by Travis Stone
She was on the third-floor and the ground felt a long way down. She leveled her eyes, and then climbed onto the metal fire-escape.
Thi would never take such a precaution, she thought. She was far too casual for Amai's liking.
The ladder groaned as it took her weight. Rust stained her hands orange. She hoped it would hold. The unsafe feeling made her rush. A third of the way down it happened.
She felt the entire ladder move to the sound of groaning metal. In a second, she imagined the fall; the impact; her bones breaking against the hard ground. She felt giddy.
She reached out and grasped a storm-water pipe, and then moved fluidly off the ladder. The pipe felt solid. She recovered her breath, and then shinnied to the ground. The fright had made her palms moist.
Concrete block walls hemmed in the tight rear yard, and she took the only exit, around the siding to the street.
Everywhere she looked children were playing: splashing in puddles; chasing each other down narrow alleys; climbing anything climbable. Amai thought of the Tet attacks. She couldn't hold back the images of Triet's Saigon slaughter.
I'm involved, she thought. I'm at the center of it.
A girl-child smiled at her. Amai imagined her as a pale corpse, lying dead in the street.
This is so wrong.
Amai performed the Trung Hoa ritual, cut through the market, and stormed toward café La Camargue. Outside the café, a handful of wire-work tables and chairs had been carefully arranged on the buckled sidewalk. Triet sat at his usual table, sipping black coffee. He wore a dark shirt, whose pointed collar highlighted his sharp features. He didn't look at her breasts this time. His expression said that he meant business. He looked straight into her eyes. His mouth opened slightly and Amai could see strands of meat in the gaps of his teeth.
Her words came in a hot rush: 'We could've been killed!'
'Danny didn't make it to Ubon,' he said. 'We don't know where he is. He is missing.'
She felt as though an invisible hand had griped her by the throat. What's happened to him? It took all of her strength to keep her appearance calm.
She sat down. She couldn’t focus her eyes.
Triet spoke evenly: 'Forget your anger and tell me what happened with the Major?'
Amai could barely think. 'The serum failed,' she said. 'He fucked us both.' she looked down.
'Damn,' he said.
She tasted bile.
'I need you to meet him again, tonight.'
Amai felt dizzy; she knew she couldn't do it again - not now that she was worried sick about Danny. 'But the serum?' She said.
'Be here at Twelve o'clock. I'll have more.'
'I can't go through that again,' she said. 'Triet please.'
His eyes hardened into black marbles. 'General Giap says this Major is the most important target in Vietnam, and you-' He pointed at her- ' Are the only one who can reach him.'
Amai felt breathless. Thoughts of Danny lying dead, wrapped in black plastic, took her focus.
'Don't forget your niece,' Triet continued. 'You will do this.'
Amai was crushed. 'What if the drug fails again?'
'War has risks.' He got up. 'Twelve o'clock. Sharp.' He left.
Amai stared into space as her world caved in. She went out into the harsh midday sun and stumbled through the crowd.
Tears streaked her face.
She had no idea where she was going.
She had no idea where she was.
She walked aimlessly.
Everything was a blur.
When she finally looked up, she found herself outside Thi's flat in Rue De Varlin. She stood and stared at Thi's red front door. In the time it had taken to walk there, dark clouds had rolled in, laying the porch in shadow.
Amai hesitated for some reason, and then went in.
21
Nash threw down his crutches, and then limped aggressively toward the PSYOPS interrogation room; the small cinderblock building dubbed the pit by Intelligence staff.
The sky had changed. A swelling mass of black cloud was consuming the mid-morning sun. Nash felt that, in-a-way, the American forces took on the power of the sun: good and right, true and just. He likened the Viet Cong to the dark mass: they could block out the sun every-so-often, but the sun would always be there, waiting to shine its light of truth and justice through the slightest crack.
But there was no obvious winner.
The sun could shine without hindrance for a time, but the black mass would always return. It was the nature of the deadlock that the war had reached. But somewhere, deep in the recesses of his subconscious, Nash feared that the storm was winning, and that Vietnam's sky would always be black, so long as the United States attempted to occupy her.
He shook himself free of the daydream. He had a prisoner to interrogate.
After his bout with Colonel Hitchcock, Nash had followed up a series of dead-end leads. Dejected, he had gone to the O-club, where he drank solidly for most of the night; the booze had helped the pain in his leg. However, in the early hours of this morning, Nash had received an anonymous call, informing him that Amai Nguyen and a US Army Major could be found on the third floor of a Rue De Varlin building. General Loan had gone missing, as he so often did, so Nash had taken Corporals Mancini and Albertez to the location.
The result had been unexpected.
They had arrested a girl named Thi Ling Nang. Wearing only expensive underwear, she had been the building's sole occupant. Nash's gut told him that he had stumbled straight onto Amai's spy network. But at-this-point, several things were causing him concern: Is Amai involved? He thought. Surely. Is Thi with her? Surely. Are they bribing this mystery Major? Surely. So what have they learned?
He crushed a mosquito against his forearm, figuring that an underling like Thi would not be privy to the Commander's location, but Amai would. Amai was a key player - she would know everything. Still, he was keen to see what he could get out of Thi.
He was bitterly disappointed that they had not been able to identify the Major. The mystery man seen leaving Thi's building just before her arrest, had disappeared, and something in the back of Nash's mind told him that this man was important.
Nash stopped outside the pit and let Mancini and Albertez go in. He would give them a few minutes to prep the victim. The torture technique was experimental; a combination of water-boarding, and the CIA's new electronic lie-detector.
Thi would be his guinea-pig.
Nash knew full well that water-torture was frowned upon; in fact General Weyand had outlawed it. But Nash was short on time, and this was the fastest way to get information out of the unwilling. In two day's time, Hitchcock would put him back on Delta-squads; killing his plans of uncovering the Viet Cong scheme; and killing his chances of promotion. He knew however, that Colonel Hitchcock would turn a blind-eye to the torture, whilst of course, maintaining a buffer of deniability.
But water-torture had its problems: because victims believed that they were dying, they often said anything to stop the suffering. This made information unreliable, and unreliable information was useless to Nash. He hoped that coupling Westinghouse's latest lie-detection machine with the torture would produce accurate results.
The spooks had assured him that it would.
The new machine was the CIA's. MI's regular polygraph would not work because the physiological responses produced during torture disrupted the machine's calibration. However the CIA's machine, which still used pulse, respiration, blood-pressure, and skin conductivity to detect lies, was able to reset to the victims changing metabolic profiles in seconds.
This ensured accuracy ever under the most extreme duress.
* * *
Wearing translucent panties and bra, Thi squatted in silence on the interrogation room's concrete floor.
She couldn't believe that she had been caught, but the thin chord which cut into the soft skin of her wrists and ankles, and the gag which forced her to breathe through the nose, made it all too re
al.
Her shiver became shaking.
She replayed the morning: Amai had gone to meet Triet. Major Johnson had gone to the Embassy. She had been lounging around the flat, admiring her figure in a long mirror, waiting for Amai to come back. Thi had been eager to know why the serum had failed. She hadn't minded that though; the sex with Major Johnson had been a fantasy come true.
I could contact him, she thought. He could get me out of here.
The cell door grated open and a wedge of light spread across the wall. Two human shapes came in. Thi could tell they were American men. The door grated shut and a dim fluorescent light flicked on.
The men stood over her. One said: 'Stand up.'
Thi stood. She could feel their eyes on her body. She felt defenseless. A strong pair of hands grabbed her under the arms and lifted her onto a flat bench.
'Lie back.'
What is this? She thought.
A hand went between her breasts and pushed her onto her back. Then the men strapped her to the board.
She couldn't move.
The men worked mechanically. They didn't speak, but she could hear their breathing and the scuff of their boots on the concrete. One took out her gag. The other tied a muslin cloth over her nose and mouth. Pads were stuck to the palms of her hands, her temples, chest, and her inner thighs. He pushed hard with his thumbs to make them stick.
Thi stared up at the grimy ceiling, and thought: What are they going to do to me?
* * *
Sweat trickled down Nash's nose and into his mouth.
The heat of The Nam was getting to him. It irritated him that it had no effect on Hitchcock.
Nash pulled back the pit's heavy steel door and let his eyes adjust to the gloom. Despite its small size, its concrete-block construction made the pit the coolest room in the MI compound. Nash was glad of the cool.
He was allowing Mancini and Albertez to carryout Thi's interrogation, and they were efficiently preparing her for the torture. Nash neared the board and his eyes followed the millimeter-perfect curves of Thi's body.
She's damn hot, he thought.
She looked nothing like the usual Vietnamese women who were rough and aged through hard physical work. And she was no prostitute.
Nash grinned. She's a spy alright.
The French panties followed the arc of Thi's pubic bone with pin-up-girl perfection, and the translucent material suggested a clean shaven pussy. Nash was rock hard. He wished he could touch the smooth material - and what lay beneath - but he couldn't. It would set the wrong example for his men, who in his opinion were merely impressionable boys of dubious brainpower.
That's why they use these beautiful girls, Nash thought. She'd be impossible for any red blooded male to resist.
Nash forced his gaze up to Thi's face. Her eyes were stretched wide and she emitted a pathetic whimpering sound through the muslin cloth.
She'll break easy, he thought.
He began to think that such an extreme method of interrogation might be overkill. A simple beating would probably have worked, but that was the beauty of water-boarding - it left no physical marks on the body - the damage it did was purely psychological. He had heard of water-torture victims that later panicked at rainfall; some never showered again; some even went into spasm if they heard dripping water.
Nash shivered. 'Hustle it up Corporal. I'm short on time.'
'Sir.' Mancini stood over Thi's helpless form like a tarantula inspecting its prey. Mancini was stocky and aggressive and Nash liked him. In his right hand Mancini held a regular, galvanized watering-can, which he put down with a clunk.
Thi grunted with struggle, but her straps prevented even the slightest movement. Her eyes were all that she could move, and they showed pure fear.
Nash felt incredibly powerful.
* * *
A shadow fell over Thi and a voice started speaking in a deliberate, military-like tone: 'My name is Corporal Mancini. You will be asked a series of questions. The answers will be recorded.'
A light snapped on and she saw his face. He smoothed a thin mustache and Thi thought that he was quiet good looking, with olive skin, and thick, dark hair, styled fashionably with brylcreem.
You will answer truthfully,' he said. 'I say again. You will answer truthfully. If you do not, Corporal Albertez here,' he pointed to someone beyond her field of vision. 'Will apply - in a controlled manner - a sufficient amount of water - into your airways - for a period of twenty to forty seconds - so as to cause severe discomfort. I suggest you answer quickly and truthfully. This will avoid any unnecessary pain, suffering or death. Do you understand?'
'Yes.'
A cuff inflated tightly around her upper arm. Albertez appeared at the edge of her vision and began adjusting knobs on a machine of some kind. She guessed that it was a lie-detector. Triet had told them about lie-detectors. Albertez took the wires from the pads stuck to her hands, head, chest and thighs, and then plugged them into the side of the machine. The display consisted of six needles, positioned one-above-the-other, which drew thin lines on a rolling sheet of paper. Albertez wheeled the thing closer.
Mancini said: 'Ready?'
Albertez said: 'Yep'
Mancini said: 'What is your full name?'
Thi realized that she was expected to answer. 'Thi Ling Nang,' she said. 'I live at-'
'Just answer the question you're asked please Miss Nang. What sex are you?'
'Female.'
'What year is it?'
'1967.'
'Have you ever been to the Moon?'
'No.'
'Have you ever committed a crime?'
'Ah - no.'
On her right, a third man came up beside her. His face came close to hers. She could tell that he was in charge, and she could tell that he meant business.
His voice was calm: 'Listen in Miss Nang. My name is Captain Nash. From now on, the-balls-in-your-court. You control the play-book.'
She had no idea what a play-book was.
What will they ask? She thought. What will I say? What will they do?
'We call this place the pit. The amount of pain you feel in here is your-call. You must tell the truth. You can't beat the lie-detector. But I swear to you Thi, if you don't give us what we want, you will suffer-' His nose touched her cheek. 'Like you have never suffered before.'
'What do you want?'
The man laughed and Thi feared that she would lose control of her breathing.
She knew that Mancini's first questions somehow tuned the machine to her body. Triet had taught them this in Laos, but she had never imagined that it would be her who was caught - her who was hooked up to a machine. She had desperately wanted to upset the tuning process, but anguish had numbed her. She didn't want to let Amai or Triet down, but she had no idea what the Americans already knew. Perhaps they knew everything.
Desperate to avoid suffering, Thi fought to recall her cover-story: Something about an attack at Khe Sanh, she thought. Damn. What was it?
When Triet had recruited her, she had imagined a life of excitement and intrigue; in-fact, Triet had promised her this.
Now look at me, she thought.
She began to cry.
* * *
Mancini tried to focus on his job, but found it hard not to stare at Thi's body.
He wanted to touch her skin; but Nash had made himself crystal clear - there would be no sexual violation on his time. Mancini wished he knew the consequences - they might be worth it.
He pulled his eyes off Thi to look at the polygraph. Now calibrated, it would uncover any deception she might devise.
Mancini said: 'Are you Viet Cong?'
'Yes.'
Mancini was taken aback. He studied the chart recorder and saw that the readings for perspiration and breathing rhythm would be useless for diagnosis. He put this down to her extreme level of fear. It didn't matter though; the other recordings were working perfectly. The even lines of scribble told him that her answer was true. 'Good,' he
said. 'Remember to answer quickly, Miss Nang. What is your role within the Viet Cong?'
'I - I - I get information.'
He watched the needles. True, he thought. This'll be easy.
Protocol dictated that he access the results after the questioning was complete; but for the extraction of information, he needed to assess her answers one-by-one, and if torture was applied, allow the machine to re-calibrate.
'So you're a spy?' He said.
'I guess so. Not a very good one.'
The needles flickered, but the result was inconclusive. It sometimes happened.
Mancini studied her manicured eyebrows. 'Who was the black Major? The one from last night?'
Her forehead wrinkled.
'Answer the question. Who was the black Major?'
'Major Johnson.'
True. Good, Mancini thought.
Thi continued: 'That's all I know.'
The needles spiked. Lie, he thought. Interesting. 'Do you know Amai Nguyen?'
'No.'
The chart recorder indicated another lie.
Mancini put his hand on Thi's stomach and felt her abdominal muscles bunching beneath the skin. 'Who is your handler?'
'I don't understand.'
He turned to the polygraph and took his hand off her skin. The machine confirmed her dishonesty. He wanted to touch her again.
Concentrate. 'Who do you report to?' . . . 'Who do you report to?'
'A man,' she said. 'Nguyen Tan Dat.'
Inconclusive, he thought. Fuck.
Mancini knew what he had to do and his skin prickled as the adrenaline entered his blood.
'Miss Nang,' he said. 'We warned you. We told you that if you lied - you would suffer.'
* * *
Thi saw Mancini nod to Albertez.
It had taken all of her courage to lie, and now she was so scared that she began to hyperventilate.
Mancini said: 'Do it Alby.'
The one called Albertez lifted something heavy from the floor.
She saw a metal spout. Cold water hit her face, soaking the muslin cloth. Albertez' thick, hairy arms bunched as he raised the can higher. Water splashed over her face and down her neck. She felt it soak through her bra and realized that it would be see-through.