Up Country

by Nelson DeMille

  Susan walked silently beside me, and I wondered if I should be telling her any of this. I also wondered if I should be telling me any of this. Back in the States, you could forget it, or sanitize it in your mind, or put it all down to false memory syndrome, the result of watching too many ’Nam flicks. But here . . . here is where it happened, and there was no way to spin it.

  We kept walking through the village, the kids following, but not begging or being annoying, like they were in Saigon. These were rural kids, who didn’t see many Lien Xo, and so maybe they were shy; but maybe they had an ancestral memory of big Americans who had walked through their fathers’ and grandfathers’ villages, and they kept their distance.

  I said to Susan, “Imagine being a villager—you don’t sleep at night, and you don’t smile during the day. You and everyone around you are on the brink of madness and despair, and you’re totally at the mercy of two armed enemies who say they want to win your hearts and minds, but who may one day rape you and slit your throat. And that was life in the villages of this tortured country. By the time it was all over, the peasants didn’t care who won. The devil himself with his legions from hell could have won, and that would be wonderful because the war had stopped.”

  Susan stayed quiet for a while, then said, “I would have joined the guerrillas and gone into the hills to fight. I’d rather die fighting.”

  I forced a smile and said, “You’re a fighter.” I added, “In fact, most of the young men and women chose one side or the other and did just that. But some stayed in the villages to plant and harvest, and to take care of aging parents and younger siblings and hope for the best. In any case, if you ever get to a rural village again, when you see people of that age, you’ll understand what they went through.”

  She nodded.

  As if on cue, an old man stood on the side of the path, and he bowed to us. Susan spoke to him, and he smiled at her Vietnamese. They talked for a few minutes, and Susan said to me, “The Citadel is just up this path. He says he’s a longtime resident of Quang Tri, and if you are a returning soldier, you must be surprised at what you see.”

  “I am. Tell him I was with the First Cavalry, and my brigade headquarters was in the old French fort.”

  She told him, and he replied at some length. She said to me, “In 1972, the Communists and the Army of the Republic . . . the ARVN . . . fought back and forth for the city, and it changed hands many times, and lay in ruins, then the ARVN withdrew toward Hue, and the American bombers came and destroyed all that was left of the city, and killed many Communist soldiers who were in the Citadel and the French fort, and the American base camp outside the city. There is nothing left.”

  I nodded.

  He said something else, and Susan said to me, “He says other Americans from the cavalry have returned, and they are always sad and surprised that nothing is left of their presence here. He also met a Frenchman once who came to see the fort where he was stationed, and the Frenchman was convinced he was in the wrong place and spent all day looking for his fort, and the . . . watchtowers, I think he means.”

  The old man thought that was funny, laughed, and said something else, which Susan translated as, “The Frenchman expected to find the café where he once drank, and maybe his former . . . ladies.”

  “Hey, that’s why I’m here. Tell him.”

  Susan told him, and he laughed harder. Why he got a kick out of this, I don’t know, but maybe he’d done all the crying he had in him, and there was nothing left to do except laugh at the death and destruction.

  We thanked the old man and moved on.

  At the end of the path, we came to a huge open space, about a half a kilometer on each side, surrounded by peasant huts and gardens in the distance. The space was covered with high grass and small trees, and at first it looked like a village commons. But all around the space was a weed-choked moat, which had once surrounded the walls of the Citadel. Here and there around the open areas, I could see pieces of wall, none of them over three feet high, and a bomb-blasted stone arch stood where a destroyed bridge once spanned the moat.

  I said to Susan, “This was the Citadel, sort of like the one in Hue, but obviously it’s in much worse shape. This was the center of the city, and it held government buildings, a hospital, bank, a few cafés, the barracks and headquarters of the South Vietnamese army, and the MACV compound— that’s the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam—American military advisors to the ARVN.” I told her, “Most of the MACV guys were killed when the Communists took the city during the Tet Offensive. Same in Hue. It’s a risky job when you have to depend on unreliable allies for your safety.”

  Susan looked around at the open space in the center of the sprawling village. “It looks like a park or a sports field, but it’s completely barren.”

  “I guess it’s been left as a monument to a destroyed city and to the people who died here, but I don’t even see a marker.”

  “Neither do I . . . but look, Paul, there’s a bridge across the moat.”

  I looked to where Susan was pointing and saw an intact, but shell-blasted concrete bridge that had once led to a gate in the vanished walls.

  We walked to the bridge and crossed the dry moat into what was once the Citadel. The kids who were following us didn’t cross, and one of them yelled something to us. Susan said to me, “He says it is government property, and we are not allowed to be here.” She added, “He also said, ‘Thanh Than.’ Ghosts.”

  I replied, “That’s what they tell the kids to keep them away from any unexploded ordnance.”

  “You’re probably right. Meanwhile, don’t step on an unexploded shell, or we’ll both be ghosts.”

  “Stay on the paths.”

  “There are no paths, Paul.”

  “Well, step lightly.”

  We walked into the center of the grassy field that had once been a city, and I said, “The parade ground was about here, and the military side of the Citadel was across the field, over there . . . I think.”

  “You remember this?”

  “Sort of. I was here only once, when I had to participate in some idiotic awards ceremony that the ARVN liked to schedule too often.”

  “You mean you got an award here?”

  “Yeah. And it wasn’t the Good Conduct Medal.”

  “What was it?”

  “Something called the Cross of Gallantry, after the French medal of the same name. It was the equivalent to our Bronze Star, I think.”

  “What did you get the medal for?”

  “I’m not real sure. The whole ceremony was in Vietnamese.”

  “Come on, Paul. You know why they gave you a medal.”

  “Yeah. For propaganda. They filmed the whole thing, and showed it before the feature film—in the six movie theaters that probably existed in the whole country. Our brave American allies, and so forth. The ARVN just took the list of GIs who got American medals for whatever and gave the equivalent Viet medal. I got the Bronze Star for the A Shau Valley without a ceremony, and the Viets gave me the Cross of Gallantry here, with a lot of pomp and ceremony.”

  She asked, “Did they give you a copy of the tape?”

  I smiled and replied, “It was a film, Susan. I don’t think they had videotape then, but if they did, they’d have sold me a copy, which they didn’t.”

  “Maybe we can find the original film in the archives in Saigon.”

  “I hope the fucking thing got blown up.”

  “You’re so sentimental.”

  “Right. Anyway, I stood about right here with maybe a hundred other Americans from the First Cav, and I got kissed on both cheeks by a colonel . . . it was June or July by this time, and the temperature was ninety degrees on this parade ground, but my reconstituted company, filled with cherries now—that means new guys from the States—were out patrolling somewhere, so this wasn’t that bad. I thought I could hit a few bars in town after the dog-and-pony show, but the U.S. Army was nice enough to collect us all in trucks and take us back to Landing Zo
ne Sharon, which, I guess, no longer exists.” I looked at Susan and asked her, “Am I a great date or what?”

  She smiled and put her arm through mine. She said, “This is really an incredible experience for me.”

  “Well . . . this is the last duty station for you. I’ve sort of taken you through my first tour—the Bong Son in November and December ’67, Quang Tri for the Tet Offensive in January and February, then Khe Sanh in April, and the A Shau in May, then back here to Quang Tri Province, where I stayed until I went to An Khe base camp in November, collected my stuff, flew to Da Nang, and on to San Francisco.”

  “That must have been a hell of a weekend in San Francisco.”

  I said, “I was ready to party hard with a few other guys I knew who I’d come home with . . . but we weren’t overly welcome in San Francisco . . .”

  She didn’t reply.

  “In truth, I wasn’t really in a partying mood anyway, and I stayed a few days in a hotel, getting my head on right . . . showering and flushing the toilet every half hour.” I smiled. “I slept in the soft bed, watched a lot of TV, finished two bottles of gin, and kept pinching myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming . . . then I flew home to Boston. But I wasn’t completely right yet.”

  “And there was no counseling available?”

  I almost laughed. “We’re talking 1968 here at the height of a huge war. You saw a shrink before you got inducted, and they always said you were mentally healthy enough to go off and kill people, but they never examined your head when you came back. And you know what? I don’t blame them.”

  “Counseling might have helped.”

  “Sigmund Freud in consultation with Jesus Christ wouldn’t have helped. Most of us found our own way back.”

  We walked across the moated acres that had once been Quang Tri City, and I stooped down and picked up a piece of jagged shrapnel that the metal scavengers had missed and looked at it. I said, “It could be from a bomb, a rocket, a mortar round, an artillery round, or a fragmentation grenade, and it could be ours or theirs. And it doesn’t make a difference when it hits you.” I gave it to Susan. “Souvenir of the lost city of Quang Tri.”

  She put it in her pocket.

  We continued walking under the gray sky, and I could see a few Viets across the moat looking at us, probably wondering if we were scouting this place as part of the DMZ tour. Two bucks to cross the surviving moat bridge and wander around the Citadel. The tour operators would throw scrap metal around each morning before the tour buses arrived, and everyone could take a piece home.

  I said to Susan, “Okay, here’s another piece of the puzzle. The letter to Tran Quan Lee that was found on his body in the A Shau Valley was written by his brother, Tran Van Vinh, who was wounded here during the battle for Quang Tri City during the Tet Offensive of 1968. Vinh lay wounded in one of the buildings that were here, and he saw something that had to do with two Americans. Do you know this?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. So, a day later, he writes this letter from the cellar of the Buddhist high school that we saw on the way in, and that letter made its way to his brother in the A Shau Valley.”

  “What did he see?”

  “What he saw was why I’m here. The question is, Did Tran Van Vinh survive this battle, or the battles of the next seven years, and if so, is he still alive today, and can I find him, and if I do, what can he tell me?” I left out the part about me killing Tran Van Vinh, and then maybe me being terminated.

  We continued walking, and Susan finally said to me, “And that’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “What he saw is important?”

  “Apparently, or I wouldn’t be here spending government money.”

  “What did he say in the letter?”

  “He said he saw an American army captain murder an American army lieutenant in cold blood, right here in a damaged building of the Citadel, as he, Tran Van Vinh, lay wounded on the floor above.”

  She thought a moment and said, “So . . . this is a murder investigation.”

  “Apparently.”

  She stayed quiet awhile, then said, “But . . .”

  “But.”

  She stopped walking and looked out over the empty field. “Right here?”

  “Somewhere. I couldn’t tell you where any of the buildings were, but it’s always good to return to the scene of the crime, even if it’s nearly three decades later, and the scene has been pulverized by bombs and artillery. Cops are as superstitious and mystical as combat soldiers, and there’s this feeling that the dead—the ghost—will speak to you, or at least inspire you to find their killer. I don’t actually believe that, but I don’t dismiss it either.” I smiled and asked, “Should we try a séance?”

  She smiled in return and said, “I can see how you could be inspired by being where the murder took place.” She looked at me. “But you think there’s more to this than a murder?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I have no idea.”

  I asked her, “Why did they tell you it had to do with Cam Ranh Bay?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What could that have to do with a murder during the war?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why is the intelligence community involved with an army Criminal Investigation Division murder case?”

  “I have no idea. Do you?”

  “I have too many ideas. Some of them fit some of the facts, but none of them fit all the facts. What I need is more facts. You got any?”

  “No . . . except . . . by the way Bill and Colonel Goodman were getting hyperventilated, it sounds like more than an old murder case.”

  I nodded. “You’re very bright. So take a guess.”

  She thought a moment, then said, “The murderer, this captain, or the witness, Tran Van Vinh, was then, or is now, a very important man.”

  “That’s a very astute answer.”

  She forced a smile and said, “I’m getting messages from the beyond.”

  We stood there awhile in this place that had witnessed at least two great battles, but was now deathly quiet. Beneath this earth were bones at rest, and perhaps bombs that I hoped remained at rest and had not been waiting for my return.

  Susan asked me, “Do you think this man Tran Van Vinh is alive?”

  I replied, “Here’s another irony, or coincidence . . . we were ordered to come down from the hills two days after the North Vietnamese captured the city, and we were ordered to set up a blocking force to interdict the North Vietnamese soldiers fleeing the city . . . and we did kill a number of them . . . so, in effect, I or my company may have killed my star witness.”

  “That would be ironic, not to mention eerie . . .”

  I nodded and said, “Yet, I feel that Tran Van Vinh is alive.”

  Susan asked, “And he lives in the village of Tam Ki?”

  “Well, no. That was sort of a cover name. My guy in Hue gave me the actual name of the village.”

  “What is the name of the village?”

  “I can’t tell you right now. Maybe later.”

  “Where is it?

  “Way up north.” I added, “Near Dien Bien Phu. You know where that is?”

  “Sort of. It’s a hike. And that’s where you’re going tomorrow?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Good. Dien Bien Phu is on my list of places to see. How are we getting there?”

  “Don’t know how I’m getting there. I thought I’d take a train up the coast as far north as I can get, then travel cross-country by four-wheel drive.”

  “Good idea. The trains start running again Friday. Does that present a problem?”

  “I guess it does. How would you get there?”

  “Well, if you buy me dinner tonight, I’ll tell you.”

  I looked at her and asked, “Do you really have an idea?”

  “I didn’t spend all day yesterday shopping.”

  “Tell me.”

  “No.” She said, “Yo
u have no need to know, until you need to know.”