All in all, it was a spectacular road, though now and then the surface deteriorated without warning, and I had to slow down.
The general direction of the road was northwest and uphill. As we got farther west, the few signs of habitation disappeared, except for the smoke from hill tribe settlements, rising out of the forest and into the misty air, the smoke sometimes indistinguishable from the mountain fog.
I drove for two hours, and neither Susan nor I spoke a word. Finally, she said, “Are you going to speak to me?”
I didn’t reply.
“I need to make a pit stop.”
Up ahead, I could see a flat area off to the side where pine trees had been cleared. There was a small culvert in the stream, and I drove over it and stopped among the pine stumps. I shut off the engine.
I sat there for a minute, then dismounted. Susan, too, dismounted, but did not use the facilities. She stretched, lit a cigarette, and put her foot up on a tree stump. She turned to me and said, “Say something, Paul.”
“I have nothing to say.”
“Tell me I did a good job.”
“You did a good job.”
“Thank you.” She said, “I couldn’t let them stop us.”
“So you said.”
“Well . . . if you hadn’t taken a wrong turn, none of that would have happened.”
“Sorry. Shit happens.”
She watched the smoke curl from her cigarette. After a while, she said, “The part that’s true is that I’m madly in love with you.”
“Is that the good news or the bad news?”
She ignored that and said, “And that’s the part they don’t like . . . if they believe it.”
I said, “I think that’s the part I wouldn’t like either, if I believed it.”
“Please don’t say that.”
“Do you need to go behind a bush?”
“No. We need to talk.”
“No, we don’t.”
“We do.” She glanced at me and said, “Okay, I do work for the CIA, but I’m also a real civilian employee of American-Asian, so neither of us has any direct government involvement, and they could let us hang if they wanted to. And, no, they really didn’t want you to dump me, they wanted you to trust me, so they told you to dump me. And, yes, I’m supposed to keep an eye on you . . .” She smiled and said, “I’m your guardian angel.” She continued, “And yes, I was involved with Bill, and yes, he really is the CIA station chief, and they’ll go ballistic if they find out I told you, and no, they didn’t tell me to sleep with you—that was my idea. Made the job easier, but yes, I did fall in love with you . . . and yes, they really are suspicious of me now because they know or suspect that we’re sexually and romantically involved, and I don’t care.”
She looked at me, then continued, “And no, I don’t know what Tran Van Vinh knows or saw, but yes, I know all about this mission, except for the name of the village, which they didn’t want me carrying around in my head, and at 4 P.M. on Sunday, after you met Mr. Anh, I met with him, and he briefed me about everything I didn’t know except the name of the village, which he could give only to you.” She added, “He says he likes you and trusts you to do the job.” She looked at me and asked, “Did I miss anything?”
“The Pham family.”
She nodded. “Right. That was an arranged meeting in front of the cathedral. This motorcycle was already bought, and you passed your motorcycle driving test on the way to Cu Chi.” She added, “I met Pham Quan Uyen last time I was in Hue. He can be trusted.”
“That’s more than I can say about you.”
She looked upset. “Okay . . . don’t trust me. But ask me anything you’d like, and I swear I’ll tell you the truth.”
“You swore you were telling me the whole truth back in Saigon, Nha Trang, and Hue. You also swore you didn’t have the gun.”
“I needed the gun. We needed the gun in case something like what happened, happened.”
I said to her, “And you need the gun to blow Tran Van Vinh’s brains out. Correct?”
She didn’t reply.
I asked her, “Why does he need to be killed?”
She replied, “I swear I don’t know. We’re about to find out, though.” She added, “I believe he’s alive.”
“So, you’ve agreed to kill a man without knowing why.”
“You killed people without knowing why.”
“They were trying to kill me.”
She looked at me and said, “How many of them were actually trying to kill you?”
“All of them. Don’t try to turn this back on me, Susan. I may have been a combat soldier, but I was never an assassin.”
“Never?”
I wanted to tell her to go to hell, but then she’d bring up the A Shau Valley, and whatever else I’d been stupid enough to tell her, and I really didn’t want to go there.
She said, “Look, Paul . . . I know you’re angry, and you have every right to be angry. But this isn’t as cold-blooded and devious as it seems—”
“Fooled me.”
“Let me finish. They told me they picked you because you were good, but also because your boss thinks a lot of you personally. He wanted to resurrect your career, or at least have it end well—”
“Like me being killed? How good is that?”
She continued, “He also thought that if you came back here, it would be good for you, and good for . . . your relationship with . . . your girlfriend. So, don’t be so cynical. People care about you.”
“Please. If I’d had lunch, I’d blow it now.”
She moved closer to me and said, “I’d like to think there’s a human element in what we do . . . I mean, as Americans. We’re not bad people, though we sometimes do bad things. And I think we do them with the hope that we’re doing the bad things for a good reason. In another country, they’d just have sent two assassins to kill this guy, and end of story. But we don’t work that way. We want to be certain that if something has to be done with this man, that’s he’s the guy we’re actually looking for, and that what he knows, if anything, cannot be dealt with in any other way.” She looked at me and said, “I’m not going to walk up to a guy named Tran Van Vinh and blow his brains out.” She added, “We may take him with us to Hanoi.”
“Are you finished?”
“Yes.”
“Can we go now?”
“Not until you tell me that you really believe that I love you. I don’t care about anything else. If you want, we can turn around right here and drive to Hanoi. Tell me what you want to do, or what you want me to do.”
I thought about that and said, “Well, what I really want to do is to push on, find this guy, and find out what the fuck this is all about.” I looked at her and said, “And what I want you to do is to go back to Saigon or to Hanoi or Washington or wherever the hell you came from.”
She stared at me a long time. Then she reached into her jacket and pulled out the Colt .45.
I looked at the gun—you always keep your eye on the weapon—and it looked bigger than a Colt .45 in her small hand.
She turned the butt toward me and handed me the gun. I took it. She pulled two extra magazines out of her pocket and put them in my other hand. She pulled her backpack out of a saddlebag and put it on.
I looked at her face and saw tears streaming from her eyes. She didn’t say anything, but took my head in both her hands, kissed me hard on the lips, turned and walked quickly across the road.
She stood there, not looking at me, but looking at the Hanoi-bound traffic. A four-wheel drive vehicle approached driven by a Viet with two male passengers, and Susan held up her hand. The vehicle slowed down and pulled onto the shoulder.
Well . . . I could let her go, then I’d regret it down the road and wind up chasing the four-wheel drive halfway to Hanoi. Or I could call out to her and tell her I changed my mind. Or I could let her go for real.
Susan was crouched down and speaking to the two Viets in the front seat. The rear door opened, and s
he got in without looking at me. The driver pulled back on the road.
I crossed the road and stood in front of the vehicle. The driver turned his head toward Susan, then he stopped. I went around to the rear door and opened it. I said to her, “Let’s go.”
She said something to the three Viet guys, who all smiled.
She got out, and I slammed the door. The vehicle continued on.
Susan and I crossed the road, and she put her backpack in a saddlebag. We mounted the motorcycle. I turned to her, and our eyes met. She was crying again, but silently, which I don’t mind too much. I said to her, “If you’re lying about being in love with me, I swear to God, I’ll blow your brains out. Understand?”
She nodded.
I started the engine, kicked the bike into gear, and we got on the road.
We continued farther into the mountains toward Dien Bien Phu, where an army had met its fate, and where my fate had been waiting patiently.
CHAPTER FORTY
We continued northwest on Route 6. It was just before noon, and the fuel gauge showed less than half a tank. We weren’t going to make it all the way to Dien Bien Phu without refueling. If Susan wasn’t on the motorcycle, I might have been able to reach Dien Bien Phu on this tank of gas. Then again, if Susan wasn’t on the motorcycle, I might be in a military prison answering difficult questions.
But to take it a step further back, to the rooftop restaurant of the Rex Hotel, my life had taken a wrong turn sometime between my second lucky beer and dessert, and so had this mission. I had the perceptive glimpse into the obvious that everyone involved with this mission knew a lot more than I did, and a lot sooner than I did.
Mud slides, caused by overlogging, covered sections of the bad blacktop, but had the advantage of filling in the potholes. I was averaging only about sixty KPH, which was better than most four-wheeled vehicles were doing. In fact, I spotted two four-wheel vehicles at the bottoms of ravines.
Back to Ms. Weber, who was not riding with her arms around me any longer, but who was holding on to the C-strap. The tears had been real, and so had the tears in Apocalypse Now. This was a woman who was as conflicted as I was about life, Vietnam, and about us. But so what? I don’t like being manipulated or lied to any more than anyone else, and when my life is at stake, I like it even less. With a guardian angel like Susan Weber, I didn’t need to worry about meeting the Angel of Death, which led me to the thought that if Susan had been instructed to take care of Tran Van Vinh, then maybe she’d also been instructed to take care of Paul Brenner, if necessary. But I couldn’t come to terms with that, so I put it out of my mind. But not completely.
The road dropped into a highland plain, and I could see Montagnard longhouses in the hills. A wind swept over the open area from the northeast, so I had to keep compensating by leaning into the crosswind. Plus, it was starting to rain, and I slowed down to see what was in front of me.
Another thought on the subject of this very strange mission was, Why me? Surely there were more gung ho individuals in the CID who couldn’t wait to risk their lives and go to Vietnam, and who knew how to follow orders.
But maybe Karl had calculated correctly that Paul Brenner was the guy they needed. My most obvious asset was my status as a non-government employee, thereby giving everyone lots of plausible deniability if things went bad. Susan, too, I was certain, appeared on no government payroll, and she had all the Vietnam stuff necessary to the mission: knowledge of the land, the language, and the culture; Viet knowledge that American intelligence had forgotten over the last quarter century. Plus, she was a female, which was less suspicious to the Viets, who didn’t think much of women.
It all looked good on paper, I guess, but there’s always the problem of agents of the opposite sex getting the hots for each other. It happened to me and Cynthia. Karl, however, had convinced his colleagues that Paul Brenner was in love with Cynthia Sunhill, and Paul was a monogamous guy, who had a good, if not perfect, record of keeping his dick in his pants on the job. Plus, Susan Weber was very involved with Bill Stanley, CIA station chief, Saigon office.
Last thought was that Karl really did care about me and wanted this for me, for career purposes and personal reasons, partly having to do with my strained relationship with Cynthia. And as for Cynthia, I had no idea what she knew, or what she’d been told, but I’d bet half my retirement pay they hadn’t mentioned Ms. Weber to Ms. Sunhill.
We passed through a small agricultural town that was actually signposted and whose name was Yen Chau. There was a big produce market on both sides of the road, and the people seemed to be mostly Montagnards in traditional garb. A lot of vehicles were parked under the roofs of the produce stalls, their drivers talking and watching the rain as they smoked. A dark green military jeep sat on the side of the road facing me, but the canvas top was up, and the two men inside were smoking, not looking at anyone.
I pushed on.
The road made a few thrilling twists and turns, and I had to keep the speed down so we wouldn’t skid out. The ravines were so deep, I’d still be falling past my visa expiration date.
We passed through a small Montagnard village where a steel and wood bridge crossed a rain-swollen gorge.
About an hour later, the rain eased off, and I could see signs of civilization ahead. Susan said to me, “Son La, right ahead. Provincial capital.”
We entered the small town of Son La, which looked like a Wild West town strung along Main Street. There were a few guest houses and cafés on either side of Route 6, which was very narrow here. A faded wooden sign in French pointed to a side road and read Pénitentiaire. The French really knew how to pick some lousy prison locations. I mean, this place made Devil’s Island look like Tahiti.
Many of the inhabitants of Son La appeared to be Montagnards in modern dress, and many of them wore berets. There was an old French concrete kilometer marker on the side of the road which said Dien Bien Phu, 150 KM. I looked at my gas gauge and estimated that I had about another one hundred kilometers of fuel, maybe less.
Susan asked me, “Want to stop for gas?”
“No.”
We pushed on through the outskirts of Son La. The Department of Public Works ran out of dong, and the road became a thin mixture of mud and bitumen. I was skidding and spinning a lot, and the road was all upgrade.
We were going into the high hills again, and the road became steeper and narrower. In front of me was a wall of fog which I entered. It was surreal riding through the mountain fog, and if I let my imagination run away, it was like flying the motorcycle through turbulent air.
Susan said, “This is Pha Din Pass. I need to stop.”
I stopped on the road, and we dismounted. I wheeled the motorcycle to the edge of a shallow creek and kicked down the stand.
Susan and I used the facilities. We were splattered with mud, and we washed up in some frigid water running down the side of the rocks, then drank some of the water.
Susan offered me the cellophane bag of dried fruit, and I shook my head. She ate some of the fruit, then lit a cigarette.
She said to me, “If you’re not going to speak to me, or if you hate me, you should have let me go.”
True enough, but I didn’t reply.
She said, “I gave you the pistol. What more can I do to make you trust me?”
“You have any other guns on you?”
“No.”
I wanted to ask her if she was supposed to whack me if I became a problem, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask, and for sure I wasn’t going to get a straight answer.
She said, “Do you want to talk?”
“We did that.”
“Okay.” She threw her cigarette in the stream, then pushed the cellophane bag at me. She said, “I’m not going any farther until you eat something.”
I don’t like fruit, even dried fruit, but I was getting a little light-headed, maybe because of the altitude. I took the bag and ate some of the fruit. I said, “Let me see the map.”
She handed
me the map, and I studied it.
She asked, “How are we doing for gas?”
I replied, “It’s mostly downhill from here.”
She came up beside me and looked at the map. She said, “There should be gas available in Tuan Giao, where Route 6 turns north and this other road heads south to Dien Bien Phu.”
“I figured that out. Ready to go?”
“I need another cigarette.” She lit up again.
I waited.
She said, “If you don’t love me or trust me, I’m going to jump off this cliff.”
I replied, “There is no cliff, and I’m not in the mood for your bewitching charms.”
“Do you hate me?”
“No, but I’m fed up with you.”
“Will you get over it?”
“Let’s go.” I got on the motorcycle.
“Do you love me?”
“Probably.” I started the bike.
“Do you trust me?”
“Not at all.”
She threw her cigarette down and said, “Okay. Let’s go.”
She mounted up, I pushed off, and kicked the motorcycle into gear.
We continued on over the pass, and the visibility in the fog was less than ten feet. At some point, we were on a straight downgrade, and I kicked the bike into neutral to save fuel. Even without being in gear, we were moving too fast, and I had to keep tapping the rear brake.
I saw a pair of oncoming yellow lights, and within a few seconds, an army jeep appeared out of the fog. The only thing that anyone could see of our faces were our round eyes, but even that feature was covered with goggles. The driver, however, was staring at us, and I had the thought that the word was out on the apparent FULRO attack on the army jeep near the Laotian border. Things like that didn’t make the news, but I guessed that it happened more often than the Viets admitted, and the army guys were very alert and wary.
The jeep was slowing down, and the guy in the passenger seat had his AK-47 at the ready. I thought he was going to block the road, so I kept one hand on the brake, and the other ready to go for the pistol tucked in my belt.
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