Lost Soldiers

by Lost Soldiers (retail) (epub)

  ‘I am sorry,’ Manh finally said, stubbing out his cigarette as he dropped his eyes. ‘I am truly sorry.’

  ‘I need your help,’ said Dzung, his chest still heaving. ‘It is a simple thing, but you are the only one who can do it.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘You are using me, Manh. You are going to use me for something evil. Evil but very important to you. And so if it is important to you, this means I am somehow valuable. To the revolution.’

  Manh watched him carefully, rocking back in his chair and taking out another cigarette. It was clear to him that, despite Dzung’s deep grief, he was opening up a new negotiation. ‘Perhaps,’ he said.

  ‘You know my weakness.’

  Manh lit the cigarette, holding it far down between his fingers like his old gangster heroes as he pulled it away from his mouth. ‘We know everything about you.’

  ‘Then you know I keep my word.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then I will give you my word.’ Dzung’s face had become deeply lined over the past two hours, as if someone had drawn cobwebs around his eyes and along his cheeks. He stepped toward Manh. ‘Give me a cigarette.’

  Manh took a cigarette from his pack and gave it to Dzung, then held out his lighter while Dzung lit it. Dzung inhaled deeply, calming himself. He took off his cap and waved a hand through his hair.

  ‘My family is more important to me than my life. They are dying, Manh. They have no future.’ Manh said nothing. He already knew that, remembered Dzung. It was in the files. ‘If that is how you control me, then that is how you must reward me.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want my baby to be buried in Bien Hoa, with my wife’s family, not alone in District Four. I want you to help me take my family there, for the burial ceremony.’

  ‘We can do that,’ said Manh. ‘But you should think clearly, Dzung. You don’t want the others to know you are working with us. It could be dangerous to you.’

  ‘Or maybe to you?’ answered Dzung immediately. ‘After I have served your purposes and am disposed of, or perhaps killed, will they know you were behind my actions?’

  ‘We don’t care,’ said Manh. ‘Why should we care about that? What would they do to us? We can always deny our involvement. We can reinvent your history with the sweep of a pen. Who would challenge us? But I promise you this, Dzung. If you are successful, we will not betray you. We will have no need to. The matter will be over. It will pass into history as a random act. A freak occurrence. An unsolved mystery.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘When the time comes you will know.’

  ‘But you admit it is for the good of the revolution.’

  ‘We only act for the good of the revolution.’

  ‘Then you must also promise to take care of my family.’

  ‘How?’ asked Manh. ‘To do what?’

  ‘I fought on the wrong side in the war. I accept my fate. But if I am going to serve the cause of the revolution, then the revolution should forgive my family. They should have a future. Just like yours.’

  ‘I will look into it.’

  ‘No. You must promise me.’

  ‘I am only one small frog in a very big pond,’ said Manh, stroking his mustache and eyeing Dzung shrewdly. ‘But you make sense. I promise you I will argue for you.’

  ‘I accept your promise,’ said Dzung, finally, relaxing into a slump that announced the depth of his sorrow. He put out the cigarette and rubbed his hands over his face, squeezing back the tears he would never allow Manh or any other government official to see. ‘And so I will give you my word. When the time comes, you have no need to question my loyalty. If you promise to take care of my family no matter what happens to me, I will do it. And I will succeed.’

  Manh rose from his chair and moved to Dzung, standing in front of him for a moment and then reaching out to take his hand. He shook Dzung’s hand firmly, for a long time, and then formally took it inside both of his, as if welcoming him into a new and deep friendship.

  ‘We will take care of your family, Dzung. I promise you. Better things will happen. You will see.’

  ‘No matter what happens to me,’ insisted Dzung. ‘No matter what happens to you.’

  * * *

  The next morning an unmarked white van drove far into the bowels of District Four. Its driver announced to Dzung’s neighbours that he was from the Bien Hoa People’s Committee and had been sent to take Dzung’s family and their deceased child to a burial ceremony in Bien Hoa in accordance with the new government policy to encourage ‘family reunification after death.’

  Dzung carried the baby in his arms as he and his family followed the driver down the alleyway for several blocks, where the van was parked on a wider road. He sat in the front seat of the van, across from the driver. His wife, Tu, and the children sat in the two back rows of seats, amazed at their first automobile ride and the feel of air-conditioning on their skin. The baby was placed in its rear compartment just behind the third row of seats.

  The driver announced that he was taking them to a small village just outside Bien Hoa, where the baby would be buried in Tu’s family cemetery. A representative of the People’s Committee would be present at the burial. Tu’s entire family had been notified and were waiting at the burial ground for their arrival. Courtesy, said the driver again, of the new government policy that favored the reunification of families after death.

  The traffic was very heavy. They listened to sad music on the cassette player just above the radio. Manh was nowhere to be seen, but to Dzung his presence was as real as the music, as permeating as the cool air that washed over them from the vents inside the van. And from that moment forward Dzung knew the deal was sealed. He could never again question the uses to which he would be put. He had made the offer, and Manh’s superiors had accepted it.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Exmouth, Australia

  From Perth they flew eight hundred miles due north, over vast, empty deserts and ledges of dust-covered, craggy mountains. The sea was always just to the west, cobalt blue, as endless and as empty as the sky. Below them, a string-like, hopeless road paralleled the coastline, connecting occasional little towns that appeared to be more like frontier outposts than modern living centers. Herds of wild horses vectored this way and that like schools of fish as the twin-engine aircraft passed over them, and then a throng of donkeys, and after that a valley full of ostriches and mobs of jackrabbits, thousands of them seeming to pile on top of one another as they scrambled away from the sudden noise. Half-way to Exmouth, Condley was certain he saw the silhouettes of camels loping ghost-like through the shadowed, powdery ridges. It was the wildest and most eerily empty terrain he had ever seen.

  Finally they reached the northwest corner of the continent, where a peninsula jutted out for another twenty miles into the first beginnings of the Indian Ocean. Above the sea the aircraft bounced like a kite from a sudden burst of wind, then dove quickly, finding a narrow strip of runway among the dust-filled weeds of the peninsula, where it barked and skittered to a halt.

  ‘Exmouth,’ said the fleshy-faced, balding pilot, consciously checking his watch as he called to them from his seat. ‘I guess three hours will do it before we turn around?’

  ‘Four hours at the most,’ called Hanson Muir, unbuckling his seat belt and clutching his briefcase. ‘As far as I can tell, there are only two people we can talk to in this town.’

  ‘You call that a town, mate?’ The pilot chuckled, shutting down the engines. He pointed to the small shack that housed the runway’s operations facility. Just next to it was a gas pump. Other than the operations shack, a dusty, shrub-filled emptiness surrounded them for what seemed to be miles in every direction. ‘I’m going to refuel, and I’ll wait for you in the operations shack. And no offense, you hear, but my price goes up if you get me stuck here overnight.’

  A pimply, forlorn-looking sailor was waiting for them at the end of the runway where the aircraf
t had shut down. The reed-thin young man was standing next to a white U.S. Navy staff car, incongruous in this wilderness. A neck-high barbed-wire fence, built to keep large animals off the tarmac, marked the outer boundaries of the runway. As Condley walked toward the car he saw five wild horses grazing lazily in a scrubby field just on the other side of the fence. Near the car a huge iguana startled him from twenty feet away as it suddenly rose up on its tail, its head higher than Condley’s waist, and then scurried into the underbrush.

  ‘I hate those fuckers,’ said the sailor, watching the iguana disappear. ‘It’s like hitting a big, fat alligator when you run over them.’

  ‘Then don’t run over them,’ said Condley dryly, as he climbed into the rear seat of the staff car.

  ‘Not much else to do out here. Hitting a horse really fucks up your car.’ He held out a hand, shaking Condley’s. ‘Mr. Condley, right? My name’s Alfred E. Newman. Petty Officer, Third Class. No shit, that’s really my name. I have two very fucked-up and cynical parents.’

  The sailor was maybe nineteen years old. He seemed oddly happy to be greeting them. He solicitously closed the car doors for Condley and Muir as they settled into the rear seats. Then he eased into the driver’s seat and started the engine.

  ‘Where to?’ he said. And then he laughed, as if at himself. ‘That was a joke.’

  Condley grinned. ‘Did you hear the one about the American sailor stuck in the middle of the Australian desert?’

  ‘That’s not a joke,’ said the sailor. And then he and Condley laughed together.

  The staff car slowly made its way down the dirt trail, finally leaving the airport and turning onto a two-lane paved road that led to Exmouth. ‘This is Professor Hanson Muir,’ said Condley to Alfred E. Newman. ‘He’s a scientist. An anthropologist, actually.’

  ‘Well, everybody’s got to be something,’ said Newman, giving Muir a grudging nod in the rearview mirror.

  ‘How many American military are stationed up here?’ asked Condley.

  ‘It’s classified, sir,’ said the sailor, becoming suddenly official. ‘I’m not allowed to tell you. We have a joint communications facility with the Aussie Navy. The town itself sort of feeds off us. If you look hard at the map and think submarines, you know why we’re here. The Indian Ocean ends just to our north, funneling naval traffic all the way down from the Asian mainland so that it has to cruise between Australia and the Indonesian Islands. I mean, you’ve got the Straits of Malacca up there at the end of the Malaysian peninsula, and down here, unless you want to go all the way around the west coast of Australia toward Antarctica, you have to pass us. So if they’re transiting east to west or west to east, no matter where they start and no matter where they end up, they pass through this bottleneck.’

  ‘So you watch them,’ said Condley.

  ‘Mostly we listen.’ The sailor shrugged, retreating into his Navy-regulation pose. ‘Sorry, that’s all I can really say. It’s classified.’

  ‘Lovely place,’ said Muir sarcastically, looking out the window at the persistent scrub that surrounded them. ‘A marvel of tranquillity.’

  ‘Best skin diving in the world,’ said the sailor. ‘But if you don’t swim, forget it. Take a jog every now and then. Learn to like Foster’s. Sit around, waiting for your weekend every month or so in Perth trying to get laid.’

  The road curved, and the blistered little town appeared suddenly to their front. Except for them, the road was completely empty of traffic, as if the entire little town went indoors during the day to escape the baking heat. Muir was all business now, his briefcase open on his lap, studying a map and looking out the windows for landmarks.

  ‘Well, at least we know why he left home,’ said the professor.

  Condley chuckled. ‘Yeah, some sailor probably snaked his girl.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ protested the sailor as they began to pass blocks of weary-looking, dilapidated shacks. ‘Don’t date the townies. Unless you want to get married, that is. The dads out here shoot to kill.’

  ‘There it is,’ said Muir, checking the map on his lap and then pointing out the window toward an old one-story cinder-block building. A small sign was posted in its yard:

  JOSEPH McHENRY, JOSEPH McHENRY, JR.

  DENTAL SERVICES

  ‘Objective number one,’ announced Muir. ‘Pull in, would you, Alfred?’

  It was just past noon. If there had been any patients that morning they were gone, leaving no indicators of their presence. Inside the office door a tall, balding man in a white medical coat was standing behind a scarred wooden desk, next to an old-style black telephone. Several file cabinets filled the space behind the desk. One of the cabinet drawers was open. The man was next to the drawer, holding a pile of well-worn manila folders. He looked up from the folders as Condley and Muir entered his office, his parched gray eyes peering at them over the top of a pair of reading glasses that were half-way down his nose.

  Condley stepped toward him. ‘Doctor McHenry?’

  ‘Junior,’ he said, his voice brick-dry. ‘My father died five years ago.’ He paused, evidently remembering the sign outside. ‘Never got around to changing the sign. It doesn’t matter. He was retired before that, actually. People here know who I am.’

  ‘I’m Brandon Condley. This is Professor Hanson Muir.’

  ‘Not hard to figure that out.’ McHenry gestured toward a second pile of folders on his desk. ‘I’ve been looking all morning and I can’t find a thing.’ He caught Muir’s exasperation. ‘I warned you when we spoke on the phone, Professor. The man left here thirty years ago.’

  ‘Nothing?’ said Muir.

  ‘Nothing at all. We’re not exactly the government, you know. Keeping archives on dead people isn’t what we get paid to do. I’m a digger and a filler and an extractor. If you want braces, go to Perth. Not that anyone around here worries about crooked teeth.’

  Muir frowned, frustrated and weary. Condley stood next to him, deciding to fill the awkward silence. ‘Do you remember treating him?’

  ‘I remember my father treating him,’ said McHenry, softening a bit. ‘I wasn’t through dental school yet. But I knew him. He was quite a bit younger than I. Totally wild, even by western Australian standards. And of course I remember when he disappeared. It was big news around here. The whole thing killed his mother.’

  ‘His dad?’

  ‘Drank himself to death. It would’ve happened anyway. Mathew’s antics might have hurried it along a bit, that’s all.’ McHenry raised his eyebrows, anticipating the next question. ‘Nobody else. No brothers or sisters. God only knows where his parents were before they drifted here. Or maybe they even met here, I don’t know. We don’t ask about things like that. If people tell us, then fine.’

  Condley and Muir stared quietly at each other, their minds working furiously. Muir tapped the folders he was carrying, as if for inspiration. ‘Do you know Doctor Kenneth T. Hasler?’

  ‘He’ll be able to help you,’ said McHenry, brightening a bit. ‘Not that he can verify any dental work, but he did know Mathew pretty well.’ McHenry chuckled, old memories filling his fleshy face. ‘A regular patient, he was. The boy did know how to brawl.’

  * * *

  Doctor Hasler was waiting for them. As the car pulled into the small parking area in front of his combination house and office building, the small, wiry white-haired old man walked out of the front door and hobbled toward them, leaning on a cane. He wore thick glasses and hearing aids. His head was tilted to the side as he searched their faces. Moving instinctively to Condley, he held out a trembling, liver-spotted hand.

  ‘You’re in charge,’ he warbled, shaking Condley’s hand. And then he pointed at Hanson Muir. ‘And he’s the scientist. I’m very glad you’ve come, actually. Follow me inside, boys.’

  Doctor Hasler’s office was in the front area of his home. He led them through it, past a desk area and a well-lit examination room, and then into a surprisingly well-furnished living room. Hundreds of books filled a floor-t
o-ceiling wooden bookcase that covered an entire wall. A new Japanese air conditioner whirred quietly from near the ceiling. They followed him to a sitting area, falling into lush leather chairs as he took his favorite place on an old leather couch. A wall just across from Condley was filled with pictures and military citations from World War Two.

  Hanson Muir sighed happily, at home in these surroundings, basking in the cool breath of the air conditioner. He dropped his folder onto the sturdy mahogany table in front of the chairs.

  ‘Thank you for seeing us, Doctor.’

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ said the old man. ‘I’ve been wanting to put this to rest for a very long time.’

  Muir glanced quickly at Condley, surprised at the intensity of Doctor Hasler’s response. ‘So you knew Mathew Larkin, did you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hasler, his head bouncing slightly from the same tremor that caused his hands to shake. ‘Yes. Quite well.’

  ‘Unfortunately, there are no dental records here, so we’re going to have to try and match up what little evidence we have from his skeletal remains.’

  ‘What happened to him?’ asked the doctor, his opaque eyes intense behind the glasses. ‘How did he die?’

  Muir seemed to balk at the question, so Condley leaned forward in his chair, speaking quietly to the old man. ‘If these remains are actually those of Mathew Larkin, he was murdered.’

  ‘How?’ asked Hasler. ‘By whom? Why? That is, if you don’t mind. Excuse me, but I’d very much like to know.’

  Condley cleared his throat, somewhat nervous under the doctor’s steady stare. ‘The matter is still under investigation, sir. It shames me to say it, but it appears he was killed by an American deserter while both of them were in a remote area with the Viet Cong. From what I can personally tell, I think the guy wanted Larkin’s passport as a way to leave the country.’