A Dangerous Friend

by Ward Just

  The boy finished pouring water and then limped away, his heavy foot making a silky sound as he dragged it across the floor. Sydney wondered if the boy was in pain. He didn't look in pain.

  Don't drink the water; Ros said.

  I don't intend to, Sydney said. The boy—

  His name is Cao, Ros said.

  Maybe one of our medical specialists, Sydney began.

  Ask them, Ros said. They like unusual cases.

  I will.

  You'll have some trouble with the family. They like Cao the way he is. Cao panhandles our soldiers, earns more than his father. Cao's the only asset that family has, so he's worth something the way he is, and not worth much if he's just like everyone else. You dig, Syd? Don't look so surprised. They're only trying to get on, like most of us.

  When the waiter arrived, Rostok ordered beer for them both and noodle soup and cracked crab. He spoke in Vietnamese and the waiter replied in kind. Ros listened patiently while Sydney told him about Mai, the office manager who did not seem to understand English and was distant in other ways, though she could be excused given her experience with Dacy. The office was filthy, official papers scattered everywhere. Fortunately none of them bore a classification stamp. One of the filing cabinets was broken, apparently by a crowbar or rifle butt. The air conditioner in the bedroom was broken. The bathwater was lukewarm. The refrigerator leaked. And someone had drawn a moustache on LBJ's face, giving him the most uncanny resemblance to Dzugashvili in his youth. Sydney noticed Rostok's glower and began to laugh. He decided at that moment not to describe the photographs, Dacy and the girl in the helmet.

  So I didn't get what I was promised, Mr. Dicky, and now I want a plane ticket back to New York.

  Fuck you, Ros said.

  Did Dicey actually do any work?

  Rostok thought a moment, hand to mouth. There was a bridge out near Bien Hoa. Needed repair so Dicey saw to that. And then the VC blew it up and Dicey lost interest. Short attention span for a police officer. He was only here for six months, but that was about five months too long. Fair to say that he didn't get into the swing of things, at least the way we'd hoped.

  I know what you mean, Sydney said mildly. Still. Six months.

  We used to let people alone out here. Let them do their jobs, and if they had a problem to let us know and we'd try to fix it, and if we couldn't fix it we'd cover it up. That was back when we were lean and mean, everyone a serious volunteer and eager to take part. Then we got much bigger, budget and personnel both. Things got away from us, fair to say. So it took us a while to—figure Dicey Dacy out.

  That was it, one bridge?

  Civic action and reconstruction and development weren't Dicey's long suits, as we found out. He didn't understand the concept of nation-building, thought it was bullshit. He liked doing the accounts. Good at it, too. Dicey was a wizard with the adding machine. They loved him at headquarters because his paperwork was always complete and on time. You'll find the Tay Thanh accounts in excellent shape, simply excellent. There aren't a better set of books in all of Three Corps. He was even able to account for the bridge, the concrete and the iron.

  Sydney watched the boy scooping rice from a bowl. When he finished he put the bowl in front of him and looked tenderly at the waiter. In the shadows with the bowl the boy again resembled an animal.

  That was a barter arrangement with the Army Corps of Engineers, Rostok went on. Dicey knew someone over there. They got something they wanted in return for the iron. I didn't ask what it was because I didn't want to know. Ros craned his neck and slapped at a mosquito. Look, Syd, he said. Everyone liked Dacy. He was so pussy-struck. It was funny. He was just having a good time, away from Modesto and Mrs. Dacy and the kiddies. I think he'd never had any fun in his life. Then he began to drink and it wasn't so funny anymore because one night he hurt one of the girls, broke her arm. He didn't know how to drink. He was just a dumb small-town cop who knew a congressman. Someone took a shot at him one night and from then on he always carried a weapon. And that wasn't funny either because he was always drunk. He got to thinking he was entitled to something because he was a volunteer in a war zone. At the end he was begging for it from any girl who would give it to him.

  Was the girl badly hurt?

  Simple fracture. We paid her off. And her family.

  You know, Sydney said, Mai has a little gold Seiko.

  Not from Dacy, Ros said. Mai has a special friend.

  Mai has a history, then?

  Syd, for God's sake. She's a human being. Of course she has a history.

  Is the special friend one of theirs or one of ours?

  Here's our beer, Rostok said.

  Beer arrived and they both drank. There were two other tables of Vietnamese and a third of two Americans alone, speaking in conspiratorial whispers. One of the Americans moved the palms of his hands over the table as if he were summoning the Ouija spirits. Everyone was eating soup and cracked crab and drinking beer. Sydney remembered a quiet restaurant on the wharf at Mystic; that restaurant reminded him of this one, a place for locals only where everyone minded his own business. In the summer the windows were thrown open to the sea air, the Atlantic breeze as thick and used up as the inland air at Tay Thanh.

  Had your shots, Syd? Malaria, hepatitis, plague?

  Those and a few more. One other, I forget. Hurt like a bastard.

  Cholera.

  That was it.

  Never; ever drink the water under any circumstances.

  I know, Ros. And never drink Coke without checking for ground glass in the bottle.

  Where did you hear that?

  Washington. The briefing. They said kids ground up glass and put it in the Coke bottle and then resealed the cap. Bad news.

  It's bullshit, Ros said. The mamasan with the grenade in her underpants? That's bullshit, too. And the fifty-seven varieties of clap? That's bullshit.

  They mentioned the clap, too. They devoted an hour to the clap.

  They're idiots. They don't know anything so they invent stories, as you do with a child at bedtime, not knowing you're scaring him to death. Or maybe you do know. Anyhow, forget them. Just don't drink the water; and if you're making ice, use bottled.

  Aye, cap'n, Sydney said.

  I'm tired, Ros said. I'm as tired as I've ever been in my life, eleven hours of meetings today and there'll be eleven more tomorrow and the day after. And for the rest of the month, probably. You'll be in those with me from now on. And you keep your own counsel for a while, don't say a word until you get the feel of things. It won't take long. There's a special vocabulary you'll have to learn, god damned acronyms up the ying-yang. Fingerprints of our secret handshake, Syd. MACV, JUSPAO, USAID, ARVN, and the others, all used commonly. The one that isn't used commonly, except among ourselves, is CAS, Covert American Services. They don't use CIA in-country, and if anyone does use it the boys leave the room, like they were members of Skull and Bones. So you don't use CAS with journalists or the other tourists who arrive to judge things.

  Cass, Sydney said.

  That's it, Syd.

  Thanks for letting me know.

  Always at your service, Rostok said.

  You'll have to make your own way, he went on, just as I did. Except I'll be better with you than my master was with me. Because he thought I was undermining him. He thought I wanted his job.

  Llewellyn.

  Boyd Llewellyn, Rostok said.

  Sydney smiled. But you did want his job.

  And I got it, Rostok said. But I didn't undermine him to get it. I outthought him and outfought him. Boyd's paranoid like most superior bureaucrats. Stands to reason, the product's so intangible, it's hard to know who deserves credit for it, or blame if things go the wrong way. Boyd knows how to move paper. He moves paper as well as anyone alive and his fingerprints are never anywhere near the bad news. The bad news was my news. His news was the bridge that Dicey built. When the VC blew it up, that was my news. Then, before you knew it, Boyd was bye-bye, his year
was up and he was back home at headquarters telling everyone how fucked up things were, the effort going nowhere, not much money, so little experience, no direction. How none of us knew how to do our jobs and therefore we were caving in to the military, taking orders from majors when we should have been giving them to brigadier generals. And the solution was to strengthen the reporting procedures. Meaning tighter control in Washington. At God knows what cost in man-hours and distraction from the job at hand, nation-building and hearts and minds. Boyd wanted more paper to push. The more paper he was given, the more indispensable he would become.

  Not stupid, Boyd. Man's a Heifetz of the filing cabinet. You want to know the location of the IH Scout, serial number 9847192635h, Boyd could find the paper on it. He has a pretty good feel for the waste, too. The leakage. The medicine that never arrived, the bulgar rice that disappeared. The trucks hijacked at Saigon port. Boyd told Administration that it was only a matter of time before a committee of Congress got wind of things and then—we were all fucked. Televised hearings, witnesses under oath. So the wise thing to do was increase the paperwork, cover your ass in triplicate.

  Rostok sighed and leaned across the table. In the dull sideways light his features seemed haggard, dark circles under his sad eyes, his skin slack. He needed a haircut. He tapped his fingers together and began again.

  Meanwhile, we're trying to control the military. Keep the heavy war away from the civilians we're trying to protect. So we insist, No H-and-I at night. He looked at Sydney and gave the explanation. H-and-I means harassment-and-interdiction artillery fire. They load up the artillery and fire shells into the rain forest helter-skelter. It's like the lottery for a millionaire. They have plenty of shells and once in a while they're bound to hit something of value and in the meantime they're killing animals and an occasional civilian. And when they finish up they send someone around with the solatium payments, so much for a water buffalo, so much for a chicken coop, so much for granddad. They send teams around with satchels full of money. Each team has a lawyer because the peasants are shrewd. Granddad dies of a heart attack, everyone stands around weeping and wailing, accusing the Americans of murder. It's the lawyer's job to make certain that Uncle Sam isn't being shaken down. They've got quite a law firm over at MACV, bright lads skilled at interrogation. Naturally they depend heavily on their interpreters. Who are Vietnamese.

  Sydney looked up at the sound of thunder in the distance.

  Artillery, Rostok said. H-and-I.

  The soup and cracked crab arrived and Ros ordered two more bottles of beer. The thunder receded. One table of Vietnamese left and another arrived. The soup was good and the cracked crab very good. Sydney was struggling to orient himself; barely seventy-two hours before he had been saying his awkward good-byes to Missy in Comminges. He wondered what it was that had attracted the French to Indochina beyond plunder, unless it was only that. He had read somewhere that the central highlands were reminiscent of the foothills of the Pyrenees, if you could forget the elephants. Opium played some role, according to Malraux, who ought to have known. Probably the heat and the beauty of the women had something to do with it, too.

  See those? Ros said. He nodded at the table of newly arrived Vietnamese, thirtyish men except for the one in the shantung suit. Traders, Ros said. Motor scooters, gasoline, television sets, weapons. The suit divides his time between Saigon and Bangkok, with side trips to Taipei.

  Big for a Vietnamese, Sydney said.

  That's because he's Chinese.

  The table suddenly erupted in giggles, the Vietnamese covering their mouths and the Chinese in the shantung suit gesturing and grinning, bringing the joke to its conclusion. The waiter arrived with a bottle of Chivas Regal. The table continued to giggle while the waiter filled glasses with ice and poured the Scotch. Rostok signaled for more beer but the waiter somehow failed to notice and glided off into the kitchen with his empty tray.

  The little shit, Rostok said, loud enough so that one of the Vietnamese turned to look at him, and then smiled in recognition. Rostok smiled back. He said to Sydney, That one used to be aide-de-camp to the Three Corps commander. They were distantly related. Not a bad aide-de-camp, energetic, spoke good English, very good with our people. He always had excellent idiomatic explanations why the time was not right to draw the enemy into battle. "Their backcourt's better than ours this season." "We'll roll when we get the tune-up we've been promised." He bought his way out of the army and then set up this place. With seed money from the Three Corps commander, who should be along any time now.

  As you say, Sydney said. Everyone has a history.

  Not everyone, Rostok said sourly. That Chinese, for example. We know his name but we don't know who his principals are. We don't know anything about his family. We don't know where he does his banking. We're not sure of his nationality. Sometimes he's Taiwanese, other times Malayan. He's whatever his passport says he is, and he has more than one passport. He says he's on our side but I bet he says that to all the girls.

  Sydney bent over his cracked crab and watched the Chinese, fastidious as he slowly lifted the glass to his mouth and set it down again. His companions were jabbering and he appeared to listen to them; but Syd thought he was far away inside his own nocturnal world, thinking whatever rich traders thought at such moments. His suit was beautifully tailored and his tie knotted just so. His loafers were polished and he wore no socks. When the Chinese turned to look at them his hand moved to his throat, adjusting the knot; and then a smile, one of utter indifference, a smile for the record only, a notice-the-Americans smile. Whatever his nationality, wherever his true home, he seemed completely at ease in Tay Thanh.

  Sydney said, I thought the Vietnamese hated the Chinese.

  They do.

  But not this one?

  Sometimes they make exceptions, Rostok said.

  They were silent a moment, eating, listening to the murmur of conversation and the buzz of the fluorescent lights. Sydney felt the thickness of the rain forest, and somewhere in the vicinity the movement of the river. Now and then a motorbike clattered in the street. For the moment there was no distant thunder. He imagined activity in the forest, from the river beside the café all the way to the Cambodian border, patrols moving, supplies moving, lines of wiry men hurrying along the trails, the night silent except for the creak of their gear. They would speak only in whispers. Everyone would be listening hard for the whoosh of the artillery shell, the one-in-a-million shot that actually found its target.

  Rostok scraped back his chair and rose. He walked slowly to the kitchen and peeked in, said a few words, and returned to the table. After a while the waiter arrived with two bottles of beer and fresh glasses, muttering something that sounded like an apology. Rostok watched him with a half-smile, following him with his eyes all the way back to the kitchen.

  Sydney's attention had begun to wander at the solatium payments, and the bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo that went with it. This was not the Dicky Rostok he remembered, the one who could see around corners and knew what you were thinking before you thought it, the Rostok who believed in thorough preparation and displayed always a sunny pessimism toward the way of the world, a mysterious passage always beyond reach, though not beyond bluff. Yet the Dicky Rostok before him sounded now like the branch manager of a tight-fisted savings and loan association waiting for the examiners to show up; and then he remembered the hard little eyes of Mai at Group House, her eyes comprehending what her ears couldn't. And Minh, too, stubbornly silent as he piloted the Scout from Tan Son Nhut to Tay Thanh, dodging American convoys. Probably it was only jet lag but Sydney did not feel entirely in the picture. He was looking hard at it but he wasn't in it. He was aware suddenly that Ros had stopped talking and was looking at him with a sympathetic smile.

  You'll get used to it, Syd. It takes a minute. Of course you need a lust for complexity. You need ambiguity in your heart. But there's a kind of romance to life here in-country. Anyhow, it's what we have. We didn't get to choose, it's our s
ecret reward. So we work with it, best we can. Hope for victory. Make it happen. Rostok began to laugh, turning to watch the commotion at the door. A slender Vietnamese in a pale blue ao dai made her entrance, hesitating, then floating to the side of the Chinese businessman. He rose with the others at the table, bowing formally. She had left two men at the door and now, at her nod, they disappeared into the darkness. The woman sat and poured tea from the pot on the table. Sydney guessed her age at somewhere between thirty and fifty; almost certainly an entertainer, and a successful one from the look of her. She wore huge rings on her fingers and a gold chain circling her throat, a presentation vaguely French, as if she had just arrived from a cabaret somewhere in Montmartre. It was hard to tell at that distance, but the watch looked like a Rolex.

  He said, Who's that?

  Madame Le, Rostok said. A singer. Everyone's friend.

  I wonder if she needs a sideman.

  I forgot. You play, don't you.

  Trombone. I doubt if she needs a trombone. There wouldn't be a trombone in her ensemble.

  Your wife played the cello.

  Yes, we were a musical family. Same tunes, different instruments. Sydney shook his head as if to clear it. I can't remember what I expected to find in Tay Thanh. I've been here less than a day, it seems like a century. But I don't think it was this. I don't think it was her, Madame Le. Or the Chinese in the shantung suit. Or Cao.

  Ros pushed his plate away and leaned back in his chair; nodding at a new arrival who stood importantly in the doorway. He said, You have to remember that ordinary life goes on here as it does everywhere else. Forget everything you've read or been told by the briefers, who're only interested in their war, their American dream where everyone's either shooting or being shot at. Truth is, children go to school. People go to church, love each other; even in this situation. People quarrel and gossip and have dinner with their friends. Mow the lawn. Listen to music. And here he is now.