“What does that mean? Were?”
“The President got overruled is all. We got other orders.”
“From who, for Christ’s sakes? He’s the damn commander in chief. What the hell are you talking about?”
“From the agency.”
“The CIA?”
“Kind of.”
“Kind of?”
“It’s an agency of the agency. They think it would be better if we just kill Ho Chi Minh. And they were pretty damn persuasive. The President’s too far into the bog, they said. Way too far.”
“Jesus, Gearheardt,” I said, hanging my head and trying to think, “this is worse than I thought. Too far into the bog? Are you nuts? Who are these guys?”
“Jack, guys like that don’t tell you who they are. They couldn’t be guys like that then, could they?”
My hands were shaking. The only guy in Hanoi that I could kill to stop any kind of madness was sitting beside me.
“Why didn’t you tell me all this before? You knew I wouldn’t be a part of all this crap, didn’t you?”
“To tell the truth, I felt that you’re the kind of guy that would do what had to be done. Like me. You’re a loyal man. A good Marine even if no one in the squadron likes you. It’s because you’re a good guy.”
He put his hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze.
“No, I didn’t tell you everything just for that reason, Jack. I knew that if we fucked up and this went bad, they’d be ripping our nuts off and feeding them to us. They can break anybody, Jack, and if you broke and told the real story just to save your nuts, I knew you’d feel bad about it. I know you, Jack.” He squeezed my shoulder again and then dropped his hand. He stood up.
I looked up at him. He didn’t look at all like a raving lunatic.
“What’s all this about, Gearheardt? I’ll do what I have to do, but just tell me what all of this is about.” I was resigned and calm. I wished I was a raving lunatic.
Gearheardt went to the door and rested his hand on the doorknob. He turned, sighed, and bit his lower lip while he looked at me. Then he said, “Beer, Jack. It’s about who hauls the beer.”
An hour later we were ushered into the office of Ho Chi Minh. The fix must have been in for sure. Gon had picked us up and deposited us without challenge at the entrance to a prewar, two-story French villa with a tile roof that had been red before decades of dirt, soot, and fungus had despoiled it. Shutters hanging loosely from the windows were thrown open, and had they been painted would have given the building a friendly, country look.
The office, in the front of the building on the second floor, was empty. It was large and filled with souvenirs from Paris and various Southeast Asian battlefields. A cheap plank desk almost eight feet long was at the center of the room, and behind it sat a rocking chair.
I sat in one of the hard-back chairs in front of the desk but Gearheardt wandered the room, peering closely at the photos and memorabilia.
“Look at this, Jack, Ho on a pony. Ho with a dog. Here’s a diploma from LaSalle Law School. Isn’t that that correspondence thing?”
He continued along the wall and to the trophy cases.
“Can you believe this, Jack? This trophy is from the goddamned Hanoi Rotary. Ho Chi Minh, First Place, Dien Bien Phu, May 1954. Wasn’t that where the Viets beat the hell out of the French? They give trophies for that kind of shit? Look at all these books in French.”
“He went to school in France, Gearheardt. He worked as a waiter or something before he came back here and—”
“And started all this trouble.” Gearheardt sat down beside me.
“I doubt if he looks at it that way.” I leaned closer to him. “Gearheardt, do we just start blasting away when he comes in or what? I’m a little new at this shooting-dictators thing, you know.”
“No time for that sarcastic attitude, Jack. But no. Follow my lead. We try to negotiate a deal along the lines the President briefed me on. When we back him into a corner, we blow his fucking brains out.”
“Why bother with the negotiating for God’s sake?”
“History, Jack. History.” Gearheardt smiled as if he had explained something. “And this way we’re kind of doing what the President and CIA each want. Kind of.”
Gearheardt looked sheepish, and I wasn’t sure he believed it.
“And remember, we’ve got to get that Giap guy in here too. Ho Chi won’t make a move without consulting with Giap. So that’s how we get them both in the room.”
The door opened suddenly behind us, and a small, goatish man walked briskly into the room. The door shut behind him. Gearheardt and I rose to our feet as Ho Chi Minh made himself comfortable behind his desk and began rocking slowly back and forth, looking from Gearheardt to me and then back to Gearheardt. He was wearing huge baggy shorts topped by a ratty T-shirt with a stretched-out neck. On the front in faded letters it read LA MORT AUX GRENOUILLES. His thin hair matched the famous wispy goatee.
“Be seat, genermen,” he said with a dismissive tone. He began thumbing through a stack of papers on his desk. Occasionally he would mutter to himself, wad up a document, and toss it to the floor. The room began to get hot even though a three-bladed ceiling fan turned slowly overhead. Gearheardt rose and walked to the windows behind us. He grasped the latch and began to push.
“Leave shut,” Ho Chi Minh said without looking up from his paperwork. As Gearheardt sat back down, Ho Chi Minh opened a desk drawer and took out an abacus. He moved the discs back and forth with hypnotic precision until Gearheardt began tapping his shoe lightly on the wooden floor. I glanced over at him and caught his eye. I shook my head slowly. Gearheardt grimaced but said nothing.
Ho Chi Minh took a pencil from a coffee cup on the credenza behind him, opened a ledger, and began laboriously to enter numbers in columns. Trying to read upside down, I could only make out the headings, a North Vietnamese flag and an American flag. The North Vietnamese flag was ahead by a large margin. He began muttering to himself again and threw down the pencil in evident disgust. Then he leaned back in his chair and began his slow rock again, looking at first one then the other of us but saying nothing.
“Mr. Minh—” Gearheardt began.
“Ho.”
“Yes, Ho, Mr. Minh. I think that you know—”
“Mr. Ho. Not Mr. Minh.”
“Fine, Mr. Ho then. My President has asked Captain Armstrong and I—”
“How many my men you kill, Captain?”
Gearheardt stopped and looked at the old man. Then he smiled and I knew I should kick him but I didn’t.
“Not nearly enough, Mr. Ho,” Gearheardt said. “But we have plenty of ammunition left.”
“That military secret, Captain. You give enemy military secret very quick.” Now the old man smiled.
After a moment Gearheardt shrugged and held out his hands palms up. “You are too shrewd for me, Mr. Ho. You tricked me.”
“Can bullshit, Captain. Lay out brass tacks. What the offer?”
I was beginning to notice that although the Communist leader was relaxed, he kept looking over our shoulders toward the door as if expecting someone. I felt the hair on the back of my neck begin to tickle.
“Okay, Mr. Ho,” Gearheardt scooted his chair to the edge of the desk, “first the syndication. No deal. No Wall Street firm is willing to put North Vietnam into a limited partnership and make you the general partner. Won’t work, end of story.”
“Racist pigs,” Ho Chi Minh said without real rancor.
“Yes, well, thirty billion dollars is a lot of money. I don’t think race had anything to do with it.”
The phone rang, and Ho Chi Minh turned to his credenza and lifted the heavy black instrument and put it to his ear. The receiver looked like it weighed about five pounds. After listening a moment, Ho Chi Minh began a rapid, singsong diatribe into the mouthpiece.
Gearheardt leaned toward me and I turned my ear to his whisper.
“Five Street firms offered a firm underwriting at th
at price, but the President vetoed the whole thing,” he said. “Wall Street would lick a dog’s dick to get these fees, but the President said ixnay.”
I settled back in my chair wondering how Gearheardt suddenly had become a financial genius. If a pig had flown out of his nose I couldn’t have been more surprised.
The phone was slammed down, and Ho Chi Minh swung his rocking chair back around. His face said that the phone call hadn’t been good news. He opened the ledger and angrily wrote another number in the Vietnamese flag column then slammed the book shut.
“So, no syndication. What offer?” he asked.
“You got the girl, right? Barbonella, you got her. The President didn’t let you down on that one, right?”
“Ha! You think Ho Chi Minh give up country for pussy?”
“Lots of guys have.” Gearheardt looked to me for support of that position. I shrugged.
“Bullshit. What offer you?”
“Okay, but you got the girl. And the rest of the list is yours too. Complete set of Barbie dolls, with clothes and the Ken doll.” Gearheardt looked up from the list he had taken from his pocket. “Guess that’s for the niece, huh?” He smiled.
Ho looked out the window and blushed.
Gearheardt continued. “Molokai, okay. The five percent thirtyyear fixed on the penthouse condo, okay. The—”
“Not Molokai. Molokai home for leper people. Want Maui or no deal.”
“I am not authorized to make that trade, Mr. Ho. I can tell you that Lanai is a possibility, but Maui could be a deal killer.” Gearheardt stopped and fixed his gaze into the eyes of his opponent in the best tradition of a car salesman. I expected him to say he needed to check with the manager next. But the Communist dropped his gaze first.
“Lanai, okay,” he said as if it wasn’t important. He waved his hand “go on.”
“Bank of America card, okay. Like I said, you got the whole list. But there is one last item that the President insists upon. You have to—”
The door slammed open against the wall, and a blast of angry Vietnamese came through it. Gearheardt and I both jumped up, and even Ho Chi Minh seemed startled. The shouting came from five feet of North Vietnamese general. He stopped when he saw Gearheardt and me and pulled out an enormous revolver. He began waving it around, all the while shouting, his face contorted and full of rancor.
Ho Chi Minh rose slowly from his chair and sighed.
“Genermen,” he said, “I present number one hero of Vietnam. Generer Giap.”
Ho came around the desk, pushing the gun down toward the floor. He put his arm around the general and led him from the room, talking softly but firmly.
When the door closed I let out my breath and sank back into my chair.
“Holy shit, Gearheardt. What the hell is going on? Unless that pipsqueak queers the deal, we’ve made a bargain. I assume that he is agreeing to stop the war. We gave him every damn thing he asked for.”
Gearheardt smiled and held out his list. I knew that smile, and my short-lived hopes sank. Taking the paper I turned to the back page. I read the last item and looked up at my still-grinning friend. “He’ll never agree to this. It’s disgusting. It’s—it’s … obscene. Who thought of this? Your ‘guys,’ I’ll bet. They want us to have to kill him, don’t they?”
“I told you they did, Jack. But I want to see the look on his face when I tell him this is what the President demands. It’s symbolic don’t you see?”
But when Ho Chi Minh returned with a calmed-down Giap, we didn’t get the chance to tell Ho Chi Minh that the President wanted him to agree to anal intercourse with Mickey Mouse in front of Sleeping Beauty’s castle on the Fourth of July.
Ho Chi Minh led the quiet but seething Giap to a chair and then returned to his rocker. He picked up a small bell, and its ring was answered almost immediately by a bowing waiter bearing a tray of tea and cups before him.
When we all were served, Ho Chi Minh held his cup toward Gearheardt and me and offered a toast. “Here to you, Marine. You gave gallant battle. Now you must be generous in defeat.” He sipped his tea.
I saw that Gearheardt had not taken his cup to his lip. “Well, to be perfectly honest, Mr. Ho, the U.S. has not lost this war. Don’t mistake our being here with—”
“You are finish! Your men all die!” Giap was on his feet again, the teacup dropping to the floor, his arm extended toward Gearheardt, pointing a finger in his face. “John Wayne love duck! Bomb all day hospiter never mind! You are finish!”
Ho Chi Minh made gentle shushing noises and gestured Giap back into his chair. He spoke to him quietly in Vietnamese.
Out of the corner of his mouth Gearheardt said, “John Wayne love duck? What the hell is that supposed to mean? This guy’s a raving asshole.”
“No asshole, Captain,” Ho Chi Minh said reprovingly. “Very brave generer, number one Vietnam hero.”
The room was quiet for a moment with no one taking the initiative to begin conversation. Finally Gearheardt spoke. “So where were we, Mr. Ho? If we agree to the terms that we have dis—”
But Ho shook his head and tilted it slightly toward Giap, who was playing with his pistol, opening the chamber and then jerking it so that the cylinder clicked closed again, and muttering to himself. I assumed, and hoped that Gearheardt did also, that Giap was not in on the deal that Ho Chi Minh was committing to.
“Yes, Mr. Ho, I see your point. There is one other item that I need to relay to you, but we can cover that later. Perhaps we can schedule a meeting this afternoon. If that would be convenient.”
Ho Chi Minh sat forward and put his elbows on his desk. “Yes, Captain, I sure that is arranged. There is no deal”—he glanced over at Giap, whose eyes were darting suspiciously from one face to another—“but I thank Captain for bringing proposal from President.” Ho Chi Minh sighed. “We must continue killing now. It must be freedom in all Vietnam.”
“FREEDOM FROM ALL FOREIGN COUNTRY!” Giap leapt to his feet again and waved his pistol wildly. Gearheardt and I both started and shrank back.
“I have beaten Japan people! I have beaten French people! I beat now American people!” He paced back and forth in front of us. I glanced at Ho Chi Minh, who rolled his eyes and shrugged.
Giap launched into a new tirade in what I took to be French. Although I could not understand many words, it seemed that he was more comfortable in that language. After a few minutes, he stopped abruptly and looked at Gearheardt. “Parlez-vous français?”
“No speakee,” Gearheardt said.
This set Giap off again, back in his fractured English.
“John Wayne number ten. Our battalion kill all! Dien Bien Phu come now again! You bomb, bomb, bomb, we scare no! Brave Viet people die many times. Ten thousand die, we fight, ten million die, we fight!” He sat back down and straightened the tunic of his dark olive uniform. He held his jaw firm and glowered at Gearheardt, who looked back to Ho Chi Minh.
“Mr. Ho, I don’t need to remind you that the U.S. has the finest military and equipment in the world. We haven’t even started to really fight. I’m sure that our leaders are prepared to do whatever it takes to win this war. But it is our—”
Napoleon was on his feet again. “Leaders shit! No strategy. Vietnam have big strategy.” He took a step toward Gearheardt, who did not flinch even when Giap reached inside his tunic and withdrew a book and shoved it in his face. “Wesmorlan, shit strategy. I read book. Shit strategy!”
He slammed the book on the desk and sat back down. A trickle of sweat rolled down his brow.
The pages of the beaten paperback rippled in the slight breeze from the overhead fan. The book was Catch-22.
“Mr. Ho, what I was trying to say was—” Gearheardt began.
“No give damn what you say!” Giap was on his feet again. “U.S. beaten! Viet—”
“Would you shut the fuck up!” Now Gearheardt was on his feet. He squared off with the little fireball, who pulled his giant pistol out and pointed it at Gearheardt’s nose.<
br />
Gearheardt pulled his .357 and stuck it in Giap’s nose. I jumped to my feet and pulled out my PPK. I wanted to point it at my temple and just pull the trigger, but I felt like I needed to support Gearheardt. The three of us stood grim-faced in front of Ho Chi Minh’s desk. My arm was shaking.
Ho Chi Minh gave his tea one last slurp, set the cup lightly on the saucer, and rose to his feet.
“So, gennermen,” he said softly, “shall we now finish meeting? No more meeting today. Tonight we will go to dinner and talk.”
“Capital idea, gentlemen. Capital idea. Sorry we’re late.” It was Whiffenpoof, who strode confidently into the room with Butty beside him. Ho Chi Minh’s face lit up. He wiped his mustache again and came around the desk. He shook hands absently with Whiffenpoof and kissed Butty on the cheek. He began whispering in her ear.
“What’s all this?” Whiffenpoof said, seeming to notice for the first time that three of us were standing in the room pointing guns at one another. “Some sort of misunderstanding, it appears. General Giap, pleasure to see you sir. I see you’ve met Captains Gearheardt and Armstrong. Sorry I’m so bloody late. Try finding a 36C bra in Hanoi sometime. What say we put away our weapons for a moment and make plans for this evening? There, that’s capital. Capital.”
I exhaled and heard Giap do the same. Gearheardt didn’t seem at all perturbed as he holstered his .357. He continued looking at Giap.
Ho Chi Minh had disappeared with Butty. I heard her laughter from the hall. Giap said something in French to Whiffenpoof, who looked over at Gearheardt and me and then replied to Giap in French. Giap snorted with disdain, put his pistol away, picked up his book from the desk and started to the door, bumping Gearheardt with his shoulder as he passed.
“Tonight, genermen. We see who is soldier first time.” He left.
“Talk about a complex,” Gearheardt said. “Fucking Hitler. Willing to lose ten million men to save his sorry-ass country.” He snorted with similar disdain.
Whiffenpoof rubbed his hands together like a maître d’. “Let me see you to your quarters then, gentlemen. You can rest up a bit and then we’ll reconvene this evening. On the town with Ho Chi Minh is quite an event, I will warn you.” He laughed and took Gearheardt’s arm and moved him toward the door. I heard him ask softly, “Did you discuss the beer situation?”
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