Into the Treeline Page 17

  Two clicks. He nodded to Vanh, who gave the signal to the others. They did not have long to wait. The jeep came careening around the corner, moving very fast. The driver had to stand on the brakes to keep from running into the bullock cart. He swung the vehicle to a stop, then stood up to yell curses. The man in the passenger seat sat there impassively, the polished brass on his collar gleaming in the sun. Little eyes peered from a fat face that seemed in danger of swallowing them. His lips were pursed in anger. He turned to say something to the driver.

  The driver’s tirade was stopped in midcurse as his uncomprehending eyes took in the figures in black who stepped out onto the road. They were heavily armed, and all the guns seemed to be pointed directly at his head. He sat down and raised his hands as high as he could get them.

  The target, Major Nguyen Quanh Binh of the Vietnamese army, was perplexed. In Vietnamese he shouted, “What is the meaning of this! Who are you, and what do you want?”

  Jim shouted the few Russian phrases he knew, as if he were giving orders to the unit. The black cloth tied around his face muffled his voice, but no matter. The PRU had no idea what he was saying anyway, as no one spoke Russian. They went about their tasks as if they did. They swiftly divested the driver of his pistol and wrapped his hands behind him with duct tape. Over his mouth they slapped another piece. Into his ear one growled, “You saw nothing. Do you understand? If you tell anyone anything, we will come to your house and kill you and all your family, just as we did with the other traitors during Tet.” The terrified man nodded his understanding. He did not know what his chief had done to anger the VC, but it had nothing to do with him. Already his mind was inventing stories to explain away the disappearance of the man. Perhaps, if he phrased it right, he could even become the hero of the incident, fighting off scores of them before finally being knocked unconscious.

  Major Binh was pulled from the jeep and, when he continued to protest, was knocked to the roadway by a blow to the back of his head. Rough hands pulled his chromed pistol from its holster. It was held to his head as his hands were pulled behind him and taped. He was so fat they had trouble getting his hands together, pulling until he thought they would disjoint his shoulders. His cries of pain were muffled by the tape they slapped across his mouth.

  Another burst of the strange language from the big one and they picked him up and set him on his feet. The man came close and looked into his eyes. Blue-eyed foreign devil! Who are you? he wanted to ask. What language is that? Not English, or French, both of which he spoke. For the first time he felt fear. There must be some mistake! Perhaps this was a unit new to the area, and they had not yet been told of his dual role. He could straighten that out soon enough. As long as nothing happened before he got the chance. He resolved to be very careful and do what they said to lessen the chance that there would be any more mistakes. He allowed himself a moment of amusement at the thought of how surprised they would be. He would demand that the men who had treated him so roughly be punished. Perhaps he would demand of the High Command that this entire unit be punished, to include the, what was he, Russian? East German? who was giving the orders. He had heard that there were Soviet and Eastern European advisors with some of the special units but had never before encountered one.

  At another command the unit formed up and marched into the jungle, with him in the center. Behind them the men with the cart abandoned it and melted away in another direction. The driver was left sitting in the jeep. They knew he would wait for a couple of hours before trying to get loose. He had been told that some of them were watching him.

  They moved at a punishing pace. He was unused to walking, and his bonds made it even more difficult. Soon he was panting and sweating, and within less than a mile he was stumbling and reeling. Whenever he tried to slow down they pushed and pulled him forward, keeping the pace no matter what. They moved through the reserve squad at the rally point, stopping only briefly as the leaders conferred. It was difficult to breathe. He would have liked to have gasped great lungfuls of air, but the tape over his mouth made that impossible. He wondered if it was possible to suffocate this way.

  Heads would roll for this! Such a thing would have been unthinkable before Tet. The countryside had been so well organized, and the communications and intelligence nets had functioned so efficiently, that there would never have been the possibility of this kind of mistake. But so many of the cadre had been killed during the attack and its aftermath, killed needlessly, to his way of thinking, that nothing functioned well anymore. His anger spilled over onto all those who had a part in it. If he had been running things it would have been much different.

  After what seemed like hours of marching, his anger was slowly sapped away. The fatigue stole it, replacing it with despair and depression. Would this walk never end? Did they plan to march all the way to Laos before they stopped? He could not make it, would die here alongside the trail, an ignominious end to a brilliant career. And all because someone had made a mistake. He had always felt impervious to the vicissitudes of fate, but now was possessed with a sense of his own vulnerability. What good had it done, all his plotting and maneuvering? The delicate balancing act that he had performed with such aplomb? It would all collapse with him on the jungle floor. Tears streamed down his face. His body screamed in agony, lungs burning, legs begging for rest.

  They had come less than two miles. Not long now. Jim had been closely monitoring the collapse of Major Binh. He had been going through the stages even faster than Jim had hoped. He would soon reach dull-eyed resignation. Jim wanted him just on that edge.

  A few minutes later he gave the sign to Vanh, who halted the column. They were at the edge of a small open area. Security was quickly placed, covering all avenues of approach. The prisoner was brought to the center of the clearing and shoved to his knees. Vanh stood before him. Binh stared up at him with dulled, hopeless eyes.

  “Major Nguyen Quanh Binh,” Vanh read from a sheet of paper, “Enemy of the People of Viet-Nam. You stand accused of crimes against the Party, against the Cadre, and against the Cause. The penalty for these crimes is death. The Peoples Tribunal of the Central Committee, of which this unit is an action arm, has decreed that this sentence be carried out. You will now be given the opportunity to make a statement which will admit your errors, serving as an example to others.” Vanh nodded to one of the soldiers, who ripped the tape from the major’s mouth and held a microphone to his face.

  Binh’s face was on fire where the tape had been ripped away, but it was as nothing to the flame in his soul. Who dared accuse him! There had been none more faithful than he. From the beginning he had played the double role, it was true, and sometimes that made it necessary to do things that made it look like he was a loyal servant of the government. But the High Command had always understood that need, and had even given him people to turn in, people who were no longer needed, or who were wavering in their commitment, who served no important roles. But had he not more than made up for that? Was it not he who had protected the secret party members in the district government? Had he not provided advance notice of planned attacks by government forces against VC units? It was he who had given the inside information on all the installations in Hue for use during the Tet Offensive. Who made sure that the Phoenix blacklists always missed the important names, and included the names of neutralists and antigovernment nationalists. When mistakes were made and actual Communists were captured, he applied the appropriate pressure to get them released. All this, and more, he screamed into the microphone. He would not stand for this injustice! They must understand that they were making a mistake. He was an important man, probably the most important in the province. They could not do without him!

  Jim had understood perhaps a third of the rapid-fire soliloquy, but even that was enough to convince him that they had caught a very big fish. He made a gesture to Vanh, who met him to one side. “Hit him for details,” he whispered. “Names, places, documents. He’s smart enough to have kept materials to blackmail
people. He’s very scared. Tell him that you don’t believe him, that his story is the attempt of a condemned man to save himself. Demand proof.”

  Vanh’s eyes were very cold above the black mask. “It will be as you say, Captain,” he agreed. “But I am sure you understood the part about his role at Tet.”

  Jim nodded. They understood each other.

  For the next hour Major Binh talked. He named names, told them where they could find documents, told about plans for the province. It did not take much prodding. He was so eager to clear himself he would have given up his nearest relative.

  “I do not know what fool denounced me,” he finally said, “but as you can see I am a true servant of the revolution. You should be spending your time finding out why I was denounced, rather than treating me as such. I do not hold a grudge,” he lied. “You are only doing your duty as you have been told. But your duty lies elsewhere, comrades. Now please release me. I will commend your revolutionary zeal to the Central Committee.” And demand that you all be shot, he thought. To include your Russian friend. To hell with our fraternal Soviet comrades!

  Vanh walked back over to Jim, the tape from the recorder in his hand. “I think this is all we shall get from him,” he said. “He is as dry as a rice ball that has been left in the sun. Now we must kill him.”

  “No,” Jim replied. “You must not.”

  “Please, Captain, no more of this. We have no choice. If we bring him in, the province chief will know that we have run an unauthorized operation. If we let him go it will not take him long to find out that there is no Peoples Tribunal of the Central Committee. And it will not be hard for them to figure out who could have run such an operation. He must die.”

  “I didn’t argue with that,” said Jim, pulling his pistol from the holster. He flipped the safety off and shot Binh cleanly through the back of the head. The body flopped heavily forward, Major Binh expiring with his face buried in the floor of the jungle.

  “I only said that you must not kill him. This action will become known, sooner or later. I hope it will be later. You have to live in this country, I don’t. And I think I’d stand a hell of a lot better chance in an American court than you would here. Call it a favor, Captain.”

  “Bury this piece of dung,” Vanh shouted to the soldiers. “Dig it deep, so that the animals of the jungle do not poison themselves.

  “Captain Jim,” he said, “I think that I may have some rice balls in my rucksack. Would you care to join me? We have many things to talk about. Like what we are going to do next. What would you suggest?”

  It took Jim two weeks of work with the material he had gathered to be ready to go to the PIOCC. First he checked it with Chandragar. For further confirmation the PRU picked up one of the people named by Binh and interrogated him. The information had been good.

  He dropped the folder on the desk of the first lieutenant who served as the senior advisor to the PIOCC. “A little interesting reading material for you, LT,” he said, taking a chair. He noted the chromed .38 in a Saigon Cowboy holster, the K-Bar knife strapped to the ankle, the M-2 pineapple grenade displayed prominently on the man’s desk. Ain’t you a bad-ass, he thought.

  The officer frowned importantly. “I don’t think we’ve met,” he said.

  Jim, who was in civilian clothes, ignored him. The man damned well knew who he was. “I need some arrest orders,” he said. “You’ll get enough to issue them from what you have here.”

  “That’s not the way it’s done!” the lieutenant protested. “You know the rules. Verification from at least three sources, only hard-core VC targeted.”

  “Yeah, bullshit. Look, LT, I don’t know if you’re crooked or just stupid. For your sake, I hope the latter. Every fucking list I get from you has nothing on it but people the province chief wants to get rid of. Most of them have nothing to do with the VC, other than trying to stay alive when they come to visit them. I’m goddamned tired of it. You take a look through here, verify it any way you want; three, four, ten witnesses. But you fucking well take a look at it. And if you have any questions, you know where to find me. And if you have any complaints, you take them up with Roger McMurdock.”

  The lieutenant, who was neither crooked nor stupid, sat for a long time after he had left. So that’s the infamous Captain Carmichael, he thought. The stories had evidently been true. Strangely, he did not feel insulted. He knew that he was in far over his depth. He pulled the folder to him and started reading. Soon he informed the Vietnamese captain whom he advised, who was both crooked and stupid, that he wanted to see him. He looked forward to the meeting. For the first time since he had arrived in this godforsaken place he felt in control of a situation.

  The first arrest orders arrived at the PRU compound a week later.

  During the next three months people disappeared. Normal seeming people, most of them. People whom no one would have suspected of any misdoings. And the Communists lost more eyes and ears, and didn’t really know why. Fear possessed the cadre. The Chieu Hoi (Open Arms), an amnesty program, gained converts daily. Everyone knew that previously sacrosanct individuals were now suddenly vulnerable, and nobody knew why.

  The province chief did. His informant in the PRU, though he had not been present during the interrogation, had gathered enough information to fill in what must have happened. Soon, he thought, soon they will use the information that they have gathered on me. He had to admire their technique. There was no evidence that anything had happened. Those who did not know of the former district chief’s dual role thought that perhaps the Viet Cong had finally seized him. The Viet Cong themselves were in the dark, searching for a renegade squad led by a Russian. By the time they realized that this squad did not exist it would be too late for most of them.

  Perhaps he had misjudged the American. The young man seemed willing to do whatever was necessary. And he was so tactful. The meeting they’d had after the incident had been totally innocuous. The American had denied that there had been an operation, had said, with a perfectly straight face, that he would never permit unauthorized operations to take place.

  How much did they know? he wondered. In his mind he explored what Binh could have told them. It was not much, not enough to affect the plans in any substantial way. They would think that his only motivation was corruption, making as much money as he could from his position. Let them. They would find it of little use. Did they want to conduct operations? So be it. They would get as many operations as they could handle. Things happened on operations. Sometimes fatal things. Did they want different people on the arrest orders? It did not matter. Most of his enemies were already dead, and those who were not were sufficiently terrorized.

  And if it did, for some reason, go wrong? He prided himself upon his ability to anticipate everything. He had his routes planned, knew when it would be time to go, had his accounts well established in European banks. No need to worry.

  Jim had, upon return from the operation, copied the tape. He enclosed it, along with a letter, to Lisa. It was the first time he had written her.

  “Dearest Lisa,” he wrote, agonizing over the salutation. Should he have said Lisa, my love? He had confessed his love for her. He still felt it. Would she believe it? Probably not. Safer to say dearest. She was dear to him. Shit, would it always be such an agonizing thing, to decide how to address a letter?

  “I’m sorry that I have not written before now.” Why are you sorry? If you’re sorry, why didn’t you write? Cut out the bullshit, Jim.

  “I am enclosing a tape. I would appreciate it if you would put it in a safe place. It will probably never be necessary to use it, but if it should come to that, it will be extremely important to me.” Using her yet again, are you, Jim? What about the fact that someone could find out about your relationship to her? You could be putting her in danger.

  “If you do not want to keep this, I will understand. Destroy it, do what you will. It could cause problems for you.” There, discharge your guilt. You told her it could be a problem. I
f she still chooses to help, she knows the consequences. You cynical fuck.

  “I think about you all the time. I miss you, and your presence, and the life that you have put into mine.” Finally, you can speak without lying, Jim. This much, at least, is true. Will you tell her that you love her? Do you? Do you know what love is?

  “I will understand if you want nothing more to do with me.” Will I ever. “But you are the only one I can trust. Do what you think you must.” More of an escape hatch for your conscience? “I miss you, and wish that I’d had more time with you. If this all works out, I would like to see you when I get back.” On the off-fucking-chance that I’ll get back.

  Roger McMurdock sifted through the sheaf of reports on his desk. Some were contradictory and conflicting, but taken together it was apparent that something very big was happening in Thua Thien Province. He had, of course, seen through the “North Vietnamese with Russian advisor” subterfuge at the outset. It had been an effective technique, he had to admit. It had thrown the opposition off for the critical period of time necessary for Carmichael and whoever was helping him to get a lot of them. And he felt no regret for the demise of the district chief. In fact, he reflected, if he had thought of it he might have ordered the operation himself. Young Carmichael was a smart one, and would be very useful, if he did not go too far. In his experience that was always the problem with operations of this sort. When did you stop? Sooner or later the enemy would catch on to what was happening, and would take countermeasures. And you would have to be very good, or very lucky, or both, to survive. The Communists had their assassins too, and they were very good.