32

“Look, a truck is coming in,” said Toi.

“I wonder what that is. We’ll call the clerk at lunchtime and ask him.”

Ahn Yong Kyu was sitting with Toi at the mouth of the second alley between the main streets into the new and old markets, overlooking the warehouse of the Puohung Company. They were lounging on plastic chairs, cans of beer in hand, around a white table set up out in front of a bar.

“Wait a minute, it’s eleven.”

Toi looked up at the clock and Yong Kyu said, “Go and check it out.”

“What if they get suspicious?”

“Don’t worry. Let’s get some fruit to eat.”

Toi did not agree. “Old man Hien, he’s a sly old fox. He already knows who I am.”

Yong Kyu squashed the empty beer can and got to his feet. “We’re making daily reports, so we can’t omit mentioning that load, can we? I’ll walk by and find out. Then I’ll meet you at the Chrysanthemum Pub. Wait about five minutes and then pass by as I do and we’ll see what you can find out.”

“All right.”

His hands in his pockets, Yong Kyu sauntered down the alley with an air of terminal boredom. Both sides of the alley were packed tight with hole-in-the-wall shops, carrying everything from candy and coffee to small but sturdy tools. Everything was US-made. Those tiny shops with nostril-sized doors should not be underestimated, for behind the miserable facades there might be a big warehouse in the basement, or the entire house itself might be a storage space. Yong Kyu repeated to himself the license plate number of the truck that was blocking the alley in front of the Puohung Company. The workers were busy unloading boxes from the covered bed of the truck and quickly moving them inside. A young American soldier who seemed to be the driver of the truck was watching the activity with a beer in his hand. Yong Kyu lingered for a few minutes, staring as if amazed by they way they worked. He recognized a fat American sergeant, with whom he had recently become familiar, sitting inside the warehouse with his back turned. Only the short-sleeved poplin shirt of old man Hien could be seen in the dark beside the sergeant.

“Get lost, gook.”

The American bastard shooed Yong Kyu away. Yong Kyu was tempted to cuss him out, but he was afraid that the old man would recognize him and so quickly turned away and left.

Once out of the alley, Yong Kyu turned right at the intersection and passed the new market headed for the bus terminal. The space in the middle of the street was barely wide enough for a single car to pass, and both sidewalks were spilling over into the street with different goods being hawked by peddlers. He shouldered his way briskly through the crowd toward the freight terminal lot. By then it was past the time when the outbound trucks normally pulled out of Da Nang for inland destinations.

He had been coming down and prowling the freight terminal at around midnight to check on the trucks set to leave at dawn the following morning. Some trucks were in the process of loading at that hour and others had only recently arrived at their warehouse docks. Since there was a nationwide curfew restricting night travel regardless of locale, the transports did all of their moving only in daylight hours and nights found them parked at rest.

There was no way to keep track of all the cargo loaded on the trucks. It didn’t much matter whether it appeared to be vegetables, grain, or handcrafts, nor was it feasible to make any accurate inventories. Even if guns and grenades were concealed inside big squashes and pumpkins, there was just no way to know without chopping them up one at a time. All Toi and Yong Kyu could do was record in their notebooks what they could find out about the routes of the various trucks that were making regular runs. Within a few months, this information might be useful in conjunction with other clues.

It was usually around lunchtime when the short-haul vehicles pulled in from the immediate vicinity of Da Nang. They were mostly three-quarter ton pickups or three-wheelers. Their main cargoes were agricultural or fish products brought in from the outskirts to be put on the tables of Da Nang residents: dried and salted fish, sprouts and sauces, ducks, chickens, cabbage, sesame seeds, beans, corn, or sometimes handcrafts made from bamboo or sedge and so forth. Yong Kyu jotted down in his palm-sized notebook as many details of the truck license numbers and their cargoes as he could. He would do a survey of a whole block, record as much as he could remember at one stretch, then put his pen and notebook away, get closer to confirm more details, and then jot more down.

When he reached the Chrysanthemum Pub, Yong Kyu pulled aside the cloth curtain and went inside. He took his usual seat next to a window with a bamboo screen for a curtain. From there he could see the bus terminal as well as the freight lots at one glance. The waiter came by and gave him a knowing look.

“Lam on vo toi, cha.”

He had ordered tea by the time Toi got there.

“That American sergeant, what unit is he with?”

“We’ll find out when we confirm the vehicle’s license number.”

They cross-checked the license plate number each had memorized and then recorded it in their notebooks.

“What kind of goods were they?” Yong Kyu asked.

“Well, some of the crates said California vegetables. I’m guessing it was potatoes, onions, cabbages, and that sort of thing.”

“Not much change the last few days, it looks like. They’ve been handling vegetables and meats.”

Toi looked at his open notebook and slowly murmured, “Hasn’t been much fruit, has there?”

“Vietnam has too much local fruit—bananas, mangos, coconuts, papayas, big tangerines.”

“The fruit I mean is the kind they use at drinking places, like king-sized cherries, lemons, oranges, grapes, and most of all, apples from Washington. The apples are the big item.”

Yong Kyu nodded. “Right. Apples don’t grow here.”

“Let’s give a call to our Smarty. Make him earn his piasters.”

Toi got up and went over to make the telephone call. He was going to talk to the bookkeeper at Puohung Company to try and get some further information out of him. The waiter brought over a pot of green tea on a tray. Ahn Yong Kyu asked him something in Vietnamese, and after receiving the reply, held up three fingers.

Toi returned. “He said he’d be here soon.”

“I ordered duck for three. In Vietnamese.”

Toi chuckled. “Not bad. Your Vietnamese is getting much better.”

Ahn Yong Kyu asked, “Is Stapley doing all right?”

“Not really, no. The landlord says he’s been sleeping all day. And at night they can hear him pacing around.”

“Have you spoken with him?”

“He’s a real hippie now. He begged me so much I had to buy a handful of marijuana for him. If this were Saigon, he could come out and wander around with no problem. There’s not a trace of military left in him.”

“His beard must be getting long by now. The day’s fast approaching.”

“We don’t know the exact date yet.”

“Don’t say another word about it,” said Yong Kyu, pointing his finger at Toi. “We promised Leon so we have to send him off safely to Nha Trang. You’re concerned about the business, aren’t you?”

Toi jumped up, upset. “What the hell do you take me for? It’s not that, it’s that the landlord’s son is on a boat that has to stop at many ports before returning here. He said he received a letter from his son saying he’d be arriving home a little later.”

“Let’s go see him today.”

As he looked out through the screen on the window, Yong Kyu spotted Nguyen Thach in a white cotton shirt over at the truck terminal area. Toi grumbled that the way he wore that shirt buttoned all the way up made Thach look like he was trying to imitate an aristocrat of the old Hue Dynasty. If he had a robe as well, he’d pass for a scholar of the old days. Yong Kyu watched him shaking hands and chatting with the truck drivers.

“Don’t you find him rather mysterious?”

“Who? Nguyen Thach?”

“Yes. You’re the one who said that even if he’s not NLF himself, he’ll be profiting from that side.”

Toi nodded. “That was my feeling in the beginning. Now, it’s just a matter of time. We’ll find out the contents of the US transactions and also who the big NLF dealer is. I’ve got lots of old friends working with the QCs at the guard posts by the smokestack bridge. I can smell something in the air.”

“Smell? What do you smell?”

“Too early to say. But the NLF’s local supply lines are sure as hell linked to the market across the bridge.”

“What’s Major Pham up to today?”

Toi laughed. “He’s out of Da Nang. Joined some operation.”

“Combat operation? You mean they kicked him out of the provincial office?”

“Pham Quyen is busy exploring the jungle. He’s obsessed with cinnamon. Rumor has it he’s issued an order to exterminate all the highland tribes up there. He’s quite a character. You haven’t seen Nguyen Cuong around either, have you? Maybe he’s also up in the jungle with Major Pham.”

“What about the supplies for the phoenix hamlets project?”

“They keep on coming out. It’s a first-rate enterprise for the office. But the reason I’m interested in the smokestack market is because the atmosphere’s a little strange.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Look, this is my country. I haven’t missed a single word. Go down to the pier and see for yourself. Rice keeps on being shipped out, but the cement and slate are staying put. What that means is that some other commodity is now popular.”

“It’s because Nguyen Thach has latched on to the channel for medical supplies, I’m sure.”

Toi listened without saying anything and then looked in his notebook. “Listen, Ahn, the construction material like cement and slate are mostly bought by little villages and farmers in non-occupied zones. That the first period of the NLF tax year has just started may be the reason for a shortage of money to buy such things, but in my opinion the reason is that the other items being purchased are war matériel. Guns and ammunition, to be exact. The merchants on the NLF side receive requisition orders from their district committees. What kind of items might those committees be most eager to lay their hands on? Money would flow to that direction. After a certain time passes, the money flow will be replenished. The taxes they are collecting will pour into the black market.”

“Here comes our Smarty.”

Upon catching sight of the clerk from Puohung Company, Yong Kyu cautioned Toi. A tall, lean man in his thirties entered. Toi spoke to him first. Even after he had taken a seat he kept glancing around uncomfortably.

“I don’t like this place,” he said.

“No need to worry,” Yong Kyu said, “we dine here with all the merchants in the market. This is only your second time here.”

Toi deliberately kept his mouth shut so that Yong Kyu could extract information for himself.

“Today was the navy cold storage again?” Yong Kyu asked.

“Yes.”

“Which American unit are they from?”

“Headquarters. Civic support unit.”

“Rank?”

“Gunnery sergeant.”

“What did he deliver and how much?”

“Vegetables again. Potatoes and onions.”

Toi spoke to Yong Kyu. “That’s strange. There haven’t been any big operations around Da Nang. I wonder why the Americans are still only bringing out vegetables.”

Yong Kyu waited for the clerk to reply.

“Well, that’s not really the case,” the clerk said. “No vegetables have been coming in to Da Nang from Dien Banh or the area around Jiang Hoa.”

“That’s Major Pham’s doing,” Toi said with a knowing air, then directly asked, “And why is there no fruit coming?”

“There is.”

Both men were greatly surprised.

“We’ve got a hundred boxes of apples ready to go,” the clerk went on, “but it’s been over a month since we shipped out any apples.”

“And why is that?”

“I don’t know. The US civic support unit is the one controlling the goods.”

“Anything else?”

“The bars and clubs downtown are complaining a lot lately.”

“Why?”

“They say Americans aren’t coming in anymore.”

“Is that all?”

“That’s all for today.”

The clerk was about to get up to go.

“Let’s have lunch together.”

The clerk looked uneasy at the prospect of lingering at the Chrysanthemum Pub.

“I’ve got a box lunch. I’ll return to the office.”

“Wait a minute,” Yong Kyu said. “We told you we’d give you three thousand piasters a month, plus an extra five hundred on any day when you bring us good information. Today’s news wasn’t exactly good, but we’ll give you another five hundred today as a token of our good will.”

“Thank you.”

The clerk quickly snatched the cash and then left without even looking back. Yong Kyu sliced up the duck.

“That wasn’t anything special.”

“Well, I’m not so sure.” His lips pursed and protruding, Toi was deeply absorbed in thought.

“That fruit, I just can’t get it off my mind. The vegetables are what they normally use to control prices, but this time it’s the opposite. That’s it: they’re trying to gauge the real demand in the market. What are apples?”

“A fruit greatly enjoyed by the rich and powerful of Da Nang. You don’t die when they’re unavailable.”

“Right. It’s been over a month since the Vietnamese military officers and government officials tasted apples. If you start slowly releasing them into the market, they’ll sell very well. And when you check the volume of sales, you can estimate how much black money is circulating these days among the upper class of Da Nang. I’m sure there’ll be some choice grade meats, too.”

“But what do you make of the restriction on passes for the American soldiers?”

“Probably no military significance. We’ll have to dig around a little more to know, but some sort of change is in the air, don’t you think?”

Toi was holding up the long Chinese-style chopsticks and tapping the table with their bottoms.

“When they restrict evening passes for the GIs, there’s bound to be some change on the way.”

“They did it before the Vietnamese elections.”

“Right. They may do it when a political change is coming, for instance, when a coup d’état is expected, or when demonstrations heat up. They also might restrict passes before a full-scale offensive. But I don’t think either of those cases applies now,” Toi said rather firmly.

“Why not?” Yong Kyu asked.

“The election is over and the new government is in place. Instead, there’ll be a presidential election in America, but not until fall. As for combat operations . . . I don’t think anything like that is on the way right now. The NLF is completely absorbed in reconstructing the combat power and the war material they lost during the Tet Offensive. The Americans are seeking to enter into ceasefire negotiations while maintaining the present breathing spell. Since the battle at Khesanh, neither side has been too eager to mount major operations.”

“If that’s so,” Yong Kyu said, revealing his own opinion, “what’s left is a basic change in the American operational strategy, or some political change in America.”

“I don’t know. It’s not inconceivable that the Americans will make some changes in their operations. Well, it’s already been changing, you know. The high command has passed from crazy Westmoreland to stubborn Abrams. And Johnson has announced he won’t run for re-election. But you know, I think the reason for restricting American passes is much simpler and also tentative, based on domestic conditions in Vietnam. Or it may be only a local order limited to areas under the jurisdiction of the US headquarters and the MAC in Danang. As I said before, I don’t see it as a measure of military significance.”

“Do you think there’ll be any changes in Le Roi market?”

“Change is already here. NLF money is flowing in, and American forces have been restricted from the city. Wait!”

Toi dropped onto his plate a chunk of duck he had picked up with his chopsticks.

“When was it that the Americans changed their commanding general?”

Tracing time back to the Tet Offensive, Yong Kyu counted on his fingers. Back in those days he had been haunting the PXs, absorbed in feeling the pulse of the trading in luxury goods.

“Was it the end of March? It’s more than two months ago, almost three months.”

“The Paris Conference had begun. Sergeant Ahn, I’ll be back in a little while, so you wait here.”

Toi rubbed his greasy fingers on his fatigue trousers and got up. As he went out, his silver sunglasses reflected the scene of the terminal lot outside the pub.

“Why leave so suddenly in the middle of a meal?”

“It won’t take long.”

After Toi rushed out, Yong Kyu did not feel like eating alone, so he ordered some beer. He quickly drained one can and was about to open another. As always, whenever he pulled the ring on a can it reminded him of his combat duty in the jungle. For a fleeting moment he would imagine he was pulling the safety pin out of a grenade, and that he had to grasp the can with a firm grip and lob it far off over his head, Then he would take some time to calm himself.

For a long, long time the giggling of a young veteran lingered in his ears, a young veteran showing a picture he was sneaking back home as a souvenir. “The new model grenade is nice. Unlike a fragmentation grenade, it’s smooth as an egg. Playing hens is fun. Push it in with a kick, watch it slip in beautifully. Before the egg can be laid, it’ll explode and fly in all directions.” What would that kid be doing back home now? Yong Kyu wondered. He would have become a civilian by this time and would probably be working himself to death just to make a living. And no doubt he had outlived those who died faceless to him. Would he still recall the game of playing hens? Those few short months in the jungle would be etched in his soul even after he died . . . imprinted indelibly in his heart like some snapshot kept as a memento.

“It’s sure a fancy lunch.”

A white cotton shirt loomed in front of Yong Kyu. Above the top button the face of Nguyen Thach was smiling, with tiny wrinkles gathered at the corners of his eyes.

“Have a seat,” Yong Kyu said, pointing with his chin. “Food for three is too much for me to handle alone . . .”

Without hesitation Nguyen Thach plopped down across from Yong Kyu. Then he unfastened the upper buttons of his traditional shirt, and pulled over toward him the plate and chopsticks that had been set for the clerk from Puohung Company.

“Has Mr. Toi got indigestion? Looks like the third member of the party has failed to show up.”

“Ah, both of them have stomachaches.”

Nguyen Thach picked up a piece of duck meat, dipped it in a spicy sauce and devoured it with evident relish.

“That’s a shame, to have missed such a delicious lunch.”

“Do you see Dr. Tran often?”

“I thought you knew. The goods are already being supplied. For starters, antibiotics and painkillers. Quinine and various antiseptics will be next.”

“I suppose they’ll all end up being used in the field.”

Despite this sarcastic remark from Yong Kyu, Thach kept on smiling. “Among the American goods circulating in Vietnam, is there anything that isn’t for military use?”

“Yes, a lot.”

Thach winked at Yong Kyu. “Of course, chocolates, candy, razor blades, everything down to condoms, but it’s the American soldiers under Pentagon command who eat and consume the duty-free products supplied by the various entrepreneurs in America. I no longer wish to argue with Sergeant Ahn. Our relationship is like . . . how shall I put it, like that between teeth and lips. We’re inseparable.”

“Those are the wrong Chinese characters. How about the relationship between spear and shield?”

“Anyway, you do not seem to trust me.”

When Thach finished replying, Yong Kyu dropped the joking tone and said in an icy voice, “I’ve introduced you to Dr. Tran, and you’ve become the only dealer in Le Loi market with access to medical supplies. But you did not keep the promise you made to me.”

Nguyen Thach put down his chopsticks. “What are you talking about? I certainly did introduce you to a clerk at Puohung Company.”

“I didn’t mean that,” said Yong Kyu. “You promised you’d give me daily information on the content of dealings by the NLF.”

Thach, fully composed, nodded and then raised both hands with thumbs extended. “Look. First you introduced me to Dr. Tran, and I introduced one of old man Hien’s clerks to you.”

Then he lifted up his index fingers. “Next, on the condition that you give me information on the dealings of Puohung Company, I was supposed to furnish you with information on NLF dealings, right? You have daily contacts with the clerk, but you have given me no information, and so neither have I. Don’t you think it’s only fair?”

Yong Kyu looked Nhuyen Thach straight in the eye. “Do you really want to know about the deals of Puohung Company? You seem to have known of their business in great detail for a long time. So Toi and I, we’re now trying to find out the information we need on our own.”

“Being independent is the first and foremost priority for any merchant, whether you run a big enterprise or a tiny hole-in-the-wall store. You and I had a relationship requiring mutual dependence. Those B-rations you brought out of Turen were a great help for both of us. And now, what exactly is it that you want to know?”

Thach began chewing duck meat again. Yong Kyu remained silent as he finished up a wing and a breast.

“Ah, so you no longer trust this Nguyen. Fine. What about this? The NLF have completed their tax collections for the first half of the year, so the black market will see a surge of activity from next month.”

“That I already know,” Ahn Yong Kyu answered curtly and fell silent again.

Thach spoke. “I hear you’ve been coming to the truck warehouse at lunchtime and again at night to check the freight vehicles and the smaller transports. I can tell you now that won’t be of much help to you.”

“Why is that?”

“Isn’t it obvious? It’s like checking every single household in order to search for guerrillas who’ve infiltrated the city. It leads nowhere.”

In spite of himself, Yong Kyu lost his temper and blurted out words that had been simmering inside his heart.

“We’ve uncovered information on most of the NLF’s dealing connections in Da Nang.”

Nguyen Thach laughed softly.

You’re being too hasty. You know, most of the merchants in the Vietnamese markets make it their business to deal with the Americans, Vietnamese soldiers, people from third countries, and always with the NLF. That’s fate. In a war like this there’s no other way.”

Thach gathered his hands together and stared with a serious look at Yong Kyu, then continued. “I liked you from the start. Because, unlike the Americans or the Vietnamese soldiers, you showed no prejudices. When you told me this war was not your responsibility and that you’d soon be heading home, taking off your uniform in a few months, I decided to discard my dislike for foreign soldiers and be fair with you. I did make a promise, but I did not want to see you get into any trouble while you remain here. Here is a little token to show you that I mean to keep the promise I made to you.”

Nguyen Thach paused and pulled a piece of paper out of the lower pocket of his white cotton shirt, then handed the folded sheet over to Yong Kyu.

“Of course, it’s merely a formality. But it could become extremely useful to you. You once told me you needed a wild card for protection, something suitable for the mysterious nature of your duty here, didn’t you? Well, here is the card for your protection.”

Yong Kyu looked over the paper. It contained information on the quantity and price of various goods and the destinations to which they were consigned.

“This is . . .”

“That’s right. Goods that clearly have been shipped to the NLF and to the residents in liberated areas. It’s a detailed description of materials that have been fraudulently siphoned off from the supplies that were supposed to be used for the phoenix hamlets resettlement project. Can you think of a better card to hold in your hand? It’s one you can play against the Americans as well as the Vietnamese authorities.”

Ahn Yong Kyu quickly put the paper away. “Isn’t the dealer your own brother?”

“Yes, and that was a great help for discovering more detailed information. Later, I tracked down those outbound trucks and so was able to make an accurate description. If you use this card when you need to, it’ll shake up the whole of central Vietnam as well as the Da Nang administration. There’ll be a storm of personnel changes in the command of the US forces, not to mention the Vietnamese army. However, as you yourself said, whether you should actually use this card, or just gulp the information down is a decision requiring very serious consideration.”

Ahn Yong Kyu took a deep breath in order to remain calm.

“Fine. But there’s still something I’m curious about.”

“What’s that?”

“I still have no information on the dealings in weapons.”

Nguyen Thach frowned. “What do you want, to become a prize agent so the Americans will award you a silver star? You may find the metal too heavy to bear.”

“Just curious.”

“From the quantities shown on that statement, you can guess,” said Thach. “Black market dealing in the phoenix hamlet supplies is vital for the Americans and Vietnamese alike.”

“Thank you,” Yong Kyu said sincerely. “I will be leaving here in three months. And I like to travel light.”

“That’s precisely your position. Everything in Vietnam belongs to the Vietnamese. Am I not right?”

“Absolutely.”

“I’m glad we’ve come to understand each other. One more thing. I must inform you that things are shaping up so that it’s going to be difficult for us to share an office any longer. My brother is completely absorbed in the cinnamon he’s collecting with Major Pham in the highlands. It’s gotten to the point where I’ve had to give up my own repair shop as a warehouse for their use.”

“I understand. We’ll move out. You’ve been a great help to us.”

Nguyen Thach stood up. “Well, it’s not as though we’ll have nothing more to do with each other from here out. You can find an office anywhere in Le Loi market, and we’ll continue to do business together. Here comes Mr. Toi. I hope you’ll relay my intention to him.”

As he left the pub, Thach nodded to Toi who was just coming in. Sitting down across from Yong Kyu, Toi asked, “What’s going on?”

“What do you mean? Am I not allowed to have lunch with a dealer of ours?” Yong Kyu said.

“What did Nguyen Thach have to say?” Toi asked, flipping the cold food this way and that.

“He asked us to vacate the office. Looks like his brother is going to use his service shop as a cinnamon warehouse.”

“You must have said something. You didn’t touch the very bottom, did you?”

“I’ve just found out who the main dealer to the NLF is,” said Yong Kyu.

“Who?”

“As we knew from the beginning, it’s none other than Nguyen himself. But I’ll make no more inquiries.”

Toi looked around in perplexity and then asked, “How can you say that when this is only the beginning?”

He gave me some information that can be used for a counterattack, and he has even more information than that.”

“Look, we’ve known that from the start. Did he say so himself?”

“No, but he didn’t have to. I could just tell.”

“Then the conditions have not changed.”

Yong Kyu could not resist taking out the piece of paper and showing it to Toi. “This ought to be enough. It’s dynamite.”

Toi snatched the sheet of paper and quickly scanned it. “Very specific. No doubt it’s useful. But one thing is missing here. There’s nothing at all about weapons dealings.”

Ahn Yong Kyu took the paper back from Toi. “We can make some guesses from the quantities of the goods. Still, this is sufficient for me. Now, I’ve got my hand on the main root. When I’m in a fix, I’m going to yank it out. I don’t give a damn who ends up digging potatoes later, I just don’t want to be the first one to dig. I’ll spend these last couple of months without any worry and then I’ll be on my way home. After that, it’s none of my business whether you do the job or not.”

“Same goes for me,” Toi said. “As I told you before, I’m an opportunist created by the reality of Cochinchina and South Vietnam. Even so, we have to know this. I’m just an informant employed by your detachment, but even when you’re gone I still have to make a living here. I told you there was something odd in the air across the river. We can uncover the Da Nang supply line of the NLF.”

“So? Shall we report it to the Americans?”

Toi paused for a moment then leaning low across the table, said, “We’ll lose nothing. We started by tracing back the flow of C-rations and ended up grabbing Pham Quyen by the ankle. We can go further to squeeze their throats.”

“I’m going to make a copy of this memo and give it to the captain. And our dealings in B-rations with Nguyen Thach are finished now, too. I’ll have to be independent here. But I have no problem if you want to keep digging for the NLF supply lines. If you come up with some solid information, though, you have to consult with me concerning the consequences.”

“We’ve been good partners. I’d like to do something good for you before you return home.”

“Thanks. What would be good for me?”

“Koreans are poor like us,” Toi said. “You never know when hard times will fall upon you. If we’re lucky, we might be able to make some big money. Then, when you go home, I’ll also quit the joint investigation headquarters and go to Saigon.”

Yong Kyu changed the subject.

“It’s getting late. I need to look in briefly on Stapley and then go into the office for a talk with the captain. By the way, what did you learn when you went out earlier?”

“I confirmed that the daily passes of the American soldiers have been restricted. It’s been three days. Considering the overall circumstances, a full scale operation doesn’t seem likely.”

“Where have you been?”

“I went to see an Indian moneychanger. I know his wife well. People may soon want to change their military currency. It’s like the calm before a storm. I’ve been through something similar once myself. After Ngo Dinh Diem was assassinated, there was a great bedlam in the market. Those who had inside information lost nothing, and those connected in some way with the Americans held out to the last minute. Of course, the American soldiers are given plenty of time to exchange their money. But on the street, the notes can lose 30 to 50 percent of their face value in an hour, then they will drop to 10 percent and before long they are wastepaper.”

“What about the apples at Puohung Company?” Yong Kyu asked.

“They figured it out fast enough. The upper class in Da Nang, those who are holding military currency, are eager to spend it as quickly as possible. Those with connections to the US military make arbitrary offers to purchase at a discount from face value and start gathering up the military currency. At the moment, a single apple can cost twenty military dollars. I’ve seen a hunk of frozen beef or a turkey go for a hundred.”

They got up from the messy table. The restaurant had no customers apart from a couple of people drinking tea. They emerged from the pub and headed down the back alley into Le Loi market.

“When I went to the moneychanger,” Toi said, “they already had heard of the restrictions on passes. They must have known about that immediately since the volume of money being changed had rapidly fallen. But they do not yet seem too concerned about it. After all, the main business for the third-country moneychangers lies in trading mainland greenbacks.”

“Nguyen Thach once suggested that, in return for our opening a channel of medical supplies, he would change our military currency to US dollars with no commission.”

Toi whistled. “Too bad, that was a great opportunity. The cost of changing will double, triple; who knows, it may increase fivefold.”

“What if the currency is replaced?”

“You guys have nothing to worry about. The finance department will treat the Allied Forces just like US troops, and they’ll swap it for you with no loss.”

“That’s not true. The captain, the sergeant, they will have no way out. The military currency they are hoarding, apart from the dollars sent back home, is all blind money.”

“Then they ought to find a channel of exchange in advance.” Yong Kyu and Toi kept on walking up the back alley behind the old market street. They passed by the signboard of Puohung Company, painted in red letters on a white background, in between a row of shops. A three-quarter ton truck was stopped out front and workers were busy unloading boxes and carrying them inside the warehouse.

“Look at that,” whispered Toi, “more goods coming in. If our guess was right, they will keep on coming in tomorrow and the next day, too.”

They purposely slowed their pace and stalled to loiter a while. An American military driver was sitting in the cab, smoking a cigarette. Old Man Hien was standing at the front door of the place with his hands behind his back, watching. As they passed by the truck, they took a peek inside at the boxes being carried in. Over his gold-rimmed glasses, Hien gave them a probing look. Once they had passed by, Toi spoke.

“You saw them, didn’t you? The boxes were white with frost. They’re fresh out of a freezer.”

“Right. Looked like meat to me. Must have been about a hundred boxes, since they were piled all the way to the top of the truck.”

Behind the next row of stores was a narrow alley lined with two-story houses, mostly used for inns, brothels, and small handcraft workshops. Toi pulled a rope hanging down outside of a porch covered with wire mesh. A bell sounded, and then the familiar face of the landlord slowly appeared in the hall. He shouted in the direction of the second floor, clapping his hands.

“Khach!”

They could hear thumps on the stairs, and then Stapley came into view down the steps. The man had called him “Khach,” meaning guest, and Stapley truly cut a figure too precious to rot away in Vietnam. He wore his “Run, Rat!” pendant around his neck, a pair of blue jeans, and a black Vietnamese shirt. His hair was long enough to cover the nape of his neck and his beard had filled out enough to make him resemble a medieval monk. This guest seemed to have been away from the battlefield for ages. Even his gait was leisurely. He grinned like a Cheshire cat. His eyes were dreamy and between his fingers he had a lit joint of marijuana. Yong Kyu patted him on the shoulder.

“Hey, hippie, how do you like the neutral zone?”

“I feel light as a feather. It’s a white wall.”

“Can’t you stop smoking the marijuana?”

“I’m still in a waiting room. I have no choice but to travel as I lay here. This is much better for your health than heroin.”

The landlord offered them seats. In the hall there was a bamboo bed and wooden chairs propped against the wall. Toi and the landlord started conversing.

“I heard your son’s going to be a little delayed.”

“Yes, about a week later than scheduled. He was supposed to have arrived tomorrow. Now he won’t be in port until next week.”

“Does your son know about this matter here?”

“No, not yet. But there’ve been similar cases before. One time he took several Vietnamese youths to Saigon. They included a draft dodger and also a young deserter.”

Yong Kyu gave Stapley a bottle of whiskey he’d brought with him.

“A gift. Drink it at night.”

Grinning broadly, Stapley kissed the bottle.

“So, what else have you been doing,” Yong Kyu asked, “besides torching grass.”

“I’ve done a little masturbating, and some reflecting about America too. Then I thought about what it would be like to live in some other country with a new name. Burma, India, some little village in central Asia somewhere near Bali wouldn’t be too bad. Anyway, somewhere beyond the reach of the Pax Americana. True, the world order is in process of changing these days. This war will be the last farewell to the old colonialism and the old era.”

“Things may get worse, you never know. The military will be strengthened. The weapons will be newer and deadlier, the Cold War intensified. What little money you have soon’ll be parted from you, and then what’ll you live on?”

“I’ll do anything. I’ll carve wood, make pottery, or weave mats. I just want to live in a totally different way.”

“Aren’t you going back to New York?”

“I don’t know. If the war comes to an end, I suppose I might make it back somehow. I have this friend by the name of Holden Caulfield. He didn’t know where this phony order came from—just like I didn’t know before coming to Vietnam. I wonder if I can use love to demolish all these monstrosities. Love is bullshit, it has a suspicious smell. It kicks up dust and then glosses things over. Love recognizes hypocrisy but doesn’t try to change it. It pronounces its solitary neutrality and then becomes an eternal fugitive. Listen to the lyrics of the pop songs these days, all the abstractions of defeatism, peace, loneliness, love, all camouflaged with beauty. That I run off into the jungle like some Frenchman, and don’t join the NLF, that I dream of some quiet village in Tibet or a desert island in the Pacific, those are self-imposed failures to act. There exists no island like that where you never grow to be an adult. I’m going to flee with all the children straight through the rye fields and go crashing down over the cliff.”

Stapley’s quiet and lackadaisical voice sounded to Yong Kyu as if it were coming from a faraway place. Why did he find Stapley’s sophistication so unnatural, he wondered? Was it because the bloodstained lips of the Vietnamese people were sealed tight, and that very silence was wearing a cold smile at the spectacle of these illusory and terrifying American dreams?

The sound of those shrill, crisp screams, the voices of those brown-skinned “gooks” who, like a swarm of soulless worms, had been tunneling deep into the ground, carrying bombs on their bicycles, digging pits for mantraps, falling and falling again until at last they overran Dien Bien Phu—could it be because that shrieking sound blackened out this mumbling monologue of a frustrated dream?

For the past century we the people of Vietnam have been ceaselessly struggling against foreign invaders to win our freedom and independence. In 1945 every class of our countrymen across the nation rose in a great revolt against the Japanese and the French, overthrowing them and recovering political power. When the French colonialists returned to invade us again, our people did not want to go back to being slaves. To protect our national sovereignty and independence, our people made enormous sacrifices. Thanks to the solidarity of our people and a struggle lasting nine long years, we of the resistance won a series of battles, and in 1954, in accordance with the Geneva Accords, the sovereignty, independence, unification and territorial integrity of Vietnam was confirmed and acknowledged.

Our people living in the south, however, were not able to lead a happy and prosperous life, working in a peaceful environment. America, which had long been aligned with the French colonialists to annihilate our race, stepped in as successor to the French and foisted upon us a new colonial system to enslave South Vietnam. They have perpetrated full-scale oppression, inflicting a long-term division upon our country with Ngo Dinh Diem in the lead as their agent for exploitation of the population. Now they are plotting to turn the south into a vast military base for the preparation of war in Southeast Asia.

Ever since, the invaders—in conspiracy with traitors to our country—have been running their cruel dictatorship. They have persecuted and murdered patriots and all who demand democracy, depriving us of the basic freedoms accorded to human beings in a democracy. They exploit the laborers, the peasants, and the rest of the working class, and suffocate domestic industry and commerce. They import the decadence of foreign culture to contaminate our race, to cause the degeneration of our traditions, and to destroy our nation’s spiritual foundations. They reinforce their preparations for war, erect military bases, oppress the masses, and degrade our own armed forces to make them serve the American policy of invasion.

For the past six years, not one day has passed without the sound of gunfire attacking the people in the south. Tens of thousands of patriots have been killed and hundreds of thousands have been imprisoned. Our people of all classes are moaning under the iron knout of the American dictatorship. Unemployment, poverty, levies of taxes and tribute, oppression, murder, forced conscription, expropriation of land and housing, all forms of concentration camps which have separated countless families and inflicted upon them unspeakable sacrifices and traumas.

This dictatorship has aroused severe outrage among our people irrespective of class. Even their merciless oppression could not submerge our fellow countrymen in despair. On the contrary, our people are resolutely determined to struggle against the American invasion and the dictatorial rule of their servants. What our people desperately long for now is an end to the merciless dictatorship in power and to win national independence, to secure democracy and to peacefully unify our nation. Grounded in this ardent hope of our fellow countrymen, the National Liberation Front of Vietnam came into being.

Our pre-modern agricultural nation of thirty million people is wailing aloud, for it has been turned by the invaders into a laboratory in which they test their technologies of death—cluster bombs, dinitrophenol chemical shells, Agent Orange defoliant, chloroacetate phenol tear gas, and many other weapons. The power of America in Vietnam is nothing more than that of a technology of homicide. Just as monopoly capitalism has destroyed all possibilities of paradise remaining within its own society, we cry out loudly and solemnly that in the end it will be defeated by humanity and nature.

Our race is a remarkable one. We have an ancient tradition of solidarity and invincibility. No matter what may happen, we will not allow our nation to stay submerged in darkness and suffering. We are firmly determined to eradicate the oppression of slavery and to win independence and liberation.