“Tell him I have to go see it,” Moon said.
“Ah,” Mr. Lee said. “Then I think you believe you can fix this problem?”
“Who knows?” Moon said. But as a matter of fact, Moon did think he could fix it. From the captain’s admittedly hazy descriptions, it had the sound of a fuel-injection problem. In the glossary of things that can go wrong with engines that depend on pressure-induced heat to ignite vapors, those were the problems Moon preferred.
“We will go to the ship then,” Mr. Lee said. “But we will wait awhile first. We will give the police time to go to bed.”
Osa, Rice, and Moon waited in the room under the floor. Captain Teele and Lum Lee had bowed them out with smiles and good wishes, and they had climbed back down the stairway, with Mr. Tung lighting their way with a carbide lamp. He left it behind for them.
The lamp hissed and buzzed and added its peculiar chemical odor to the various perfumes the room already offered. But it was better than waiting in the dark. Moon resumed his position on the sofa, sighed, and relaxed. Rice was relating his misadventures in the jungle. Osa was listening. They would wake him when they needed him.
“Why not one of the beds?” Osa asked. “You would be more comfortable.”
“I really don’t know,” Moon said. “I know you’re right. I think it’s because I have the idea that the lady should get the bed and the man should sleep on the sofa. Or because I’m stubborn. Or maybe I just enjoy having these cramps in my leg muscles.” He thought of another theory that had something to do with his headache. But Osa had lost patience with him. She was talking to George Rice.
“Did you see how they keep the water out of this room? When the high tide comes, these boards pull down into these slots and-see how tightly they fit.”
Moon didn’t hear the rest of it. He was asleep again.
Special to the New York Times
SAIGON, South Vietnam, April 24-Panic is clearly visible in Saigon now as thousands of Vietnamese try desperately to find ways to flee their country.
Few exits are left and most involve knowing Americans. U.S. Air Force C-141 transports took off all day and night from Tan Son Nhut air base with lucky passengers en route to Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines.
The Fifteenth Day
April 27, 1975
IT TOOK MOON A FEW MOMENTS to focus well enough to read the numbers on his watch: 1:07 A.M. When he blinked, it became 1:08.
Mr. Tung was holding back the bamboo screen. In front of it, five squared timbers had been dropped into place across the opening in the wall. The tide must have come in, because Moon could see the prow of a little boat nudged up against the planks.
“Be careful,” Mr. Tung said. “I think maybe you will have to get yourself just a little bit wet.”
Careful or not, Moon was soaked to about six inches above the knees. Cool water. It helped jar him awake. Mr. Tung stepped from the topmost timber into the boat, agile as a monkey. Captain Teele, now wearing a grimy Beatles T-shirt and pants that seemed to be made of canvas, sat amidships, holding a long-handled paddle.
Mr. Tung said, “We go now” in English and something in some other language. Teele slid them soundlessly down the bamboo tunnel and out into open water. Moon could see now that Mr. Tung’s hideaway was located behind the Puerto Princesa wharves, and once away from it there was less effort to maintain total silence. Teele allowed his sculling oar to splash. Moon scooped up a handful of water and splashed it on his face. He felt lousy. Tension. Change of food and water. Too little sleep. Someday he would lie down on something soft and sleep forever. If anyone came to wake him he would strangle them.
Captain Teele sculled past the barnacle-encrusted pillars supporting the dock, past what seemed to be some sort of naval auxiliary vessel, rusted and in need of paint. A dim light burned on its mast, but there was no sign that anyone aboard was awake. Probably an old U.S. Navy minesweeper, Moon guessed, turned over to the Philippine navy. They passed under the bow of a barge that smelled of turpentine and dead fish. Then the white shape of the Glory of the Sea was just ahead.
Moon had always loved cars and airplanes. In the army, he had even come to feel a rapport with tanks. Nothing that floated had ever interested him, though. But now the sleek white shape of the Glory of the Sea rose above its reflection in the still water, and Moon saw the beauty of it. Someone had built this thing with pride. He looked at Captain Teele, now steering their little boat carefully to the boarding ladder. The captain was smiling. As well he should be, Moon thought. A captain should love this ship. At the moment, however, Moon was feeling no such sentiment himself. He was feeling faintly seasick.
Nor, once on board, did the engine inspire any affection. It was an old Euclid, probably salvaged out of a landing craft left on a beach somewhere after World War II. A burly young man, barefoot and wearing only walking shorts, was standing beside it watching Moon approach, his face full of doubt. His hair hung in a long black braid. A design that suggested either a dragon or a tiger was tattooed on his shoulder, apparently by an amateur.
“Mr. Suhuannaphum,” Captain Teele said, “Mr. Moon.” Mr. Suhuannaphum bowed over his hands and pointed to the diesel. “Old,” he said.
“Do you speak English?”
Mr. Suhuannaphum looked nervously at Captain Teele, seeking guidance. Receiving none, he shrugged, produced a self-deprecatory smile, and said something in a language entirely new to Moon.
“Thai,” Captain Teele said, and made a wry face, as if that explained everything.
“Okay,” Moon said. “Let’s see what we have here.”
Moon discovered very quickly that what they had here was very close to the diagnosis he’d made sight unseen. Something was wrong with the fuel-injection system. Apparently Mr. Suhuannaphum had already reached that same conclusion and had done the preliminary dismantling. The injection system was mechanical, a system long since replaced by electronics. Archaic or not, it seemed to work, as Mr. Suhuannaphum demonstrated. At low pressure, diesel oil emerged evenly from each injection jet. Then, with his face registering first surprise and then disapproval, Mr. Suhuannaphum advanced the throttle. He gestured angrily.
Fuel spurted from one jet. The others died away to a trickle. “Alors,” Mr. Suhuannaphum said. “Kaput.”
“Do it again,” Moon said.
Mr. Suhuannaphum stared at him. Moon devised the proper hand signal.
Mr. Suhuannaphum repeated the process. This time he said, “Broke.”
Moon thought about it. He removed four screws, lifted a plate, removed the filter from the only jet that operated properly, blew through it, handed it to Mr. Suhuannaphum, and made washing motions. Mr. Suhuannaphum looked surprised, but he washed it.
With that done, Moon reinstalled the filter and replaced the plate. Simple enough, but would it work?
“Start it,” Moon said, gesturing to Mr. Suhuannaphum. Mr. Suhuannaphum’s expression formed a question.
“Let’s see,” Moon said, trying to think of a way to explain to this Thai why the old injection systems worked in this perverse way, increasing the pressure when the filter was dirty and thus starving the jets whose filters were clean. He didn’t understand it himself.
“Just start it.” he said.
It started, but it had started before. The question was whether the tendency to cut out with acceleration had been solved. Now it thumped with slow regularity, like a healthy heartbeat.
Moon had an eye on his watch, giving it a little time to warm. And thinking that if he had fixed it, and he probably had, he had once again cut his own throat. The condemned electrician repairing the electric chair. Moon Mathias, jack-of-all-trades, fixing the engine that would take him into the hands of the Khmer Rouge, who beat people like him to death with sticks.
It was a little after three A.M. and Mr. Suhuannaphum was looking at him anxiously, awaiting instructions.
“Okay,” Moon said, “go for it. Give it the gas. Vrooom, vrooom, vrooom.” He leaned back agains
t the rail, fighting an urgent need to throw up.
The old Euclid diesel went vrooooooom, vrooooooom. Mr. Suhuannaphum eased off the throttle, clapped his hands, and produced a joyful shout. Captain Teele emerged from the darkness, grinning broadly. “Yes!” he said.
“Well, hell,” Moon said. “Nothing to stop us now, I guess. Here we go to meet the boogeymen.”
And with that, Moon Mathias leaned over the rail and became thoroughly sick.
SAIGON, South Vietnam, April 26 (Havas)- Some of the many signs of panic and desperation in South Vietnam:
Saigon drugstores are sold out of sleeping pills and other medications useful for suicides.
An American economic aid worker is offered $10,000 to marry the pregnant wife of a Vietnamese co-worker so she can qualify for escape.
Deserting ARVN paratroopers seize a transport plane, force the passengers off and fly away.
The Fifteenth Day to, Alas, the Eighteenth Day
April 27-30, 1975
IT WAS EMBARRASSING. He remembered that part of it clearly enough. But much of the rest was either hazy or mixed with the confusing dreams that high fever provokes.
He recalled sitting on the deck after the heaving of his stomach finally wrenched to a stop. He recalled trembling with a chill, and the voice of Mr. Tung saying something in his oddly accented English about this seasickness, this mal de mer as Mr. Tung called it, being unusually premature, and laughing at his joke. And then he remembered the angry voice of Mr. Lee, speaking in a language that might have been Tagalog or Chinese or almost anything but English.
They took him belowdecks then, Captain Teele helping him down a narrow ladder. He’d sprawled on a bunk. And there was Osa van Winjgaarden leaning over him, asking what he thought was the matter, asking about pain, about what might be causing this, and he’d said something like it must have been something he’d eaten, and she had said, “I hope so.”
She’d stood over him, he remembered that clearly, frowning at him, holding the back of her hand against his forehead, taking his wrist and checking his pulse, looking worried.
“You are practicing medicine without a license,” Moon had said. The fever was back, and Osa’s hand felt cold on his skin. “If I have to throw up anymore, I’ll call my lawyer and have him file a malpractice-”
But he didn’t finish. Didn’t feel like trying to be funny. Felt, in fact, like closing his eyes and leaving all this behind. And so he had.
And now it was-what? Three days later? And almost sundown, so that would make it three and a half days.
“Well, it’s Wednesday,” Osa said. “And we left Puerto Princesa Sunday morning. So, yes. Three days you’ve been sick.”
Moon had just eaten a bowl of soup made of rice and something else-probably some sort of fish. It was very thin and warm and delicious. It sat uneasily in his stomach. But it was going to be all right, he could tell that. In fact, he could use another bowl.
“Good soup,” he said. “Excellent soup.”
“You should wait a little while,” Osa said. “Until we see what happens with your digestion.”
He was sitting on a roll of canvas, leaning back on a burlap sack full of something heavy-maybe rice. A bank of dark clouds closed off the horizon to the left, but the sky above was clear and the setting sun felt wonderful. Climbing up the ladder had left Moon feeling weak. But his head no longer ached. His stomach seemed to be dealing handsomely with the soup. No more nausea. A fresh breeze blew across his face and hummed through the rigging above him. The sea was dark blue, and Moon felt absolutely wonderful. I am actually going to find Ricky’s kid. I’m actually going to walk into the room and hand this child to Victoria Mathias and say, Well, Mother, here she is. Here’s your granddaughter. And then- He exhaled a huge sigh.
Osa was leaning against the railing, frowning at him. “You’re all right?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Hungry. I feel like you should be telling me what I’ve been missing. First, where are we?”
“Well,” Osa said, “we’re on the Glory of the Sea and we are going to the mouth of the Mekong and I think we get there very soon. Tonight, I think. Captain Teele is just waiting until he believes it is a little safer. Otherwise, I think we have told you everything.”
“You did, I guess. But a lot of it-” He tapped his forehead with a finger. “You know. It’s all confused. I remember hearing people talking about the Filipino minesweeper. Rice, I think it was, and Mr. Lee. And I seem to remember the minesweeper didn’t chase us. And you told me the North Viets were almost at Saigon. Or maybe I dreamed that. And something about an air base being bombed.” He shrugged.
“I think I told you the airport had been shelled and no airplanes were landing. And the Vietnamese had put in a new president but the Communists wouldn’t negotiate with him.”
“I hoped maybe the good guys would have won while I was asleep,” Moon said. “Nothing good seems to happen for our side out here while I’m awake.”
“I think it’s even worse since you got sick. The Communists are winning everywhere.”
“Maybe that will solve a problem for us,” he said. “I mean, no more war. Peace. Maybe your brother will be safe now.”
Osa didn’t react to this. She was staring out toward the setting sun.
“Well,” he said, “who knows? Why not?”
“Mr. Teele said the Khmer Rouge radio didn’t sound very peaceful. He said they announced they had executed eleven government ministers.”
“You know how that is,” Moon said. “Things like that get exaggerated in the excitement. The press hears they’ve been shot and they’re just locked up.”
“The Khmer Rouge decapitated them,” Osa. said. “And the radio was ordering people in the city to turn in all the college professors, lawyers, and doctors. Business people. Everybody like that. And he heard another radio station broadcasting terrible reports. I think it was from a freighter sailing down the Mekong. It said all the people in some of the villages had been killed.”
Osa was looking away from him, to where cloud shadows were making their patterns on the sea.
“Awful,” she said, and shuddered, and then was silent.
Moon could think of nothing to say.
“Worse even than what I was telling you when you were sick.”
“I don’t remember much of it,” Moon said.
“Don’t,” she said, and wiped her sleeve across her face. She turned toward him.
“Part of the time you were delirious. Did you know that?” Suddenly she smiled. “Did you know you were calling me Debbie?”
“Oh,” Moon said.
“And talking to your mother quite a bit. You must have dreamed you’d done something very bad. You were telling her you were sorry. Several times you said that.”
“Well,” Moon said, “several times I did things that were bad.” Which really wasn’t what Osa van Winjgaarden wanted to talk about.
“This Debbie, I think she must be your sweet-heart.”
“What did I say?” And, as soon as he asked, wished he hadn’t. So, apparently, did Osa. She looked slightly abashed.
“Well, personal things sometimes.”
Time to change the subject. “I remember hearing you talking to Mr. Lee about getting me off the ship and to a doctor, and Mr. Lee saying there wasn’t a doctor, except the prison doctor,” Moon said. “And you said prison was better than being buried at sea. And I remember agreeing with you.”
“I thought you had dengue fever,” Osa said. “That is very bad business. You die from that.”
Moon had a sudden surprising thought. “But you would have gone to prison too. Not just me.”
Osa shrugged.
“And I think I remember somebody giving me sort of a bath,” Moon said. “With a wet towel or something, turning me over. Washing everywhere. Even behind my ears. I think it was you. Or was I dreaming?”
“It was to make you more comfortable,” Osa said, still looking out at the darkening sea.
>
“So I don’t guess I have any secrets anymore,” Moon said.
“No secrets?”
“I mean, I guess you know I am a little bit too fat around the middle. And have a scar on my hip. So forth.”
“Oh, yes. How did you get that terrible scar?”
Moon was silent for a moment. “When I turned over the jeep.”
Some slight variation in the wind caused the sail above them to make a flapping sound. Straight ahead, and high, four sea birds were circling. Long pointed wings. Albatross, perhaps, if they flew over the South China Sea. Gooney birds.
“And a man was killed in it,” Osa said slowly. “The friend who died in the accident you had. You talked about him when your fever was so high that first day.” She looked at him, face sad. “I think he must have been a very good Mend. You grieve for him.”
“Yes,” Moon said. “I do.”
Rice appeared at the top of the ladder, looked at them, climbed out, and walked toward the stern, where Captain Teele was doing something at the wheel.
“What did I say to my mother?”
“I didn’t listen,” Osa said. “Of course not.”
“But you heard enough to know I was talking to her. What did I say?”
He decided she wasn’t going to answer. Then she said, “I already told you. You said you were sorry.”
Rice was walking up.
“You decide you’re going to live?”
“With a little bit of luck,” Moon said. “And a little more of that soup.”
Rice sat on the canvas beside him. “Teele’s going to wait until about an hour before dawn. Then he’ll haul in the sail and go as close to the mouth as he can get. We’ll take the rubber boat and ride on into the new R. M. Air base. Then I’ll fire up a copter and we’ll get this business over with.”
Moon didn’t comment. The soup suddenly felt heavy in his stomach.
“If we’re lucky, Bob Yager will be there. If he is, we can get maybe four or five of those copters out of there. You know, fly two of them over to Thailand, leave one, fly back in the other, take a couple more. Keep doing it until we got all of ’em out that are ready to go.”
Finding Moon Page 18