‘She is a good person,’ said Condley lamely, uncertain of where the canny colonel was taking him. ‘A very beautiful woman.’
‘She told me about your evening after we all went to temple.’ Colonel Pham raised a hand, as if there were no need for apology or explanation. ‘It opened her eyes, Cong Ly. I wish to thank you for that. We are Buddhists, as you know. We are not controlled by such an exact formula as your own Ten Commandments. Instead, we must look inside ourselves to find what is good and what is not. If she had… been intimate… with you that night, I would not have liked it. But if she had truly struggled with it and determined that it was for the good, I cannot say that it would have been wrong.’
Condley watched the colonel quietly, stunned by his directness. Finally he shrugged nervously. ‘I appreciate your insight, Colonel. But as you know, nothing happened between us.’
‘I thank you for that. She is, as I have said, very naive. And at this moment more than a little bit confused by her freedom.’
Condley shrugged again, with a casualness that he did not feel, wishing to move on. ‘We are all confused, Colonel. It is a very confusing time.’
‘All kinds of freedom can be confusing, yes?’ Colonel Pham nodded, done with his little lecture. ‘I wanted to report to you that your trip to Quang Nam was most successful,’ he said, raising his teacup as if delivering a toast. ‘The People’s Committee was very impressed with the way you conducted your business. There will be more co-operation if you need it.’
Condley lifted his own teacup as if returning the toast. He knew immediately that the five-thousand-dollar rental fee had been properly distributed, with some of it no doubt going to Colonel Pham himself. ‘That is good news, Colonel. And I appreciate very much your precious advice.’
The colonel sipped his tea, leaning toward Condley and speaking softly. ‘I want also to tell you that I passed the name of this man Deville to people whom I trust in our government. They did a thorough check for us in Ha Noi. Very quietly but very thorough. We have nothing on the man. Nothing.’
‘You mean, your government knows nothing about what happened to him after he killed Mathew Larkin?’
‘Mathew Larkin?’ said Colonel Pham, his brow furrowing behind the thick glasses. ‘Who is Mathew Larkin?’
‘He was an Australian photographer who was on a secret assignment with your side. We believe Deville killed him. It was his remains that we found in Ninh Phuoc, wearing Deville’s dog tags.’
‘Not a soldier?’ said the colonel, seemingly amazed.
‘Not even an American.’
‘You are making my head spin,’ said the colonel, a smile masking his embarrassment. ‘I will ask if they know anything about this man Mathew Larkin in Ha Noi. But anyway, Cong Ly, we know nothing about this man Deville. Nothing at all.’
‘We know he was in the Que Son Mountains in June 1969, Colonel. And we know that his dog tags mysteriously appeared on the body of Mathew Larkin in 1971, in the same area. And that Mathew Larkin’s hand was cut off, in the same fashion that another victim of Deville’s was mutilated in Long Binh in 1967. So we do know something about Deville.’
‘You know something,’ corrected the colonel. ‘I am saying we do not.’ He hedged, finishing his tea and reaching for the teapot. ‘If he was in the mountains, maybe he went there by himself. Maybe he was hiding. Maybe he was helping a local militia without our knowledge. As you saw, the mountain people are very independent. But he was not working for us.’
‘Then how did he reach the Que Son Mountains from Sai Gon?’ The question was so obvious that it embarrassed Condley to ask it. ‘There was no free movement back there during the war, Colonel. He had to be escorted, probably at night, just as Mathew Larkin was escorted. This wasn’t exactly a resort area.’
‘Many strange and unexplainable things happened in the war, Cong Ly.’ The colonel sighed heavily, as if wearying of this conversation. But he was holding his ground, and Condley knew immediately that there would be no deviation from the story he had been given by his government. ‘Since you know all these other things, maybe you can find the answer to that question as well. We cannot be responsible for the movements of Americans in our country thirty years ago.’
‘But if we gain some information and need to find an answer, you are still willing to help?’
‘Why are you so obsessed with this?’ The colonel’s suddenly impatient question was a veiled accusation, no doubt the echo of conversations that had already taken place among his government contemporaries.
‘Because it’s my job,’ said Condley, working to contain his emotions as he held the colonel’s stare. He finished his own tea, setting the cup gingerly onto the table. ‘And because he killed two of my men.’
The colonel watched him silently, then waved a small hand in the air. ‘OK, Cong Ly. Yes, of course I will still help you. I promised you that, as long as you will be reasonable.’ He paused, thinking. ‘And what about the skull of Nguyen My Den?’
‘We identified him through his dental records,’ said Condley. ‘He was a deserter. Alphonse no-middle-name Smith. I hope you will be pleased to know that we have decided against publicising anything else about his… other conduct. Our official statement will only say that he left his military post and was never heard from again.’
Colonel Pham nodded, relieved by this news. ‘Then you are being reasonable. Ha Noi will be very glad to hear this. It will be most helpful in the relationship between our countries.’
‘But I still need your help with Deville.’
‘Because you have been careful with Nguyen My Den, it will be possible for me to continue to help you.’
Condley slowly poured himself more tea, deliberately avoiding the colonel’s eyes. ‘Our government has information about a Russian soldier who says he was in the Que Son Mountains during the war.’
‘A Russian soldier?’ Pham seemed genuinely confused. ‘Where is this Russian?’
‘He’s in Moscow. I want to talk to him. I want you to come with me.’
Colonel Pham eyed him closely for several seconds, sitting very still, his mind working. ‘Cong Ly, I like you very much, and so I am giving you some good advice. You must be more careful from now on. You are making many people in my government very nervous.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t understand your question.’
‘Why should they be nervous, Colonel?’
‘You are not the State Department,’ said the colonel immediately, as if regurgitating a recent conversation. ‘You are supposed to be finding the bones of soldiers lost on the battlefield during the war. It is not your job to be rewriting history or gaining some personal revenge, and it is not my job to help you do that. And I must tell you, Cong Ly, it causes people to wonder about your true motivations in coming back to this country. About whether you truly want to help improve relations between your country and Viet Nam. And even whether finding bones is your… true occupation.’
Condley thought about that for a moment. ‘That’s fair,’ he finally said, shrugging his agreement. ‘So let me put it this way, Colonel. I’m going to Moscow to meet with a former Russian soldier who says he was in the Que Son Mountains during the war. I am going, do you understand? The day after tomorrow. It has already been decided. And for the very reasons you just gave me, I believe it would be in the interest of your government to have you come along as a witness to this meeting. In fact, I will allow you to interpret for me, since I don’t speak Russian. And I am comfortable with you providing a complete report to your government about everything that is said in that meeting.’
‘What is this man’s name?’
Condley grinned mischievously. ‘No way, Colonel. I don’t want my man disappearing on me before I even get there.’
Colonel Pham laughed knowingly. ‘You are very smart, Cong Ly. And I know that you do love Viet Nam, so there is no malice in your heart. I will ask Ha Noi if I can accompany you.’
‘Thank you, Colonel. I have
nothing to hide. I am only looking for the truth.’
‘The truth about what, Cong Ly? The truth can be very evasive. Or sometimes it can be different to different people, depending on whose eyes are seeing it.’
‘Then let’s keep it simple,’ said Condley, swilling the final half inch of his tea in the little cup. ‘The truth about Deville. Not who he was, or why he did what he did. But what he did, and where he went after he did it.’
The colonel shrugged deliberately, growing restless in his chair. ‘As I said, we know nothing about that, and to be very honest, my government has no interest in it either. This man was never a prisoner of war. He was never listed as missing in action. And he never worked for our side. I will ask Ha Noi about going to Moscow because I value your friendship, but this is all beyond our normal jurisdiction.’
He checked his watch and rose from his chair, a deliberate gesture meant to end their conversation. ‘My daughter is waiting to see you, I think? Let me see what is taking her so long.’
Van spoke from outside the room. ‘I’m here, Father.’
‘All right,’ said Colonel Pham, formally shaking Condley’s hand. ‘Then I will say goodbye, Cong Ly.’
Condley turned to see Van enter the room as if on cue, just as the colonel left it. Her knowing grin as she neared him told him immediately that she had indeed been waiting for her father to be done. Standing to greet her, he could not stop his eyes from lingering on her flowing cascade of hair and the smooth skin of her neck and the way her white spandex T-shirt hugged so closely to the contours of her body. She caught the journey of his eyes and smiled deliciously, followed by an open laugh.
‘I think you like this shirt? Francois bought it for me in Paris.’
She was barely a foot away from him now, happily flirting, and despite the logic that worked against such thoughts it was all he could do to keep himself from pulling her into him. ‘Francois has excellent taste,’ he finally managed to say.
She shrugged dismissively. ‘Yes, but sometimes I think he is dressing me up as if I were a doll.’
She turned slowly and took the chair in which her father had just sat. Watching him sit down, she leaned back in the chair, smiling to him again and crossing her legs, the fabric of her black designer slacks tight along her thighs and hips.
‘Did you miss me, Cong Ly?’
‘Not even “hello”?’
‘OK,’ she laughed, her face lighting up. ‘Hello! Did you miss me?’
‘Actually I heard you’ve been busy. My sources tell me you were all over Sai Gon in a limo last night.’
‘I told you, that was only Francois,’ she said, waving a hand into the air and then touching her new clothes as if presenting them to Condley as evidence. ‘He won’t drive in the Sai Gon traffic. It makes him nervous. And he won’t ride on my Honda. So he always takes a limo. And besides, he is in love with me already!’
‘It was “only Francois”? You’re acting very French,’ he said, laughing at her sudden look of indignation.
‘It’s fun to go places with Francois,’ she countered. ‘Why should I lie about such things? But I am very happy to be Vietnamese.’ She gave him an open, challenging smile. ‘And you have been waiting only for me, Cong Ly? Is that what you’re saying?’
He could hear her parents talking softly in the other room. For a moment he concentrated, trying to understand their conversation. She watched him intuitively, not losing her smile.
‘She is asking my father if we are going out,’ said Van. ‘If we are staying she thinks she should begin making some dinner.’
Condley found himself chuckling softly, mostly at himself. He could not help but feel somewhat leery of the welcome he was receiving, and yet he was undeniably seduced by it as well. Something had changed since the last time he had seen her, either in Van’s relationship with Francois Petain or in her feelings about Condley himself. From her parents’ warmth toward him and the knowledge of her intimate activities that was evident in the colonel’s words, it was even possible that in the intricate, Vietnamese way, a family decision had been reached and he had become the front-runner in a race that he had not even consciously entered.
‘I’m not used to being treated so nice,’ he finally teased, working to shift his focus from the careful dialogue with her father to her breezy and openly inviting charm.
She smiled confidently, lifting her perfectly sculpted chin and looking out the window toward the front gate. ‘Do you want to have dinner with my parents or do you want to go away with me?’
‘Where do you want to go?’
‘To dinner.’ Her eyes grew musky with what seemed to be a memory. ‘But before that – someplace. A place I go to dream.’ She gave him a hopeful smile. ‘You told me something last time. A secret from your heart. I want to show you something from mine.’
‘Is it far?’
‘What do you care? We’re not on a cyclo.’ She stood, looking down at him, her hands on her hips, overwhelming him with nothing more than her raw, natural beauty. ‘Let’s go.’
He suddenly grinned, rising from his chair and now standing over her. ‘Your bike?’ he asked.
‘I drive,’ she laughed. ‘You would get me killed.’
Sitting behind her on the bike, he immediately put his arms around her waist. As she pulled out onto the alleyway he gently squeezed her to him, warning himself all the while that he should not dare to like her and that she was not yet equipped, as her father himself had said, to understand the implications of the very forces she was putting into motion. Then her soft hair fluttered in his face as the motorbike sped forward, air-brushing all such thoughts away.
Making a turn, she dropped one hand onto his leg and patted it for a moment just above the knee.
‘I did miss you,’ she said, surprising him with her words.
The motorbike left the winding back roads and reached Dien Bien Phu Street. He saw Dzung just off the curb on one corner, lazing in his cyclo as he waited for his assigned hour to pass. When she turned onto Dien Bien Phu they came very close to Dzung. Condley called to him as they passed.
‘Di ve nha,’ he said. Go home.
‘Da, di.’ Dzung waved casually to Condley as the motorbike gained the main road, leaving him behind.
She turned left onto Nguyen Van Troi Street, and he knew where she was heading. After fighting thick traffic for a few miles, they angled off to the right, past large billboard signs and an old concrete bunker left over from the French days. A tollgate met them in the center of a widened road. She paid five thousand dong at the busy gate, and in minutes they were outside the terminal of the Tan Son Nhat airport.
Throngs of cars and taxis lined the street and parking areas around the terminal. Hundreds of travellers flowed into and out of the building. Behind the terminal they could see a huge Boeing 747 parked on the runway. An international flight had just landed. Shuttle buses were hauling passengers from the tarmac to the terminal, captained by smiling young women in pink or blue ao dais.
‘Here,’ she said, looking longingly at the terminal building where the travellers ebbed and flowed. ‘This is my dream.’
‘It’s only an airline terminal,’ he said, thinking she was joking.
‘To you it is an airline terminal,’ she said quietly, her eyes lost in the endless possibilities that rose into the sky with every departing flight. ‘You can come and go whenever you want. Where do you come from? Where do you go when you leave? Do you know what this airport is like to someone who doesn’t know the answer to those questions? Japan or America might really be the moon. That’s what it’s like when you do not know.’
Her dream was his normality, and for the first time he saw the bustle of the airport from her eyes. Dzung’s struggle was to survive; that he understood. But hers was different; it was to live. How many times had he passed through those doors, on his way into and out of Viet Nam, thinking of nothing more than the foul taste in his mouth and the sleep he had lost on the plane?
; ‘Maybe you could work for Viet Nam Airlines,’ he said weakly.
‘It’s too late,’ she said with a genuine, muted sadness. ‘There is so much competition for those jobs, Cong Ly. I think it is the hardest job to get in all of Viet Nam. I tried three years ago, but they stopped most of their hiring when the economy went bad. If I had known Chinese I could have had a chance. But Chinese is so hard. I could not pass the test. And now I am twenty-six. Too old.’
Twenty-six and too old. The longing in her eyes was palpable, as was the reality of her fading dreams. ‘Maybe when things get better you could work for a business that travels overseas,’ he said.
‘Maybe,’ she said, still straddling her motorbike. ‘Someday.’ She turned to him, her face far older than it had been a half hour before in the front room of her father’s house. ‘You come and go, Cong Ly, and you think nothing of it. You’re going tomorrow or the day after, I know. I heard you talking to my father. I want to go. Not to Russia, but just to go! I want to know what is on the other side. I hear the stories. And I dream. There is nothing wrong with that, Cong Ly. I want that dream.’
At that moment he wanted more than anything to take her into his arms and promise her that somehow she could have her dream, as simple and yet impossible as it was. But he had nothing to offer her. He did not know her, not in that way, and he did not wish to become merely the agent of her fantasies. And so he sat silently on the rear of her little Honda, watching the giant plane unload its cargo, and retreated into his own unending memories.
She remained quiet for a long time, staring at the energy of people coming and going and then back to his face, as if waiting for him to offer a solution. Her silent charisma was urgent and demanding, just as when she had waited outside the hotel that first night as though he would kiss her if she only watched him long enough. And then she suddenly turned away from him and gunned her motorbike.
Lost Soldiers Page 27