. Storm?”

“Correct. Billem Stafford Storm.”

“Billem?”

“B-I-L-L-E-M. It was my grandfather’s nickname. My mother’s father, William John Stafford. It doesn’t really solve the puzzle, man, it just puts in a crazy piece that doesn’t fit. You start out confused and end up mystified.”

“And they don’t call you Bill.”

“Nope.”

“Or Stormy.”

“Jimmy’s good. Jimmy gets you a response.”

Skip said, “Are you army Intelligence?”

“Psy Ops. Just like you. We want to turn those tunnels into a zone of psychological mental torture.”

“The tunnels?”

“The VC tunnels all over Cu Chi. I’m thinking: odorless psychoactive substance. Scopolamine. LSD, man. Let it seep through the system. Those bastards would come swarming out of those holes with their brains revved way past the redline.”

“Gee.”

“Psy Ops is all about unusual thinking, man. We want ideas blown up right to where they’re gonna pop. We’re on the cutting edge of reality itself. Right where it turns into a dream.”

“Rick Voss isn’t Psy Ops, is he?”

“Nope.”

“But you deal with him as a regular thing?”

“‘Keep your friends close. Keep your enemies closer.’”

“Who said that?”

“The colonel.”

“Well, but he’s quoting somebody.”

“He’s quoting himself.”

“He usually is.”

“Voss is an evil prick.”