Word of Honor

by Nelson DeMille

  He looked up and down the lane, then opened a rotting wooden gate and walked through the courtyard garden choked with hibiscus and poinsettia.

  Tyson pulled at a bell rope, and a minute later the mahogany door was opened by an old servant woman. Tyson said, “Allo. Toi trung-uy Tyson. Soeur Térèse, s’il vous plaît.”

  The old woman smiled, flashing an uneven set of teeth dyed reddish brown with betel nut. She motioned him into the dark foyer, then led him to a sitting room.

  Tyson stood his rifle against a credenza and sat in a musty armchair, its threadbare fabric home to a few darting silverfish. The chair, indeed all the furniture, looked to be European, pre–World War II vintage. A lizard climbed up a dingy white stucco wall and disappeared behind a cheap print of the Blessed Virgin. The mortar between the red terra-cotta floor tile was green-black with mildew, though the floor seemed to be freshly scrubbed. The tropics, he thought, were not hospitable to man’s creations. That, added to forty years of war, made it a wonder anything still stood or functioned in this wretched country.

  Tyson didn’t hear her come into the room but saw her shadow pass along the wall. He stood and turned. She wore a white cotton ao dai with a high mandarin collar. The floor-length dress had slits up to the thighs, but she also wore the traditional silk pantaloons beneath the dress. She seemed, he thought, somewhat embarrassed that he’d called at the convent. Thinking about it, Tyson was embarrassed also. War was justification for much that was uncivilized, but a man calling on a woman ought to have a good reason for doing so. He said, “Je suis en train de venir . . . à MAC-V. . . .” He thought that “just passing through” sounded as trite in French as in English. “Comment allez-vous?”

  She inclined her head. “Bien. Et vous?”

  “Bien.” He hesitated, then lifted the box from the floor and set it on the credenza. “Pour vous . . . et pour les autres soeurs. Bon Noël.”

  She looked at the box but said nothing.

  Tyson vacillated between leaving and pressing on with his unexpected visit. He knew that if his heart were pure, suffused with Christian charity and the spirit of Christmas, he would not be acting so awkwardly. But the fact was he had other things on his mind.

  Sister Teresa took a step forward and laid her long fingers on the box.

  Tyson drew his K-bar knife from its scabbard and sliced open the gift-wrapped box, then pulled the corrugated lid open, revealing a potpourri of PX treasures: soap, stationery, tinned fruit, medicated talc, a bottle of California wine, and other consumer products whose nature and usefulness would probably have to be explained.

  Sister Teresa hesitated, then reached into the box and withdrew a bar of Dial soap wrapped in gold foil. She studied the foil and the clock on the wrapper, then sniffed it, and an involuntary smile passed across her lips.

  Tyson said, “Pour tout le monde,” attempting to further depersonalize the gift. “Pour les enfants, pour le dispensaire. Une donation.”

  She nodded. “Merci beaucoup.” She placed the soap back in the box. “Bon Noël.”

  They stood in silence awhile, then Tyson said, “Je vais maintenant.”

  She said, “Could you . . . take me . . . a ride?”

  He smiled at the unexpected English. “Where?”

  “Le dispensaire.”

  “Certainly.”

  Tyson slung his rifle, and she led him to the door.

  He followed her out through the garden and helped her into the jeep. He did a walk-around to see if any parts had been appropriated, or worse, if anything lethal had been added. Satisfied but not positive, he climbed in, unlocked the ignition, and pushed the starter button. The jeep didn’t explode, and the gas gauge still read half full. The ubiquitous VC and local slicky boys were sleeping on the job. He decided it wasn’t such a bad country after all.

  They drove in silence along the Phu Cam Canal, crossed the An Cuu Bridge, and headed north on Duy Tan Street, a section of Highway One. The buildings here were mostly two-story wooden clusters, with narrow fronts, wooden sidewalks, and alleyways between them. Tyson was reminded of an Old West town.

  Here on the South Side of the river were the university, the Central Hospital, and the sports stadium, as well as the treasury, the post office building, and the French-style provincial capitol. None of these institutions or services had existed in the imperial walled city, but the French had grafted them neatly onto the South Bank while the emperors reigned in splendid isolation within the Citadel. But neither the emperor nor the French ruled here any longer. In fact, no one ruled here any longer. Instead the city was a collection of fiefdoms: the military, the civil government, the Catholic and Buddhist hierarchies, the students, and the Europeans. The Americans had found the place too perplexing, and Hue was the only city in Vietnam where no American combat forces were committed. The small MAC-V compound was like the Emperor’s Forbidden Palace, secluded and forlorn. And everywhere, in every quarter of the city, in every government building, every school and pagoda, on every block, was the invisible presence of the communist cadres, Hue-born and educated, mingling easily in the cafés, lunching with Monsieur Bournard one day, the National Police commander another, and all the while waiting. Waiting.

  Tyson picked up speed, checking the side and rearview mirrors, staying to the center of the road, and keeping a close watch on the motorbikes that passed him. He found Hue more unnerving than the jungle. He glanced at Sister Teresa, sitting placidly with her hands in her lap. He said, “Do the VC bother you? At the school?”

  She remained staring straight ahead. “They leave us alone.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “In Hue everyone leaves everyone alone.”

  “They say there are many VC and sympathizers in Hue.”

  “There are many intellectuals in Hue.”

  “They also say Hue is very anti-American.”

  “The Europeans in Hue are sometimes anti-American.”

  Tyson smiled. “Hue is very antiwar.”

  “All the world is antiwar.”

  “Hue reminds me of Greenwich Village. Even the people dress the same.”

  She looked at him. “Where is that?”

  “In America.”

  She nodded. “There are riots in America.”

  “So they tell me.” Tyson sometimes felt adrift between a once-familiar world that had become increasingly alien the last time he’d seen it and a true alien world that was becoming uncomfortably understandable. They said that if a day came when you completely understood the Orient, you should seek professional help.

  The jeep approached the Joan of Arc Church, a yellowish stucco building with a colonnaded front and an impressive steeple. There was a school close by, and a small dispensary building marked with a red cross. Sister Teresa said, “I will walk from here.”

  Tyson pulled to the side of the busy street. Sister Teresa remained sitting in the seat beside him, then said, “When do you leave?”

  Tyson glanced at her. “Vietnam? I’m leaving on 17 April. If not sooner. No later.”

  She nodded slowly.

  “Why do you ask?”

  She shrugged, a very Gallic shrug, he thought. He wondered which parent was French. He said, “Do you have family in Hue?”

  “Oui. The family of my mother. My father, he is un para.”

  “A French soldier. A paratrooper?”

  “Oui. Un para.”

  “In France?”

  She shrugged again. “I never knew him.”

  “Have you ever been to France?”

  “No. I have been only to Da Nang. To the convent school.”

  “You speak French well. You are educated, a nun, you are half French. Why don’t you leave here? Go to France.”

  She looked at him. “Why?”

  Tyson thought he should tell her there was a war going on, that eventually, as Monsieur Bournard said, the communists would win, that she was a beautiful woman, and that she would do well anywhere. Instead he changed the subject. “W
hy did you become a nun?”

  “My mother wished it. My father was Catholic.”

  “How old are you?”

  She seemed somewhat surprised at the question but replied, “Twenty and three.”

  He nodded. She would have been born in 1945, the year the Second World War ended, the year the Japanese surrendered Vietnam and the French and the communists began their war to determine who was going to be in charge here. He looked at her, hesitated, then asked, “Don’t you find it difficult? Not being able to . . . marry?”

  She looked away from him.

  He said quickly, “That was not a proper question.”

  She replied, “I am content. There are many of us of mixed blood in Hue, and we are . . . how do you say? . . . Les paria. . . .”

  “Outcasts.”

  “Oui. Outcasts to our people. The Europeans treat us well, but we are not as good as them. We find peace in the Church.”

  Tyson realized her view of the world was rather limited. He had a dislike for men who played Svengali or Professor Higgins with women of other cultures or lesser stations in life, so he dropped the subject for a more immediate one. “When can I see you again?”

  She turned toward him and looked him fully in the face for the first time. He met her eyes and held them. Seconds ticked by. Finally, she said, “Tomorrow if you wish. There is a—une soirée pour les enfants. A l’ école. Pour Le Noël. . . . Do you . . . ?” She made a fluttering motion with her fingers. “Le piano.”

  “Oh . . . sure. Un peu.”

  “Bien. Les chansons de Noël?”

  “That’s about all I can play. Except for ‘Moon River.’”

  “Bien. A onze heures. A l’ école.” She pointed.

  “I’ll try to be there.”

  She smiled. “Good.” She put her legs over the side of the jeep and looked back. “Merci, Lieutenant.”

  “A demain, Térèse.”

  She seemed surprised at being addressed that way, then said, “A demain . . . Benjamin.” She slid down from the jeep and walked toward the dispensary in the church compound.

  Tyson watched her. She looked back, smiled shyly, then hurried on.

  He thought of the first time he had seen Teresa, a month earlier on his first trip to Hue. He had gone to the Phu Cam Cathedral with a Catholic officer and attended mass. Two dozen nuns were taking communion together, and among them was this singularly beautiful Eurasian, hands pressed together, returning from the communion rail to her pew. The officer he was with noticed her, too, and so did most of the Europeans around him, or so he believed.

  After mass he saw her again in the square speaking with a Vietnamese Catholic family. At Tyson’s urging he and the American officer he was with approached. Tyson introduced himself and the officer in French.

  Even then, he reflected, he couldn’t imagine not seeing her again. And today he had. And now they both understood that any subsequent meetings were at their own peril.

  Tyson sat in the jeep a while longer, then noticed it was nearly dark. Hue had a late curfew, midnight to 5 A.M., but MAC-V wanted their charges safely tucked into the compound by dark. Unless you’d made other sleeping arrangements and informed them of the lady’s address.

  Tyson threw the jeep into gear and traveled the few hundred meters to the MAC-V compound. The sentry waved him through the barbed-wire gate between the high concrete walls.

  Tyson opened his eyes and saw by the illuminated clock on the nightstand that it was three-fifteen. The city was darker now, and he could see stars high above the horizon.

  Several images vied for attention in his mind: Teresa, Karen Harper, Marcy, the wall, the hospital, and Hue. It was as if the past were overtaking the present and about to become the future.

  CHAPTER

  22

  Benjamin Tyson entered Sag Harbor from Brick Kiln Road. He drove slowly through the narrow streets, past early eighteenth-century houses of white clapboard and gray shingle.

  The drive in the rented TR6 had taken nearly three hours from his apartment in Manhattan, and it was already twilight here on the eastern end of Long Island. There was no streetlighting, and the tree-lined roads lay in darkness.

  Tyson realized he was in a part of the town that he did not know. He pulled the Triumph to the curb and got out. The air was damp and briny, with misty auras shimmering around the post lamps near the entrances to the tightly spaced houses.

  Tyson reached back into the car and retrieved a book. He zippered his windbreaker and began walking west, toward the setting sun. At length he recognized a street and turned into it, and within a few minutes he came to Main Street. There were a good number of people promenading to the Long Wharf and back, entering and leaving several taverns and restaurants. People sat on the veranda of the old American Hotel, rocking in their bentwood rockers, throwing back drinks on the aft roll and returning the glass to a rest position on the forward roll.

  Tyson crossed Main Street and turned into a small lane, following it downhill toward the water. He had remembered where he’d seen the mailbox so long ago and found the house, a very old cedar-shingled saltbox sitting on a small bluff above the body of water called the Lower Cove. A tilted picket fence surrounded the house and the unkept grounds. The mailbox still said Picard/Wells. The lights were on.

  Tyson opened the gate and approached by way of a footpath paved with broken shells. With no hesitation—because he had not come this far to have second thoughts—he raised the brass knocker and brought it down hard on the black-painted door. He heard footsteps, and the door opened. “Yes.”

  Tyson did not reply.

  Andrew Picard peered at his visitor in the dim light of the porch lamp. Finally Picard’s eyebrows rose. “Oh. . . .”

  Tyson stared at him, and neither spoke for some time. Picard showed what Tyson thought was a good deal of cool, or perhaps it was the alcohol that Tyson smelled on his breath.

  Tyson regarded the tall, lanky man standing a few feet from him. He was wearing blue jeans and a button-down oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He was very tan, and his longish hair appeared to be bleached by the sun and salt. Tyson knew him to be a preppie and a Yalie, and had heard his voice on radio and TV, so the words tweedy and madras-covered marshmallow entered his mind. But the reality belied this unkind prejudice, and Tyson reminded himself he was looking at an ex-Marine officer who by all accounts had done his duty.

  Picard said simply, “Come in.”

  Tyson followed him into the foyerless room. A stereo was playing Paul McCartney’s “Hey Jude.” Tyson’s eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room. It was, he saw, a large open space, created by the removal of all the interior walls where hand-hewn posts still stood. The simple painted furnishings all looked as if they had been bought at a Quaker garage sale. Three hooked rugs sat on the rough floorboards, and a fireplace of round river stone dominated the left-hand wall. A small coal fire in the grate warmed and dried the sea air.

  At the rear of the open room was a long countertop separating an enclosed porch that held what had once been called a summer kitchen. The rear windows of the kitchen looked out onto the cove, and Tyson saw the lights of Baypoint across the water and picked out the deck lights of his house. Shadows moved in front of the sliding glass doors, and he felt his heart give a sudden thump.

  Picard said, “Are you here to kill me?”

  Tyson turned from the window. “The thought never crossed my mind.”

  “Fine, then how about a drink?”

  “I don’t need one, but if you do, go ahead.”

  Picard did not reply. His eyes dropped to the book in Tyson’s hand.

  “I came for your autograph.” He held out the book.

  Picard took it and smiled. “The Quest. One of my early ones. Did you like it?”

  “Not bad.”

  “Fiction is fun. Nonfiction sometimes gets people upset.” Picard placed the book on the oval dining table and opened it. “This is a library book. Garden City. And it’s ov
erdue.” Picard shrugged. “Pen?”

  Tyson handed him a pen.

  Picard thought a moment, then wrote: For Ben Tyson, Where have all the soldiers gone? Long time passing. Best, Andrew Picard.

  He handed the open book to Tyson, and Tyson read it, then closed the book. “Indeed.” He laid the book back on the table.

  Picard went to the stereo and turned it off. Both men stood in silence, though it did not seem to Tyson an embarrassing silence, but a time to reflect on a shared experience and to go through the mental leaps necessary to get to the here and now. Finally Picard said, “If you wanted a drink, what would it be?”

  “Scotch.”

  Picard went into the open kitchen and put ice in two glasses. “Neat?”

  “Soda.”

  He rummaged through the refrigerator, then held up a bottle of Perrier. “Wimp water of the Hamptons. Okay?”

  “Fine.”

  Picard split a bottle of Perrier between the glasses. “How’d you find me? I’m not listed.”

  “Mailbox.”

  “Right. Mailbox. Have to paint that out. Getting too much attention these days.”

  Picard poured from a bottle of Cutty Sark, then came around the counter and handed Tyson his drink. Picard held out his glass. “To those who met their fate at Hue, including us.” He touched his glass to Tyson’s, and they drank.

  Tyson’s eyes wandered around the room. Under a side window was a writing desk cluttered with papers and pencils. “What are you doing for an encore?”

  Picard shrugged. “Hard act to follow.”

  “Well, you can do the court-martial of Benjamin Tyson.”

  Picard for the first time seemed ill at ease. “I don’t think so.”

  Tyson put his glass on an end table. He glanced at a steep open staircase that ran along the right-hand wall, up to the loft. He said, “Are you alone?”

  Picard replied, “Yes, but I’m expecting company any moment.” He added with a smile, “Five duck-hunting friends with shotguns.”

  Tyson did not acknowledge the quick wit.