by Ty Patterson
Cham slithered forward an inch and brought his rifle around. If there was one VC soldier, there would be others.
He would take his shot, and that would also rouse his men.
He sighted Charlie, flicking his eyes from the binos to his rifle, until he had memorized the VC’s location.
He was depressing the trigger for an easy shot when the conversation grew louder and he heard an English word.
Cham frowned. He let go of his rifle and used his binos.
He gasped when he saw the second man step into view.
Billy Patten!
Cham didn’t believe his eyes for a moment. He looked away for a moment and then peered through the NVGs.
Yes, there was no doubt. Those eyebrows. That nose. That was Billy Patten.
But since when did Billy speak Vietnamese?
No, he didn’t. After several moments, Cham noticed that Billy was speaking slowly, repeating himself several times.
He was speaking in English, and Charlie was replying back in the same language.
Their conversation had dropped and Cham couldn’t overhear it anymore.
Cham thought furiously. He couldn’t shoot the VC while Billy was there. But why was the American soldier talking to the enemy?
Maybe Billy was cultivating a snitch? Yes, that seemed likely.
Satisfied with his reasoning, Cham watched, memorizing every detail about the enemy soldier. The way he talked, his posture, the roundness of his shaven head, the shape of his glasses.
After a long while, Billy handed several folded bills of currency to Charlie.
That confirmed the meeting for Cham. Charlie was surely a VC informer that Billy was talking to.
Cham’s suspicions didn’t leave him entirely.
He observed Billy Patten for the next few days as they went on missions. The American soldier seemed to be his normal self.
Cham thought of asking him, but he and Billy weren’t that close.
He considered going to Leroy or Pete, and there was one moment when the three were smoking in silence. It was ideal for asking them, but Cham’s nerve failed him, and it never returned.
As time passed, that night faded from his memory. However, he never forgot that VC soldier’s face.
The war continued and then slowed to a stuttering stop. The American soldiers started returning to their home country.
Cham had an emotional parting with Leroy and Pete. They were crying unashamedly, grown men bawling their hearts out, knowing they were lucky to be alive. Not knowing why they had fought in the first place.
And then Cham was sent to re-education camp by the North Vietnamese, who were now establishing their communist government over the unified Vietnam.
The camps were nothing but prisons where the SVA soldiers and prisoners of war were indoctrinated in the ways of the new government and in communist principles.
Cham survived by taking the path of least resistance. He readily embraced all that was taught. Protesting or going against the victors was futile, and besides, he had a wife back home.
Cham was released after three years, and as he made his way out of the camp to a life of freedom, he spotted a man talking to a camp official.
Freedom was in his grasp, his wife awaited him outside the camp’s office, but Cham lingered.
He recognized the man talking to the officer. The man had hardly aged.
He was bald, wearing glasses, and despite the passage of time, Cham remembered him.
It was the same VC soldier he had spotted with Billy, in the jungle near the Saigon River.
That soldier’s face was burned into his mind.
Cham drifted closer to them, trying to overhear their conversation.
He didn’t catch anything, except for a name that he never forgot.
The camp’s employee referred to the former VC soldier by one name.
Chieu Ton Dang.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Present Day
‘NVA soldier?’ Beth asked incredulously.
Cham nodded his head, understanding her question.
‘North Vietnamese, not South Vietnamese?’
Cham did the vigorous head thing again.
Beth exchanged a swift glance with her sister. They had been on the wrong track all along. They had been hunting for Dang in the wrong army.
‘That was a long time ago. That man could have been anyone,’ she told Phuong, who translated rapidly to Cham.
The elderly man shook his head and gesticulated as he spoke.
‘He says he has a good memory. He can remember faces. He says there is a mole on your sister’s neck. He saw it just once, for a few seconds, the first time he met you.’
Beth’s eyes widened when Meghan pulled aside the neck of her tee and revealed the tiny skin disfiguration.
She clicked her teeth together and stopped gawking when Meghan kicked her leg.
‘That… is incredible,’ she exclaimed and was rewarded with Cham’s gap-toothed grin.
‘How does he know Dang is bad, though?’
‘He made discreet inquiries about the man. He asked people he trusted. They told him Dang was a businessman. Export and import.
‘Cham was ready to leave it at that, but then he reunited with some men from his former unit. They went drinking in HCMC. One of those soldiers told him about an NVA man who used to run a smuggling business during the war. He described the man, and that description fit Dang.
‘Cham didn’t believe him. But he became curious. He asked more people. He asked people in the underground.’
‘Underground? You mean underworld?’ Beth questioned her.
Phuong nodded. ‘Yes. Criminals. Cham beat up one man, a street pusher, who confessed.’
‘Confessed to what?’
‘That Dang was a drug runner.’
Cham spoke urgently when he saw the disbelieving look on the sisters’ faces.
‘He knows what you are thinking. That in those days, during the war, many soldiers used drugs of one kind or another. There was a lot of smuggling.
‘He says Dang started off like that, then became big. Now he’s one of the largest dealers in narcotics.’
The farmer held his hands wide.
‘The largest,’ Phuong corrected herself.
‘And Cham found this out just by asking people?’
‘By asking the right people. And by becoming a mule. He took a year off from his fields after the war. He went to Laos, where the poppy farms were. Became a mule. Brought it into the country. Joined Dang’s gang. Saw him a few times at his warehouses, as he supervised the loading of the drugs. He learned how the drugs are smuggled into our country. How they are distributed.’
‘They took him into the gang just like that?’
Phuong translated the question and got a lengthy answer.
‘No. They checked him. His background. He told them he had lost everything in the war. That was easy, because it was true. His fields weren’t of much value. He had only his wife. No job, no regular income. They didn’t believe him at first. They tortured him—’
‘Tortured him? Why?’ Beth went pale.
‘To check if he was from the police.’
‘When was this?’ The younger twin swallowed. ‘When did he take that year off?’
Cham counted on his fingers when Phuong turned to him.
‘In 1980.’
‘If he knew all this, why didn’t he go to the police?’
Cham removed the shirt he wore and presented his back to them.
Beth bit her lips to stop from gasping when she saw the pockmarks and long stripe-like scars on his body.
She recognized them. Cigarette and red-hot poker burns.
‘Those are not from the war. They are not the marks Dang’s gang made. The police arrested him, they were worse than those gangsters. Cham had taken notes. Descriptions. He had written everything down. The police burned those in front of his very eyes,’ Phuong said softly.
‘Why didn’t they kill him?’
‘They threatened his wife. That was better than killing him.’
‘Why did Cham go to all that trouble? Why didn’t he just get on with his life?’
The farmer looked into the distance, and then at the buffalo that was trudging slowly towards his field.
‘He did it for that animal,’ Phuong translated, a bemused expression on her face.
The sisters caught on immediately, however.
‘He did it for his country,’ Beth murmured, at which the old man nodded in understanding.
‘He says he didn’t survive the war just to see another enemy. Drugs.’
‘What if he had died? His wife would have been alone.’
Cham cackled, slapping his thigh.
‘He died a thousand times during the war. If he had died in Laos, it wouldn’t have been a big deal. His wife was alone during the war. She would have managed if he had died.’
The Vietnamese man smacked his palm against his forehead suddenly and gesticulated excitedly.
‘What’s he saying?’
Phuong turned to them, her eyes alight. ‘He says he has a copy at home.’
‘Copy of what?’
‘The notes he took. Once he was released by the police, he wrote everything down again. All that he remembered. Kept them safe. They are not as detailed as the original, but he can show them to us.’
Kirilov watched them from his car, his binos to his eyes.
He was behind a bus stop, on a road that bisected fields to the left and the right. Cham’s farms were to his right.
In front of him was a broken-down bus that gave him cover. His windows were mirrored on the outside, and his windshield was dark. No one from the outside could make him out.
Kirilov could read lips. It was one among his many skills that made him stand out, made him one of the deadliest hunters in his world.
He didn’t watch Cham; he observed the translator and wondered idly if he had to kill her.
Killing police, even in an emerging country like Vietnam, was never a good thing.
He shelved the half-formed idea and concentrated on the conversation.
He kept the binos down when his watchees walked to the road, toward the translator’s vehicle.
He made a call as the Toyota headed towards town, where Cham’s residence was.
‘Dang is a drug dealer, a big-time criminal,’ he told Gorbunov when his boss took his call.
‘I can’t find any references to such a man,’ the Mafia boss responded after a while.
‘Are you on your computer?’
‘Da.’
The two men fell silent, considering the implications.
‘He has changed his name,’ Gorbunov concluded. He didn’t ask if Kirilov was sure, if his killer’s information was right. His man was never wrong.
‘Da,’ Kirilov agreed and awaited instructions.
‘Did they find anything about Cole Patten?’
‘No. They seem to have reached a dead end.’
‘Good. This Dang… you remember that one time we tried to get into Vietnam?’
‘Da. We failed. We lost product, money, and men.’
‘Dang—if he is as big as that man is saying, he could be our way back in.’
‘By partnering?’
‘No,’ Gorbunov scoffed, and his next words brought a smile to Kirilov’s face.
‘By killing him, and taking over his operations.’
Zeb was dressed like a farmer, in a loose pair of trousers and a white shirt, a large Vietnamese hat on his head.
He was sitting next to a bunch of elderly men under a tree and made as if he was talking to them.
He gestured helplessly whenever one of them fired a remark at him and after a while they gave up. The Westerner didn’t seem to have any manners. He didn’t respond to them. Talking to one another was a better use of their time.
Zeb had Kirilov’s vehicle in his sight, but he couldn’t see what the Russian was up to.
However, he could make a good guess.
Far behind, he could make out a Jeep with shaded windows.
Bwana and Roger. With those two close, the twins were safe. He could pour all his attention on the Russian.
In less than twenty-four hours, he would regret that he hadn’t been closer to Kirilov.
‘There’s a lot of detail in these,’ Phuong said after skimming through the old papers that Cham brought out.
There were about twenty sheets, tied together with a thread, spidery handwriting running across them. There were dates, places, and people’s names. That was about all the sisters gathered before handing them to the police officer.
Cham nodded in satisfaction as Phuong broke down the salient points of his records for the Petersens.
He had folded the papers and put them in a tin box and had buried that underneath the front step of his house. It was a simple enough hiding place that it wouldn’t stand up to a rigorous search. However, no one had bothered to search his home.
‘He has drug-smuggling routes. Locations and dates where he saw Dang. Various key people in his gang. The date the police arrested him. Names of the police officers who tortured him. We should turn this over to An Khoi.’
‘We will,’ Meghan asserted. ‘Ask him if Billy Patten told him anything of his sons.’
Cham looked puzzled and then shook his head.
‘No. He had no contact with Billy after the war. He knew about his sons through Pete Garrett, but nothing more. Should I tell him about the accident?’
‘Yeah.’
Cham looked troubled when Phuong told him about the events of the past. He stroked his chin and then uttered a few words.
‘If there was anyone in Vietnam who knew what happened to Billy Patten, it would be Dang.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Kirilov waited until the Petersens left with their police escort.
He waited for the evening to turn dark and for the lights to come in the village. He was patient. The time had to be right for what he was going to do.
Mothers stood in doorways and called their children who were playing in the streets. It was dinnertime.
In the darkness, hidden in the shadow of an abandoned house, the Russian could smell cooking in the air. Rice, meat, fish from some houses.
He had a keen nose and could distinguish flavors as the breeze wafted in his direction.
He was motionless, as still as the walls of the house. His companion, for he wasn’t alone, was more restless. However, the man didn’t make much movement, not after the killer had narrowed his eyes in his direction. Not many people disobeyed that look, not even those who didn’t know Kirilov.
Lights in the various homes in Sa Dec started turning off as the residents went to bed.
Cham came out of his house one last time and gossiped idly with his friends, all of his age. Someone guffawed and slapped Cham on the back. Cham grinned, shook a finger in admonishment, and went inside his home.
The lights turned off, but still, Kirilov didn’t move.
It became midnight, and then one am, and only then did the Russian move.
He beckoned to the man beside him, and the two went silently to Cham’s house.
They scaled its wall and went to the rear. Kirilov opened a kitchen window and made his man climb inside first.
Then he followed, and Cham’s nightmare began.
Kirilov left two hours later, leaving behind two physical and emotional wrecks, Cham and his wife.
Kirilov could inflict pain in thousands of ways. He could make his victims pray for death.
The farmer and his wife had begged for death. They had pleaded to be spared, but those pleas fell on deaf ears.
Kirilov hadn’t stopped until he believed their stories, translated by the Vietnamese gangbanger who was with him.
When he left, it was with a chilling warning.
If Cham and his wife told anyone of what had transpired…they wouldn’t die, he reassured them.
They would fa
ce a worse fate.
Kirilov and his hood went out of the village as silently as they had arrived.
They went to their vehicle, parked on the outskirts of the village, and set off with dimmed lights.
The Russian made the hood stop the vehicle five miles later.
‘Let’s relieve ourselves,’ he told the Vietnamese. ‘It will be a long drive.’
The gangbanger agreed and followed him to the edge of the road where the fields began.
Kirilov snapped his neck, taking care that no urine splashed on his legs, and flung the body into the paddy farms.
There was nothing to link him to the thug. The police would assume it was a gang war killing.
He gave no more thought to Cham, his wife, or the dead hood.
He had accomplished his goal, finding out exactly what the farmer had revealed to the sisters.
He rolled the window down to let the night air in as he drove steadily back.
Zeb had been tricked by a deceptively simple maneuver by Kirilov.
The Russian had switched cars at a crowded intersection where several vehicles had stopped.
He had emerged from his vehicle to investigate the holdup and had returned several minutes later.
It was only when they were at the edge of Ho Chi Minh City that Zeb had realized that the driver wasn’t Kirilov. He’d never gotten a good look at the returning driver. He turned out to be someone who looked like the Russian.
He cursed himself for falling for the switch.
He checked his screen. The sisters and Bwana and Roger were back in HCMC.
He turned back at the next opportunity and accelerated towards Sa Dec.
There was only one reason Kirilov would have switched cars.
It wasn’t because he believed Zeb was following him.
Neither Cham nor his wife wailed loudly. They sobbed quietly, leaning on each other’s shoulders for support.
After a while, Cham got to his feet and hobbled towards the kitchen.
He could walk, even though it felt like his body was on fire.
Their torturer had not left many marks on him or his wife. There were a few bruises, but no cuts, no wounds, no bleeding.