He shook his head. “Need passport and visa.”
“In hotel.”
“You bring here.”
“No.”
His eyes narrowed and he shouted, “You bring here!”
“Go to hell.” I stood and walked out of the room.
He ran after me and grabbed my shoulder. I pushed his arm away, and we faced off out in the corridor.
We looked into each other’s eyes and both of us, I think, saw the same thing: a bottomless pit of pure hate.
I had been this close to only three enemy soldiers, and with two of them, what I’d seen and smelled was fear. On the other one, however, I’d seen this look that was not combat hostility, but a pure hatred that was ingrained in every atom of that man’s being, and which ate at his heart and soul.
And for a second, which seemed like an eternity, I was back in the A Shau Valley, and that man was staring at me again, and I was staring back at him, both of us looking forward to killing the other.
I came back to the present and tried to regain some sense of sanity, but I really wanted to kill this man with my bare hands, to bash his face to a pulp, pull his arms out of their sockets, smash his testicles, crush his windpipe, and watch him suffocate.
He sensed all of this, of course, and was having murderous fantasies of his own, probably having more to do with a sharp filet knife.
But unlike on a battlefield, we both had other orders, and we each reluctantly pulled back from that darkest place in our hearts.
I felt drained, as though I’d actually been in battle, and the cop, too, looked spent.
Almost simultaneously, we each nodded in recognition, and we turned and parted.
Outside, on the street, I stopped and took a deep breath. I tried to clear the bad thoughts from my head, but I had this almost uncontrollable urge to run back in there and smash that son of a bitch into a bloody pulp. I could actually feel his flesh splitting under my knuckles.
I put one foot in front of the other until I was well away from the police station.
I walked aimlessly awhile, trying to burn off the adrenaline. I found myself kicking bottles in the street and punching signposts. This was not good, but it was inevitable, and maybe it was good. Unfortunately, it wasn’t cathartic; quite the opposite.
It was about 9 A.M. now, and the New City was starting to stir. I walked toward the Perfume River via Hung Vuong Street, which took me to the Trang Tien Bridge. In the river near the bridge was a floating restaurant that I’d noticed the night before. There were a few people sitting at café tables on the deck, so I walked to the restaurant, crossed the gangplank, and was greeted by a young man who looked like he hadn’t yet gotten to sleep.
He showed me to an outdoor table, and I ordered a coffee with a double cognac, which pleased him and would please me more.
The deck was strewn with decorations, paper party hats, champagne bottles, and even a lady’s shoe. Clearly, not everyone had spent midnight gathered around the family dinner table and the home altar.
The coffee and cognac came, and I poured half of it down my throat. My stomach was already churning with bile and acid, and the coffee and cognac just added to the unhealthy brew.
I sat there on the gently swaying deck of the floating restaurant, and stared across the misty river at the gray, brooding walls of the Citadel.
I really didn’t want to dwell on what happened at the police station—I knew what happened, why it happened, and I knew it could happen again, any time, any place.
I finished the coffee and cognac and ordered another. The young man put the cognac bottle on the table, recognizing, I guess, a guy who needed a few drinks.
After my second C&C, I felt a little better and thought about my job. My problem at the moment was to shake any tail I might have, and meet someone on the other side of the river at noon, or two, or at four. And if those rendezvous didn’t work out, I was to await a message at the hotel, and be prepared to leave at a moment’s notice.
If, however, I made a successful rendezvous, I’d know where I was supposed to go next.
Every man or woman on a dangerous assignment has a small, secret wish that the whole thing would just fizzle out. You want to know in your guts that you’ll go, but you’re not going to be disappointed if they say “Mission canceled.”
I remembered this feeling when we’d moved out of the foothills toward Quang Tri City with orders to retake the city from the Communists. By the time we got there, the South Viets had done the dirty work, and we were all secretly relieved, but outwardly we expressed great disappointment that we hadn’t gotten a piece of the action. No one, including ourselves, believed a word of it. But that’s what macho posturing is all about.
Then, in late March, we got our wish to get a piece of the action; we were told we were going to Khe Sanh to face twenty thousand well-armed, well-entrenched North Vietnamese troops who had surrounded the marines at the Khe Sanh firebase since January. This is not the kind of news that brightens your day.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget the sights and sounds of hundreds of helicopters picking up thousands of infantrymen and air-assaulting into the hills around Khe Sanh. If ever there was an apocalyptic vision on this earth, short of a nuclear explosion, this air assault was it; fighter-bombers dropping hundreds of thousand-pound bombs that made heaven and earth shake, jet fighters releasing tumbling canisters of napalm, the earth aflame, rivers, streams, and lakes burning, forests engulfed in fire, and great fields of elephant grass and bamboo ablaze and, all the while, the helicopters are firing rockets and machine guns into the inferno below, and artillery shells are raining down high explosives and burning white phosphorus, making the dark earth erupt like mini-volcanoes. The sky is black with smoke, the earth is red with fire, and the thin layer of air in between is a killing zone of streaking red and green tracer rounds, hot, jagged shrapnel, and plummeting helicopters. Apocalypse now.
I remember the helicopter I was on swooping in for a touch-and-go landing, and I was standing on the landing skid, ready to jump, and the guy standing on the skid beside me put his lips to my ear and shouted over the din of explosions, “Hey, Brenner, you think this is a go?”
We both laughed in recognition of what we and everyone had been thinking before the assault began, and in that moment, we formed a communal bond with every soldier in history who ever waited for the sound of the bugle, the war pipes, the whistle, the red flare, or whatever it was that meant Go.
Go. You are no longer human, you have no mothers, no wives, no one you care about, except the man beside you. Go. This is the moment you have been dreading for as long as you can remember, this is the fear that comes to you in the night before you sleep, and the nightmare that wakes you out of your sleep. This is it—it’s here, it’s now, it’s real. Go. Meet it.
I wiped the clammy sweat off my face and dried my hands on my trousers.
And then there was the A Shau Valley.
When you think you’ve plumbed the depths of fear, when you’ve gotten to a place at the end of the tunnel, where it can’t get any more narrow or any more black, a place where you no longer have the capacity for fear, in a little corner of the tunnel where you laugh at death, you discover a secret room with the greatest fear of all: inside that room is yourself.
I stood, left five dollars on the table, and walked over the bridge to the Citadel.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I spent the next few hours sightseeing with my guidebook in hand, snapping photos, taking cyclos and taxis, doubling back on streets, and generally making life miserable for anyone who was trying to follow me.
The crowds around the sights were thin because of the late celebration the night before, and I had the feeling that my contact might wait until 2 P.M., when there were more people around.
Almost everyone who was meandering about were Caucasians, so I didn’t stick out. Most of the morning sufferers, I noticed, were with organized tour groups but as the morning got later, I saw a few Viet families out for a
stroll. The walls of the Citadel were over two kilometers on each side, and I stayed within the walls where most of the people were.
At 11:30 A.M., I left the walled city through a gate that put me back on the river walk. I headed south along the embankment where there were a good number of people strolling, and dozens of cyclos, which followed me wherever I went, the drivers yelling, “Hello! Cyclo? Hello! Cyclo?”
The cyclomen, as in Saigon and Nha Trang, looked like what was left of the losing side in the war. The winning side looked like the cop in the Immigration police station. It had been one of those wars where the vanquished looked slightly more well adjusted than the victors. The only hope I saw in this country was in the eyes of the children, and even those eyes didn’t always look hopeful.
I continued along the river and came to the main gates opposite the flag tower where Susan and I had been the night before. The gates were open to the public today, and I re-entered the walled city and crossed the ornamental bridge where dozens of tourists were snapping pictures. I was now in the Imperial Enclosure, formerly reserved for the Emperor and his court. The Emperor’s Palace was also open, and I entered the huge, dark structure. The entrance hall was red and black lacquered wood, with lots of gilded dragons, and green demons with glassy eyes, the sort of stuff that doesn’t help a hangover.
I exited the rear of the palace and directly in front of me was the Halls of the Mandarins, Number 32 in my guidebook.
This was another ornate building, which, according to my book, had been resurrected from the ashes of 1968, and it had that old/new look, like a Disneyland pavilion. I snapped a photo.
It was 11:45, and I had no idea where, exactly, I was supposed to meet this person. The Halls of the Mandarins was big, and like all buildings, it had an outside and an inside, but Mr. Conway had not been specific, though common sense would dictate inside if it was raining, which it wasn’t.
I walked around the perimeter of the building, and by now I was certain I wasn’t being watched or followed. TV shows to the contrary, it’s almost impossible to tail someone for three hours unless you’re on a treadmill, and then it’s easy to spot your tail.
At this point, if I did spot someone who was watching me, it could very well be my contact, and I looked out for that, too.
The danger, I knew, wasn’t in me being followed; I’m better at shaking a tail than a married man with a jealous wife.
The real danger was that my contact might be well known to the Ministry of Public Security, Sections A, B, C, D, and E. It’s almost always the local amateur, hired by some half-wit in Washington, who shows up at a secret rendezvous with fifteen cops on his tail, half of them with video cameras.
Thank God this guy didn’t have to pass anything to me that would be incriminating, like a box full of documents marked “Top Secret.”
No one approached me, but I still had about five minutes, so I walked through yet another gate, this one leading into the Forbidden Purple City, which was the inner sanctum within the outer sanctum of the Imperial Enclosure. These emperors liked their privacy, and according to Susan, only the Emperor, his concubines, and his eunuchs were allowed in the Purple City. In other words, this whole compound was reserved for two balls. I need a place like this.
Actually, there wasn’t much left in the Forbidden Purple City—no emperors, no eunuchs, and unfortunately, no concubines—only wide expanses of fields and low foundation walls where buildings once stood. The only intact structure was the rebuilt Royal Library, Number 23 on my guidebook map, and my second rendezvous point at 2 P.M., if the first one didn’t come off.
There were a number of Westerners in the Purple City, and I overheard a middle-aged couple speaking in American English. She was saying how awful it was that the American military bombed these architectural treasures into rubble. He agreed and added, “We cause death and destruction wherever we go.”
I didn’t think he meant him and his wife, who only caused stupidity wherever they went. As part of my cover, I offered to take their picture together in front of a grassy expanse of waste and rubble. They seemed pleased and gave me their idiotically complex camera that had more stops than the Washington Metro.
As I focused, I said to them, “Did you know that the Communists attacked this beautiful city during the Tet truce, the holiest night of the Buddhist year? Smile. Did you know that the Communist political cadres executed over three thousand citizens of Hue, men and women, by shooting, bashing their heads in, or burying them alive? Smile.”
They weren’t smiling for some reason, but it was a photo that they’d remember, so I fired off two shots, the second with the guy coming toward me, holding out his hand for the camera.
The guy took his camera without a word of thanks, and he and his wife walked away, a little less ignorant than a minute ago, but obviously not happy with this new information. Hey, you’re supposed to learn things when you travel; I had.
I walked out of the Purple City, back to the Halls of the Mandarins, and wandered around inside. The place was big, and I had no idea how this person was going to spot me. If we both had tails, maybe the tails could sort of help us get together for a photo and a bust.
Despite my flippancy, I was getting a little concerned. Again, I knew I was alone, but I had not one iota of confidence that the other guy was similarly alone.
At 12:20 P.M., I was still wandering the building, and the fire-breathing dragons started to look like I felt.
I went outside. The sun was peeking through small cracks in the cloud cover, and it was a little warmer.
I circled the Halls of the Mandarins, but no one seemed to want to make my acquaintance.
The rendezvous had not come off. I had about an hour and a half until the next one, during which time I could go and have my head examined.
I exited the walled city onto the river embankment where I’d noticed a few snack bars. I bought a liter of water and a rice ball wrapped in banana leaves.
I ate on a bench beside a young Viet couple and stared at the Perfume River, eating my ice cream with a plastic spoon and sipping tepid water out of a plastic bottle.
I bit into the sticky rice ball. This really sucked. James Bond never sat on a park bench with a hangover, sipping warm water and eating a sticky rice ball with his fingers.
The Perfume River was flowing fast because of the winter rains, and downriver I could see the three stone pylons where the old bridge once spanned the river. I’d spoken to a marine years ago, who’d been here during the battle, and he said that you could cross the river by walking on the dead bodies floating downstream. This, of course, was a typical marine exaggeration, but all war stories have a seed of truth before they grow into gigantic bullshit trees. I’ve never actually known a war story to get smaller with a retelling.
Two co-deps in pink ao dais walked along the river, and their long, straight hair, parted in the middle, reminded me of Susan. I stood, called out to them, and indicated my camera.
They stopped, giggled, and posed. I took a picture and said, “Chuc Mung Nam Moi.”
They returned the greeting and walked past me, still giggling and glancing over their shoulders.
This gave me a little lift.
Most people, I think, lead normal lives; I have not. In this whole world, at this moment, there couldn’t be more than a few dozen men and women, if even that, doing what I was doing now. Most secret rendezvous were of the sexual kind, and there were millions of them happening right now, and there would be millions more tomorrow, and the next day. And a few of those lovers would wind up dead, but most would wind up in each other’s arms.
Paul Brenner, on the other hand, was going to wind up either arrested, or in possession of a piece of information that could get him arrested, or killed, or, best scenario, might get him a few more bucks in retirement pay, and the lady of his dreams back in the States.
This had all seemed like a good idea back in Washington—well, not a good idea, but at least an idea that might do me some
good, and it had.
I stared at the river, and the New City on the opposite shore. I watched a thousand people stroll by. Having missed the first rendezvous was sort of a reprieve, and I had a lot of legitimate reasons to abort the mission, Colonel Mang being not the least of those reasons. Time to go back to the hotel and clear out of this country.
I sat there.
At 1:30 P.M., I stood, re-entered the Citadel through the outer wall and into the Imperial Enclosure, then through the final wall into the Forbidden Purple City. It hit me then that the symbolism of the name had not been lost on the dramatically inclined dolts in Washington, and I knew that this was where I’d meet my contact and possibly my fate.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I entered the walled enclosure of the Forbidden Purple City, and walked through the vegetable plots and flower gardens toward the Royal Library, which, as I noticed before, was the only surviving structure within the inner walls.
A few tourists stood around the building, but most people were wandering through the gardens.
About twenty meters from the library, a Vietnamese man was squatting beside a garden, examining the flowers. He stood up and stepped on the path in front of me. He said in near perfect English, “Excuse me, sir. Are you in need of a guide?”
Before I could answer, he went on, “I am an instructor at Hue University, and I can show you the most important sites of the old walled city.” He added, “I am a very good guide.”
The man who was standing before me was in his mid-thirties, dressed in the standard black slacks, white shirt, and sandals. He wore a cheap plastic watch, like everyone here, and his face was unremarkable. I could have passed him a dozen times and not picked him out of a crowd. I said to him, “How much do you charge?”
He replied with the countersign, “Whatever you wish to pay.”
I didn’t respond.
He said, “I see you have a guidebook. May I look at it?”
I handed him the book, and he opened it. He said, “Yes, you are right here, within the Forbidden Purple City. You see?”
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