The Cover of War

by Travis Stone

  To her, he was repulsive. She wanted to get away from him. She needed to think. She needed to breathe.

  'Open it.'

  She tore open the seal. As always, it contained two hundred American dollars in twenties, tens, and fives; but this time there was a small plastic bag of white crystals - a drug. She used the money to fund her socialite's lifestyle. But she was a fake socialite; a terrorist; a fake terrorist - a traitor. A child killer.

  Amai stuffed the cash and the drugs between the buttons of her blouse and into the purse concealed below her left breast.

  'What have you got for me?' Triet said, his focus business-like again.

  She handed Triet a notebook. He looked pleased.

  The American she got the notebook from scared her more than anything else in Vietnam; the drugs were his payment. Thinking of Golota made her shiver; his eyes were cruel and blue, and instead of a right ear, he had a knot of scar tissue. Amai knew he could strangle her with his bare hands and not even blink.

  'Okay,' Triet said. 'You are free to go.'

  Amai knew she was not free. She got up.

  'Avoid the far side of the square,' Triet said, gesturing with his hand.

  'The basilica?'

  'A bomb will go off there soon.'

  She went to the tunnel and crawled inside. How will I stop Tet? She thought. Who will I go to?

  * * *

  Danny sat on the basilica's steps, where in the failing light, he could see the Trung Hoa's entrance. It had been ten minutes since Amai had gone inside.

  Danny and got up and walked back through the square. Her behavior had stunned him.

  She's in some kind of trouble. It worried him. I hope she's safe.

  Jabbering Vietnamese voices and the beeping of motorcycle horns swarmed insect like around him.

  He checked his wristwatch and realized that he had only forty minutes to reach the Grand. As usual, General Westmoreland would only attend for a short time; MACV's commander was a busy man. He had to leave her.

  He reached the far edge of the square and stepped onto the roadway. Before her, he had never felt truly at ease with a woman. Girls in collage had called him cute, but his experiences with those girls had proved them to be nothing but conceited and scornful. At some point he had become a loner; journalism his escape - the more exotic and dangerous the locations the better. He had flown into Saigon from Palestine, his expedition there a failure. Articles he had risked his live for had not made print. It was bullshit. He knew in himself that his work in the Middle East deserved acknowledgment - even a Pulitzer. The lure of a Pulitzer had driven him to Vietnam. He wanted recognition. He was owed recognition.

  Meeting Amai had been a spectacular stroke of luck. She possessed an extensive knowledge of the Viet Cong: movements; infrastructure; tactics; and targets. Not only beautiful and lovely and fantastic in bed, she was a fantastic source. With her by his side, a Pulitzer would be his, but she was always too busy. He had tried persuading her to work with him, but she wouldn't.

  The heavy air shattered around him like plate-glass. A violent gust hurled him to the ground. Heat scorched his back.

  He stared horizontally across the road's surface; a blur of legs were running in panic; a high-pitched ringing hit his eardrums.

  He got up. The smoke tasted familiar. Cordite, he thought. Christ. A bomb!

  He ran his hands over his head and face, thankful to find no blood.

  Several bodies lay twisted on the roadway.

  Fuck.

  He needed to get his bearings. Instinctively, he felt for his camera; his security.

  Then he realized that he could hear something through the buzzing in his head. He went cold.

  Never in his life had he heard a living thing make such a distressing sound.

  * * *

  From inside the Trung Hoa, Amai heard the bomb go off.

  She took a soft drink from the barman, and waited. Her next task was due, and to keep up appearances, she would have to go through with it.

  * * *

  Danny listened to the child cry.

  As his focus returned, he inched closer, dreading what he might find.

  Then he saw her.

  Trapped under a mangled Honda was a frightened little girl. They had ridden past as the bomb exploded. The girl's mother was dead; her pale corpse opened-up by the blast's full impact. She had been pregnant; the tiny fetus lying beside her in a greenish bed of intestines.

  Danny looked away; back to the girl. He focused on the girl.

  Her eyes clamped onto his; wide; arched in fear. Fear in its purest form. Her mouth hung open; panting; her face white.

  Danny could smell the mother's insides and smoking oil from the scooter's ruptured engine. His hands gripped the Honda's frame, sending ringlets of shock up his arms. He lifted the twisted metal off the girl. Her left leg had been blown off at the knee; splintered bone and ripped meat gaped from the stump. The mother's body had protected her child from most of the blast, but the leg had been exposed.

  Danny heard himself yell for an ambulance. A bystander said she'd called one.

  He took off his shirt and knotted the sleeves around her upper thigh. He tightened the knot and her stump squirted warmth onto his chest. He looked down and realized that he was drenched in her blood.

  The girl babbled in a high-pitched voice that he couldn't understand.

  He stroked her forehead. 'You poor little soul.'

  Her thin arms went around his neck. Danny held her frail body to his. 'Its okay. It'll be okay. The ambulance is coming.' He said it more to comfort himself than her.

  What a mess. What a damn mess.

  The child began shaking. She had seen her mother and let out a disturbingly hollow sound - a sound that he knew would haunt his mind until the day of his own death.

  Without warning a blow struck him hard in the face. His vision blurred. Another blow struck the side of his head.

  The attacker was a Vietnamese man.

  The Trung Hoa?

  The girl was ripped from his arms. Danny jumped to his feet; but his attacker, with the girl in his arms, dropped to his knees beside the mother's corpse.

  The father.

  A military ambulance stopped beside Danny. A medic went to the girl. Black plastic was draped over the mother.

  Danny backed away. He didn't know where to go or what to do - he turned and started walking. He walked fast.

  Then he remembered General Westmoreland. The Grand, he thought. I've got to get cleaned up.

  * * *

  Fully aware of the danger he was about to put himself in, John Golota strode past the ambulance and entered the Trung Hoa Club.

  Just shit killing shit, he thought.

  The Trung Hoa reeked of VC - VC and cockroaches and stale booze.

  Switch on, he thought.

  Like a rock-star, Golota removed his ray-bans, smoothed his spiked blonde hair, and squinted through the cigarette smoke. He went to bar, aware that a male gook had blocked the door behind him.

  Golota was not here to make trouble; he was here for his drugs - his payment.

  He put both hands on the dusty counter, and eyeballed the barman. 'I'm looking for Amai.'

  'Never heard of her.'

  'She's expecting me.'

  'Never heard of her.'

  Golota propped an elbow on the bar. 'I'll take bourbon on ice.'

  Eyeing him warily, the bartender poured bourbon into an iceless glass and pushed it toward him. Golota internalized his laughter; it reminded him of a scene from a low-budget western. He put a ten dollar note on the bar, drained the glass, and said: 'Hit me again, hold the ice.'

  Mindful that he was in VC country, Golota took his drink and crossed the cheaply carpeted floor, where two drunks bickered in Vietnamese.

  If the shit-hits-the-fan, Golota thought. I'm dead.

  He had not wanted to come here, but it was the only place that Amai would meet. He had decided the risk was worth the reward. He needed
his 'speed'.

  The club was small. The filthy bar covered the back wall. Behind the bar was a padlocked door, brush-painted in faded orange. The room had no obvious ventilation, and thin layers of smoke floated between the floor and ceiling. At the room's centre, several sluty girls took turns at frotting a chrome pole. They paid him no attention; they were for local benefit only.

  VC scum.

  Five small, round tables surrounded the pole. Golota sat at one of the tables and watched a girl's lacey underwear slide down the chrome.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Golota saw a flash of blue. He turned and held his breath. Amai's curvy form drifted out of the haze.

  I'd love to see her fucking that pole, he thought.

  She sat opposite him, looking frightened. Golota smiled.

  He had picked she was VC instantly. It was two months ago, at a bar in Cholon. Dressed in clinging charcoal silk, which would've stood out in a 5th Avenue restaurant, and oozing sexuality, she looked out place - then he had watched her work the reporter.

  Golota had attempted to blackmail her, threatening to blow her cover if she didn't supply him with the 'speed' he was needing more-and-more. It had been a gamble - a dangerous gamble - but he wasn't surprised when she asked for military information in return for the drugs. The information she asked for had been easy to get. He needed his 'speed'.

  He Said: 'Where's my fucking stuff?'

  Amai pushed the small plastic-bag across the table and Golota felt the rush of anticipation. With those drugs in his blood he would be a killing machine in the field.

  With his left hand, Golota pinned Amai's wrist to the table. With his right, he touched the smooth skin of her arm.

  'No.'

  He held her tight and looked into her frightened eyes. Her body trembled. He felt powerful.

  'If I yell, your-'

  He let go. She stood, turned, and then floated back into the bar-room smog; the clinging blue fabric making love to her entire body as she walked. He imagined her sucking him off, her sultry eyes looking up at him as she made him come.

  Those eyes, he thought. Fuck, those eyes.

  Amai was playing it too close, Golota knew. He figured she would soon be locked in an interrogation chamber; Saigon was riddled with informants.

  He suddenly feared loosing his line of supply. Next time he saw her he would arrange a back up.

  If I see her.

  Somehow he didn't think he would.

  Golota pocketed the plastic bag and left.

  * * *

  Chaske Thorn recognized the girl immediately. There were only two faces like hers in Vietnam; hers, and her sister's.

  Chaske's mind spooled back six years to Laos. The Ho Chi Minh Trail.

  It was her.

  The top-secret mission was a proof-of-concept test for the JASON Group. Chaske's team of the CIA's Special Activities Division, had seeded a section of the emerging Ho Chi Minh Trail with experimental seismic detection devices - GSIDS.

  The details came back vividly: through the hot, wet foliage, he watched the girl and her sister. Somehow the older one had seen him. Chaske's mouth was dry. He felt simultaneously helpless and attracted to her; the older sister. In the ferns beside him, Golota raised his PPS submachine-gun. Chaske reacted instinctively, pushing Golota's barrel away as the firing pin struck the primer. The bullets slapped into heavy leaves. The sister looked directly into Chaske's eyes. He felt the thump of an explosion; heard the crack of bullets. He forced his mind to stay conscious; conscious enough to escape. He dumped the radio; the Station Chief's metallic voice vibrating through the speaker, broadcast from a C-121, orbiting thirty-thousand feet overhead, demanding to know what the hell was going on with his sensor string.

  Chaske looked for an escape.

  Golota's head was bleeding; his ear shredded.

  It was Chaske's fault. He just couldn't bear to see such beautiful creatures killed. It was a mistake - he had let Golota down - his country down.

  Chaske had heard his father's words echo in his mind: Conscience is the root of all courage. If you want to be brave, obey your conscience. Those were the last words his father had spoken before beginning his walk into the spirit world.

  Saving those beautiful girls was no mistake. How could it be?

  Chaske came back to the present. Sweat slipped between his muscles and the loose cotton shirt. The younger of those beautiful creatures was now on the sidewalk - in Saigon.

  * * *

  It took Amai less than a second to remember everything about the man's face.

  He had saved her life in Laos; the big, olive skinned man with jet black hair. But Amai wasn't about to thank him. She wasn't stupid. She turned casually into an alley, and then started to run. She could hear the big man's footsteps behind her. Amai pumped her legs. She swung around another corner. Her hand caught a fire escape. She ran the ladder like a sailor and threw herself through the first open window. She lay on her back on the wooden floorboards, breathing hard.

  She had escaped.

  Was he part of Loan's surveillance team? Were there more men following her?

  No, she thought. The look on his face had shown shock recognition - the big, olive skinned man had not expected to see her.

  She got to her knees and looked down into the lane. The man was gone.

  It suddenly occurred to her that reporting Tet to MACV might not be so easy. She climbed onto the metal ladder. She couldn't tell Danny about Tet; if he found out that she had spent the last month lying to him, he would leave her; she couldn't bear that - she just couldn't imagine living her life without him. Neither could she walk up to MACV's Tan Son Nhut headquarters; they would just dismiss her as a silly girl. Similarly, a note wouldn't be taken seriously. She couldn't tell General Loan or the Military Intelligence men that were tracking her; they would certainly believe her and react accordingly - Tet would be stopped - but after torturing her for Triet's whereabouts, Loan would put a bullet in her head and dump her body in the Saigon River. At present, MI would keep there distance and attempt to follow her to Triet.

  She stopped on the ladder. That's it.

  She could lead Military Intelligence to Triet. Once they had him she could send them a note, detailing Triet's plans for the Tet Offensive. She felt sudden vertigo; Triet would be tortured; Tet would be confirmed; US Forces would be pulled back into the city - Saigon's children would be saved.

  She could continue her life with Danny. They would have to leave Vietnam. Danny could never know.

  Amai climbed to the ground, feeling at an advantage. She had a plan; a dangerous plan - and now she had to execute it.

  Saigon's lights were starting to come on. She cut through a narrow, crowded Market. Spices, candles, food, and bodies blended into a sweet smell that hit her just before the elbows of shoppers. Habitually, her hand slipped beneath her left breast and thumbed the concealed purse strapped to her body. It held over a-thousand US dollars.

  All counterfeit, she thought.

  Amai would not abandon her flat tonight; instead she would cook Danny something special for dinner. She bought fresh seafood, spices, white thigh-high stockings with a lace top, and two bottles of sparkling French wine. The wine was cheap, but it was the best she could find. She put the goods into a woven bag, and then started back towards Thong Nhut Boulevard. Returning to the flat was a risk, but she would meet Danny, and in the morning, lead Military Intelligence to Triet.

  3

  A Marine detachment guarded The Grand hotel's Dong Khoi entrance.

  Danny took the crumpled invitation from the inside pocket of his dinner jacket and gave it to a stone-faced Sergeant. The Marine let Danny through, and he went up the steps and through the doors. Inside, a solidly built Captain stood in the doorway wearing the short-sleeved dress uniform; the sleeves stretched skin-tight around his big biceps.

  The Captain said: 'Tough day, buddy?'

  'A bombing-'

  'You saved the girl.'

  'She lived?'


  The Captain looked smug. 'Did you see who the target was?'

  Danny felt professionally embarrassed; tunnel vision had obviously stopped him seeing the full picture. He shook his head.

  'A South Vietnamese politician. Dead.'

  The Captain extended a big hand connected to a thick, hairy forearm. 'Captain Nash. Intelligence.'

  Danny shook his hand. Nash's grip was excessively strong. Early-thirties with a solid build, Nash exuded confidence. With his torso pushed forward and jaw extended, he looked like a pro-football star.

  Danny broke the handshake and looked over Nash's shoulder for General Westmoreland. The room was full of politicians, media heads, and Military officers from all services.

  'If you don't mind,' the Intelligence officer said. 'General Loan would like a word.'

  Danny checked his watch. 'What's this about?'

  'Won't take long.'

  Danny felt Captain Nash's hand between his shoulder blades, pushing him between conversing dignitaries and tuxedoed wine waiters. 'Right this way.'

  Nash's physical control annoyed Danny. He stopped. 'Excuse me. I've got someone to see-'

  Nash pushed him toward a man standing in the corner. Danny recognized the man and his heart kicked. He was the one who had burst into Amai's flat - the hunter.

  Who is this creep?

  Nash said: 'Danny. This is General Loan, Chief-of-Police.'

  Loan's gangly body reminded Danny of a stick insect. Danny shook Loan's limp hand and glared at him.

  Loan grinned.

  Why am I nervous? Danny thought.

  'General Loan is assisting us at the Phoenix Program in one or two matters.' Nash's movie-star face became contemptuous. 'We'd both like to ask you a few questions about Amai Nguyen. If that is her real name?'

  The buzzing returned to Danny's eardrums. Chief-of-police, he thought. Why did he break into Amai's? Why did she sneak out? Why did she go to the Trung Hoa? Why did the thug-

  Danny controlled his racing mind. He kept quiet. They're trawling for information, he told himself. Any question or comment he made would provoke an attack. Staying quiet was the safe-play. The journalists play.

  Loan accepted a canapé from a waiter. 'I'm impressed by some of your recent articles.' He contemplated the canapé but didn't eat it. 'Parrot's Beak,' he said, spitting the B. 'Build up of VC forces. - Tay Ninh: weapons caches. - The Fishhook: re-location of the 33rd NVA Division.' Loan lent toward Danny. 'All accurate. All good Intel. You mind telling me where you're getting this stuff?'