by Chuck Logan
Trin nodded. “They got ahead of me. But it was right you waited. They had to be caught transporting it away.”
“The house in Dong Ha, you were the woman,” said Broker.
“Correct, Mr. Broker, and I’m married to a real bastard who likes to take too many chances. He thinks he’s hot stuff, but he’s just a colonel in the border police.”
Trin smiled tightly. “Phil, meet Mai Linh, my wife.”
With flowering understanding, Broker inclined his head. He couldn’t shake. His hand was a mess. She nodded back. Then Trin conversed with her in rapid Vietnamese. She switched back to English. “You still insist on doing this thing?”
Trin nodded curtly. “Get them all out, except those two.” He pointed first to Bevode, then down the beach. Nina had cornered LaPorte, who stood waist-deep in the ocean. Soldiers closed in on him and motioned to him with their rifles. Trin turned to Mai Linh. “You can’t be here,” he said flatly.
“I don’t approve of this,” she insisted.
“You’re not going to see this. Go.” She turned and jogged toward the beach. She stopped at Blue Shirt’s body and spoke to two soldiers who were starting to drag it up the slope. One of them bent, got up, and sprinted back to where Trin and Broker stood. He handed Trin the gold tiger tooth. Trin closed his hand around it in a bloody fist and glared at Bevode Fret, who squirmed in the sand thirty feet away.
Then he turned and shouted at the snipers who popped from their holes and jogged down to join their comrades at the waterline.
A truck rumbled down through the dunes and most of the soldiers gathered up the dead, the wounded, and the prisoners and loaded them aboard. Trin’s wife joined them. The truck gunned back up the slope and out of sight.
“What was that scene at the house about in Dong Ha?” asked Broker.
“I wanted her personally to see you. She photographed you through the window. To be able to identify you if it came to this.”
“Who was the guy at the house with her that day?”
“Our driver. I’m a cop.” A thin smile crossed his mouth as he aped Pidgin English. “How you say—undercover.”
“You could have let me in on it.”
Trin shook his head. “You might have tipped them off.”
“Cut it kind of fine, didn’t you?”
“You’re the one who kept insisting we had to catch him loading it into the boat.” Then he glanced up and his face could have been a rock on Broker’s beach. In a tight group, Trung Si and the six cripples slogged up the beach toward them. “Don’t interfere, Phil,” Trin admonished.
Bevode Fret was situated between them and the approaching Viet Cong veterans. He began to scramble painfully toward Broker and Trin. He crawled over his whip and left it behind like a molted skin.
“Hey, Broker. Okay, man. I’m your prisoner…”
“Talk to the guy in charge,” said Broker.
Bevode’s eyes were brilliant yellow with pain. They swiveled to Trin. But Trin’s gaze was fixed ahead, behind him. Slowly Bevode turned his head and saw Trung Si pause, balance on his good foot, and use his crutch to scoop up the whip and toss it in the air. He caught the whip by the handle and let it uncoil in a nasty twitch.
“Okay, you caught me. Quit fuckin’ around,” said Bevode.
The cripples filed past Bevode and walked to a stack of loose ingots—the first ones Broker had tossed out. Wobbling on their artificial legs, they reached down and loaded their arms.
Trung Si tested the whip in the air.
Crack! The sound echoed away down the beach. It took all emotions except hate with it.
The lash whipped across Bevode’s legs. He shivered with an involuntary cringe and scuttled to escape. The cripples formed a gauntlet and funneled him toward the pit.
“Hey, knock it off!” Bevode’s eyes were indignant. Still no fear. No remorse. Not quite getting it. But then that’s where he got his dark energy: Not quite getting it.
Trung Si let the whip sway menacingly. Waiting. Broker saw Nina limping up the beach pushing LaPorte in front of her. A soldier had given her a pair of baggy fatigue trousers to cover her dirty underwear. She looked like Charlie Chaplin.
Two soldiers walked on either side, herding LaPorte with their AKs. Nina collared LaPorte by the scruff of the neck and pushed him to his knees in front of Broker and Trin. The soldiers stepped back.
“You’re a…soldier?” She stared at Trin’s pistol belt, numb, bewildered, definitely happy.
“He’s a fuckin’ cop,” said Broker. “Don’t ask me how.”
In the distance, the three helicopters, blocky Russian Hinds, circled the Lola.
Trin reached and roughly seized LaPorte by the ear. He nodded to Trung Si. The whip feinted left, circled, and snapped into Bevode’s face. Bevode bellowed, scrambled, and tumbled backward into the hole.
One of the cripples immediately drew back his arm and fired one of the heavy ingots. A howl of pain rose from the pit. “Cut that out!”
“Who are you? You can’t do this,” whispered LaPorte.
“I could shoot you right now for stealing Vietnamese antiquities; we take that very seriously,” said Trin without emotion. He kicked LaPorte and dragged him forward by the ear and tipped him forward over the pit.
The cripples now hobbled around the edge of the hole. Down below, Bevode had torn a piece of the rotted planking from the pallet. Instinct. Grasping a weapon. An ingot drew a glittering arc and smashed through the moldy wood. Bevode roared in pain and scrambled on his hands and one knee, scooting in a circuit of the pit, dragging his wounded leg. Taking their time, the cripples talked among themselves, altering their stances around the circumference of the hole.
Tiger in a pit came to mind. Other analogies would fit. Maybe it was the war. If Bevode could get his hands on them he could tear them apart. But then, they had position on him…
On a command they all hurled their missiles. One of the bars scored a solid hit on Bevode’s skull. At least two hit him in the arms and trunk. He fell forward roaring, smashing blindly with his fists. He gathered himself and attempted a staggering charge up the ramp. A volley of ingots chopped him to his knees. He was badly hurt now. Blinded. Parts not working. With the awkward jerky tempo of a squashed bug, he crept back into the hole and began to claw at the rotted wood. Digging. Trying to hide.
Trin yanked LaPorte to his feet. LaPorte came partway up, reluctant to rise to his full height. Knees bent, he stayed with his head below Trin’s.
“Run,” said Trin.
“Wait a minute,” protested Nina. Broker touched her arm. Shook his head, warned her off.
“Run,” repeated Trin. “You have money? Your passport?”
LaPorte hunched over, his wild pale eyes fixed on the pit where the cripples were taunting Bevode with feints, preparing to throw another volley.
“Go that way.” Trin pointed across the dunes. “Get to the road. Someone will run you into Hue for a few bucks. Then you can catch a plane. Go quick before I change my mind. Before they get here…” He yanked his head at the helicopters that still circled the boat.
A flurry at the pit. Another volley. Bevode’s impaired voice, “Come down here…try that, chickenshit lil’ fuck…”
One of the cripples held out his right hand. He didn’t have a left one. He bent his index finger back with his second finger into a crude oval. And Broker remembered that one too. Right up there with “Meeow.” Calling Bevode a pussy.
Trin pointed to the helicopters again.
“Office guys, Cyrus,” said Broker helpfully. “No sense of humor whatsoever.”
“He’s right,” said Trin. “When they get here it becomes official in a stuffy way. Right now I have some discretion.”
LaPorte’s eyes locked wide open. Flight. Trung Si snaked the whip across the sand and let it skitter, undulating next to LaPorte’s desert boots. The cripples hurled another shower of gold. LaPorte heard the broken wet squeal from the hole. He looked around once and bolted
, running in long strides across the sand. Some soldiers, who had stayed to picket the top of the slope, chased him, yelling insults. Laughing.
“You let him get away?” Nina’s voice was confused.
Trin smiled grimly. “If you find what you’re looking for down there, let the U.S. Army catch him when he gets back to America.” Softly, he added, “One last joke on Cyrus.”
Nina drew herself up. “You are really something, mister.”
Then, pitiless, they turned their attention back to the pit.
Bevode was losing a lot of blood from his face and scalp. One arm hung, smashed and useless. His crouch had deteriorated into a fetal curl. With his good hand he pawed through the punky wood and scooped feeble handfuls of sand.
“Jesus,” gasped Nina in a harsh release of emotion.
Bevode, blinded by blood, raised a shard of chalky bone in his functioning hand, trying to protect his face.
Trin snapped an order.
The cripples dropped the gold of Ming Mang and Trieu Tru and Gia Long and Tu Duc. Slowly they lurched and tottered and staggered down the sand ramp. They dragged Bevode to the side of the pit. Carefully, remorselessly, they pried the bone from his twitching hand and reverently placed it aside. Then they formed a semicircle and, arm-in-arm for stability, balancing on their artificial limbs, using their good legs, they kicked Bevode Fret to death.
77
AMERICAN ROCK-AND-ROLL DRIFTED DOWN THE beach from a portable radio that some of the troops played under the shade of a poncho liner. Four-wheel-drive vehicles were parked hubcap to hubcap along the edge of the dunes. Some of the fiercest old faces in the Politburo had arrived by chopper. They didn’t seem to mind the music.
A cooling sea breeze rippled through the camouflage silk of a parachute that had been strung between the rotors of the square Russian helicopters. Like half-time in the Roman arena, sand had been kicked over the pools of blood after Bevode’s carcass had been dragged away. Nina, Broker, and Trin sat in the shade on camp stools and waited. Army medics had cleaned their wounds. Now a doctor was coming.
Two young troopers in white gloves, with carved bronze faces and bayoneted assault rifles held at the ready, guarded a carefully stacked pile of ammo boxes. The loose gold ingots formed a solid cube on top. They had been carefully washed in the sea to expunge all traces of Bevode Fret. Apparently saltwater was the natural thing to spruce up gold. Broker tried to remember where he’d heard that before. Shook his head. It sure dazzled in the sun.
Older Vietnamese men in white shirts, straw hats, and gray trousers lingered near the gold. Ponderous Marxist-Leninist pressure ridges plowed their foreheads and they had lots of pens in their chest pockets. Very senior office guys, Commie type, figured Broker. Occasionally one of them would reach out with perverse pleasure and steal a touch at an ingot.
An orderly brought around a tray with chilled bottles of Huda beer. Trin reached for one. Then withdrew his hand. Broker, who took one, raised an eyebrow.
“I drink too much,” Trin admitted as the orderly returned with a cold can of Pepsi. Nina, who sat quietly between them, raised her hand to touch his shoulder. But her hand was raw hamburger waiting for the doctor and she lowered it. She pronounced his name fondly, “Trin,” and resumed her silence.
He gestured with the pop can. “See all these bigwigs? Most of them fought the war in offices.” He gestured down the beach to where Trung Si and his men sat in the dunes, in the sun. Poor country cousins. They had been given food, drink, and cigarettes. And had been moved down-wind. Trin exhaled. “I changed sides and, now, because of Mai Linh’s protection, I have status again. They won the war and they’re fucked. Everything’s rotten. So I drink.”
Broker and Nina offered no comment to the complicated and bitter observation.
Trin kicked at the sand and inclined his head at Nina. “Maybe the young people…” His voice trailed off.
In the shade of the parachute, an army doctor set up shop and muttered indignantly as he cleaned and bandaged torn hands and whip lacerations. First Nina’s, then Trin’s, then Broker’s. A sloe-eyed nurse with beautiful black Annamite hair swabbed Broker’s face with a cool scented towel. His thumb had gone on a rampage and conquered both his hands. They were a stiff study in gauze and adhesive tape.
He had been given a clean pair of Army fatigues. Extra, extra large. But he couldn’t put them on with his bandaged hands. Soldiers who had watched without expression as Bevode died now wore easy boyish smiles and helped him. Vietnamese are fastidiously clean people. They insisted that he wash in the ocean first.
They were given inoculations. Tetanus and vitamin boosters. A field kitchen had been set up. The nurse spooned hot pho—beef soup—and hand-fed Broker warm fragments of baguette, piece by fluffy piece. In rifts of wind change he caught a whiff of electronic circuits and radio crackle from the interior of the choppers. Trin and Broker were no longer the center of their adventure. The office guys had taken over. The office guys clustered around Nina.
She stood at the edge of the pit wearing a baggy pair of clean, olive-green Vietnamese army fatigues and a soft army cap. She had also bathed in the sea and washed her hair. A lot of Americans had arrived on the choppers. Some of them talked and postured to her nonstop. A few feet away, a husky black man in jeans and a Hawaiian shirt, who had the blue-collar aloof presence of a senior NCO, spoke in deliberate Vietnamese sentences. A Vietnamese officer listened patiently. A team of Americans and Vietnamese waited with boxes of equipment. Another American took a reading with a Global Positioning System.
Broker gathered that one of the Americans talking with Nina was from the State Department. Part of an advance team that was setting up the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi. The other was Department of Defense. A senior member of the MIA mission. More helicopters dotted the horizon. Words: “Should have been a combined effort. Phobic about security. A little too close to the edge if you ask me…”
Nina raised a hand, mittened in tape, in a feminine reflex, to touch her hair, to smooth it down to cover her deformed ear, which the doctor had scrupulously cleaned and left exposed. Too short. Stiffly she dropped the hand. After that she stood with her bandaged hands clasped behind her, listening. Appropriately austere and under control, her eyes never wandered toward the pit.
Broker asked Trin, “You put all this in motion?”
Trin nodded. “Right from the time you landed in Hanoi. Mr. Hai, the driver, was one of my men. The cyclo driver outside the villa in Hue, who took Virgil away, also my guy.” Trin knit his brows. “I made two big mistakes. I didn’t expect they’d be so bold as to grab Nina in Hanoi. And not putting security around the vets’ house. That cost a life.”
“You in trouble?”
“Probably not. Tot, the dead man, was just an ex-Viet Cong rifleman. Not a party member. He won’t cast a shadow in Hanoi.”
Broker clicked his teeth. “Fuckin’ office guys, look at them, crawling all over the place. They even brought their own kitchen.”
Trin smiled back. “I’ve been working this thing for years, since Jimmy sent Kevin Eichleay. Waiting to see who would come. But I didn’t really know what we had until we dug it up. Now they’ll get the credit.”
Broker grinned. “That whole story about the reeducation camps?”
“All true. I ate frogs, little goddamn birds,” Trin protested ruefully. “But…things changed. When the door opened to the West I was resurrected in slow stages. I had the language skills and the background to fit in with the tourist trade. And antiquities are being looted.” He shrugged. “And I was lucky. I had a sponsor in the party.”
“With a big letter A on her license plate,” said Broker.
Trin sighed and inclined his head. “She kept a lid on the operation. She kept them at arm’s length in Hanoi. She took charge of bringing in the force on the beach last night. Without her…” he shook his head, “catastrophe.”
Mai Linh stood in the crowd of dignitaries, at ease now in a tailored gray Hanoi power sui
t and sunglasses. With her arms folded, she chatted with Nina, who also had her arms folded across her chest. Broker recalled seeing female executives taking up those defensive stances talking to each other in American offices. Despite Nina’s bandages, she and Mai Linh shook hands. Nina resumed talking to the guys from State.
Mai Linh turned her head, lowered one lens of her sunglasses with a crooked finger, and winked at Trin. They exchanged curt sentences in Vietnamese. Then she walked away. “Great,” said Trin. “She has to go to Hanoi.”
Broker grinned. “I think you can afford the fare.”
“Shhh,” said Trin. “Let’s, ah, take a walk on the beach.”
They wandered away from the crowd around the helicopters and the pit. “Just checking,” said Broker. “Am I going to get arrested for stealing antiquities too?”
“I have a feeling my wife and I will need a sponsor in America in the near future,” said Trin from the side of his mouth. “If I don’t get killed by my own border guards sneaking thirteen crates of rare gold across the mountains into Laos. I don’t know exactly how to exchange it yet, but I’ll figure it out. Half and half.”
“Okay,” said Broker.
They started back toward the gathering. Nina came out, alone, to meet them. “Excuse me, Trin. Phil, would you walk with me?”
They went down the beach, away from the pit and the crates of gold and the blood drying under the sand.
“You know what happens now, what I get back there,” she said. He nodded. She took a deep breath. “I can’t cry,” she said. “Audie fucking Murphy wouldn’t cry.”
“Forget Audie fucking Murphy. You’re Nina fucking Pryce.”
“Aw shoot.” She threw her arms, bandaged hands and all, around his neck and burst into tears.
“Hey, knock it off, Jesus—hey, here, I have something that belongs to you,” he protested.
She sniffed and wiped her nose on her baggy sleeve. “Okay. I’m better now. What?”