“I…I don’t know. I doubt it…How d’you suppose these guys would’ve gotten into the U.S.?”
“Who knows? My guess is a U.S. aircraft. C-141 or a C-5, maybe. High-rankin’ Vietnamese got to use Uncle Sam’s taxi service. They probably came through San Francisco. Travis Air Force Base, most likely.”
Shuck Deveroux was quiet for a long time; finally, he spoke. “Doc. I think I know where to find your Mr. Linh.”
“Yeah. Right.”
“No. Really.”
“No shit? You are good, Deveroux. Where?”
“Try the Louisville coroner’s office.”
CHAPTER 25
Saigon, Republic of Vietnam
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1970
“Not an option, Sergeant.” John Bergeron’s voice resembled a marble lazily rolling around in a tin pie plate. Its south Louisiana modulation and volume were erratic, and he was hard to listen to and generally even harder to look at, given his tendency to seek the familiar comfort of the shadows. Today was no different. The rolling voice seemed to be coming from somewhere near the shuttered window, but in the waning daylight Jimmy Lee Tenkiller’s eyes couldn’t find the focus. “Not at all an option, you,” the voice repeated.
“I don’t think you understand, Mr. Bergeron,” Tenkiller replied. He beamed his voice in the direction where the shadows seemed the darkest. “This isn’t what I signed up for. It’s gone too far. You don’t understand.”
“Oh, but I do. It’s you who don’t quite understand, Cochise. We’ve got way too much invested in this, way too much for anyone to suddenly get a touch of the cold shivers. And that’s what I’m sensing here, a malignant case of no balls.”
“It’s not that…”
“No? Then what is it, Chief? You tell me, ’cause from where I sit it looks like some damn zip-head general waves a gun ’round and Tonto here suddenly can’t find his dick to piss with.”
“Screw you. You weren’t there. He’s crazy, that man.” Jimmy Lee Tenkiller balled his fists at his side and tried to pattern Bergeron’s shadowy form in the remaining light. He steadied his breathing. Bergeron’s type pushed buttons. Jimmy Lee Tenkiller had had his buttons pushed his whole life. He exhaled completely and then slowly drew in a new lungful.
“Look ’round, Chief. This is French-Indo-Frickin’-China, my friend. Find me one person over here who isn’t goddamn crazy. Jus one, you.”
“That isn’t all.”
“No? Then tell me, Chief. Who pissed in your war bonnet?”
“You’ve seen the reports. Those men from the twenty-fifth ID—you seen someone shredded by a claymore, Mr. Bergeron?”
“Question is…have you, Chief?” Bergeron waited momentarily for a reply, and when none came he pressed forward. “Didn’t think so. Quartermaster. Look, Sergeant Tenkiller, when I selected you for this operation, I did so because of your access to certain resources. I never assumed that you’d go and start thinking for yourself. Bad habit to get started, my red friend.”
“Maybe. But maybe it’s better than letting a suit like you do the thinking. Men like you, their thinking gets other men killed.”
“Perhaps, Cochise, but my thinking will also save men in the end. And that’s what this little dance is all about, isn’t it? Saving men. Saving a whole friggin’ country. Saving a whole friggin’ way of life. Now listen carefully, Chief, pulling pitch right now is a no-go. You read me? A no-go. You back out now and the souls of all those dead men that you seem so concerned about, they gonna be on your head. They’ll hang around your neck for the rest of your life. Let’s remember the facts, here; you supplied that crate of claymores, and you’ve got nothing to show for it but some money in what must be rather a fat bank account by now. That how we end it? You just count your money and leave the dirty dishes for someone else to wash.”
Bergeron waited for a response but when none came, he continued. “No, I don’t think so; I think we gonna play this out—comprende? Now, if that’s it, if it’s about money, more wampum, well, anything’s negotiable, but not by ultimatum. You want to shake me down for some more glass beads, hey, that’s a book I can read, but not in midoperation. No, sir, Chief. We play this out. We clear?
Jimmy Lee Tenkiller blinked hard. The room was close and smelled of mildew and vinegar from soured clothing that never completely dried in the humid air of South Vietnam. There was the almost fecund smell of the river, and dried cuttlefish, and wood smoke. Sweat worked its way into the corners of his eyes and stung. He closed his eyes again and thought about the spinsters at the Indian Boys School. He thought about what had almost been. He thought about getting rattled and not keeping his toe pointed.
He wanted nothing more than to run, fast and long, across a treeless, red soil plain.
CHAPTER 26
U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16, 2008
Kel was late for a staff meeting with the CILHI’s commander, Colonel Boschet. Time once again for a weekly dose of the commander’s numb-nutted, adolescent humor and overt posturing about the burdens of being a “steward” of the taxpayers’ money, all the while flushing efficiency down the toilet and wasting countless man hours in the countless meetings that were required for the staff to educate him in the basics of his job. He was sure the first ten minutes would be spent re-educating the commander about how to do something complex, like open his window or use his stapler without drawing blood, but he also knew that he couldn’t just refuse to show up. He’d promised Les Neep that he’d make an effort to get along, and the commander’s brittle ego would preclude adjourning the meeting until all of his courtesans had been properly assembled and provided with the highlights of how well he had performed on his last assignment in the Pentagon, which, as best Kel could reconstruct, involved driving a whole office of hardworking government employees to take early retirement. The problem, of course, was that the rest of the assembled senior staff was being held hostage until Kel arrived, by a man whose idea of humor, at its wittiest, involved rhyming things with the word “Nantucket.” Accordingly, when D.S. had asked Kel if he had a minute to talk about the problem of getting a DNA sample from Tenkiller’s reluctant brother, Kel had asked him to talk as he headed down the hall to the commander’s office. As they drew near, they could see that his door was closed, which suggested that Kel was probably the last to arrive.
“If the brother won’t cooperate, let’s see about goin’ around him. How’s the genealogy search comin’ along? Just because Tenkiller’s brother doesn’t want to give a blood sample doesn’t mean that there isn’t another maternal relative out there,” Kel said.
“Easier said than done, boss. Our genealogy consultant got on this as soon as you told her to, but she’s drawing blanks,” D.S. said. He took a small skip to adjust to Kel’s longer stride. Kel’s normal walking speed always resembled that of a man about to put his head through a brick wall, but if D.S. hadn’t known better, he’d have thought the scientific director was anxious to get to the meeting by the pace he was setting. But he definitely knew better.
“How so?”
“Tenkiller had a brother, younger I think, and that’s it. No maternal aunts or uncles, obviously no cousins on that side. No aunts or uncles on either side, for that matter. Both his parents were only children.”
“Family tree sort of got sawed off short, huh? Well, tell her to keep lookin’.”
“Will do, but these aren’t your average records that she’s dealing with.”
Kel nodded and slowed his pace. “Got a point. Tenkiller’s mother was a Cherokee, wasn’t she? They aren’t one of the Five Civilized Tribes for nothin’. Cherokees keep pretty thorough tribal rolls, from what I understand. Let’s give her some more time. You’ll see. She’ll find someone.”
D.S. shook his head. “I dunno—”
“Look, I don’t have time to do this myself. There’re fifty other cases out on the lab floor. But if I have to start checkin’ genealogy records myself
, I will.”
“Hey, don’t bite my head off.”
Kel sighed and shook his head. “Sorry.” They had reached the commander’s door, and Kel paused with his hand lightly cupping the doorknob. They could hear the commander’s voice droning on the other side. He shot a quick look at D.S. “Five bucks if you’ll sit in this meetin’ for me.”
“Fifty.”
“IOU?”
“Nope.”
“C’mon.”
“Cash. No checks. You haven’t paid for the last time.”
Kel closed his eyes and slowly turned the knob.
CHAPTER 27
Fort Campbell, Kentucky
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16, 2008
The same humorless desk ornament of a major was again guarding the entrance to the general’s office. His contempt for Deveroux had grown in direct proportion to the number of hours that Deveroux had spent talking to the general. Deveroux had been around long enough to know that young executive aides, especially those to general officers, often develop proprietary feelings out of all proportion with their responsibilities and duties, and don’t share attention readily. This one was no different.
Shuck Deveroux sat quietly in the same chair as yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. It was standard prison construction; ugly and dysfunctional. It was hard-backed, and what little padding it once had offered had long ago flattened into a vestigial reminder. He had been aware of it before, of how the particleboard pressed painfully against his ass, but now was lost in cavernous thought, picking his way through the thick briar patch of facts that made less and less sense the more he waded into them. He absentmindedly toyed with his wristwatch band.
The unctuous major looked up from his desk, his nostrils flared like an animal’s, keen to capture any movement from the general’s office; any sound; any change in the circulating air that would signal the general’s needs or wants, that would signal opportunity. He had detected a shift in the air currents or the subtle flicker of a shadow. He sniffed.
“The general will see you now,” he announced efficiently, no energy wasted where it need not be. “He has a very busy schedule, please limit…Warrant Officer Deveroux…I said, the general has…”
Deveroux stood up slowly at the sounding of his name but made no eye contact with the major. He had stiffened up in the short while he’d been waiting, and his knees reported like distant gunfire at being aroused. It took two steps before he managed to fully straighten up and move without a hitch.
“…Be mindful of the general’s time. Understood, Warrant Officer Deveroux?” Now it was the major’s turn to avoid eye contact. He dipped his head and feigned absorption in a memorandum on his desk so as to best dismiss Deveroux as something unimportant to his world.
Deveroux smiled at the major’s efforts as he walked into the general’s office.
“Let me hazard a guess, Chief Deveroux. You still have nothing to report.” General Anderson leaned back in his chair and cradled the back of his head with his hands. His voice was level, even fatherly, and disclosed no sense of its previous impatience or veiled disappointment. That had passed in the first few days of the investigation. Despite his attempt to impart his will to Deveroux, he understood that the case was dead-ended, and he was contemplating making some phone calls to see if someone would pull the plug on the patient.
Deveroux smiled. They had been refining the complex choreography of this dance every afternoon for the last week and a half. At first the general had been impatient for answers, even threatening to demonstrate how a size-twelve jungle boot can be made to fit sideways up a grown man’s ass, but lately the tension was absent. Deveroux had no answers, and the general had come to expect none. The question now was how long they would continue these daily meetings. Both men certainly had better things to do with their afternoons, although Deveroux did derive a certain level of satisfaction with the jealousy visibly building within the young major sitting in the outer office. He also was surprised to realize that he enjoyed talking to the general, though he couldn’t actually articulate why. Perhaps it was a father complex.
“You should avoid such hazards, General. Actually, I was thinkin’ we might just try a change of pace today.”
The general continued leaning back in his chair, but his eyes belied any casualness suggested by the lay of his body. “Go on, Chief,” he said quietly. “Go on.”
“Well, sir, without goin’ into more detail than you probably got time to chew on, I got a call yesterday from a buddy with the Central ID Lab. You know, the folks that identify all the MIAs…”
“I know who they are. Go on, please.”
“Yes, sir. Umm. Seems they’re workin’ on some old case from the Vietnam War that involves an MIA or a KIA; an American GI who got hisself mixed up with some black market fellas down in Saigon. As I understand it, this American had some high-rankin’ ARVN partners…”
“And?” The general slowly brought himself upright and rotated his chair a quarter turn so that his left shoulder was to Deveroux and his gaze was focused on a small clump of trees visible through his window. For the first time, Deveroux noticed the black-and-drab octofoil combat patch on the general’s left sleeve. Ninth Infantry Division. Old Reliable. The office had grown very quiet, and the light through the window made the general’s short gray hair look like the thin, prickly, white halo around a peach. Despite the change in posture, he clearly was listening very closely to Deveroux.
“And…so this buddy at the CILHI is tryin’ to track these ARVN fellas down,” Deveroux continued. “He assumes that they’re livin’ in the United States; that’s why he called me. He wants some help in locatin’ them so he can talk to them. You know, see if they remember this American, know where he might have last been seen, et cetera.”
“I might think you have quite enough on your dance card right now, Chief. Do you need to be taking on extra work?”
“Sir, yes, sir. I do at that—have a lot on my plate, that is. That’s certainly true, except for the fact that one of these Vietnamese fellas they’re lookin’ for appears to be one Mr. Linh Nhu Ngon, late of downtown Louisville, Kentucky, and now minus some hair.”
“The body from Fort Knox? You’re sure of this?”
“Yes, sir. Fairly. I’m still runnin’ it to ground, but, yes, sir, I’m sure. Same name, probably came through Travis Air Force Base out near Oakland.”
“And you think there’s a connection to this MIA that the Hawaii lab is looking for?” the general said slowly.
“Well now, don’t know that I’d hunt that dog just yet, it’s probably another dead end, but then I’m not in a position on this case to exclude much of anythin’. Like I said, I just found out about this yesterday afternoon, and I haven’t really had a chance to chew on it long enough to tell much. May just be a coincidence, but…”
“Probably is just a coincidence.” The general still had his shoulder to Deveroux and maintained a steady look out his window. “The American…the MIA that they’re looking for…does he have a name?”
“Yes, sir. He’s KIA actually. Name’s Tenkiller. Master Sergeant Tenkiller. Indian, I think.”
The general remained silent, but his shoulders seemed to stiffen and square. His gaze remained fixed on some soldiers milling about under the clump of trees across the street. Deveroux shifted his weight in his chair, unsure of where to take the briefing. He’d assumed the general would be pleased with any development on the case, but now he wasn’t so sure; the body language seemed to suggest otherwise. The general answered his uncertainty.
“As you say, Chief Deveroux, probably a coincidence…a dead end…but I assume you’ll investigate the possibility, nonetheless,” the general replied. He swiveled his chair to face his desk and wrote quickly on a small pad of paper, which he then handed to Deveroux. “Perhaps he can help.”
Shuck Deveroux looked down at the small cream-colored paper with the embossed red flag bearing the two white stars of a major general. Written in an o
pen, cursive hand was the name Brig Gen (Ret) Paul Fick.
CHAPTER 28
Saigon, Republic of Vietnam
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1970
“It seems that my good friend thinks I am…how did he say it? ‘A crazy one,’” General Ngo Van Thu said as he stepped around the door frame into the room. It was dark in the room, and Ngo Van Thu moved with such an oiled grace that he scarcely made a sound.
“So he does,” John Bergeron replied. “So he does. Crazy.” He was still standing at the shuttered window from which he’d watched Jimmy Lee Tenkiller angrily depart. Short, parallel rectangles of dim light shot past the wooden slats and projected diagonally across his chest like chevrons.
Ngo Van Thu quietly took a seat against the wall and cozied into the comfort of the shadows. Only the small, fiery tip of his cigarette was readily visible. “That is good. I am pleased that I did not shoot my late brother-in-law for no effect.” The general exhaled and a thin lens of smoke caught one of the stray shafts of light. It hung, shoulder height, across the room, and undulated slowly in the lazy air.
“I’m sure your late brother-in-law would fully understand, General Ngo. As long as you had a good reason, that is.”
“Hmm. Perhaps so. Perhaps not so. He was not an intelligent man, my late brother-in-law, but he made my sister happy. Yes, I am glad for the effect. I am a crazy one, he says. I like that, but tell me, my friend John, perhaps there is too much effect? Your friend may yet find his feet.”
“You mean Geronimo there? No, don’t you worry about him. He ain’t running nowhere; I gonna handle him.” Bergeron was still looking out the window, watching the cyclo drivers and motor scooters and the hundreds of people on foot. Everyone in a hurry to arrive at nothing. Saigon in 1970 was like a bottle of soda shaken up. Thousands of bubbles mixed chaotically, waiting to have the pressure released.
“You say no. I am not so sure. He is Indian. A savage race. I would not like such a man to be my enemy.”
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