Hour of the Assassins

by Andrew Kaplan

  Touched, he put his hand to her cheek and said softly, “You know that before the monsoon ends, I’ll have to go back to the war.”

  “I know, lord.”

  “And don’t call me lord,” he shouted. “You’re a free woman.”

  “Yes, lord,” she cried happily, hugging him tightly.

  They made love throughout the long rainy afternoon. Although she lacked the languorous sensuality of the Lao women, her body heaved against his with a dark and primitive intensity. Drowsy with lovemaking and the rain, he fell asleep. Some sound, something woke him suddenly. He grabbed his .45 automatic and stealthily got out of bed. As Lim began to stir, he crept to the door, threw it open, and found himself aiming at a ten-year-old girl sitting motionless under the eaves of the hut. Although her face was without expression, Caine remembered thinking that she was the most beautiful child he had ever seen. She didn’t look at him, but continued staring into the rain. He scooped her up in his left arm and brought her into the hut. Lim was awake, her eyes wide with fear.

  “Who is this?” he demanded angrily.

  “My daughter, lord. I was afraid to tell you”—her voice trembling.

  “Then tell me now. What’s the matter with her?”

  “She has a great sadness. Her three souls have been stolen by evil tlan and have left her body behind.”

  “Fine. Now tell me what happened to her,” his eyes blazing.

  “I cannot,” she sobbed. “It is a great shame for me.”

  It was Dao who finally told him about it at dinner the next day. Lim had roasted a chicken, and as protocol demanded, Caine offered the head to Dao. Dao crunched noisily and sucked out the brain before he finally answered.

  “The child has lost her mind. There is nothing to be done, Tan Caine.”

  “Damn it, I want to know what happened,” Caine said, his voice soft and cold.

  “Why?” Dao demanded. “It will not make you any happier to know.”

  “What are you afraid of, Dao?”—his voice challenging, mocking.

  “Lim and the child were in Muong Ngom. She is such a pretty child, that was the problem.”

  “So what?” Caine put in.

  “Muong Ngom was one of our villages. The Pathet Lao held it for over three months until we pushed them out. Some officer must have taken a fancy to her. For three months she was kept naked in a small cage for the use of all the troops. She was raped hundreds of times in the most brutal fashion. You see,” he sighed. “There is nothing to be done.”

  “Where are the guerrillas who occupied Muong Ngom now?”

  “We think they’ve moved north, near Nong Het.”

  “Well, there’s still some killing to be done,” Caine said quietly.

  “There are NVA in that area as well. It’s too dangerous. And besides, that won’t help the girl. Nothing will, except perhaps death.”

  “We won’t be doing it for the girl. We’ll be doing it for ourselves,” Caine replied.

  As it turned out, it took them over a year of fighting before they reached Nong Het. Lim was pregnant then, with a son, she assured Caine proudly. And so that the son-to-be would be strong, she continued to labor in the poppy fields despite Caine’s objections. Throughout the long hot days the women worked in the fields that were bright red patches in the sun, like splashes of blood on the green hills, harvesting the opium for shipment to the heroin factories in Vientiane, Bangkok, and Saigon.

  That last night Caine came back to his hut from the radio shack to find Chong playing his khene, his thin oriental face almost drowsy, like that of an opium smoker. Caine had just been arguing with Cunningham, demanding a flight of B-52’s from Thailand to hit Nong Het once the trap was sprung. The plan itself was quite simple. Chong would take Nong Het with a Meo company and, acting as bait, would draw the Pathet Lao into an attack on the village, while Caine and Dao would take the rest of the Meo force and seal the valley. Chong would dig in and the bombers would then saturate-bomb the valley, leaving Caine and Dao to move in and mop up. Caine also wanted some bombing in the neighborhood of the camp in order to protect their base, which would be defenseless once he moved out. Cunningham, of course, was furious.

  “Damn it, Caine. How in hell am I supposed to get you a flight of bombers when officially we don’t exist in Laos?”

  “The flight is checked out for a strike in Nam. They just hit the wrong target Accidents happen all the time in war,” he said.

  “No go, buddy. You’re not only exceeding orders, you’re blowing us wide open.”

  “Bullshit, Cunningham. Stupidity is being unable to do anything other than follow orders,” he had retorted angrily. “Fuck orders, because I’m going in and unless you support me, the Meo force will cease to exist.”

  He went back to his hut confident that Cunningham would come through. People will do anything in the name of military expediency. The one great advantage they had in Laos was that officially they didn’t exist. Cunningham more than anyone else should appreciate that, he thought. Not like those poor bastards in Nam who had politicians running the army, fucking things up all the way down to the company level. When he got back to the hut, he was disquieted by Chong’s fatalistic calm.

  “You’re sure you’ll be able to handle it, Uncle Chong? We only have this one chance to trap them,” he said as Chong finished playing. In the corner Lim’s daughter sat like an icon, staring into the fire. Her eyes were flames, the only thing about her that was alive.

  “Rest easy, Tan Caine. You will lead us to victory as you have before. We will destroy all of them, God help them.”

  How can Chong not hate them, he wondered. He remembered the time Chong had straightened the contorted limbs of a guerrilla they had killed in an ambush, so that his soul would rest more comfortably.

  “Leave him alone,” Dao demanded angrily. “He was a Communist.”

  “He was a man,” Chong had answered simply.

  But it was Dao who had been right, Caine thought. Compassion was weakness. Perhaps it was compassion that had made Chong hesitate that fraction of a second and led to his being captured. Death is nothing; it’s dying that is so hard, he decided. And Chong’s calm. He couldn’t understand that either. Perhaps he’d had a premonition. Lim had a premonition and it made her anything but calm. He’d awakened in the middle of the night to find her trying to stifle her sobbing so as not to disturb him.

  “I’m so afraid,” the words bursting out of her. “When you are gone, who will look after us? Who will protect your son?”

  He cradled her in his arms as though she were a child, gently stroking her long black hair. What the hell, he thought. What the hell.

  “Perhaps you’ll find another man, who will give you a dozen sons,” he teased.

  She shook her head wildly. “I’m yours forever,” she cried desperately.

  “Only death is forever,” he said.

  Nowhere in the record of propaganda called history will one find any mention of the battle of Nong Het. The Communists never talked about their defeat, the Laotians publicly ignored it, and the Americans officially weren’t involved. Sure, Caine thought. Tell that to Chong and the thousands who filled that valley with the stench of death. More than anything, he remembered the stench of blackened corpses when they finally took the village.

  He had found Chong’s naked body tied to a stake at the edge of the village, recognizable only by the necklace around his neck. The flesh below his knees had been beaten off with bicycle chains and bones gleaming white in the sun were all that was left of his legs. They had gouged out his eyes and cut off his ears, nose, lips, and genitals. The wounds were black with maggots and fat swarming flies. With a shudder, he cut Chong down and forced himself to straighten the limbs as Chong himself had done.

  Lynhiavu came up to him, smiling, proudly holding up a severed head for Caine’s approval. The dusty street was full of bodies and by the thorn fence dozens of bodies were piled in a loose tangle. Sporadic fire and grenade explosions still echo
ed in the remorseless heat as the mopping up went on.

  “There are many prisoners in the big hut, Tan Caine. What should we do with them?” Lynhiavu asked, grinning.

  “Don’t waste ammunition,” Caine replied tonelessly. “Secure the hut and set fire to it.”

  He was damp with sweat as he got out of bed to get another cigarette, lighting it from the still burning butt in his mouth. A gray misty dawn was breaking over the beach. He noted with satisfaction that his hand wasn’t trembling as he lit up. When he turned around, he found that C.J. was awake. She regarded him seriously, a vague concern mirrored in her soft blue eyes.

  “You smoke too much,” she said quietly.

  He found that wildly funny and let out a short harsh laugh. Nobody in Indochina ever figured that they’d live long enough to get cancer. What do they know anyway, he thought. He remembered telling the psychologist during his exit interview in Langley that he didn’t want to burn down any more huts with screaming gooks inside.

  “What else is bothering you?” the psychologist had asked, as if that wasn’t enough.

  If they couldn’t understand that, how would they understand how he found Lim when he returned to base? The camp had been hit by a cluster bomb and most of her body was a festering blob of flesh and insects, indentifiable only by her plastic shower shoes. The stench was indescribable and he was retching with the salt taste of tears and sweat on his lips. Nothing was left of the little girl’s body, except for a few tatters of rags and charred bones, and all he kept thinking was, we did it. It wasn’t just the gooks or Charley, it was us, and he knew that he had to quit.

  “I’ve been thinking about you while I was asleep,” C.J. brought out tentatively. She patted the bed for him to sit beside her and then she began stroking his arm.

  “You were in Vietnam, weren’t you?” she asked.

  “Yes, sort of.”

  “Did you ever kill anybody?”

  “That’s what war is all about, isn’t it?” he snapped.

  “What’s it like to kill someone?”

  That question always fascinated women, he thought. Maybe it’s a turn-on for them. Maybe that’s what war is all about, a turn-on for the spectators.

  “It’s easy,” he said.

  “God, sometimes you scare me.”

  He leaned over and kissed her brutally, his hands pressing her into the mattress, his tongue thrusting deep into her mouth. At first she responded, then she twisted away desperately, terrified at the sudden power and sheer savagery of his body. Abruptly he shoved her away and took a drag from his cigarette, his eyes bright and cold as green ice.

  “How long have you been back?” she asked, surprising him. He hadn’t given her credit for being so perceptive and tough-minded.

  “It’s been a while,” he said, and suddenly tired, he lay back on the pillow and watched the smoke rise to the ceiling.

  She thought a long time, then put her fingers hesitantly to his cheek.

  “No,” she said softly, sadly. “You never came back.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Everything is for sale in Las Vegas. That’s probably true in most cities, but nowhere does money talk more loudly and openly than in Vegas. In its own way Vegas is the unique embodiment of the American dream carved in concrete, neon, and white stucco. It is the Babylon of the middle class, the Monte Carlo for salesmen and secretaries, the one place in America where the term working girl means prostitute and where you can indulge in any sin, so long as you pay for it in cash.

  Even before the Paiute Indians came, the sixteenth-century Spaniards, who were building the Spanish Trail between Sante Fe and the Camino Real, had discovered the fertile valley. Ringed by harsh treeless mountains, the valley was an oasis of grass fields fed by natural springs, and so the Spanish called their settlement Las Vegas, meaning “The Meadows.” But if Vegas got its name from the Spanish, it got its character from Bugsy Siegel, a gangster of the forties, who understood, perhaps better than anyone else, that what Americans really wanted was a gaudy cut-rate merry-go-round where everyone gets a crack at the brass ring and where even the losers can pay for their sins on the installment plan. And that was why Caine had come to Vegas. There were things he had to buy and it would be easier in a town where money is as sacred as the name of God to an orthodox Jew.

  Or at least so Caine thought in the taxi from McCarran International Airport to the Strip. The taxi turned into the circular drive around a huge fountain display and pulled up to the main entrance of Caesars Palace. As the driver got Caine’s suitcase out of the trunk, he said, “There it is, pal. The biggest Italian car wash in town,” gesturing at the fountains spraying water at least a hundred feet into the air. Caine smiled appreciatively, but his eyes behind his sunglasses were not smiling. The tail in the brown sports jacket he had first spotted at LAX was still with him. He registered under the name Charles Hillary, the identity he had picked up in Hollywood the previous night. The long-haired bellboy, who looked like a college student except for his cynical expression and knowing eyes, took Caine’s suitcase up to the twelfth floor. Caine barely glanced at the plaster Roman statues set in niches along the corridor as he followed the bellboy to his room. After the bellboy had put away the suitcase and fussed about the lavish suite a bit, Caine gave him a five-dollar tip—adequate in case he wanted to buy a little something extra later, but not enough to make the boy remember him—and locked the door as soon as he was alone.

  He lit a cigarette and sat down in the large easy chair opposite the bed. The room was opulently furnished, with oversized furniture on an ankle-deep gold carpet. The living area was separated by arched dividers from the bed that stood on a raised platform with steps. Caine walked over to the window and looked down at the city. The hotels and golf courses were spread out below him like the toys of a giant. He turned away and looked at the immense raised bed again and grinned. The place was a standing invitation to debauchery.

  Then his brow furrowed. He would have to flush the tail and find out who was after him and why. But he could take care of that later. He only planned to be in Vegas for a couple of days, so the Hillary cover should hold. But it was annoying that he had to worry about his cover so soon. After all, he had just acquired it a few hours ago.

  The first thing C.J. had done yesterday morning was to take a snort of coke and go down on him. Then she straddled him, her sea-blue eyes fastened on his like a leech, as they bucked and heaved in a sweaty tangle. For the first time, he was truly aware of her, not of her body but of her, and he groaned as he came into her. Afterward she tenderly nuzzled his neck and ear.

  “It was better this time,” she said.

  “Much.”

  “Karl said you have to leave. Will you be coming back?” she asked, and wouldn’t look at him.

  “I’ll be back,” he said and wondered if it was true. She smiled and snuggled against his shoulder.

  After a leisurely brunch at Alice’s on the Malibu pier C.J. had dropped him off at the airport. But instead of heading straight to Vegas, as he had indicated to Wasserman, he had doubled back and rented a car. He drove the freeways to Hollywood and checked into a cheap motel on Highland Avenue. He spent the rest of the day in his room, except for brief excursions to a stamp shop, a stationery store, and finally a costume store on Sunset, where he bought a curly black wig, a mustache, and a red silk shirt. On his way back to the motel he stopped at a photographer’s studio and had half-a-dozen passport photos made, paying extra for immediate development.

  Back in his room he wrote himself a meaningless business letter filled with buy-and-sell agricultural commodity quotations taken from The Wall Street Journal. He carefully glued the Mauritius one-penny stamp to the envelope and, next to it, two other canceled Mauritian stamps that had come in a two-dollar packet from the stamp store. He wrote a return address on the envelope from a nonexistent Mauritian company, but left the name of the addressee blank, since he didn’t know what cover name he would be using. Then he burned the remaini
ng stamps. He also burned the hundred-dollar bill that Wasserman had first sent him, using it to light a cigarette. He knew it was childish, but it was something he had always wanted to do, and besides, he had to destroy the bill in any case, since it had Wasserman’s number on it and was the only physical link connecting them. The last thing he did before taking a nap was to ring the desk and instruct them to call him at 8:00 P.M.

  He met Charles Hillary at the Peacock Lounge on Hollywood Boulevard, the second gay bar he had hit that evening. Hillary was just what he was looking for. He was the same height as Caine, although thinner, with wavy blond hair and fine even features. He squinted slightly, which indicated that he might be nearsighted, and he wore lipstick and just a touch of eye makeup. He would play the “fem” to Caine’s “butch,” and was probably used to a passive role, so he shouldn’t be much trouble, Caine deckled. After a few drinks, during which Hillary ran his fingers admiringly up Caine’s arm, shivering slightly at the feel of the silk and the hard muscles underneath the shirt, they agreed that the noisy atmosphere of the bar, the queens screeching in noisy voices and cattily eyeing, each other, was terribly crude and they left arm in arm. As they walked out, Hillary threw a triumphant glance at his fluttering friends. He had a dark-haired Adonis, oozing machismo, on his arm. Hillary drove them to his nearby apartment and, when they got inside, excused himself so he could slip into something more comfortable.

  Hillary came out of the bedroom, wearing a flaming pink velvet robe and sat next to Caine on the couch. He nuzzled Caine’s neck, then ran his lips down the silk shirt and breathed warmly on Caine’s crotch. Caine spread his legs slightly and slid to the edge of the couch, as Hillary knelt before him and leaned forward. Suddenly, without any change in expression, Caine brought his knee up sharply into Hillary’s chin, snapping the head back. Hillary crumpled to the floor, moaning through his shattered teeth. The blood trickled from his mouth and seeped into the carpet. He had almost completely bitten through his tongue. Caine considered kicking him again in the jaw, but the moaning stopped. He knelt and felt the erratic pulse of the unconscious man and was warmed by a vague sense of relief. After all, he hadn’t wanted to kill the poor bastard. After a bit of searching, Caine found Hillary’s wallet in a pants hip pocket in the bedroom and quickly scanned the driver’s license and credit cards. He had been right. Hillary wore wire-rimmed glasses in the license photograph. He took the wallet and methodically rummaged through the apartment to make it look like an ordinary robbery. Not that he thought that Hillary would go to the police. Homosexuals usually avoided the police, from whom they could expect little sympathy. As he left the apartment, he heard Hillary beginning to groan. He quickly walked two blocks to Sunset. On the way he dropped the black wig-and mustache in an apartment house trash bin. He caught a taxi outside Schwab’s and took it to near where he had parked the car.