Lost Soldiers

by Lost Soldiers (retail) (epub)

  ‘What do you mean, like a book?’

  ‘Like a book,’ said Petrushinsky, suddenly recalcitrant. ‘How do you study a book? All the little details. Why are you asking me these things? Of what use is it?’

  ‘We think the devil killed the lark,’ said Colonel Pham quietly, as if mediating between the two. ‘We would like to solve this matter.’

  ‘It would not surprise me,’ said Petrushinsky delicately, toying with his vodka glass and for some reason avoiding both of their eyes. ‘They disappeared. We were told that the lark was taking the devil back to Sai Gon, but neither of them was seen again. And why would the devil want to go to Sai Gon? The Americans were looking for him. What if they caught him?’

  Something tugged at Condley’s emotions, as irritating as the dreams that had not let General Duncan drop the matter when he first read the message traffic regarding Deville. Something odd, but inarticulable. A piece that was obvious, and yet was missing. Or perhaps it was merely Petrushinsky’s flushed and avoiding face. ‘Did you know the lark?’ he finally managed to ask.

  ‘Of course I knew the lark,’ said Petrushinsky.

  A sudden light went off in Condley’s brain, giving him a moment of awesome, frightening clarity. How could that be? ‘Did he ever take a picture of you?’

  Petrushinsky froze. He watched Condley carefully, as though a gun were suddenly being pointed at his head. Condley’s own pulse quickened, filling his veins with a rush of adrenaline. And finally Condley pressed forward, not wishing to give the former Soviet soldier more time to think. ‘If he took a picture of you, and if that picture was published in the world’s newspapers, wouldn’t that have compromised what you were doing?’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Petrushinsky, fighting off the vodka.

  ‘According to your government there were no Soviet soldiers in Viet Nam. So what would the picture say about that lie? And what about the devil? Did the lark take a picture of him too? He did, didn’t he? Perhaps even without permission? And what would that picture say? A Russian soldier – or maybe a lot of Russian soldiers – and at least one American deserter working with the Viet Cong in the Que Son Mountains? Not only in Viet Nam but in South Viet Nam? This would have been important news if it was documented with a photograph. Huge. It would have been displayed in every newspaper on earth. Maybe the lark was going to become the most famous photographer in the world. What do you think about that, Anatolie? Is that why the lark was killed? Because he had the evidence? And because even if you took away his cameras, he knew the truth?’

  ‘This was a long time ago,’ said Petrushinsky, leaning back against his couch. ‘It was a war. A very important war. A war we won, I will remind you.’

  ‘And so the lark became expendable, for the importance of the war.’

  ‘He made mistakes. He was not supposed to see us. We were in another camp. But one day he wandered along the trails and he found us. And then he was not supposed to photograph us. He betrayed his hosts. He became uncontrollable.’

  ‘And so you killed him.’

  ‘No, we wouldn’t have done that as long as he was with us. But once he became uncontrollable, he had to stay with us as a captive until the war was over. That was his only alternative, unless he wanted to resist that fate and die.’ The former Soviet soldier’s face was now wild with uncertainty. ‘But it was the devil who killed him. The lark wanted to escape. The devil studied him, studied him, and then one day told him he would help him return to Sai Gon. They left at night, as if escaping. But I know the devil killed him.’

  ‘Where did the devil go?’

  ‘To Sai Gon? I don’t know. We never saw him again.’

  ‘Where did the lark want to go?’

  ‘I don’t understand you,’ said Petrushinsky.

  ‘When he thought he was escaping. Where did he want to go?’

  ‘I have had enough of your questions,’ said Petrushinsky, suddenly weary of Condley’s probing. ‘It is time for you to leave my home.’

  Colonel Pham, flushed with his vodka, had also been ambushed by the direction Condley’s questions had taken. He burped slightly, studying Condley’s insistent, incandescent eyes, and then surprised him by supporting him. ‘Anatolie Petrushinsky,’ said the colonel. ‘You are not in trouble. You will not be questioned again. Your own government does not know we are talking to you. And anyway, it was the old government that set such policies into motion. This is a matter only of history to the Russian people, but in Viet Nam it is important to our future.’

  ‘Your new future,’ slurred the drunken Petrushinsky. ‘Without your Russian friends? With the Americans who are not going away?’

  ‘We will never forget our Russian friends,’ insisted the colonel. ‘You will return someday also, I am sure of it. But please. You must trust me and answer the question.’

  ‘What is the question that you wish me to answer?’ asked Petrushinsky quietly, with an almost tragic helplessness. ‘Now I am confused. Tell me exactly what you want me to answer, and I will try. And then you must leave me alone with my little dollhouses and my memories. Viet Nam is gone for me, like my parents in their graves. I am growing old now. The rest of it is too much to contemplate.’

  ‘The lark,’ said Condley. ‘The photographer who had to die. If things had gone all right for him, when he finished with his story in the mountains, where did he want to go?’

  ‘To see his girlfriend.’ Petrushinsky grew dark again, his face filled with jealousy and with the memory of a moment that would never be offered to him again. ‘That was why he tried to escape. Always he was talking about her, rubbing her beauty in our faces as we sat isolated in the mountains. I used to say to him that anyone can buy a whore in Bangkok.’

  ‘Bangkok?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Petrushinsky, his face blanketed with green-eyed memories. ‘He was always boasting. Every month he flew in from Sai Gon to be with her. Every month, for a week! So what? He was such a naive fool. What about the rest of the month? What did he think she was doing for the other three weeks?’

  ‘He flew in to Bangkok every month?’

  ‘Yes, yes! I saw his passport. It was filled with immigration stamps.’

  * * *

  The visit with Petrushinsky had for some reason deeply shaken Colonel Pham. He was quiet as they made their way across the frostbitten fields toward the subway stop, not with the silent, war-like tension of their journey toward Petrushinsky’s apartment, but with an introspective gloom. He teetered now and then as they walked, still flush from the vodka, looking up at Condley from time to time as if questioning himself for this relationship and indeed for their very journey.

  ‘I know you do not like them, but they were good people,’ he finally said as they neared the subway.

  Condley was shaking again, his face numb from the cold. ‘I have no opinion, Colonel.’

  ‘Then you might respect mine.’ They reached the subway and walked together down the steps. ‘What are you going to do now, Cong Ly?’

  ‘I’m going to Bangkok.’

  ‘Please keep this man from getting into trouble. He loves Viet Nam just as you do, and he has given enough.’

  ‘No one will know, Colonel.’

  They reached the platform. It was very late and they were the only people there. Pham studied his face for a very long time. ‘You are a good man, I think. And this devil, I can see how he hurt you. But don’t be stupid. Bad things happen in wars. And this war is over.’

  ‘Almost,’ said Condley, holding the colonel’s gaze.

  They could hear the train approaching, and then they saw a light, far off inside the tunnel. ‘I will stay in Moscow for a while longer, Cong Ly. It has been a very long time, and it may be my last visit.’

  The train reached the platform and they climbed in, taking seats across from each other. Condley nodded, indicating that he understood. And they did not speak to each other again until they said good night at the hotel.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven


  Sai Gon

  ‘Cong Ly,’ she was saying, again and again. ‘Cong Ly. Are you awake?’ And then a lilting, nervous laugh. ‘Cong Ly, it’s me! Wake up!’

  He lay in his bed, clutching the phone to his ear, trying to do just that. So many time zones over such a short period of time, so many airports, so many flights, so many questions, and so many odd, unfulfilling answers. Six hours of sleep beginning in the middle of a Sai Gon afternoon and here he was, helplessly groggy, and yet happy that she was so rudely awakening him.

  It was just after ten o’clock. The sky outside his window was pitch-black. The motorbikes serenaded him like an unending stream of two-hundred-pound mosquitoes, whining insistently as they came and went along the street below. He had been dreaming about his mother, the dream itself almost a memory, filled with the warmth in her still-young eyes as she combed his hair just before sending him off to his very first day of school. How many decades ago?

  Oh, Brandon, I swear to God in heaven on high, you are gonna be some kind of lady-killer when you grow up. It’s all over, honey-pie. They are not gonna be able to keep their hands off of you.

  When the telephone awakened him he had felt an immediate, overwhelming sense of sadness. He had abandoned his mother, indeed his entire family, for this odd and unproductive life. He had never decided to. It had simply happened, one tragedy and one failure at a time, until he no longer had a place to come home to without having to explain it all, and it would have taken forever to explain. His father had died while he was on a security detail for an oil company in a remote section of Indonesia. He missed the funeral and had yet to visit the grave. He had not visited his mother in ten years. He called her now and then when he was in Hawaii, holding stilted and disjointed conversations about her tulips and her dogs, but the same reasons that had kept him in Asia after the war somehow prevented him from going home.

  OK, where would we begin? Long time no see. So here’s how this disaster happened. I fell in love with a woman and kept killing bad guys so that I could stay with her, I mean everybody needs a job, and finally they killed her because I was too good at my job, and then I killed them back for her until the killing ended, more or less, and when that was over what was I supposed to do, come home and apply for a job at the Chamber of Commerce?

  In the dream his mother was calling to him and now it was Van on the telephone calling to him, or maybe it had been Van all along as he struggled to awaken, rather than the voice of his mother in a dream. But when he finally came out of his stupor all he could say was –

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  She laughed at that. ‘What are you talking about? Are you awake?’

  And now he was, finally, fully awake. He sat up in his bed, surrounded by the overwhelming darkness and the whining of the motorbikes below, and realiSed that he was indeed back in Sai Gon. At least for a day or two.

  ‘Van?’

  She laughed again, and yet he heard a nervous edge in her voice. ‘Who else did you think it was? Should I be worried that you asked me that?’

  He shook his head, snapping his brain into gear, and finally chuckled. ‘I was dreaming about my mother.’

  ‘That is a good sign,’ she said almost happily. ‘Your mother visiting you in a dream just as I am calling you. A very good sign.’

  Her voice was hollow, as if it were coming from the bottom of a well, and he knew she was talking on a cell phone. Dishes clattered near her, or perhaps it was glasses clinking in an idle toast. People were laughing. Mixed with the intimacy of her conversation, all these public signals disappointed him, making him feel somehow violated, as if he were on display. She was calling him and talking about his mother and his dreams, for the enjoyment or even the approval of – whom?

  ‘And how is the grand merchant of aromas?’ he said dryly.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Perfume Prince?’

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘Yes, my faithful friend Francois?’

  ‘Why do you think I’m calling?’ she said, immediately switching from English to Vietnamese. ‘No good. I want you to come and get me.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m at the East Wind, Rain. It is a nightclub. Do you know this place? Only a five minute walk from your hotel!’

  ‘Then why don’t you just come on over here?’

  ‘No!’ she said emphatically, still speaking Vietnamese, as if all of this were their secret. ‘For me to walk away alone would be… mat mat,’ she indicated, meaning that she would lose face. ‘You must rescue me, Brandon. I promise you, there is a good reason for this. Let me choose to leave him openly, to his face, so his friends will understand that he has lost. Please? I am waiting for you. Take me away from here.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘I will tell you later.’

  ‘No promises, Van.’

  ‘Just come get me. Please.’

  ‘And no fights,’ said Condley carefully, rubbing the sleep away from his face with the back of one hand.

  ‘A fight? Francois, with you?’ She laughed. ‘Oh, that is very funny.’

  * * *

  A sudden, lazy rain began to splash the streets. He walked along dark, wet sidewalks toward the East Wind, Rain, thinking about her last words on the telephone. He was not afraid to face down Francois, and yet he knew that the very thought of a physical confrontation between them was absurd. Francois might mock him and certainly would find ways to subtly ridicule him, but the impeccably manicured Frenchman would never risk his ego in a fight. Especially a fight over a woman.

  No fights. Van had misunderstood him. What he wanted to avoid was an ugly, public scene between Van and Francois, with him ending up as the moral equivalent of a getaway car. There was a note of urgency in Van’s voice that he had never heard before. And he knew that asking Van to control her emotions was about as sensible as begging a bird not to fly.

  The East Wind, Rain was one of several upscale nightclubs that had recently sprung up in Sai Gon, catering to foreigners on expense accounts and younger, well-connected Vietnamese with a penchant for western frills. Condley avoided such places, seeing them as cesspools of the corruption that had invaded the higher reaches of Sai Gon’s business economy. An evening’s bar tab could feed and clothe a family of four in the provinces for a year. Drugs were quietly available for the asking, from old standbys like opium to the most modern western imports such as Ecstasy, which had swept through the upper levels of Sai Gon like an invisible typhoon. Cell phones, designer clothes, and MTV music were the standard fare, with the old notions of dress and ritual courtesy seen as marks of a failed past. And despite the government’s public ranting against corruption and ‘westernisation,’ most of the Vietnamese regulars at such clubs were the sons and daughters of communist officials who had pulled strings to send them overseas for schooling or to find them jobs with foreign corporations.

  The westerners were no better. The East Wind, Rain was the watering hole for an ever-changing group of young professionals who saw themselves alternatively as financial pioneers in Viet Nam to strike it rich or Conradesque adventurers seeking to live on the fringe. They had come to Sai Gon from Britain, Australia, the Netherlands, France, the United States. They paid four dollars for a beer, eight dollars for a hamburger, and left large tips for some of the most beautiful waitresses in the world. They sat for hours in groups of four and six in the vast, muraled, pastel-orange nightclub, trading boasts and fantasies as clouds of cigarette smoke invaded their lungs and raucous music attacked their eardrums.

  They were ever cheerful. Their faces were creamy and luminescent in the glow of glittering chandeliers. The latest music videos from the rock and rap factories of Los Angeles and New York echoed from quadraphonic speakers mounted on the ceiling. They traded hip snippets of Vietnamese street slang. They laughed together at that day’s examples of government and worker stupidity. One or two might even have dared to spend a week or so in the provinces or an evening on the seamy side of Sai
Gon.

  And it all had a sickly ring to it, a false resonance that reminded Condley of too many foreign correspondents posted to Sai Gon during the war. They could count months and even years spent in Viet Nam. They had written reams about Viet Nam. And yet few of them had ever known much about what happened outside the bars and tennis courts of Sai Gon.

  He sweated inside an old blue poncho, even as the rain pelted it. His hair and shoes were wet. He knew that such disarray would cause him to be stared at and even mocked when he reached the East Wind, Rain. And in a way he was glad. He did not belong there, nor did he want to.

  The rain stopped, just as suddenly as it had begun. He took off the poncho, shaking water from it and folding it as he walked. As he neared the club, a rat as big as a cat ran across the top of its sign, hopped onto a windowsill, and then disappeared into the night.

  It was chaotic, circus-like outside the club. A steady stream of people came and went, moving into and out of taxis and limousines, a few arriving on motorbikes that they parked just across the street. On the sidewalk and in the street the evening shift of hustlers was back at work, pushing, chasing, pleading. Like starving goldfish in an aquarium, they were waiting to be fed.

  A little boy with slicked-back hair in designer blue jeans and a Disney World T-shirt was carrying a wooden box, hawking shoeshines in urgent, gutter English. A hunchbacked young woman with sad eyes and arthritic fingers shyly waved a package of old black and white photographs. A thirtyish man dragged useless legs behind him as he hobbled on wooden crutches, trying to sell packs of gum. A young man wearing a Chicago Cubs baseball hat marched briskly in front of the restaurant, holding an array of foreign English- and French-language newspapers. Two suborning little girls in identical red wide-brimmed hats formed a tag team, offering cigarette lighters and foreign cigarettes from similar foldout cases.