CHAPTER SIXTEEN
In the Heart of Vietnam
Aykhal
He couldn’t give up the ghost. And now he was being sent away, all the way to outlying Aykhal, where she would never find him. He was told that the rules applying to him from hereon in were simple. If he was caught trying to escape, the guards who caught him were under strict orders to shoot to kill. They were done with him. And still he would admit to nothing, and he looked them in the face and denied his name. Past the fields, the Volga, the pines, the Urals. Through Kazan, across the Kama River, and his heart almost stopped beating while crossing it, remembering swimming across it, keeping his gaze back to make sure she didn’t get carried away by the current. She never did. Any current was all right with her. Through the Urals, to Sverdlovsk, and past it through the taiga. They were on the Central Siberian Plain, and the steppe, and past that, too, and now they were on the North Siberian Plateau, in the frozen tundra, and it was there before the mountains, before the Ob and the Amur, before turning south to Vladivostok, to China, to Vietnam, on the edge of nothing, in the middle of one road, one small indentation in the frozen earth known as the Rhone Valley, lay Aykhal. That would have been his ten years in exile after his twenty-five years in the Soviet prisons.
And he was going even farther than that now. Even farther than Aykhal.
Tatiana fretted over him before he left as if he were a five-year-old on his first day of school.
“Shura, don’t forget to wear your helmet wherever you go, even if it’s just down the trail to the river.
“Don’t forget to bring extra magazines. Look at this combat vest. You can fit more than five hundred rounds. It’s unbelievable. Load yourself up with ammo. But bring a few extra cartridges. You don’t want to run out.
“Don’t forget to clean your M-16 every day. You don’t want your rifle to jam.”
“Tatia, this is the third generation of the M-16. It doesn’t jam anymore. The gunpowder doesn’t burn as much. The rifle is self-cleaning.”
“When you attach the rocket bandolier, don’t tighten it too close to your belt, the friction from bending will chafe you, and then irritation follows, and then infection…
“…Bring at least two warning flares for the helicopters. Maybe a smoke bomb, too?”
“Gee, I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Bring your Colt—that’s your lucky weapon—bring it, as well as the standard-issue Ruger. Oh, and I have personally organized your medical supplies: lots of bandages, four complete emergency kits, two QuikClots—no, I decided three. They’re light. I got Helena at PMH to write a prescription for morphine, for penicillin, for—”
Alexander put his hand over her mouth. “Tania,” he said, “do you want to just go yourself?”
When he took the hand away, she said, “Yes.”
He kissed her.
She said, “Spam. Three cans. And keep your canteen always filled with water, in case you can’t get to the plasma. It’ll help.”
“Yes, Tania.”
“And this cross, right around your neck. Do you remember the prayer of the heart?”
“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
“Good. And the wedding band. Right around your finger. Do you remember the wedding prayer?”
“Gloria in Excelsis, please just a little more.”
“Very good. Never take off the steel helmet, ever. Promise?”
“You said that already. But yes, Tania.”
“Do you remember what the most important thing is?”
“To always wear a condom?”
She smacked his chest.
“To stop the bleeding,” he said, hugging her.
“Yes. To stop the bleeding. Everything else they can fix.”
“Yes, Tania.”
When Alexander arrived in Saigon on a military transport jet in November 1969, he thought he was dreaming someone else’s diluvian nightmare. It was raining so biblically hard, the plane couldn’t land. Alexander actually became worried they would run out of fuel, they were circling in the air so long. Finally they landed. So much for the hot and humid jungle. It was windy, cold and pouring.
Because the helicopter couldn’t land in the wind and rain, they couldn’t fly out to Kontum. Richter called, told him to sit tight. So he sat, smoking by the window of his hotel room, looking out onto Saigon Square, reading American newspapers. Mostly he paced the room—oh, he was good at that, pacing.
While drinking downstairs at the bar, a frazzled and wet Vietnamese woman approached him, told him she would give him boom boom for two American dollars. He declined. She told him he could sample for free but if he liked, he would pay. He declined. She offered him yum-yum for a dollar. He declined. She came back a few moments later, thrusting a small toddler into his face and saying, “My baby need food. Why you no give me piastres for yum-yum? I have to feed my baby.”
He gave her twenty American piastres and sent her on her way. Five minutes later she was walking up the stairs with another man, baby in hand. Alexander ordered another drink.
Wishing for the rain to end.
The nights were long. But the days when the rain didn’t end were even longer. He paced as if he were in his cell in Volkhov, in hell, pacing away what was left of his life. Despite all his presumptions at the time, a surprising lot had been left, which showed what he knew.
He wasn’t in charge, he had finally learned that. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be drumming out his son’s life and his own life on the windowpane. He had telegraphed Tania, told her he’d arrived safely. He put his hand on the cold glass. Bar lights flickered down below in the wet night.
Why did you come? the weeping heavens seemed to be saying. It’s bad out here. We won’t let you pass.
There was too much time to think in his dark hotel room. He wondered if Tania could feel him from three continents away. He had not been in a hotel room alone…well, ever. He had been alone in many places—cold wet cells, on trains, in wet forests—but he had not experienced isolation like this since his solitary confinement in Sachsenhausen. It had been an instrument of torture and punishment. And he had not been alone since the door opened a crack, light streamed in, and a small slim shadow stood trembling in front of him.
After that, they lived in hotels and motels and rental homes and houseboats, and a mobile home that was preserved complete like a museum on the hilltop, and now they lived in a spotless stucco house that was clean and cool, where his bed was white and made, and she was always next to him. She never left him, except for those one hundred Friday nights—and somehow they managed to survive even that.
His hand remained fanned out on the damp, cold pane. Even now, in Saigon, he was not alone. Staggering comfort was always close, even in Vietnam, twelve thousand miles away from home.
He telegraphed her. “DESPERATE RAIN. STILL IN SAIGON.”
Three more days of rain went by.
She telegraphed him back. “SUNNY AND HOT IN NOVEMBER. STILL IN PHOENIX.”
She telegraphed him again. “HAPPY THANKSGIVING.”
She telegraphed him again. “DECEMBER LADIES HOME JOURNAL. SEEK: 100 REASONS TO REJOICE.”
He smiled. This is what he meant. She found a way even from twelve thousand miles away. In one of the news kiosks catering to the Americans, he found a December Ladies Home Journal, and the article she was referring to: “100 Places to Make Love,” and spent one happy day remembering some of those places.
Number 16, in a tent. Number 25, next to a fire; number 33, on top of a hill. At a rest area; on a picnic table; in a hammock; in a corn field; in a sleeping bag under the stars. On a boat on a lake; in a bath; in a barn; in the bed of a truck on a hot summer night. In the woods; in the woodshed; on the wood floor. During sunset and high noon. In the pool. On a beach, almost secluded; on a beach at night. In a car on a deserted road; at a drive-in movie theater. In a room with lit candles; in a big brass bed; in every room in your house; in a room at your friend’s house during a noisy party; and once during a quiet dinner party right before dessert. On a porch swing; on the playground swings; on a bobbing houseboat deck; in the core of the Grand Canyon; in luminescent, lilac-heather, never-forgot Bed and Breakfast. And last but not least, on top of the Maytag washer when it was in spin cycle.
One happy day. Then he was clawing his hair out again.
Richter called. Alexander said, “I don’t give a f*ck if a tsunami comes and washes away the whole of South Vietnam. Tomorrow you’re getting me on that slick.”
Tomorrow it stopped raining. The sun shined as if it had never rained, as if the ground was just soggy with heavy morning dew. It got hot and muggy. Alexander choppered out with two young PFCs fresh from basic at Fort Bragg, plus two suppliers and two sergeants. The doors of the Huey remained open through the three-hour flight north. The young soldiers tried to engage Alexander in conversation, but he was looking down below him to the canopied countryside, trying to do Tatiana’s thing, trying to feel for his son under the blanket of trees and ancient pagodas and broken beaten open churches and French Catholic palace ruins, trying to find that rising smoke signal. The green covering looked too thick to land the helicopter but then the jungle ended, and rice valleys began. A rectangular, orderly swathe of man-made clearing was laid out below surrounded by distant mountains. A large military base etched out in symmetry in the freshly cut elephant grass in the central highlands, that was the MACV-SOG Command Control Central in Kontum, the chopper distressing the grass and dust underneath as it came in to land.
Richter was waiting for him. Alexander hadn’t seen Richter since Anthony’s graduation four and a half years earlier. They were both in green battle fatigues, both with striped and barred officers’ insignia at their shoulders, including sharpshooter badges, and rifle and machine-gun bars. Both had graying hair cut army short, Alexander’s mostly black, Richter’s mostly gone.
“I’m sorry to see you under these circumstances,” Richter said. “But, man, am I happy to see your face.” They shook strong hands, they smiled briefly. Richter’s smile subsided. “Come, let’s go have a drink, some grub,” he said. “You must be exhausted.”
“Exhausted from sitting around.”
“I know. Not very good at that, are you, Major?” Richter shook his head as they started walking. “Look how much gear you brought. You’re a lunatic. You know you can get anything you need here. Look at our supply points. Ground studies teams go out loaded for bear.”
Alexander nodded in acknowledgment of the bear metaphor. “I had no idea you were so well equipped. But I have to talk to you and Ant’s lieutenant ASAP, Tom.”
“Come,” Richter said, with a slightly resigned demeanor. They walked from the landing strip down to the row of well-maintained officers’ barracks. “Lieutenant Elkins and Sergeant Mercer are waiting for you. They can’t wait to meet you.”
The base, its perimeter wrapped by a fence and barbed wire, was organized and functional: a landing pad, a landing strip, a hospital, a mail room, officers’ barracks, enlisted barracks, command headquarters, many weapon sites, a training camp, all on flattened ground the size of three football fields.
In Richter’s large, comfortable quarters—a desk, chairs, a conference table, maps, books, a cabinet full of liquor, obviously home—Alexander found two men. The small squat guy was the sergeant major of Anthony’s Special Forces unit. His name was Charlie Mercer, and aside from a shortness and squatness of stature, he also conveyed a stubbornness he might call stoic but to Alexander it looked bloody-minded. Mercer said nothing. He barely spoke.
The other soldier, a young, slim, good-looking boy was Dan Elkins. Alexander knew of Elkins from Anthony’s letters. For some reason, Elkins looked awfully young to Alexander, even younger than Ant. Too young to be in the army. His light hair was thin and stuck up, and his ears thick and stuck out. He chewed gum, popped bubbles, was instantly friendly.
“How old are you, Lieutenant?” Alexander asked.
“Twenty-seven, sir.”
This boy that looked too young to be in the Army was older than Alexander had been when he returned to the United States after ten years of merciless bloodshed. Alexander lowered his head.
Elkins was all about eye contact. Mercer never made eye contact.
“What’s wrong with that guy?” Alexander whispered to Richter.
“You are a legend around these parts, Major Barrington,” Richter said, smiling, cleaning the conference table of papers so they could sit down.
“I am?” Alexander stared at Elkins and Mercer, who now both looked away.
They were brought snacks, drinks, smokes. Elkins said, “You don’t mind that the non-com eats with us, do you, sir?”
“Of course not.” In Poland and Byelorussia, his sergeants always ate side by side with him and his Lieutenant Ouspensky.
White teeth from one protruding ear to the other, Elkins said, “Mercer has been under Ant’s command since Airborne. Anthony’s the one who recommended him for SOG. Over the years, he—we all—have heard some serious shit about you, Major.”
With a small nod, Alexander clicked his glass with a nearly-trembling sergeant.
Elkins smiled. “Forgive us if we see a bit…um, flabbergasted—to finally meet you.” The men stared.
Smoking intently, staring right back at Elkins, Alexander said, “You want flabbergasted? Well, how is this?” He swallowed a mouthful of his beer. “In his last letter home, Ant wrote that he married a Vietnamese girl. How’s that for f*cking flabbergasted? Know anything about that, Lieutenant?”
Profane surprise came from three throats.
“Hmm,” Alexander said, taking an almost calm drag. “Guess not.”
Richter, always a leader of men, asked to see the evidence. “Come on!” he said. “Let’s see it. Don’t tell me you don’t have with you the last letter your son wrote. Let’s f*cking see it. Maybe there’s something in it you overlooked and forgot to tell me. Maybe I’ll be able to glean some other information from it.”
“No matter how many times you ask me,” said Alexander, turning away from Richter and toward Elkins, “I don’t have it. Ant’s mother has it. And as far as I know she’s not here. But I do know what he said in it, and I’m telling you, he got married. What, you don’t think I can read English? He said he married a girl he met last year near Hué, and that her name is Moon Lai.”
It was at this point that Dan Elkins fell off his chair. Then he went wild. He had to leave the barracks for a few minutes to calm down. Alexander exchanged a glance with Richter. Mercer didn’t speak, sitting like a hangdog. He reminded Alexander of someone; the faint familiarity was just out of reach. Something having to do with small kids.
When Elkins came back he was only slightly calmer. “It’s impossible,” he said. “It’s f*cked up and impossible. I’m shocked and I can’t believe it. I have to see it in writing.” He kept shaking his head. “I simply don’t believe it.”
“What did I tell you?” Richter said calmly. “Better cough up that letter, Major.”
“Ant wouldn’t do it,” Elkins said to Alexander. “Your son is not f*cked up like the rest of us. He doesn’t do idiot things.”
“Lieutenant, calm down,” Richter said in his commander voice. “Do you know this Moon Lai?” They were sitting at the cleared rectangular wooden conference table, staring at one another.
“Yes, sir. Oh, yes, sir,” said Elkins, banging his fists impotently on the table. “I most certainly do f*cking know her. Which is why I can’t believe it.” Elkins’s blue eyes were blazing. “It’s not true. It can’t be true. Merce, do you think it’s true?”
“I don’t know,” Mercer said. “I don’t know her.” He shook his head. “But with Captain Barrington anything is possible.” The sergeant paused. “But why would he get married and not tell you, Lieutenant?” he said to Elkins. “You were friends. That’s the part that doesn’t make sense.”
But Alexander, staring at the grain on the table, knew: a four-year love affair with Tatiana’s best friend, in their house, under their nose, and no one suspected, not the estranged husband, not the prescient Tania. The most open boy was obviously also the most shut-in boy. With Anthony, everything was possible.
“Major, maybe you’re mistaken,” Richter said to Alexander. “Lieutenant Elkins here says it can’t be.”
“I didn’t say it can’t be, Colonel Richter,” said Elkins. “I said, it can’t f*cking be. Meaning, it can be, I just don’t f*cking believe it.”
“All right, Elkins, who is she?” Alexander asked.
“Who is she? Obviously that’s the million-dollar question. Oh, the bastard! But not to say anything to me, not even a word, I mean how f*cked up is that?”
Alexander waited until Elkins moderated himself down a degree or two.
“Ant knew I would’ve ripped him a new one, if I knew,” Elkins finally said. “I wouldn’t have let him do it. He didn’t want to hear it from me. He’s like that. When he wants to do something, he just doesn’t want to hear it, the pig-headed West Point bastard.”
“All right now, Lieutenant,” said Richter. “The pig-headed West Point bastard is this man’s son. Now tell us what you know.”
Elkins finally told them what happened last year, the summer of 1968, in Hué. After Tet was over and Hué was destroyed—its civilians terrorized and massacred by the Viet Cong who were finally pushed out by the Americans—the U.S. soldiers were mopping up.
“We were a three-man killer team, silent and lightly armed,” said Elkins.
“Security patrol, Elkins,” corrected Richter.
“Oh, yes, I forgot. I apologize, Colonel,” Elkins said dryly. “Security patrol. We wouldn’t want to offend anyone by hinting there is a war on or anything.”
“Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sorry, Colonel. I’ll continue. Well, we were patrolling the pachinko, hunting for—um, excuse me, looking for—Viet Cong; that was our mission, to find them and to, um”—he glanced at Richter—“to what, sir? To apprehend them?”
“Elkins, three hours in the stockade for you,” said Richter, “if you keep this up. Just continue.”
“Ah, yes, to neutralize them; that’s the delicate word I was looking for!”
“Six f*cking hours, Elkins!”
“Sorry, sir. Anyway, it was me, Ant, and our other buddy Lieutenant Nils; real good guy, he’s not around anymore. Stepped on a mine two months ago,” Elkins said, crossing himself. “Ant would be sad to hear it; they were tight.” He sighed. “Anyway, we ran into a little situation.” He coughed, rubbing his hands together. “We were on the outskirts of Hué, passing through a ravaged ville torched by the VC in their hasty retreat. And in this burned-out ville, in broad daylight, we found a South Vietnamese girl, very young, maybe fifteen? I don’t know. Very young, very small, and very buck naked, tied to a tree. She had been beaten, had obviously been assaulted. No sooner that we lowered our weapons and approached her than from around the ruins a dozen Charlies opened fire, wounding me, Nils, and barely missing Ant. He was grazed in the scalp, bled like a slaughterhouse animal. He returned fire, hosing them down, then lobbed a frag grenade at them. He greased them, but unfortunately the grenade didn’t spare the naked bird.”
Richter said, “Lieutenant, what does this firefight have to do with…”
“I’m getting to that, sir. Well, she wasn’t dead. Anthony untied her, took off his tunic, covered her, stabilized her. She’d lost an eye and two fingers. He bandaged her up, gave her morphine. We called for a medevac. Anthony kept asking her, where’s home? At first she couldn’t get control of herself, she was screaming. But just before the chopper came, she told us she was working in Pleiku, trying to support her—I don’t even the f*ck know—dying mother, sick sister? Point was, the medevac flew us all to a Pleiku hospital. As we landed on the roof, the little girl flung her arms around Ant’s neck and pushed them both out of the hook and onto the ground. She was hysterical. After that she refused to leave his side. He stayed with her, helped her, got himself cleaned up. Nils and I convalesced at our leisure. I remember now, a few days later when we got leave, Ant went somewhere without us. We didn’t see him until we got back to base for our next mission. That was a year ago. We never saw the girl again and Ant never talked about her. But now that I think about it, he never came on R&R with us after that. And he had had quite the…yen for the Asian ladies, if you know what I mean. We had some wild times together.” Elkins broke off, staring solemnly at Alexander. “I mean, sir, you know, just normal guy stuff, sir, nothing too crazy—”
Alexander stopped him. “Just—continue.” Why was it that the young were always convinced they had invented sex?
“Well, he stopped coming out with us. When he’d get a couple of days off, he’d disappear on his own. I know on his last trip in July he signed out to Pleiku.”
Richter confirmed that records showed that Anthony had gone to Pleiku during each of his six leaves.
Alexander was thoughtful, considering Elkins, absorbing what he had been told, what it meant, and then he said, “And this young girl is Moon Lai?”
Elkins nodded. “This young girl is Moon Lai.”
Alexander sat quietly, considering.
“Let’s go and find her,” he finally said. “Where in Pleiku does she work?”
Elkins was fixedly studying the wooden table and said nothing.
“Answer the major, Lieutenant!” Richter barked.
Elkins lifted his gaze to Alexander for a moment before he lowered it again and said nothing.
“Elkins,” mouthed Alexander in disbelief. For a moment he thought he might have to leave the quarters himself. “Anthony did not”—he could barely speak—“marry a whore from Pleiku.”
“Why do you think I’ve been cursing up a shitstorm?”
“No.” Alexander shook his head. “It’s some kind of a mistake.”
“That’s what I said!”
And then the four of them sat stunned, no one more so than Alexander.
Mercer finally spoke. “Hey, Major, don’t feel so bad,” he said. “Maybe she’s a reformed whore.”
“Oh, shut the f*ck up, Merce!” exclaimed Richter.
“Maybe she’s reformed?” said Alexander. “As opposed to what? Tom, in his letter, Ant said that not only had he married this girl but that she was expecting a child!”
Oh, the cursing from four hardened soldiers.
What was wrong with his son? God, where was he? “You see, there has to be some mistake,” Alexander said to Elkins. “Because it’s just not possible.”
“That’s what I f*cking said!” yelled Elkins.
Richter spoke with authority. “All right, everyone, let’s bring this down about a thousand. Alexander, this is the situation…”
“You have to tell me the situation?” snapped Alexander. Now it was his turn to bark. “My son, a commander of a Special Forces A-team, a tight, highly trained, elite group of men, went on leave and did not come back. His weapon, his ruck, his gear, have not been found. And now we find out he married and knocked up a yum-yum girl. Meanwhile, he’s vanished off the face of the earth. Anything I forgot?” He was trying hard to think clearly.
Richter poured everyone another glass of beer. They lit up their cigarettes, they sat. “No, I think you just about covered it, Major.”
“Hey, maybe his disappearance has nothing to do with Moon Lai?” Elkins said, brightening. “Maybe it’s just a coincidence?”
The silent soldiers smoked skeptically.
Alexander’s face was contorted in concentration. “Elkins, did you say the girl was South Vietnamese?”
“Well, yes,” said Elkins. “Of course she was. What else?”
“What else?” said Alexander. “You three did walk into a Viet Cong ambush, did you not?”
Elkins looked puzzled and troubled. “Yes, but…I don’t understand what you’re saying. What are you suggesting? She was assaulted by them, Major. You should have seen the state of her.”
“Elkins,” Alexander said, “the girl sells herself to soldiers for money. I can imagine the state of her. What do you think she’s not used to? What do you think she won’t do? Get beat up a little? Look, I knew this when I came here—we need to find this Moon Lai, and we need to find her in a hurry.”
“Oh, good luck finding her. That’ll be easy,” said Richter with a nod. “So easy. Why, I’m sure Pleiku has no more than one brothel full of young Vietnamese women. It won’t be a problem.”
“Yes,” said Alexander. “But how many one-eyed, eight-fingered pregnant hookers does Pleiku have?”
“What are we going to do, go to each and every happy house until we find her?”
“If that’s what it takes.”
Richter laughed. Slapping Alexander on the back, he poured him another beer. “Absolutely, Major Barrington. Why don’t I just telegraph your wife and tell her that her husband traveled halfway round the world so he can go to whorehouses for the next three months. I’ll tell Tania it’s for a good cause. I’m sure she’ll understand.”
Richter and Elkins laughed. Mercer did not allow himself such liberties. Certainly Alexander didn’t laugh. “First of all, we don’t have three months,” he said, downing his beer. “We don’t have five minutes. And second,” he added with a straight face, “my wife is very understanding about whorehouses when it’s for a good cause. We’ll drive there tonight. How far is it? Fifty kilometers?”
“Tonight?” said Richter.
“At night the bars will be full.” Alexander stared pointedly at Richter. “What, you don’t know it’s the best time?”
“Alexander, forget it, stay here,” said Richter, glancing away. “I know how Tania feels about me with regard to my own wife. For this, she’ll never forgive me.”
“Enough talking, let’s go.” She forgives worse than this.
“She’s going to think I ruined you. Forget it. I’ll take on a division of Viet Cong before this happens under my watch. Stay here. Elkins and I will go. I’ll bring one of our Yards, Ha Si, to translate.”
“By all means bring him. I want to meet him. Which jeep are we taking?”
Richter rubbed his face. “I think we should talk about this…”
“Oh, for f*ck’s sake! Do you always do this much talking? It’s a wonder anybody ever goes out on missions. Let’s go!”
Alexander didn’t leave Richter’s quarters, not even for some fresh air. He smoked inside, stayed inside, and for dinner they had beef pho—Vietnamese thin noodles with beef broth—which Alexander couldn’t get enough of. Richter asked Alexander if he wanted to rest, wash up, but Alexander wanted only for it to get dark so they could leave.
When it got dark, they drove to Pleiku. The road was unpaved but straight. It took them an hour.
As in any good capitalist city, the run-down bars—fronts for dingy brothels—were all located within a small stretch of dilapidated streets in a squat, low-to-the-ground wet downtown, running along a muddy narrow river, overflowing after the rain. The whorehouses like ducks, all in a row, made it easier for the consumer in a hurry to make his inebriated choices. They certainly made it easier for the four men to look for Moon Lai. Alexander wished he had a picture of her, but at least he had a photo of Anthony to show around. They split up. Elkins and Ha Si, a Montagnard warrior, took half the bars, Alexander and Richter took the rest. From Ha Si they learned how to say in Vietnamese, “Does a young girl with eight fingers work here?”
Heads down, they walked from place to place, standing in narrow doorways, behind red curtains, in small smoky rooms, drinking a little beer, talking to the madams, quickly looking over the girls who hovered on chairs, waiting for customers like Richter and Alexander. There were dozens of establishments all laid out on these darkened unpaved streets, just mud and dirt from the rain. Alexander tried to wipe his boots before he entered the bars, but it was no use, the mud was slowly hardening into cement on his heels. Lights twinkled, men laughed, there was a sound of a fight somewhere. Alexander and Richter went to seven places with no luck.
In the eighth one, the madam, an older Vietnamese woman, smacked her chest and exclaimed, “Ah, Moon Lai! Dien cai dau! Dien cai dau!”
Richter whispered, “Dinky Dau. She’s saying she’s crazy.”
“Tell her,” said Alexander, “that’s not as helpful as she thinks. She knows the girl?”
Apparently, yes, the madam knew the girl well.
“Where is she?”
They couldn’t get that out of her. Alexander took out a hundred dollars. The madam started talking rapid-fire Vietnamese, interspersed with English words, grasping for the money, “I no see her! She go! I no see her! She go! I told you. Dien cai dau!”
“Tell her she doesn’t get the hundred if all she’s got is ‘I no see her.’”
Alexander stayed behind while Richter ran to find Elkins and Ha Si. They needed Ha Si to talk to the madam.
While Richter was gone, the madam paraded her best-looking, youngest girls in front of a smoking and a politely inquisitive Alexander. “While you wait,” the madam kept saying in broken English. “No take long. Thirty piastres.” The girls—in various states of complete undress and what looked to Alexander various states of shocking underage—were trying to lure him with cheap prices for extremely advanced wares. “What the hell took you so long?” he said when the three men finally returned.
Ha Si talked to the madam. After he was finished, Alexander gave the nearly-fainting-with-gratitude woman a hundred American dollars. They went out into the clear air and stood by the short wooden railing over the brown river.
“She knows little,” said Ha Si, a tiny highlander, who stood still as a rock and had skin like ageless leather. He was their point man on missions, Elkins had told Alexander, because Ha Si was undetectable by the enemy until he was on top of them with his shiv in their throats. “She said Moon Lai worked for her for about two, three years.”
“Two, three years? How old is she?”
“No one asks. No one would tell you the truth anyway.”
Elkins said, “She could have been twelve. Or twenty-two.”
Alexander shook his head. “Probably not twelve, if she worked for three years?”
Ha Si said nothing, unblinking and unfazed. Alexander groaned.
She was a quiet girl, Ha Si said, always did as she was told, never complained, never refused work, but had only a few repeat customers. She lived in the farthest, smallest room upstairs. The madam said even when Moon Lai had two eyes and was pretty, “the men did not come back for her.” Except for one—and that was the soldier in the photograph, and he came back for her when she had just the one eye, and paid a lot of money for her so she could live in the room and not take other customers. He was very generous, madam said.
“She also said Moon Lai would sometimes disappear without notice for two or three weeks. Then she would reappear, ask for her old room back, and work without complaining. That is why madam said she crazy. She just comes and goes as she pleases. Last time madam saw her was in the early spring. Not since. Madam thinks maybe she die or become pregnant and could not work.”
Alexander was thoughtfully smoking. Richter and Elkins milled around him. Ha Si stood still. He had not been released. “Where’s Moon Lai from, Ha Si?”
“Madam was not sure.”
“Are you joking?” Alexander exclaimed.
“I never joke, sir.” Ha Si stood gravely little in front of Alexander.
“It’s the only piece of info we can’t leave Pleiku without. Go back immediately, take another hundred dollars, and don’t come back out until the madam is sure. Go.”
Ha Si slowly put up his hands. “Wait,” he said reluctantly, not taking the proffered money. “Madam said she heard the fingerless girl talking about a ville called Kum Kau. Moon Lai’s mother and sister lived in Kum Kau. Perhaps that is the place she went to every few months.”
“Never heard of this Kum Kau,” Richter said suspiciously. “Must be either very small or far away from here.”
Ha Si said nothing.
“This is so f*cked up,” Elkins said. “Could Ant have gone with her to her stupid village? As a new husband? A father-to-be? To meet the in-laws, perhaps?”
“Let’s say he did,” said Alexander. “Why didn’t he come back?”
“Maybe he tried,” said Richter. “Maybe we’ve been looking for him in the wrong place. This Kum Kau—where is it, Ha Si?”
Ha Si did not reply, and was no longer unblinking. They asked him again, but he still did not reply. Richter raised his voice on the river street.
Very quietly Ha Si said, “You do not want to know, Colonel Richter.”
“It’s the only f*cking thing we want to know!” Richter exclaimed. “It’s the only thing we came here to find out. Stop f*cking with us. That’s an order. Now where is it?”
“Fourteen klicks north of the DMZ,” Ha Si replied.
“It’s in North Vietnam?” Richter said in an aghast voice.
“It’s in North Vietnam!” said Alexander in a deathly voice, his voice inflecting, his heart falling.
Not speaking anymore to anyone, he barely finished his cigarette as he walked back to their jeep. With raised weapons, the men drove in silence for fifty kilometers through the dark countryside, back to base. It’s in North Vietnam! was all Alexander kept thinking.
At Kontum, in Richter’s quarters, Richter brought out the whiskey—beer was not strong enough. Ha Si was not drinking; he was sitting quietly in a chair; he was actually quieter than the chair. Alexander thought he himself had learned stealth well, but he was a jittery epileptic compared to Ha Si. Even now, the small man was imperturbable. Well, why shouldn’t he be imperturbable? It wasn’t his son who was missing in North f*cking Vietnam.
“Do you see what I was getting at before, Elkins?” Alexander said finally. “You were ambushed.”
“With all due respect, Major,” said Elkins, “and pardon me for saying so, of course it was an ambush—that’s clear to a duck—but what does an ambush a year and a half ago have to do with where Ant is now? Or with Moon Lai?”
Richter and Alexander exchanged a long whiskey-sodden look. Richter shook his head, pouring Alexander another glass from the carafe. They clinked and drank. “Don’t worry, Major,” Richter said. “Tomorrow I’ll call Pinter, the commander of CC North. I’ll ask him to send a recon team to the DMZ, up to where the fortress of Khe Sanh used to be. I’ll ask him to send another RT to the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos. It comes down from North Vietnam and enters Laos about 30 klicks north of the DMZ. Let’s see if they can scope out something there. I’ll ask Pinter if he’s ever heard of this Kum Kau.”
Alexander’s mouth twisted. He put his drink down. He put his cigarettes down, got up from the table and stood at attention, clicking his heels, looking grimly at Richter. “Colonel Richter,” he said, very quietly, “can I talk to you alone for a minute?”
With great and visible reluctance, Richter motioned Ha Si and Elkins out and turned to Alexander, who was still standing stiff inside the barracks. “Look, I know what you’re going to say—”
“You don’t know what I’m going to say.”
“Oh, I do, I do.” Richter slumped in his chair.
“Tom, what the hell are you talking about, Pinter, his RT teams? I mean, whose benefit was that for?” Alexander started to pace in front of the long table.
“Only yours. Alexander, Pinter’s men know that area by heart. You know my guys stay in the triangle.” Richter poured himself another drink. “Want one?”
“Tom.”
“Alexander!” The drink was slammed into the table. “There is something about this, I can see you just don’t understand.”
“Tom!” said Alexander. The fist was slammed into the table. “There is something about this you just don’t understand.”
Richter jumped up. “Listen to me! You do know that we are under direct orders not to go into North Vietnam? You do know that, right? Direct orders!”
“Oh, come on. I know how the SOG works. You tell your men where to go, they go where you send them. End of story. You’re telling me Elkins won’t go? Mercer won’t go?”
“Alexander!” Richter’s voice was lowered to a furious whisper. “You’ve lost your mind! It’s not my area of operations! I’m here. My AO is in central South Nam, in Laos, in Cambodia. Here.”
“Yes, and we’re not supposed to be in Laos or Cambodia either, here, there, anywhere. You’re not supposed to be sending your little excursion teams to the Trail. You’re not supposed to be running SLAM missions into the Cambodian jungle to intercept their supply runners. Yet you are.”
The two of them stood tensely across from each other. Two pairs of fists were clenched against the table.
“Fourteen miles north of the DMZ!” Richter said. “Not five miles from Pleiku, not ten miles from Kontum but three hundred miles from here in North Vietnam, where Abrams himself on express orders from Johnson said we could not set one toe so we wouldn’t upset the Soviets and trigger an international incident that no one will be able to walk away from!”
“Give me a f*cking break.”
“Well, let me ask you, since you seem to have all the answers,” said Richter, “what the f*ck do you know about Kum Kau? Say we defy the commander of MACV and the President of the United States—your commander-in-chief, too, by the way—and we send our guys there, and we find out it’s a nice little village where Vietnamese women in coolie hats stroll around with rice buckets on their shoulders and have babies. Say we find your son in that village, eating pho, helping in the paddies. Then what? Are we going to bring him back for a nice court-martial? Because it’s been five months, and if he’s picking his navel in a ville, he ain’t coming back. You want us to bring back your son to be tried for desertion during time of war?”
“The answer to that is yes,” Alexander growled through his teeth, “since you and I both know he is not sitting in North Vietnam picking his f*cking navel.”
“Fine,” said Richter, also through his teeth. “Second question. So you think he met with foul play—”
“As you do, otherwise you wouldn’t be all twisted up like this.”
“Do you think he’d be sitting unsecured in some little civilian village?”
“We find Moon Lai, we’ll know,” said Alexander. “We find her, we’ll know everything.”
“Okay, we find her and then we’re in enemy territory, and she kindly informs us that he is eight hundred miles up in the Hanoi Hilton or is part of the Cuban Program, at one of the POW camps deep near China, run in stealth by the Cubans from sugar cane country who come to North Nam pretending to be diplomats and then set up and run the NVA camps, brutalizing American men. Then what? You’re going to walk eight hundred miles to Hanoi?”
“If that’s what it takes,” said Alexander.
“Holy Mother of God!” Richter was panting. “Okay, and that brings me to my fourth f*cking question. We’re in enemy territory, we get in an asskick situation, we need help. Where are we going to get help from? We usually have eight choppers on stand-by for support for this kind of mission. But for this? Anyone finds out we’re in North Vietnam, and the shitstorm is going to be a lot worse than one missing boy.”
“I don’t f*cking think so,” said Alexander. “And you know what? Save it for another idiot, Richter, because you’re forgetting who you’re talking to. SOG has its own planes, its own helicopters, its own medevacs, its own hospitals, its own weapons. Clandestine, top secret, and this is precisely what they do. You’re running Macvee’s covert operations! This is SOG’s whole point, otherwise they’d be fighting in open battalions with artillery support. They’d be the Marines. Do not, do you hear me?—do not try to sell this bullshit to me of all people!”
“I’m sorry I ever gave you a f*cking G-2 MI job!” yelled Richter.
“Well, it’s too late for sorrys. Now we have to go and get Ant.”
“Oh my God,” Richter gasped, “is that why you came here?”
“Why the f*ck did you think?”
“I don’t go into North Vietnam!” yelled Richter.
“You’re going there tomorrow.”
“Like f*ck I am.”
“The NVA have been breaking the rules and destabilizing supposedly neutral countries since 1954 to ferry Soviet-made weapons to South Nam so they can kill you,” said Alexander. “Destabilizing Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Papua New Guinea. Now you’re worried about breaking a little rule? They’ve been arming the 17th parallel and the DMZ for fifteen years with their pretend civilian villages. You know that better than I do.”
“That’s right, but this isn’t the DMZ, this is actual North Nam, and you do realize we have no information on Ant! We know absolutely f*cking nothing! Why are you against sending a recon force there first? Pinter will send a seven-man team from CCN in Da Nang; at least then we might find out what we need. What if he’s not there? What if we need a hundred men to extract him? What if we need just one, to carry his body? You did think of that possibility, did you not? God forbid, that he may be dead?”
“Alive or in a bag,” Alexander said with a clamped everything, “we are bringing him back from North Vietnam.”
“What if there is no Kum Kau, but I’ve sent twenty troops into enemy territory and they all get greased and I can’t explain what the f*ck they were doing there?”
“So you think if you send Pinter’s men and they get greased, that’ll make you feel better? You won’t have Ant, but twenty of Pinter’s guys will be dead. That’ll be better?”
The two of them stood panting, facing off, two men, fifty years old, soldiers, fighters. The two of them at their wits’ end, two men who could not believe it had come to this. But come to this it had, and now it had to be dealt with.
“You are thinking only of your son, Alexander,” said Richter. “But I have to think of my whole command. There are a thousand guys I’m responsible for.”
“Tom,” said Alexander, “you know what the NVA and the f*cking Cubans do to American soldiers.”
“Kum Kau is near the DMZ. The Cubans are in Hanoi and near China. We’re not going anywhere near China, are we?”
“North Vietnam has directly violated every sentence of the Geneva Convention, which, by the way, they signed. Our guys are turning up on the Trail dead, drowned, burned, mutilated beyond recognition because they can’t be released alive to tell the world how the NVA treat their prisoners of war and you want to leave Ant there?”
“They can release them or not release them,” said Richter. “Like the world gives a f*ck how the NVA treats its prisoners of war. The world only cares what the Americans did at My Lai.”
“Yes,” said Alexander, “because they are judged mercifully for having no standards whatsoever, while we are judged harshly for failing to live up to our high ones. It’s like Carthage being regarded more highly than Rome. I know. More is expected from Rome. But the point is,” he went on, “you can posture all you like, with Elkins outside your door, but you know perfectly well that one way or another I’m going to Kum Kau to find out what happened to my son. I didn’t come to Vietnam to go to cathouses with you. We’re talking about Anthony. Anthony!” Alexander nearly broke down.
“I know who we are talking about!” Richter fought for his own composure. “I’ve taken care of him and protected him as best I could since he got here. He’s had the run of everything. I barely asked him any questions, as long as the mission was accomplished, he could do whatever the f*ck he liked. I did this for him because that’s what he wanted.”
“Good,” said Alexander. “And this is what I want, just so we’re straight. Either you help me like you’re supposed to and meant to, or you stand there and give me five hundred more reasons why you can’t, but Anthony is not going to remain in North Vietnam.” Alexander’s fists remained down at the table. “Not my son, and not one more day.” He took a deep breath, not moving an inch, his shoulders up, the hair on his body standing on end.
Snarling in his naked aggravation, Richter stood down and backed away. Alexander did not stand down. He knew what Richter was going through. He just didn’t want to hear it. And after five minutes and another glass of whiskey, Richter bowed his head. “What I don’t understand is why your whole f*cking life has to be a redux of Tatiana’s commando mission in Berlin,” he said, much quieter. “Why can’t your life be about something else?”
“My life is about something else.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Richter. “I don’t think so at all.” After two cigarettes, Richter was finally calm enough to call Ha Si and Elkins back into his quarters. A groggy Elkins ran to wake up Mercer. It was well after one in the morning. The four men stood at attention. Richter, in his agitation, forgot to release them.
Circling around the Montagnard he said, his eyes boring into him, “Ha Si, you know this terrain like the back of your hand, I know that, but…let me ask you something, and I want you to think very carefully before you answer. That ville, Kum Kau, is far from here, far from your area of expertise. After all, you come from Bong Son, and that’s nowhere near there. Wait, don’t interrupt. Perhaps, just perhaps, do you think Kum Kau could be west of North Vietnam? Could it be a klick or two inside the Laotian border, in that mountainous Khammouan country? Maybe you made a tiny mistake. Hmm? Think before you answer.”
Ha Si thought before he answered. “I think,” he said slowly and quietly, “you may be right, Colonel. It could be just inside Laos. That border is very tricky through the mountains, and I don’t know the parts as well as these. I spoke too quickly. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to amend. It is in Laos.”
“Good,” said Richter. “Because you know, Ha Si, we can do many things, but we cannot under any circumstances go into North Vietnam. If Kum Kau is there, we can’t at the outset define that as our mission parameters and go there to find this Moon Lai, and perhaps find out where our Captain Barrington is.”
“Yes, sir. I understand, sir.” Ha Si glanced at Alexander. “It’s definitely in Laos.”
Richter nodded. Finally, he put the men at ease. The five of them sat huddled together in his quarters, smoking, thinking, plotting.
“What I’d like to do—my preference,” said Richter, “is to send a small recon unit there first.” Alexander opened his mouth, but Richter cut him off. “But I know this better than anyone at this table”—he glared at Alexander—“if our men are detected, we’re goners. If there is an actual Extraction and Escape and Evasion situation in Kum Kau, we can only go in once. They don’t expect us; the element of surprise will be our greatest weapon. On the other hand, if we get into a position we can’t defend, we’re f*cked. We simply can’t bring enough men to both escape detection and engage a superior enemy force. So this is what we’re going to do: we’re assembling an A-team and going on a top-secret, location classified and undisclosed, long-range recon mission to Laos. Do you hear me? Laos. We’re not calling it SLAM. Is that clear? We’re calling it recon. A little intel gathering. Maybe some supply disruption.”
“Understood, sir.”
“We go in unmarked. You know what that means. If you fall in North Nam, no one will find you. You will remain unidentified. I suggest you make all appropriate phone calls and write all appropriate letters before we move out. Personally, unlike Major Barrington, our intelligence advisor straight from Fort Huachuca in Arizona, I think Kum Kau is just a regular village.”
“Well, unlike you, gentlemen,” said Alexander, “I haven’t been on the ground since 1946, and I’m sure things have changed since then. And Colonel Richter may be right, having so much experience in this area. But let’s just approach it as if it’s a booby-trapped, mined, heavily-armed enemy camp. All the means with which we hope to achieve our objective, we have to bring with us. While I’m certain that all Vietnamese villagers are nothing more than innocent civilians, let’s just in f*cking case bring enough ammo to raze Hanoi, not torch a mud hut.”
Richter glared sideways at Alexander. Everybody else glanced sideways at Richter.
“I’ll charter a hook to take us into Laos,” Richter said. “I’ll get us a medevac crew. That way it inserts us, flies back down south to refuel and waits for our call. There’s an SOG supply base just south of DMZ, I’ll get our support gunships to wait there, plus two extra Hueys if we need them, and a medic slick. But remember, even our classified mission is parametered to Laos. Six f*cking snakes cannot fly to North Vietnam—because that would no longer be called combat support, it would be called a f*cking invasion.” Snakes were Cobra helicopter gunships. “Everybody all clear on that?”
Everybody was all clear. Mercer was mulling. “Excuse me, Colonel. You keep saying, we. Are you…thinking of going, too?”
Alexander looked down at his hands so as not to see Richter sit defeated in front of his men.
“Damn it all to hell,” Richter said. “I’m way too f*cking old for this. But I’m going in because it’s my ass if bad shit goes down in North Vietnam. There will be twelve of us. A six-man Yard team plus us. I’ll get Tojo to come, if he doesn’t have a heart attack first when he finds out I’m going. Elkins, Mercer, Ha Si, I’m assuming you’re all volunteering to go?”
The three men nodded and then turned to stare at Alexander.
“What the f*ck are you all looking at?” he said. “Without me, you’d still be getting laid in Pleiku, eating cheese sandwiches, and lobbing grenades at the fish in the river. Of course I’m going.”
The men were quiet.
“Maybe you should stay back, Major,” Elkins said. “You did just say you haven’t seen active combat since 1946.”
“Active combat with a Donut Dolly doesn’t count,” Richter added bitingly.
Alexander said nothing. Richter obviously felt the need to have the last word.
“Does the colonel need to upgrade your security clearance?” Elkins pressed on. “Because that can take a month.”
“My security clearance has long ago been upgraded by the Military Intelligence commander in Fort Huachuca, thank you for your interest, Lieutenant,” said Alexander. The conversation was over. “Tom, can you walk me to my hut? I need sleep.” The other men stood, saluted them, and they left. Alexander turned to Richter. “Are you going to be able to get your shit together by tomorrow?” he asked as they walked to his hut.
Richter didn’t think so. “And we call it hooch, Alexander.”
“Hooch, hut, who the f*ck cares. We’ve waited long enough, Tom. We have to go.”
“We’ll need a couple of days,” Richter said. “I have to commission a Chinook, we have to get our supplies, our weapons. You know better than anyone, we have to be ready. We get only one chance at this.”
Alexander agreed they needed to be ready. He knew they got only one chance at this.
When they stood outside Alexander’s barracks, Richter lit a smoke and said, “Alexander, you do know how small our chance of success is?”
“So you’re confident then?” In a more relaxed mood, Alexander patted Richter’s arm. “Tom,” he said. “You understand you’re talking to the wrong man about odds.”
“Don’t I f*cking know it.”
“What were the odds of a five-foot-nothing woman who never shot a weapon in her life getting into Soviet-controlled territory not knowing where I was, or even if I was there, or alive, and then finding me—there and alive?”
“Better than ours,” said Richter.
Alexander shook his head. “One unarmed woman in a Gulag camp with machine-gun sentries every five inches,” said Alexander, nearly reverentially. “Not twelve guys, carrying more ammo than their combined body weight. And yes, the NVA are bad motherf*ckers, but the Soviets weren’t ladies having finger sandwiches at the Kentucky Derby. They brought their artillery, too. And yet she found me and got me out. So sleep well.” But he couldn’t help thinking of what Tania had once said to him. We can rail all we want. But sometimes what we do is just not enough. He knew something about that. He tried to push the thoughts from his mind.
Richter sighed, blew smoke from his cigarette, attempted a smile. “I’m surprised you and Tania have never used your abilities to beat the odds to your benefit.”
It was the first time since July 20, 1969 that Alexander laughed out loud. “Tom,” he said, lowering his voice and briefly putting his friendly arm around Richter. “Who says we haven’t?” A wide smile was on Alexander’s face. “It’s Las Vegas twice a year for us, baby,” he said happily. “The kids think we’re getting R&R in Sedona. As soon as we get there, we gamble for twenty straight hours. My wife is a roulette and blackjack queen.”
Richter’s mouth nearly fell open. “We’re talking about Tania?” he said. “Tania, your wife, at the blackjack table?”
Alexander nodded. “And Tom—she needs to be seen to be believed. We’ve been getting a complimentary penthouse suite at the Flamingo for seven years. The hotel gives her free chips, free food, shopping vouchers, it makes no difference—she simply does not lose. If she is cold, she doesn’t play. We went just a month ago to cheer ourselves up a bit, but she was cold, so we stopped playing. She kept getting dealt the queen of spades and busting. But that was an anomaly.” He broke off, then lowered his voice. “The dealers don’t see her coming. She sits at their tables, sips a little wine, dresses in pink, lets her hair down, jokes with them, and all their defenses are gone. They stand no chance. She is unbelievable.” He recalled her fondly. “Me, I’m a different story. I play poker. I win, I lose. She comes and stands behind me and cools the rest of the table, while I heat up. We do all right. But she loves to do it.”
Richter listened with wide eyes, and then laughed. “Unbef*cking-lievable. You come here and in ten hours my world is turned upside down. I, a lieutenant-colonel, am taking orders from a f*cking major, Anthony is having Vietnamese babies with whores, we’re single-handedly and without authorization invading North Vietnam, and Tania loves Vegas. Is there anything else you want to shock me with?”
Instantly brought right back to earth, Alexander stopped smiling. “No,” he said, giving him a careful pat. “Nothing that comes to mind.”
Richter also grew serious. “Alexander, do me a favor. When we go in, don’t talk to me like we’ve been friends for twenty years.”
Alexander saluted him. Richter saluted him back.
“Good night, Colonel Richter,” said Alexander.
“Good night, Major Barrington.”