by Ed Marohn
She stood up looking at me. Her wet body glistened in the setting sun, the beige bikini almost blending with her skin, giving an illusion of nudity. “I am going to my room to change for dinner. At 1900 hours?”
“OK. I’m taking a few laps and then I’ll change.” I watched her walk away, following her sensuous sway, tantalizing in her bikini, feeling a twinge of guilt for watching. I quickly dove into the refreshing pool.
Giang area, January 4, 2003
Last night at dinner, Hieu had again mesmerized me with her femininity. Dressed in black tailored slacks, short heels, and a white blouse, with her hair brushed out, falling around her face and onto her shoulders, she appeared as mysterious as the Orient. Our meal wasn’t totally unpleasant, despite Hieu’s reserved manner. We simply talked shop, becoming more in tune, knowing that a strong partnership had to develop.
Hieu’s intelligence and her status as a daughter of an NVA officer gave her opportunities that kids of South Vietnamese parentage could not get, at least not for three generations—the penalty for opposing the North Vietnamese. Recruited to join the National Police after graduating from Hanoi University, she rose through the ranks in her twenty years with the organization. She held the title of senior field agent, and very few outranked her. Major Han, normally her supervisor, had been circumvented by Colonel Tin for this assignment. Shrewdly, Hieu kept Han in the loop, however.
“Have you ever killed anyone?” I asked, trying to understand her reservations toward me.
“Almost. I wounded a man we pursued to arrest.”
I captured a momentary flutter of her eyes. She didn’t show remorse, just a pained look that said it wasn’t easy to kill someone.
Staying away from alcohol in order to be alert for a long day tomorrow, we ate a simple meal of grilled shrimp on mixed greens for me, a mixed-greens salad for her, bottled water for both, and no coffee or tea. Before we left for our rooms, she learned that I was a widower. She offered her condolences with a sincerity that moved me.
After my morning shower, I had an hour before we met with Quan, who would be hand-delivered to us for our drive to My Son. I logged onto to the internet with my Palm phone and checked the message board. One message appeared for me: Puking Buzzard—Glad you arrived safely. Any sign of your friends? Love, Rex I.
I responded to his question with a negative.
By the code word friends, Woodruff meant Ramsey and Loan. Ramsey stayed hidden somewhere in Hong Kong, and Loan should be picked up today—I assumed. I packed my backpack, putting in the aluminum case with the satellite phone and Palm phone. The satellite phone would be my emergency link while in the bush, and every day I ensured that the power pack had been fully charged and that the phone functioned.
I started to get into the Mercedes’s passenger side just as Hieu returned from another car parked in the hotel’s driveway, Quan in tow behind her. “Will you drive? I will talk with Quan while you do. Follow the lead vehicle—it will lead us to Giang.”
I nodded and walked around to the driver’s side. Once the three of us were in and seated, a black Mercedes sedan moved in front of our vehicle and I got the signal to follow. Outside the hotel’s gate, five vehicles were parked in convoy formation: two Vietnamese Army utility vehicles, similar to jeeps, and three two-and-a-half ton US Army trucks, circa 1968.
Hieu saw my questioning look. “The army will be assisting in the search. We need the manpower.”
“The more the better,” I said, keeping my eyes on the road. We were moving fast, seven vehicles in a tight convoy, scattering other traffic to the side. In the meantime, Hieu leaned back over her front passenger seat, asking Quan questions, trying to obtain new information as he sat in the back seat.
I remembered some information that validated our trip. “You know, Hieu, the Viet Cong headquartered in the My Son area during the war, and we had set this region as a Free Fire Zone. This resulted in massive bombings by the US, destroying some of the ancient temples. When the bombing damaged the main sanctuary, former President Nixon, pressured by the international community, halted further destruction of My Son in order to preserve the remains of these national antiquity structures.”
“I know. It is the reason that Ramsey chose the spot to hide his spoils of war. Once your president stopped further bombings, Ramsey would feel secure in hiding anything here.”
I raised my eyes—that made great sense. The convoy sped along recklessly, forcing me to drive faster to stay with the lead sedan; all the while, the army vehicles in the rear pressed me to drive even faster. My odometer read sixty miles per hour.
We had decided to focus mainly on the Giang village because of Quan’s information. Once we arrived, Hieu took charge and divided the area into search sectors, with the center being Giang. On a map spread out on the hood of our Mercedes, she marked out a circle with a ten-kilometer radius from the center of Giang, then divided the circle into six roughly equal sectors, like slices of pie. Turning to the gathered Da Nang police agents and army officers surrounding the map, she ordered them to divide personnel equally and to search over every square kilometer by foot.
Hieu said to me, “You and I are with Quan. We will focus on the southwest sector.” This became our slice of the pie.
I strapped on my backpack containing the aluminum CIA case, energy bars, bottled water, a full combat medical pack similar to the ones used in my days in the war and, thanks to Hieu, fifty rounds for my .45, as well as five full thirty-round banana clips for the AK-47. The satellite phone and case, as per Woodruff’s assistant, weighed twenty-six pounds; the rest of the gear and ammunition made my carrying weight over sixty pounds, reminiscent of the loads I carried on my back in the war.
I noticed stares from the four army lieutenants and their 109 men. I felt uneasy as they tried to understand why an American in jeans and tropical shirt, armed with one of their AK-47s, stood among them. Some of these young soldiers would have had relatives who had served and died with the NVA, fighting Americans and their allies, the South Vietnamese. I assumed they knew that I had been here as a soldier during the American Indochina War, involved in killing their people. If that was the case, I understood their feelings, but was also apprehensive about being the only round eye in the group.
Hieu intervened in front of me and jabbered to them, invoking the familiar name of Colonel Tin and probably embellishing my role. I sensed no real change in their looks, but they now plunged into the job at hand. Ignoring them, I retrieved Hieu’s rucksack from our SUV and put it on her back, startling her.
“Thanks for the pep talk to the troops,” I said, feeling better having her with me, even without her friendliness.
“You are welcome.” Her tone seemed less severe. Then taking out a compass, she said, “We go this way.” She carried her AK-47 with her left hand, her nine millimeter strapped in a shoulder holster over a green police uniform shirt bearing her rank and authority. She also wore jeans and hiking boots.
I followed her with a sad and silent Quan behind me; I plodded along with my AK-47 strapped over my right shoulder and my .45 strapped into the shoulder holster over my tropical utility shirt. The troops and police agents split into their assigned teams, hustling to obey Hieu’s directives, observing the New York Yankees baseball caps identifying us as the organizers of this outing. I anticipated a difficult search in the days ahead; the jungle terrain would not be a willing participant.
That evening at our hotel, Major Han delivered news by phone to Hieu that didn’t surprise me: Loan had escaped agents converging on him at the hotel in Phnom Penh. Our contingency of focusing on Giang and My Son defaulted as the only plan.
Giang search sectors,
January 5–12, 2003
Years ago, I did psychotherapy on two Charlotte police detectives who struggled with a brutal shooting of some bad guys. One partner had been wounded while the other killed one of the perpetrators. Emotional tr
auma existed for both of them: One felt guilty for being wounded and unable to assist his partner, while the other blamed himself for his partner being wounded, almost killed. I learned how close these two men had grown in ten years, almost like a married couple. They shared personal thoughts, experiences, pain, and joy—often not discussed with their own wives.
After a week of humping through the Vietnamese boonies without finding anything, I realized that Hieu and I had developed a similar relationship, even though our tenure together was much shorter than that of the two former police detectives. We acted with little verbal communication, knowing what the other would do. We started arguing by the eighth day, after a long, frustrating week of nothing but dirt, heat, sweat, bugs, snakes, jungle, and more jungle, and more bugs.
Hieu glared at me. “We should have gone more to the left on this old trail, not the right!”
“Hieu, listen—we walked the left fork of the trail yesterday. How hard is that to understand?” I said, getting pissed at her, not backing down. In return, she rolled her eyes and acted as if I belonged to a subhuman species.
She raised her hands in frustration and stomped off, going right, as I had suggested. I watched her storm ahead mumbling to herself. A frightened Quan stood next to me, worried about Hieu’s wrath. He had tried to help daily, racking his brains for any facts he still held, hoping to lead us to our objective. He no doubt yearned to be in Da Nang permanently, rather than being forced back here every day, only returning to Da Nang at night.
“Look, Quan, her bark is worse than her bite,” I said, showing my smile, thinking he didn’t understand English. “Come, my friend, we better follow her or we both will get our heads knocked off.” Confused, he looked at me, trying to understand as I put my hand on his back and positioned him in front of me on the trail to begin another hard day of exploration.
By the end of another twelve-hour day, we gathered at our checkpoint in the village, Hieu instructing everyone to be back tomorrow at the same time, 0800 hours. The police agents and soldiers were glad to get back to Da Nang for cold drinks and showers. They gave questioning looks to Hieu, wondering about her mental state. I was too tired to care at the moment. Once Quan was safely tucked in a sedan with police agents for the trip back to Da Nang, Hieu took the wheel of our SUV and tore out, scattering gravel behind her. We drove for a few minutes in silence; her anger showed.
“Hieu,” I said, “we’re missing something.”
She turned toward me, neutral, her pride preventing her from admitting that she lost her temper earlier. “That is certain. But what is it?” she said, still curt.
I shook my head slowly. “I keep racking my brain. Have we reviewed everything?”
She kept driving, glaring at the road to Hoi An. Reed’s journal notes bothered me. No matter how we studied his notes, no revelation popped up to help solve our puzzle. There were only similarities to Quan’s information—confirming some details but not providing the ultimate answer.
“Any word on Colonel Loan?” I asked, instinctively holding the passenger door as she sped. Her anger worried me, as it had Quan.
“No,” she said.
Well, that was that, and we drove to the hotel in silence.
Each night after a long day of hiking through the bush, we had brief meetings, alternating between her room and mine, to review, to analyze, to study, trying to mesh her Oriental thought process with my Western thinking. Hieu, like Colonel Tin and many Vietnamese, believed in the Yin and Yang of life religiously: death versus life, darkness versus light, negative versus positive, female versus male. To the Vietnamese, one needed both to stabilize life, to ensure tranquility and harmony, each part contributing to the whole. If one was missing, then there was no balance in life. She relied on this Yin and Yang philosophy in seeking to locate the gold and entrap Ramsey and Loan. I understood her beliefs and her philosophy, but I grew up a product of American culture, heavy on pragmatism. Colonel Tin had intentionally thrown us together, hoping that our two different worlds would decipher this quandary. However, as we scurried around My Son blindly, I felt less certain than ever that this quest would succeed.
Tonight, we were in her room. Now more comfortable with each other, she sat in her sleep shorts and top, trying to relax after a hot shower, her wet hair wrapped in a bath towel like a turban. Sitting on her bed, her back resting on the pillows piled against the headboard, her caramel-colored legs stretched in front of her, she jotted ideas down on a legal pad and occasionally threw questions at me.
I had showered in my room earlier and now sat stretched out in a lounge chair by her bed scanning my notes, dressed in my khaki cargo shorts, golf shirt, flip flops, and with wet hair.
Our earlier tiff had faded but her reserved attitude remained the same since we met at the Hanoi airport. However no matter how brusque she acted toward me, and no matter how unfriendly she seemed, I welcomed her presence. It prevented my complete loneliness in this country, and I grasped at it to make our partnership tolerable, despite being mired in a mission that seemed impossible.
I understood that our only chance to capture Loan, and eventually Ramsey, would be finding the buried treasure first. That seemed to be our only hope. I also understood that the clues from Reed must matter now, and that seemed to be the other reason I had been asked to Vietnam. Everyone assumed that Reed’s cryptic notes could be deciphered using Colonel Hung’s and Quan’s input. In all of this, I became more important since Major Han’s mission to capture Loan within days of his arrival in Cambodia had failed. Frustrated, Hieu and I noted that Loan had disappeared almost two weeks ago, and still no word on his whereabouts. I also suspected that the lackadaisical attitude of Tin and the others toward Ramsey was a mere ruse. Did they want Ramsey as much as they wanted Loan? It began to seem so.
“We need to look at Marble Mountain.” Hieu’s softened tone reached out to me like an olive branch offering.
I grasped her overture eagerly, hating the coldness between us. “Maybe, but it just doesn’t make sense. The VC held that hill. Why would Ramsey want to do anything there?” Looking at my sheets, I checked off the words that made sense for what felt like the hundredth time. “On the first sheet—My Son/Cham, Giang, Gold, Phoenix, Village—100 KIA, Ramsey. These match Quan’s input as well. And we are assuming the Americans are Ramsey and Reed.”
I put another question mark by Montagnards. What bearing did that tribe have? While we searched, we found no local Montagnard tribe in the area. Besides, during the war, the Montagnards hated the VC and would not have been welcome in the My Son area, which the VC dominated. And the Da Nang/Marble Mountain reference confused me. Da Nang made sense; Loan and Ramsey met Hung there to obtain the APCs and Rome plow. But why write Marble Mountain down?
The second sheet of Reed’s notes listed: Grove of Banyan Trees, My Son again, and Village elders/Giang. These words and phrases generally agreed with what Quan had told us. The word Caves seemed the only missing link, and we had assumed days ago that the gold had been placed in old caves.
“We’re missing something,” I said, sounding like a broken record.
“But what?” A frustrated Hieu countered, staring at me. Then she got up and padded to the bathroom, shutting the door behind her. Soon I heard a slight groan and some of her cosmetics scattering on the floor.
I stood quickly, thinking she was sick, and approached the bathroom door just as she came out, anger on her face.
“Can I help?” I said, looking at her face.
“I need aspirin for my headache and—oh, this is so frustrating.”
I shook my head. We might as well be married, I thought. I grinned at her, which set her off glaring, yet I thought I caught a small tear on her face. She turned away, embarrassed, irritated, and almost defeated. Her barrier toward me still remained intact, however.
“OK, look, I’ll go to the gift shop and buy you some stuff. Just write down the V
ietnamese name for what you want so I get it right.”
Sheepishly I paid for the Bayer Aspirin, the label on the bottle in clear English. I didn’t need any note. The jolly young man behind the counter talked like we were old friends for a few minutes. He eyed the package, matching what Hieu had written in Vietnamese before putting my purchase in a plastic bag printed with the hotel emblem.
“Aw, for you or your wife?” he said, curiosity on his boyish face. No doubt there were rumors as to why an older American stayed with a younger and beautiful Vietnamese woman, here at this nice resort.
“Yeah, for the wife.” I frowned as I walked out of the hotel gift shop. Jim Schaeffer would love this. Maybe now there would be less gossip about us at the hotel.
Hieu opened the door, a slight grimace showed. “I am sorry that you had to do this.”
“It’s OK.” I handed her the plastic bag.
She pulled the bottle out and unscrewed the cap, taking three aspirin with a glass of water from the nightstand. “Thank you. You are kind.” She tried a weak smile. The first one I had seen since the dinner at her apartment with her family.
Looking down at her five-foot-five body, I said, “Let’s get some rest. We have another long day tomorrow, and we are thinking too hard about this. Maybe some sleep will help.”
She nodded. I don’t know why, but I wanted to give her a hug. But I wouldn’t.
When I got to my room, shutting the connecting door behind me, I stripped off my cargo shorts and fell into bed, still wearing my shirt and undershorts. I had hoped to read my notes one more time, but I fell asleep in minutes.
