Little Saigon

by T. Jefferson Parker

  “Meganice.”

  “I still think it sounds like a bomb, son,” said Edison. “Megaton. Change the name is my advice, for your marketing department, if nothing else.”

  Frye watched Bennett wipe a small grin with his napkin. Mauro had filled his wine glass from the martini pitcher.

  “Can’t change the name, Pop. Mega is my motto.”

  Hyla motioned Mauro forward for more wine. She looked at Chuck with an expression of sadness so complete that he had to look away. She feels worse about Linda than I do. In the silence that followed, he could sense everyone’s thoughts leaving him and moving across the table to his brother. Bennett busied himself with seconds and another glass of gin.

  When dinner was finished, Hyla brought out the birthday cake, an elaborate chocolate affair dancing with candles. She sang. Edison smiled at his bride. Frye and Bennett ganged up on the blowing-out routine, which ended—as it had for years—with the candles coming back to life. Edison got still another laugh out of this shopworn trickery. Hyla raised her glass. “To the two best sons God could give a woman,” she said. “There are better times ahead for both of you. Happy birthdays.” She bowed her head and prayed out loud for guidance and help, forgiveness and redemption, the return of Li and Linda.

  Mauro brought in a tray with packages on it, bright wrapping paper reflecting off the silver. Frye got a television wristwatch that Edison immediately swiped and started to fiddle with, and a foam insect guaranteed to grow to two hundred times its original size if you dropped it in water. The package said Gro-Bug. Frye realized with a minor thrill that the thing would hit sixteen feet at maturity, bigger than his whole kitchen. What if you could make a surfboard like that, like, carry it in your pocket until you need it? He pondered marketing gimmicks as Bennett opened his gifts—a television watch also, and a plastic scuba diver with pellets to make bubbles come out his mask. Mauro brought out a big snifter full of water, into which Bennett deployed the frogman. For a moment they all sat, watching the fizz rise. It seemed to go on forever.

  Mauro served coffee. Edison checked his watch. “Hon, might we retire to the den? There’s an important news item I think we all should see.”

  They sat around Edison’s beloved big-screen TV. Hyla dimmed the lights, and Edison turned to ABC. The regular show had been preempted for a special network news report. Peter Jennings had the honors. Sitting beside him in the studio was Lucia Parsons. She looked like a million bucks. Jennings welcomed his viewers and said that the government of Vietnam had made an unprecedented “and perhaps historic” move: They had requested American air time to broadcast via satellite a live statement from the Vietnamese Council of State President, Truong Ky. Truong had said that the statement would be of special interest to the West. Jennings said that the President of the United States had personally called the network, urging that the broadcast be carried. Jennings speculated that the topic was American POWs. He asked Lucia.

  She nodded, almost serenely, Frye thought. “I think, Peter, that is exactly what President Truong has on his mind.”

  “Oh, my,” said Hyla.

  Edison stared gravely at the set.

  Bennett sat on the couch, arms crossed and silent.

  “… as you know, and the MIA Committee has been lobbying the Vietnamese government through the Vietnamese people for nearly two years. I’ll put it bluntly, Peter. We all hope, we’re all just praying right now, that our labors have paid off.”

  Jennings noted that ABC would supply an English translation in voice-over during the address; then the image of Truong appeared.

  The picture was hazy, drained of color. He was sitting at a simple desk, a bristle of microphones in front of him, a Vietnamese flag behind him. He blinked into the lights. He was slight, gray-haired, dour. Without smiling, shuffling paper or any other visible preliminaries, he started speaking. The voice-over was heavily accented.

  “It has come to the attention of the Vietnamese people that certain American soldiers are alive in this country. They were located after exhaustive searches, in remote provinces. They were being detained by primitive tribes who did not know of our nation’s victory and believed that we were still at war with America. It is the desire of the Vietnamese people that these men be free to return home, or go where they choose. The Vietnamese people are now making arrangements for this to happen. The Vietnamese people are a peace-loving nation. This we wish to demonstrate to the world community. We are not at odds with history. We wish to work with the peace-loving American people, through the MIA Committee, for the timely return of these men. Their exact number is not known. Negotiations will begin soon. We ask of America only one pre-condition to negotiation: to end all support for terrorist groups operating on Vietnamese soil. We can no longer tolerate American-supported violence in this sovereign state. As always, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam will struggle for a world of free peoples everywhere. We will welcome negotiators from the MIA Committee, and a minimum number of American Government representatives, in Hanoi. Our nation wishes to continue its role as a leader of peace and freedom throughout the world.”

  President Truong stared into the camera, then vanished, replaced by an excited Jennings and a tearful, smiling Lucia Parsons.

  “Oh, Ed! She’s done it.”

  “Goddamn, I knew she would!”

  Bennett looked up at Chuck.

  Frye shook his head and grinned. He hugged his mom. He felt happy, but more: a feeling of freedom and release, the lifting from his shoulders of a weight he never knew was there.

  Jennings’s voice reasserted itself: “Negotiations pending … just how many not stated … what condition these men are in … what steps if any did the United States Government take to facilitate this … unprecedented cooperation … unsure what President Truong is referring to, so far as American-sponsored ‘terrorism’ is concerned … much depends on Lucia Parsons’s ability to deal with Hanoi … a day of celebration and joy … the healing of a nation’s heart … upcoming comments from the president … back with Lucia Parsons in a moment … now this …”

  Hyla stood up. “This calls for champagne! Mauro!”

  They drank the bubbly and watched the follow-up in silence. Frye wondered at Lucia’s composure, her easy grace in front of millions. Jennings asked her about the so-called “terrorism” that Truong had mentioned.

  “Peter, I believe there are groups, some of them centered in Orange County, California, whose unstated purpose is to overthrow the government of Vietnam. I’m not an expert in this, but I’ve heard talk of these people. It’s time for them to stop any kind of activity that could even be construed as ‘terrorist,’ so we can bring our men home. We can only implore them to desist.”

  Bennett swung out of the room.

  “Benny?” asked Hyla. “More champagne?”

  Frye followed him from the house, down the sloping green of the huge back yard, to the dock. Bennett started up Edison’s Boston Whaler, choking the engine up high while he worked the lines from the dock cleats.

  “Where to, Benny?”

  “Get in.”

  CHAPTER 23

  THEY TOOK THE WHALER FROM EDISON’S dock, chugging across the dark water of the harbor. Mullet jumped and splashed around them, pale comets in the black. The air was warm, and Frye smelled Mexico in it. No stars. Rain any second, he thought. Hose us all down. He worked the engine and Bennett sat fore, facing him. Halfway between Newport Island and his father’s, Frye cut the power.

  Bennett fixed his gaze on Frye. “There are some things I want you to know, and to do. These aren’t easy to talk about, Chuck. I’m not too good at that sometimes. First of all, I’m sorry for keeping you in the dark. I didn’t want you involved in … this. In me. But things don’t always work out the way you want.”

  “No.”

  “Chuck, when Li got taken, it was just like losing my legs. I felt this part of me going away and never coming back again. If she doesn’t make it back, I’m not so sure I want to stay he
re.”

  “Move away, you mean?”

  Bennett pulled. “Not exactly.”

  Frye caught his brother’s expression in the dim moonlight, the shine to his eyes, the anxious lines on his forehead, the heavy downward pull of his mouth. “Don’t do that, Benny.”

  Bennett worked out a cigarette and lit it. The smoke hovered, then vanished in a puff of breeze. “I wouldn’t leave any messes, Chuck. No loose ends. If for some reason I don’t make it out of all this, I want you to do what you can for Li. She’s capable, but she needs direction. She’s cut in on the Paradiso with me, but Pop might just gobble her right up.”

  “Okay. Sure.” Frye sat back and gazed at a fisherman on a far dock, elbows tight to his body, hat drooping, pole bent to the water. “Is there some reason to think you’re not going to make it?”

  Bennett exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Things are very … questionable right now. DeCord is CIA. We’ve been getting clandestine money from the agency for three years. Six months ago DeCord cut us off. He said the administration had a change of heart. I didn’t believe that.”

  “Then why?”

  “You just heard it on TV. Hanoi’s ready to deal on the MIAs. DeCord said there were high-level talks going on, and all their support was going to end. He didn’t say talks with who, and he didn’t say how high-level. Now I know. And he was adamant. He didn’t just want me to find other funding, he wanted me to shut the whole thing down. Hanoi’s got us by the balls again, and our government is following them right into the corral.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “To take a flying fuck at the moon.”

  “So you recorded the last few payments to Nguyen in case DeCord tried to hang you for the whole thing. So you could prove the government was involved.”

  “Damn straight. That’s why he wants that tape back so bad. That’s why he took his pictures to Minh—to get the cops to do the dirty work, if it comes to that. Minh is just a simple cop, and he’s honest, but they can use him. And that’s why the guy called Lawrence arranged the break-in at your place. It’s clear to me that Lawrence is just another spook running around Little Saigon, trying to cover for the government.”

  “A spook with General Dien in his pocket. It makes sense now.”

  “Chuck, that tape was my protection. The plan was to copy it, put both tapes in a safe deposit box ready to go out to the networks if anything happened to me. But everything came down so fast. I kept thinking: I’ll do it tomorrow, I’ll do it tomorrow. Well, tomorrow came, Li got ripped off, and the best thing I could do was shuffle off that tape to an innocent party—you. If Lawrence got the tape to DeCord, my parachute’s got a big hole in it.”

  “If the government wanted the pipeline stopped—would they have taken out Li?”

  Bennett shook his head. “They’d have taken out both of us. DeCord is protecting the agency, he’s just doing his job. But they would never have taken Li like that. There are much simpler ways.”

  “Is Li a bit player, or the star?”

  Bennett hunkered inside his coat, lighting a smoke. “DeCord paid us money here for basic operational expenses, but the bulk of it was wired straight to Switzerland. Li made the pickups in Zurich to pay off our people at that end. Those tapes she always took? They had songs and news and propaganda on them, but also code. Meeting places, drop locations, contacts inside Vietnam, times, dates, places. Plans to coordinate military strikes with terrorist moves were coded into the programs themselves—the order of the songs, the first letter of the titles—things like that. We set it all up ahead. Li didn’t know what exactly was happening until she got there and played the tapes. That way, if they caught her, the whole operation wouldn’t be gutted. Li wasn’t just another part of the resistance—operationally, she was the key.”

  Frye tried to collate the information now, make some sense of the details with this new light on them. “Who knew I had that tape, besides you?”

  “Donnell. Nguyen Hy. And Kim, the woman you took to the airstrip.”

  “Then one of them is a traitor?”

  Bennett nodded. “One of them.”

  “What about Kim? If it was her, what happens to the Secret Army? Will she let them tail her in, expose the network?”

  Bennett sighed. “She made Vientiane. She was supposed to connect with our people, go south through Thailand, then slip into Kampuchea. The guns we flew from the Paradiso would be waiting in a village controlled by the Khmer Rouge. We haven’t heard anything, Chuck. Silence. We got confirmation that Thach was in place yesterday. That tells me Wiggins’s story of Thach being under house arrest isn’t true. But Kim’s silence either means she’s under the gun and holding her breath, or she’s sold out and my people are being greased while we sit here.”

  Frye considered. “How much good does the Secret Army do? What do they accomplish?”

  “Lots, Chuck. Programs broadcast on the Secret Radio, straight into Hanoi. Recruitment of the disenchanted. Gathering up the villagers who’ve been smashed down by the Communists. They blow a bridge, attack a depot. Harass the regulars.”

  “It doesn’t seem like much.”

  Bennett looked at him. “It’s how Ho Chi Minh started. We’re how revolutions breed. We’re how history gets written. That’s why Hanoi throws the muscle at us. That’s why they’ve cut Thach loose against us.”

  “The radio transmissions from Saigon Plaza. Are they talking to Thach?”

  Bennett nodded. “That’s my guess.”

  Frye applied a little gas, easing the Whaler into a gentle bank that took them into deeper water. They chugged into the harbor through a canal. Once past the peninsula bridge, Frye could see the lights of the big restaurants wavering on the water, hear the halyards of the big pleasure boats pinging against their masts in the breeze. A bunch of people on the Warehouse patio lifted their drinks and waved.

  Bennett stared up at them, then at his brother. “From where we are right now, Thach is the key. If Kim is working for him, the entire Secret Army will be slaughtered.”

  “And you plan to kill him at kilometer twenty-one.”

  “How did you know that?”

  Frye told him of Nha’s request, of the film he developed. “I put it together with something you were saying in your office Tuesday night. On the phone.”

  Bennett sat upright, a smile on his face. “I should have enlisted you a long time ago, little brother. You’re a good soldier.” The smile retreated. “We’ve tried to get to him a half dozen times. No luck. We’ll try again tomorrow night. Nine, our time.”

  “And if you succeed?”

  “I can quit. At least for a while. I want our prisoners back too, if there are any. I suspect it’s a game played by Hanoi—I don’t think they’ve got any Americans there who don’t want to be there. But I won’t stand in the way of them, if there are.”

  Frye wondered again at this man in front of him, at his passions and secrets, his plans and campaigns. He’s holding off the CIA with one hand and Thach with the other, trying to assassinate enemies halfway around the world. Benny, always your own agendas. You just never give up. You don’t know when to stop. Down deep inside, it’s the biggest thing we have in common.

  Bennett’s dark hair shifted in the breeze. For a moment he was still, clutching the gunwales in his hands, his stumps centered on the bench for balance. He looked up to the restaurant as the Whaler glided by. Pale lights washed across his face. In the long silence that followed, the first rain started to fall, resonant upon the boat. The harbor water began to boil. Bennett had the thousand-yard stare, all right.

  “It was a night like this—rain coming down, and thick sweet air. Man, it was a hundred shades of green. Everything drooping and slow. You wouldn’t believe what I’d been going through with Lam and Li. I knew that one of them was tight with Charlie. Our patrols were getting intercepted. The fucking villagers would clear out way ahead of time. Some of Li’s information turned out wrong. But was it wrong when she gave it to us,
or did it get wrong when she, or he, tipped the Cong? Which one? Lam or Li? Or was it both?”

  Bennett looked up into the rain. The big drops slapped against the Whaler, a drumroll of water on aluminum. “I was in love with her, and he hated me for it. I could see it in his face. With Lam, you were either a friend, or he wanted to grease you. He didn’t have anything in between. I’d never known a guy so … singleminded. You know who I wanted the traitor to be—but how could I know?” Bennett shook his head. “So I set up my own trap. I asked Li to move to base with me. I knew that if she did, it meant she was innocent. And I knew that if Lam saw her moving to me, he’d know I suspected him. He’d try something. Our little triangle was over. Chuck. And I hated to see it go. Back when it started, we had it all. We were friends, and we got things done. Li’s information was the real stuff.”

  Frye eased the Whaler into deeper water. The warm rain had soaked him.

  “The night she was supposed to show, I waited. I really didn’t know what would happen. I was past thinking about it, past caring. When I saw her coming down the path, man, it was the best feeling in the world. She came through a stand of bamboo and stood a few yards from me. The jungle was black and shiny behind her. She had a guitar, a basket full of clothes, some cooking stuff, and this pack on her back. That was all. Her face was white. She was dripping wet. She stood there and I’ll never forget what she said. ‘Benny, there is something on me. Lam put it there, and said we must open it together.’ “

  Bennett lit another cigarette, cupping it in his hand. Frye watched his face glow orange.

  “Fucking gift from Lam, right? So I helped her off with it. Real careful. I could tell by the weight that he’d packed in enough shit to blow a whole platoon away. I put it in an empty mortar pit, took her by the hand, and led her to a hootch I’d set up near the perimeter. I let her inside and helped her get arranged. The whole time I was thinking of Lam. He’d played the same game I had. He’d used Li. The difference was, I loved her enough to let her live, and he loved her enough to kill her. And me. So I got my ‘sixteen, and eight men, and hauled ass to the trail by Lam’s hut. I figured he had five minutes on us.”