by Dale A. Dye
Justin Halley dropped into his desk-chair and assessed the situation in a logical fashion. He was worrying himself silly over nothing. There’s just no evidence, he decided, even if the man was contemplating some sort of exposé on Salt and Pepper. They couldn’t know who those two turncoats were. There would be nothing in the archives except for rumor and second- or third-hand reports that had all been discounted. The Company Commander who knew some detail, who had seen a few of the photos, was dead long ago. There was nothing to connect him with that. The guy was fishing, Halley concluded. The thing to do is ignore it.
He scrabbled around among the files on his desktop and found the memo Eileen had prepared concerning Wilhelm Johannes Pudarski. Nothing much to worry about with this guy, he thought as he re-read the file. He was low-profile—college student at University of Chicago—works part-time as a carpenter—recently inducted into the Medal of Honor Society. And then he saw the addendum clipped onto the last page of the report…something Eileen had attached and he’d missed. It said Pudarski had dropped out of school and moved to St. Louis.
Justin Bates Halley squeezed at his temples but he couldn’t ignore a coincidence like this. This was too much to shrug off with Pudarski, and now this Spike Benjamin, the man who shot the pictures, in the same city. They were connected somehow. He punched a button on his console and told Eileen Winter to set up a private meeting for him with Cleveland Emory as soon as the CEO got off the road from his factory swing. No matter what brings out these ghosts, he decided, it’s a matter that demands preemptive action.
CAMP 413, Socialist Republic of Vietnam
Now that Tet celebrations were over, Comrade Cleveland Herbert Emory thought he might finally get the audience with the regional political officer he’d been requesting for the past month. Army patrols were sweeping through the area, and such activity usually meant a Revolutionary Education and Assistance Team was making rounds.
The officer leading one patrol that paused at Camp 413 was a young Thi Uy from the Red River Delta region who managed to acquire a passable English vocabulary somewhere. He’d heard there was a “foreign volunteer” in this remote camp and sought Emory out to test his language skills with a native speaker. And to freeload a dinner of fresh fish from the teeming stream that flowed near the communal hut that Emory shared with ten other student workers.
The People’s Army lieutenant was grateful for the smoked fish and vegetables, lingering over green tea long enough to give the emaciated American a look at his map. It was a startling revelation for Emory, who assumed he was marking time somewhere near Hanoi. Camp 413, the third such education and work center he’d been in for the past four years, was actually located in a remote northwestern corner of the newly united Vietnam. It looked from the map to be some eight kilometers from Laos and ten kilometers from China.
That baffled Comrade Emory, but he didn’t bother to question the lieutenant who would have no knowledge of policy decisions outside his platoon. He simply added a question to the list of topics for discussion with the regional political officer. Why, he would ask, am I stuck so far away from Hanoi, the heart of revolutionary policy? And what, he’d continue, is being done about my request for a more active role in the task of nation-building that I earned on the battlefield?
The unspoken truth of the matter was that after years of struggle and toil on and off the battlefield, Comrade Cleveland Herbert Emory was sick, tired, and suffering a loss of faith in the gratitude of his hosts for his sacrifices. Either he was being intentionally mistreated or simply ignored now that the main struggle had ended. Assignment to Camp 413 along with a pitiful collection of political deviants and rootless reactionaries indicated it was probably the former. And after all he’d sacrificed all he’d done to prove his fervor and loyalty to the cause, he sat vegetating in a remote jungle camp. Comrade Emory didn’t know why that was the case, but his patience was at an end. He intended to get some answers and a change in both his status and location.
Since 1970 when he’d nearly died in the air strike near the Mu Gia Pass, he’d spent two years in a series of hospitals around the north. That was understandable. His injuries were extensive, requiring long periods of painful treatment and rehabilitation, but he could see no reason why he had to spend the next three years being shifted around from pillar to post in a series of schools and camps in the hinterlands. He expected to be in Hanoi celebrating and working with the victorious Socialist planning committees. He’d been a model patient and a loyal comrade during that time, keeping his complaints to a minimum. And there was plenty to complain about. He still didn’t have full use of his right arm and leg, but his brain was intact.
Comrade Emory felt he deserved a lot better than he was getting. It was well past time for him to make a few reasonable demands. Stoop labor was not the kind of thing he expected to be doing for the rest of his life.
He really didn’t have to work that hard at Camp 413, but why should he be working at all…and why in such a remote location? He would find out…demand some answers when he finally got a chance to ask someone in proper authority. And he would find out why all the letters he’d written to the politburo offering his services had so far gone unanswered.
With a new-found determination, Comrade Emory glanced up at the sky, judging the hour, and decided it was time for him to check the series of seines and gill-nets that trapped fish to feed the residents and guard cadre at the camp. The tributary of the Black River that flowed past the camp provided a dietary staple along with the rice paddies and cultivated fields where more of the residents worked at their daily chores in between lectures and political studies.
There was a political education class scheduled for after dinner this evening, and Comrade Emory intended to be a loud and demanding participant. Tonight, he’d take a stand as a hero of the revolution and get some answers; perhaps he’d even stop working until he got an audience with the regional political officer. He deserved to be heard and given due consideration in the new world order.
There were six bony perch struggling in the gill-nets when he arrived at the river bank. He squatted, freed the catch, smashed them on a rock and began working to remove the scales. As he worked, he thought about what he would say at the meeting, contemplating the proper words to use so his demands wouldn’t sound too much like whining or complaining. He’d have to do it in Vietnamese, and despite years of almost total immersion in the language, he still had difficulty. Languages had always come hard for him. He was a concept guy, an idea man.
Emory was glib enough with the standard communist bromides and slogans required of everyone in the camp, but tonight he’d have to express himself well and eloquently. In the past he’d struggled with weighty concepts which had led him to be marked down for a halting, uninspired presentation when the political cadre called on him in classes. That is yet another example of the unfair treatment I continue to suffer here, Emory thought. Maybe I should just leave, walk off into the jungle and head for the nearest civilization. But he knew he would likely die if he did that, or the cadre would track him down and he’d wind up under arrest. He’d be branded a counter-revolutionary and wind up standing one of the mock trials he’d observed over the years since the end of the war. The accused was always guilty, and the sentence was either death or a life term in one of the gulags run by the party. It amounted to the same thing.
Emory was so engrossed in fish-gutting and writing speeches in his head that he didn’t notice Sergeant Ngo Xa Dinh of the Provincial People’s Militia had arrived for the weekly barter session. Dinh waited quietly to be noticed, then coughed politely and squatted on his haunches. Emory glanced up at him while he finished with the fish he was scaling and then offered a gnarled hand at the end of a stiff right arm to shake the man’s hand. Dinh was a former VC combat soldier, wounded in the Central Highlands. Emory knew his story. Sometime during the man’s time with the VC, his family had disappeared, relocated by the puppet regime. Dinh never found out where
they were, or if they were still alive after the Saigon government fell. Rootless when the war ended in the south, Dinh drifted north, leaving his ancestral home, and applied for a job with the northern militia. He wound up as a guard with the cadre at Camp 413. It was relatively simple duty that kept him fed. The armed guard force at education camps dotted around Vietnam were nominally tasked with keeping the camps safe from marauding bandits, but Dinh and his fellows understood their real job was prison guard. And despite the fiction of reeducation and doctrinal training, those inside the camps knew that the armed guards were there to keep them from going anywhere except back to work.
Despite all that, Emory didn’t think of old Dinh as a jailer. In fact, up until the camp cadre began ignoring his regular demands to see the regional political officer, Emory suspected Dinh was his quasi-official bodyguard. He was, after all, a Hero of the Revolution, an unusual and important person who required special security to protect him from reactionary elements who thought of all westerners as mortal enemies. Lately, he’d decided that Dinh was just another simple man doing what he needed to get along and that made him a valued ally in the plans for recognition and release that Emory was constantly formulating.
While Dinh rummaged in his raggedy knapsack for trade goods, Emory opened a bamboo hamper and began to assemble market staples. There were fillets of smoked perch, freshwater eel jerky, turtle meat, fresh onions, turnips, and banana squash. He placed a little of each on a pile of banana leaves and waited for the bargaining to begin. Dinh shifted the worn stock of his Simonov carbine out of the way and presented his first bid, a half can of East German tooth powder. It brought some perch and three turnips. There were two more minor exchanges before Dinh got around to the serious business he always saved for last.
As with all economic systems, barter at Camp 413 had its own standards of value which were driven by demand and supply. Lately the hot item was American cigarettes, and Dinh had a black-market source downstream where a regular ferry crossed the river. Today he had two unopened packs of L&Ms, which was a lot more than the three or four moldy smokes that he usually brought to tempt Emory’s tobacco craving. As casually as he could, Emory reached into his basket and put a thick catfish on the leaves next to the cigarettes. Dinh eyed the rare delicacy and sighed, pointing at some eel jerky and chunks of turtle meat that he thought would constitute a better trade.
“You ask too much, Trung Si Dinh.” Emory tugged at an earlobe. He was desperate for the tobacco, but there was a certain protocol to be observed. Dinh just stared at the water flowing by them. He was a playful trader, but Emory could tell there was something bothering the man beyond the barter at hand. Emory reached for his basket to up the ante, but the guard held up a hand to stop him.
“We have done business for a long time,” he said. “Now I wish to speak with you privately as a friend.”
Emory settled into a more comfortable squat and nodded.
Dinh glanced at the rear of a nearby hut where two student-workers were cleaning farm tools and leaned toward Emory to speak in a quiet voice. “I think you will understand my feelings, being a foreigner in this land.”
“We are all brothers in the great struggle.” Emory couldn’t tell what might be coming. It could be some kind of cadre test.
Dinh hissed and spat between his knees. “No lectures now. I have heard enough of that.”
Emory paused to light the last of his remaining cigarettes and stared into the dark eyes of the man squatting across from him. Dinh seemed sincere, but this was dangerous ground. It might be some kind of lure to make him say the wrong thing. On the other hand, it might be something he could use to advantage.
“This remains between you and me. Tell me what you want.”
“I want vegetables and fish, smoked, salted, and wrapped. There must be enough for a long journey, perhaps three weeks or more.”
Emory caught a note of desperation in the man’s voice. If he had to guess at this point, he’d say Comrade Sergeant Dinh was going to go AWOL. He could understand a thing like that. He’d contemplated it himself any number of times.
“Maybe I can help you,” he said, “but I want to know what you are planning to do.”
“It’s my problem, mine alone,” Dinh said, shaking his head and pointing at the cigarettes still sitting on the banana leaves between them. “No one must know of it. If you demand more cigarettes, I will try to get them for you.”
“You know I have sources for what you want, Dinh. I can help you, but I need to know this is not something that will get me punished. I’m planning to be out of here soon.”
Dinh took a deep breath and inched closer where he could whisper in Emory’s ear. “I think I have found my family. There was a man at the ferry crossing who tells me they are in Thailand. I want to find them…I will find them, but I must have provisions for the trip to the border. It’s a long way.”
Emory pondered the passion in the man’s voice. Family was everything to the Vietnamese, and nothing the communist re-educators did would ever change that. He eyed the cigarettes on offer and thought about the concept. He supposed he still had a family somewhere in the States. His father would still be running a huge business and exploiting the capitalist system. What would he think of me if he knew what I’ve done and where I am? Does he ever think of me at all?
Comrade Emory reached for the cigarettes. “Come to see me in one week. I will have what you need.”
j
Most of his arguments for transfer and all of his complaints about unfair treatment fell on deaf ears. After the third time Comrade Emory rose to speak even his fellow worker-students shouted him down. He was forced to sit silently and listen to drivel for the rest of the night and suffered a stern lecture from the camp’s senior political officer who informed Comrade Emory that he was jeopardizing any hope he had of presenting his case before the politburo in Hanoi.
When Emory stomped away back to his sleeping hut, the political officer returned to his office and made another negative entry in the foreigner’s file. Comrade Emory had never seen the fat file maintained on him in the cadre hut under the name Di Anh—which loosely translated as fleeing foreigner—so he had no way of knowing his political instructors had consistently evaluated him as slow, unstable, and unreliable outside communal groups. There was even a note in the file that said Comrade Emory might be a mental defective or perhaps suffering some brain damage from the air-raid by Yankee Air Pirates. Emory had no way to know the politburo in Hanoi was keeping him on ice, saving Comrade Emory as a pawn they might want to play in negotiations to end the American trade embargo or as leverage in any other post-war dealing they might have with the west. Emory would have been shocked, devastated to learn that beyond such a remote possibility, the handful of government officials in Hanoi that even knew he existed had no particular interest in whether Comrade Emory lived or died.
The others who shared his hut were gathered in a corner playing a gambling game as Emory entered. He walked to his bed, ignoring their snickers, and reached for the little box where he kept certain prescribed medicines he’d been reluctantly given for the pain in his arm and leg. He was after the little white pills in a plastic bottle. They were brutally strong and more than one taken as a single dose usually caused Emory to lose consciousness for several hours. That’s exactly what he needed on this frustrating night. Emory took two of the little tablets, stripped to his shorts and lay back on the uncomfortable cot.
He was lost in a black swirl after a half hour and the visions began. There was an odd soundtrack to his dreams, a tune that featured tootling flutes and roaring snare drums. It was an old Civil War refrain—when Johnny Comes Marching Home—and Emory saw himself marching at the head of a victory parade where flags snapped and people cheered. The bands will play and the children will shout and we’ll all feel gay when Johnny comes marching home again.
The images were familiar. He’d seen them many times before in dreams over the years since th
e war ended. It was a picture he first painted of his life, of his future, back when he was very full of himself. The parade scene fizzled, and Emory saw himself standing among a gang of screaming activists and anti-establishment protestors on the campus at Berkley. It was a strange crowd. There were some people he remembered and a bunch of strangers including his father, who stood on the periphery, dressed in tattered clothing, with his head hanging, defeated, and embarrassed. And next to him, laughing madly was Stinson, the Students for Democratic Society radical.
There was a fade to black and then Emory saw himself at the pivotal SDS meeting that brought him to Vietnam. Everyone at Berkley and on other campuses across the country knew radical groups were walking a very thin tightrope. The feds had busted Angela Davis; Huey Newton and the Panthers were all on the run or in hiding. Hoffman and the brothers in Chicago were in jail. Undercover FBI moles were infiltrating and making everyone paranoid. Revolutionary fires banked quickly when someone got busted on a felony. Under Stinson’s leadership, the Berkley SDS was all about felonies on a grand scale. And now he was advocating a plan to bomb the ROTC building. It was foolish and futile and Emory objected.
There was an actual fistfight that night, the first one Cleve Emory ever had, after Stinson accused him of being a coward, the kind of man who talked a great game but was afraid to play. The fight was broken up so quickly that no one got hurt beyond a few bumps and a bloody nose, but it pushed Emory to make a crucial decision. He didn’t really think it through. At the moment, embarrassed and a little unhinged by the fight, all he wanted to do was upstage Stinson, the star of the expanding Berkley SDS galaxy. He could have reacted more rationally and simply told the leadership that if they went through with Stinson’s plan, he would cut off the steady flow of his father’s money he was pumping into the cause.