A Dangerous Friend

by Ward Just

  Forget them, Rostok said.

  You can't forget them, Ros.

  The reports of the Group go directly to the White House. Some of you still don't understand. Our lad with the Montagnards? White House was delighted with the coverage. Our lad isn't burning villages or wasting civilians. Vice President himself has taken an interest, you see.

  But the Pentagon signs the paychecks, George Whyte said.

  And writes the efficiency reports, someone else threw in.

  Do the minimum, Rostok said wearily. He looked at his watch. So, George, what happened to the safe? I assume it's installed and running.

  Little problem there, Ros, George Whyte said. It was too heavy for the damned floor.

  What do you mean? Rostok demanded.

  We got it upstairs all right. He waved at the ceiling. Last night, it took five men to do it with ropes and pulleys. It's a big Moslem you know. Weighs a damn ton. It's just as awkward as can be. He smiled sadly, another hope dashed, and said no more.

  Where is it now?

  George pointed at the ceiling. Up there, he said. Third floor. Half in and half out of the floor. The beam cracked. We can't budge it.

  Can we open the door to the safe?

  George shook his head. It's stuck. We can't get to the combination lock. Thank God the second beam held or it would've fallen into the basement, maybe killed someone on the way down.

  And no one thought to check the floor?

  That's Procurement's job. It's their responsibility. Obviously we needed a structural engineer and we didn't have one. I'm afraid we need a smaller safe, Ros.

  Rostok sighed, one more worry in a busy day. Where are the reports?

  Where they've always been, Ros. Locked in the filing cabinets in the big closet. Secure enough for the time being.

  See to it, Rostok said.

  And the Mosler?

  Get the smaller safe, George.

  I mean the one that's there. That's stuck. That's betwixt and between.

  Tell Supply to reinforce the ceiling.

  Yes, Ros.

  And keep it quiet.

  Will do, Ros.

  The meeting began to break up. George mentioned that Doctor Zhivago was playing at the Brinks and wondered if anyone wanted to join him for the film and a steak later at the roof restaurant, a nightcap or two and early to bed.

  Rostok had a dinner with the deputy at JUSPAO.

  I have a mahjongg game, Pablo said.

  Sydney had two sociologists. He fished in his pocket for the memo. I'm supposed to brief them on the role of women in Vietnamese society. And what they think of the war. Anyone know any anecdotes?

  They don't like it, Rostok said. A woman told me that only the other day.

  Can you flesh that out a little, Ros? Her name and age. Economic status. Education. And how many of her children have been killed?

  Pablo Gutterman gathered up his papers and prepared to leave.

  What was his name? Rostok asked.

  Who?

  The congressman's nephew.

  Smalley, Pablo said. Captain Harry Smalley.

  What else do you know about him?

  Not much, Pablo said. West Point, class of 'sixty-three or 'sixty-four, somewhere in there. This was his first command, he'd only been in-country a few months. When I met him, he was playing poker and listening to loud music. Drinking beer. Complaining. They were in stand-down. I remember his hands were so big the cards disappeared into them.

  His CO say anything?

  His CO said he was a big dumb blond.

  Anything else?

  Smalley said this one thing to me. He was restless, eager to get back to the field, into action. He said, "I hate stand-down. I hate bivouac. Bivouac's no good. Equipment rots, men get into trouble."

  Did he say what kind of trouble?

  No, he didn't, Ros, Pablo said. I think he meant trouble generally. Trouble of the spirit, undefined trouble, trouble that comes when discipline breaks down. Because of the idleness.

  Rostok looked at him strangely. Makes no sense, he said. When you're in stand-down, you're safe. No one's shooting at you. You play poker, drink beer, sleep late in the morning. Stand-down's every soldier's dream.

  Not Smalley's, Pablo said.

  Big dumb blond, Rostok said.

  He was a soldier, Pablo said.

  Make me a memo, Pablo. Everything you know about him. Everything that you can remember. Memo on my desk tomorrow? Make a call or two if you have to. I'd like a full description, too. So if we find him sitting in a cathouse in Bien Hoa we'll know that's him, the missing Captain Smalley. Can you do that, Pablo? Confidential, personal to me. And anything you can dig up on the hoi chanh, his name and age, his bill of particulars. When he defected and where and to whom and what he got for his trouble and who gave it to him. Who controls him? CAS? The army? And any speculation you might have from your private sources, a likely place they might take our captain for safekeeping. Any speculation at all, no matter how out of the way or off the wall.

  That may take a while.

  Close of business tomorrow, Rostok said, and turned to leave the room.

  Why do you want this, Ros?

  That's my business, Rostok said, and walked through the door.

  They listened to the click of his heels in the corridor, then watched him hurry across the lawn to his Scout, the one with the long aerial and the yellow light on the roof. He jerked his arm in the direction of his driver, who was talking to one of the gardeners. Rostok was already in the car and reading from some document when the driver leapt into the driver's seat, backed up, and hurtled away in a flurry of gravel.

  What was that about? Pablo asked.

  I imagine he'll want to brief his good friend the undersecretary, Sydney said. He will want to do that personally so Highest Levels know that everything possible is being done to rescue the young man and that Rostok himself personally is on the case with his own information, information supplied to him by private sources unavailable to the embassy or the military—

  Me, Pablo said.

  You, Sydney agreed.

  But I don't know anything more, Pablo said.

  Then tell him that.

  You try telling him that, Pablo said.

  Probably he'll forget about it tomorrow.

  Rostok never forgets anything, Pablo said.

  Sydney began to laugh. He forgot to return the call to the White House.

  No, Pablo said. He wants privacy.

  ***

  Back in his office at Tay Thanh that afternoon, Sydney found a letter in his IN box, creamy stationery with initials on the back flap, an invitation to lunch a week hence, twelve noon, tenue de ville, regrets only, Dede and Claude Armand. Accompanying the invitation was a hand-drawn map, most detailed, handsomely decorated, directions to Plantation Louvet.

  The next day he called Pablo Gutterman for advice as to a tailor. He needed slacks and a shirt, the things he had brought with him were not suited to the climate. After listening to Pablo's complaints about Rostok, Sydney was rewarded with a tailor's name. And the day after that he drove to Monsieur Tan's in rue Catinat, a few doors away from the Continental Palace. Monsieur Tan suggested a white linen suit, an ice cream suit for the tropics, a suit that breathed and kept its shape. A suit that would not be out of place in California or Texas or even Paris in France. Delivery in three days, twenty dollars U.S.

  Be careful, Pablo had said when Sydney asked him for the name of a tailor.

  Plantation Louvet

  THE WEATHER TURNED. Heavy clouds motored down from the North and the temperature fell ten degrees. The milky sun disappeared as if it had never existed and the rain forest appeared as a damp monochrome. There was an urban shape to the gray light, the sort of pall that wraps New York or Chicago on a foul autumn day. Sydney was late rising and stood quietly for a long time looking out the window of his bedroom at the street. The smell of the forest was as rank as compost; and then the wind came up and the drizzl
e began. He watched schoolchildren troop up the street in the drizzle, their books in bright plastic satchels. They walked two by two, holding hands, as orderly as a column of infantry.

  He heard Mai moving about in the office below. She was singing softly to herself. He dressed slowly in the shadowless gray light, thinking that the room had improved since it belonged to Dacy. There was a picture of his daughter on the bureau and a poster of the Normandie that he'd bought at Orly. He owned a clock, a transistor radio, and a bright red bedspread he'd found at the market. Of course the room was clean, tidy as a monk's cell, and he wondered when he would begin writing on the walls and hiding whiskey bottles in the closet. The Malraux lay on the bedside table unopened. On the floor was a foot-high stack of press clippings thoughtfully sent over from USIA, and a month-old copy of Time. He wondered whether the World Series had begun and who was in it. He looked at the picture of his daughter and realized he had heard nothing from her in weeks; when he first arrived he had a card from her every few days, a picture of an animal or a New York landmark with her scrawled upside-down signature and "love." When he wrote her next he would tell her about the farmer who had surrendered his mind but was withholding his heart, a sentiment that would appeal to Karla; and then he remembered he had two unmailed letters to Rosa in the glove compartment of his car. The front door opened and closed and he watched Mai hurry away to the café, her ritual morning tea with her friend Thuy.

  It was still raining an hour later when he spread the map on his bureau, tracing the route to Plantation Louvet with his finger. It resembled a labyrinth, Tay Thanh to Xuan Loc, then north from Xuan Loc. He had never been north of Xuan Loc, a region the government had abandoned because there was nothing important to protect, only a few peasant villages and the rubber plantations. The roads were unfamiliar and some of them seemed little more than cart paths or trails. The odometer would be essential— 11.6 km north of Xuan Loc, past the ruins of the fort and the Buddhist shrines nearby, turn right; 2.5 km and then left; 1.3 km another left; .5 km and left again; 2.6 km a sharp right at the fork; and 7.2 km straight ahead to Plantation Louvet. On the map the plantation was marked with a little French tricolor. Pay close attention to the distance, Dede Armand had written in her rolling schoolgirl script, there are no road mark ings. Drive slowly. You should not meet anyone, but if you do, don't stop. Drive on. Good luck.

  He felt like a colonial himself in his ice cream suit and pale blue shirt, foulard tie neatly knotted, shoes polished. The suit fit beautifully, as the tailor promised it would. All he lacked was a pith helmet and a walking stick. When Sydney looked at himself in the mirror, he began to laugh. All Americans in South Vietnam would be better off if they dressed like planters, supervising their domain with colonial hauteur. He lit a cigarette and stood at the window watching the drizzle turn to mist; and then, giving another glance into the mirror, he went downstairs.

  He moved to straighten the papers on his desk. He aligned the pencils next to the IN box, and then he saw the letter, bone white with the address typewritten, the sender's identity top left in raised letters, Greener, Leman & Kis, Attorneys at Law, 612 Broadway, New York. His feeling of well-being vanished at once at this intrusion from Manhattan, so distant and irrelevant. Letters from New York lawyers had no business in his IN box. Sydney did not open the letter but stared coldly at it, as if it might speak of its own accord. The postmark was three weeks old. Certainly it had passed through many hands, yet the envelope was pristine. The law firm was familiar but he could not place it. Then he remembered that Otto Kis was a lawyer who specialized in left-wing causes, the noisier the better. He had bad teeth, a high-pitched voice, and a manner of high martyrdom. And he was a friend of Karla's.

  Otto Kis announced that he represented Karla Parkes. He intended to file a decree for divorce promptly. The grounds were desertion—and here the letter wandered into legal thickets too dense to penetrate, and Sydney had no desire to try. He looked away out the window to the street. A convoy was passing; the mist had turned to drizzle. He let the letter fall, like any beachcomber who had found an unwelcome message in a bottle washed ashore. Greetings, Sydney Parade. You're due in court! And the beachcomber wondering, How did they find me? What do they want? He thought he had been living in a parallel world beyond the reach of Earth's daily light, a black hole of sorts with its own special atmosphere and rules of engagement, and wartime code of conduct. Of course she wanted the marriage over and done with so she could get on with things. She wanted him out of her life. Their marriage was old news. It belonged to the past, which seemed to him changed utterly in the light of the present. He lived in Vietnam. Vietnam was the conjugal bed. The marriage was hers and she could do with it as she wished. The days when they had loved each other had vanished, and even the memory of them had faded. In some sense they could be said not to have existed at all. They were the notes on the score after musicians had packed up their instruments and left the stage.

  He picked up the letter and weighed it in his palm; heavy official paper, the sort of stationery Stalin would use for his own decrees. The words roamed the page. Sydney noticed a snide reference to "your war" and "the inconvenience" if this and that did not come to pass. He scanned the first page and was into the second, understanding little. Then, near the end, a sentence that seemed to state plainly that his client was prepared to grant joint custody of their daughter and had no objection to visiting rights that were flexible and in the best interests of the child, et cetera ... Rosa would remain in her mother's care. That was not negotiable. In fact, none of it was negotiable, including alimony and child support. The numbers that followed seemed to Sydney quite large, but surely that was only the opening bid, a bluff. Please let me know the name and address of your attorney...

  He looked at his watch. It was late. It was time to leave for Plantation Louvet.

  He slipped the letter back into the envelope and put it in his desk drawer. There was no reason why Karla could not have what she wanted. Money was of no use to him in Tay Thanh, and his daughter was on the other side of the world. Then he remembered an incident with his father many years ago. Sydney was at the tiller. They were sailing in calm waters in Long Island Sound under a cloudless sky when he felt a tap on his shoulder; and when he turned he saw the thunderheads boiling in from the west. His father laughed and laughed when Sydney hastily came about and made for port. You have a tendency to ignore things that aren't in your immediate vicinity, Syd. You've got to look over your shoulder all the time, because bad luck's always there. So he would ask his father to speak to old Jim, his golfing partner; an avuncular sort who specialized in wills and trusts. Jim was especially good with fine print and women, and would prove more than a match for Otto Kis. He would write his father as soon as he found time; and there would be much to describe of lunch chez Armand.

  Then Mai was in the room looking at him wide-eyed. She had pulled on a sweater against the chill and stood hugging herself. She had never seen him in a suit and did not know what it portended. She watched him hastily fold a map and put it in his pocket. Sydney explained that he was off to lunch with important visitors from the United States. He took a last look around, then gathered up the bottles of Beefeater and Martell, gifts for his hosts. He fetched the carbine and a black umbrella that had stood unused in the coat closet these many months and told Mai to take the day off.

  The plantation house stood at the end of a long tunnel of evergreens, fat at the bottom and slender at the top. They were widely spaced. Back of the evergreens stood the bulbous palms of the plantation laid out in rows that produced a kind of optical illusion. The rows went every which way and then merged in the distance to become a dense and formless green. In the dull light of this wilderness it was impossible to know the direction he was headed. He might as well have been underwater. Yet the bungalow was in sight, exactly as she had promised it would be.

  Stone turrets flanked the long drive. Atop each turret was a life-size cat in bronze, green with age and the weathe
r; blank-faced. In the heart of the great forest the turrets and the cats seemed a fragment of the imagination of another age on another continent, or an apparition from a child's illustrated fairy tale. The mist eddied, swirling across the road so that the bungalow vanished and reappeared and vanished again. He had a sense of abandonment, of a dwelling empty of life or of purpose, a place that came and went according to the weather or the season or the time of day—or whether a guest was expected for lunch, tenue de ville, regrets only. Sydney wondered if he had misunderstood the day or the hour, but Dede Armand's invitation was clear and specific. He rolled down the window and listened hard but could hear nothing but the damp rustle of leaves in the forest.

  He was filled with the sudden excitement of discovery. He had no idea what he would find at the end of the tunnel. He felt privileged, for now he would see for himself the sort of life the Armands lived in their location between the lines. As he drove slowly up the driveway he noticed beds of flowers placed here and there among the evergreens, and around the beds wooden benches. Probably that was where she watched her birds, though there was no sign of bird life or any other life. The driveway gave into a square parking area framed by a foot-high privet hedge. He saw now that there were dim lights inside the bungalow. The front door was open so he could see through a long hallway to what he supposed was the verandah; and then he remembered the photograph of Dede and Claude at the coffee table, the table laden with magazines and books, a Matisse drawing on the wall behind them, a sense of happy domesticity. The space at the end of the corridor was flooded with light, as if Plantation Louvet was provided with its own personal sun that could be switched on at will like a lamp. There were soft white curtains in the front windows and a brass-rimmed chandelier in the hallway. The bungalow was smaller than it appeared from the end of the driveway, the outside walls of stucco and wood and topheavy with a corrugated iron roof. The place had the easy, regular dimensions of a modest country house in New England. The whole was pleasant to look at and composed the way an artist composes a picture. The Land Rover was parked under a lean-to.