A Dangerous Friend

by Ward Just

  Rostok rose and shook hands with the new arrival, then introduced him, General Binh, the III Corps commander. The general's face was perfectly round and unlined, his hand soft as a child's and carefully manicured. He and Rostok talked sotto voce, alternating English and Vietnamese, something about an "incident," the incident unspecified but apparently not serious, for the general was smiling benignly. After a moment he joined the other table, laughing at something Ros had said. Sydney saw that another bottle of Chivas Regal had materialized with a fresh glass for the general.

  That's a general? Sydney asked.

  One of the better ones, as a matter of fact, a product of our own National War College. He's quite an expert on the Napoleonic campaigns. Normally I like to talk to him in his office, a more private venue. But he often isn't in. Or isn't in to me. So I take my opportunities where I find them.

  He doesn't look like a general, Sydney said.

  Neither did Bonaparte.

  Rostok thumbed a cigarette from the pack in front of him, then patted his pockets unsuccessfully for a match. Instantly Cao was at his elbow, producing a Zippo, lighting it, waiting for Rostok to inhale. He tapped the Zippo on the tabletop and pushed it across to Rostok. This is Mr. Parade, Rostok said.

  Cao nodded and shook hands.

  Mr. Parade will be helping me in Tay Thanh.

  Welcome to Tay Thanh, Mr. Parade.

  Thank you, Sydney said.

  You need anything, you ask me, Cao said.

  I will, Sydney said.

  I am always here, Cao said. He stood lopsidedly with both hands on the table, palms down to steady himself.

  Sydney said, When did your foot become infected?

  Cao looked questioningly at Rostok, who translated.

  Many years, Cao said.

  Have you seen doctors?

  It's congenital, Rostok said. He pocketed the Zippo and handed Cao a wad of piaster notes.

  Or a parasite, Cao said, and with a nod he was gone, scuttling crabwise across the floor; the useless leg swishing behind him.

  He's well spoken, Sydney said. He did not want to admit that he had thought the boy was retarded, incapable of speech or much else; and he was not a boy, either, but a man nearing middle age.

  Yes, well spoken. Cao—finds things. Things go missing and Cao finds them, a jack for your car, a deck of cards, a pound of sugar. Cao and Dacy were great friends until Dacy crashed. Rostok started to say something more but signaled for the check instead. He began to drum his fingers on the table, looking sideways at General Binh and the Chinese deep in conversation. Madame Le had disappeared. The table of Americans had departed also and the restaurant was so quiet Sydney could hear the rustle of the river water outside. Rostok sighed and flexed his fingers.

  Marriages are going to hell everywhere, he said suddenly.

  Sydney looked up but did not reply. He was watching Cao in the corner; counting the notes Ros had given up. He was not interested in discussing marriage. Ros often employed the creative non sequitur to keep people off balance or to fill dead air when he became bored.

  I don't mean you, he said.

  It's what happens, Sydney said.

  I don't know how happy Janet is in Hong Kong. Rostok again began to drum nervously on the table. The apartment's nice and we have it cheap. Janet has friends. But she's been talking about going back to Virginia and that's all right, too, if it's what she wants to do. She doesn't care for Asia. She doesn't like the food. She doesn't like the heat. She says she's lonely. It's harder and harder for me to get away for long weekends, and when I'm there she complains that Pjm really still here, and that's a low blow because I make a hell of an effort, getting away. You can't just leave a war whenever you want to. Women have a hard time putting themselves in someone else's shoes, don't they?

  Rostok sighed and rapped the table sharply.

  He said, Strange thing is, in the year we've been here, she's aged ten. You can see it in her face and the way she moves, her conversation. She's gained weight. She's careworn. She hates the war because I'm in it. She thinks I'll be hurt and that's reason enough to get out. She spends too much time at the press club playing bridge, listening to the horror stories. They don't know anything, you see. The newspaper people look at our war zone through a telescope and they think they know what it is because they see the outlines of a hill or a valley. Sometimes they see the dimensions of a human being. But they can't know what it is really because they're not invested. They're bystanders, notebook people. They're defeatists and Janet's defeatist, too. She expects the worst, and when she doesn't get it she thinks it's a trick they're playing. Janet used to look for things out of life. We always knew there was a jackpot somewhere and if you wanted it badly enough and were willing to work hard enough you'd find it, or it would find you. That's what drew us together, the idea of the jackpot. My God, we're still young! Or I am. She isn't. Suddenly she's a defeatist and prefers Virginia to Hong Kong.

  Sydney was silent. Janet Rostok was always the quiet one at the table, chain-smoking Pall Malls and nursing a single highball. She was known as a good sport who excelled at tennis and bridge, utterly without personal ambition—and then Sydney realized he had no idea what her ambitions were. Whatever they were, she never spoke of them. She seemed to be focused on tennis and bridge and, by general agreement of their friends, on Rostok. He often said he could not survive without her.

  Gutterman manages it, I don't know how. Or rather I do know. He's married to a slope, has been for years. You'll meet him tomorrow, my deputy Pablo Gutterman. But you'll never meet his wife because she lives behind the scenes, strange-looking woman, refused to speak English the one time I met her, strictly by accident in the central market. Pablo was buying shoes and she was choosing them, as if Pab didn't have sense enough to find the right ones. I didn't recognize him. I stood next to him for the longest time and then he said something and I looked up. He went red in the face when he saw me. He tried to escape but saw he was trapped and forced to introduce his wife. She's a dumpy thing, middle-aged like him, eyes too big for her head. She offered her hand, almost weightless but hard as stone. And after a pleasantry they were gone, like that, disappeared into the crowd. Damnedest thing, Pablo looked like the others, all the other men in the market, so I didn't recognize him.

  And that's how he manages? Sydney asked.

  I suppose it is, Rostok said. Buying shoes in the market with his frau, and then a cup of tea somewhere, and a game of mahjongg at the end of the day, after he mows the lawn. I don't think Pablo knows where he is. My God, this is the adventure of a lifetime. I mean in the sense of a long sea voyage, the ship alive under your feet, strange ports of call, an untested crew, a skipper who never shows his face, and nasty weather all day long. He laughed loudly, savoring the caprice.

  Maybe it isn't her adventure, Sydney said. Any more than it is Janet's.

  It's everyone's adventure, Rostok said. You'll discover that there aren't enough hours in the day to do what you have to do, and at the end of them you'll have energy left over. You'll have energy to burn, more energy than you know what to do with because the war doesn't take. It gives and gives and then it gives again. It's like being plugged into an iron lung, Syd.

  The waiter arrived with the check and Ros threw down another wad of piasters.

  So I suppose it's finished, he said.

  We married when we were young, he added.

  Before Sydney could make the pro forma protest, Rostok was out of his chair and walking toward the door.

  Let's take a walk, he said.

  The street was dark. Even the forest seemed to sleep, the only sound the swish of water somewhere. Stars were visible overhead but the constellation was not familiar. The fetid odor of the forest was not familiar. A vast anonymity seemed to settle over the street, the wooden shacks on either side of it, and the forests and hills beyond. They began to walk in the direction of Group House—his house, Sydney thought, his private address now. He thought of the IN and O
UT boxes on his desk and the work that would begin tomorrow. Down the street a dog barked twice and was silent.

  I love it, Rostok said softly. I love this place.

  Why, Ros?

  He stretched his arms wide, looking at the sky and the blurred stars. I love the freedom, he said. I love not knowing. The shape of things in the morning.

  And being in charge, Sydney said.

  Yes, that, too.

  They walked on. Far in the distance they heard the chop-chop of a helicopter. A light flared in one of the houses nearby, and as suddenly went out. Rostok began to laugh quietly, muttering something about night sounds in the countryside, everyone gets used to them and when they're absent, you miss them.

  Do you ever dream, Syd?

  Now and again. I don't remember them, though.

  Rostok cleared his throat and said, I receive Ho Chi Minh in my dreams. He visits me often, though not in the form you might think. He's in the kitchen of the Carlton making pastry under the direction of the great Escoffier, bending over the marble counter with his poche à douille filled with batter. He makes cygnes en pâte à choux, the swans reminding him of the beautiful birds on the Petit Lac and the Red River at Hanoi. He squeezes out teardrops of batter, all the time remembering the lake and the river, and Trotsky's teachings and the cruelty of the French and the titanic struggle for doc lap, independence, a struggle that he knew would not be won in his lifetime but was inevitable. He must give his life to it. Meanwhile, he has his patriotic pastry to attend to. I watch him. He never says a word, never looks up from his pastry table. His hands are frail. His skin is the texture of old paper. He never smiles, never looks up as he continues to squeeze the pastry bag, replicating one swan after another. And when I wake up, he remains on the margins of my vision. When he vanishes at last, I am sorry to see him go. But I know he will return, in that form or in another, chef or president. And in time these dreams will have meaning for me as they did for Goya, who described his subjects arriving when he was asleep; and when he woke he drew them exactly as he remembered them, his sueños. They are most detailed, most suggestive. They are among his finest works. Still half asleep, Goya made extensive notes on a pad he kept on his bedside table. In the morning he went to work, bringing his sueños to the canvas. And I do the same, make notes when I rise, and one day I will bring them to life.

  Rostok's voice had fallen to a whisper, and then died away. Sydney waited for more but Rostok had said what he had to say and now was silent. He imagined his friend's nightstand filled with wild jottings, descriptions of Ho at the pastry table, patiently counting swans while he imagined the revolution to come. Probably he thought of the birds as so many expendable infantrymen, fragile as meringue.

  They walked on, Rostok lost in thought. Mist was rising from the forest, wispy vapors that seemed to take one shape, then another, vanishing and gathering again in the heavy air. The village was behind them now. Rostok said softly, Tell me what you can about the Armands. What did you learn?

  Sydney hesitated, then explained about Missy and her apartment in the rue du Louvre, the long trip south from Paris, the stone house and the Roman wall, the heavy meal and the raw wine, and the four Armand brothers, one in France, two in Africa, one in Indochina. He related the conversation as best he could recollect it, Missy translating, the old man belligerently staring across the table, his heavy arms across his chest. Suspicious old bastard, wouldn't give an inch. He thinks it's dangerous for his brother to meet with Americans. Meet with Americans, share information with Americans, that might mean you're choosing sides. Plus, we've been bombing his rubber trees.

  So you didn't get the letter, Rostok said.

  I got the back of his hand, Sydney said.

  Nice place they have?

  Stone house in the mountains. Second-century Roman wall in the back yard.

  Rostok stopped to light a cigarette, blowing a smoke ring that hung stubbornly in the mist. Did you tell him that you could do something about the rubber trees? That Claude's rubber trees were under your supervision? That you had authority and could do something about the bombing?

  I did. He didn't buy.

  Rostok kicked at a stone in the road and muttered something.

  He thought I was too dangerous for his brother.

  People are going to have to choose sides. Even French people.

  They think they know more about it than we do.

  Everybody thinks they know more about it than we do. But that's not the point. Cooperation's the point. Choosing sides is the point.

  They don't forget their experience any more than we forget ours, Sydney said. We think we're back in the European theater in War Two. We want to bomb. We think if we turn Haiphong into Hamburg we'll break the spirit of the population. We think there's a Rhine somewhere, and if we can find it we can cross it and occupy the enemy's heartland, and then old Ho will retire to his bunker with his mistress and commit suicide. And the French don't want to fight at all. Why would they? Where did fighting ever get them? In this century it's one catastrophe after another, from Verdun to the Maginot Line to Dien Bien Phu. So I don't think we ought to count on them, Ros. It's really only us here on the ground. And that's what we've wanted all along, isn't it? We've wanted to be the sentry on the bridge. And now we are.

  There are ways and means, Rostok said vaguely.

  Did you know Claude's wife is American?

  Rostok muttered something noncommittal.

  She worked for the embassy. She was Cultural Affairs. What do you suppose she did in Cultural Affairs? Bring jazz bands to Danang? West Side Story to the opera house in Saigon? Maybe university professors to lecture on myth in William Faulkner. What do you suppose she did as cultural attaché?

  I think she ran the USIA library.

  I saw her picture, a good-looking woman.

  That's what they say, Rostok said.

  There must have been people who knew her, embassy people. Our people. She must've had women friends, people she went to lunch with. She must have had a roommate before she married Claude. They're the ones who ought to make this approach, if you want to go ahead with it. Seems useless to me.

  It was a while ago she worked for the embassy, Rostok said. Anyone who knew her has been rotated home. And when she married Armand she disappeared into Xuan Loc, and that's an insecure sector, has been for years. She even stopped going to the Cercle Sportif. Last time anyone saw her was when she showed up to have her passport renewed. That was routine, no one thought anything about it. She was in and out in thirty minutes and the moron on duty didn't have the sense to check her out and get a message upstairs. He did notice that she had nice legs and freckles. At that time we thought we had things in hand and no one cared about an American living on a rubber plantation, unless she was in danger; and if she was, she didn't say so. None of our people have even met Claude Armand. Two of the lads went out to the plantation a few times, made the courtesy call, anything we can do for you, Dede, and by the way, how's the security situation in your sector? But no one was at home and the servants weren't talking. And then they realized they were at the wrong plantation. So everyone forgot about them. Except me.

  I think they're unimportant, Sydney said. They're two people holed up on a rubber plantation, and who cares?

  Let me tell you something, Syd. Hard to succeed in this business. You've got to have something that no one else has. MACV has the army, the navy, the air force, and the marines. The spooks have the money and the confidence of the people who count. The embassy has the State Department, and their teletypes connect to Highest Levels. What do we have? We have a few smart guys and an ambitious charter. They're hoping Llewellyn Group can make some difference but they have no idea what that difference might be. So our great task is to have something that no one else has, and when we get it we'll be listened to, and if we don't get it they'll collapse us like a tin can. What that thing is right now is knowledge. We've got to know things that the rest of them don't know from a source of
information they can't figure out. If they do figure it out, they'll steal it, especially CAS. Then we're out in the cold. We want a source of information that's ours and ours alone. They'll have to admit, Rostok has that information. He's the only one who has it and he's holding it tight, because he's a son of a bitch. So ask him nicely and give him something in return.

  Rostok paused, suddenly alert. Then he lowered his voice.

  And then Llewellyn Group will count for something. Not before. It's information we're after and I'm not even certain what information, what it is that I need to know. I don't even know what I don't know. But I intend to find out. And I have an idea that Monsieur Armand and his American wife will be able to help me. I'm highly confident, Syd. And I have confidence in you, too. It all fits in.

  Then he was quiet, listening.

  Shut up now, Syd.

  They moved, crouching, into the shadows of a sandalwood tree. Rostok dropped his cigarette and stepped on it. It was so quiet Sydney could hear the ticking of his wristwatch; then he realized it was not his wristwatch but something else, a mechanical click-click of something in the road ahead, and mixed in with it a strenuous vibration, the pulse of bodies moving. When they came out of the mist they were elevated and as clumsy as camels, their heads forward, bodies swaying, humpbacked, moving in a single-file caravan. They were slow. The bicycles lurched this way and that, avoiding the ruts in the road. The men did not speak and glided like ghosts in the swirling mist. Three feet separated each bicyclist. Sydney counted six, and six more, then stopped counting because Rostok was breathing so heavily he thought the troop would surely hear them. Each man carried a slung carbine, a backpack, and a long black sock that looked like a bandolier but was filled with rice. Their uniforms were black and their faces camouflaged. They came on and on, never speaking, as much a part of the night as the dead air that surrounded them. Rostok had begun to tremble and when one of the guerrillas turned to look at them, Sydney held his breath. The Vietnamese wore little wire-rimmed glasses that had slipped to the end of his nose. His expression was blank. In his exhaustion and myopia he saw nothing and in a moment was gone; and then they were all gone, leaving Sydney and Rostok in a state of silent terror. When Sydney put his hand on Rostok's back it came away wet with sweat. Rostok stank. His face seemed to glow in the dark. And then they were talking at once.