Conspiracy

by Stephen Coonts

  “You were in the Army?”

  “Marines.”

  “Ahh,” said Qui, as if this explained everything.

  “What did you do during the war?” Dean asked.

  Qui’s lip curled with a smile, but it faded before she spoke. “The war lasted a long time, Mr. Dean.”

  “You can call me Charlie.”

  “It was a long war, Mr. Dean. It began before I was born. I grew old well before it was over.”

  Qui didn’t elaborate. Dean turned his attention to the scenery. The factories, office buildings, and apartments gave way to stretches of green. Houses poked out from behind the foliage in the distance, as if they were playing a child’s game of hide-and-seek. The trucks that passed from the other direction were mostly Japanese made, though here and there Dean was surprised by a Mack dump truck and a GMC Jimmy, among others. A half hour out of Saigon, Dean spotted an old American tank left from the war sitting off the road. Though surrounded by weeds, the tank appeared freshly painted, its olive green skin glistening in the sun.

  Dean kept his cover story ready, expecting Qui to ask about it. His preparation wasn’t necessary, however; she seemed to have no interest in small talk, let alone quizzing him about his bona fides. He wondered why Tang told him he needed a new cover until they passed a large piece of bulldozed land off the highway in the Central Highlands, more than two hours after setting out. Qui muttered something loudly to herself as they passed, then realized Dean had heard her.

  “They tear down everything,” she said. “Pourri,” she added, beginning a riff in very profane French about corrupt corporations and equally corrupt government officials raping the land. She spoke far too quickly for Dean’s very limited French, but the depth of her feeling was clear.

  “Without the curses, she said, ‘Corporations and politicians suck,’ ” Rockman told him.

  “I guess I didn’t catch too much of that,” Dean told her. “But you’re angry about the bulldozers?”

  Qui smirked. “It’s a beautiful country.”

  “It is.”

  “You’re only just realizing that?”

  Dean stared at her, noticing again the lines around the corners of her eyes. They looked softer now.

  “I didn’t appreciate beauty the first time I was here,” he told her.

  “Do you now?”

  “As I got older, I started to see things differently.”

  There was a knot of traffic ahead. Without answering him, or even making a sign that she had heard, Qui turned her full attention to the car, maneuvering to pass.

  Dean stared out the passenger-side window. A man plowed a field with an ox-drawn plow, struggling to overturn the earth. Smoke curled in the distance, a small brush fire set to remove debris.

  The scene was both common and familiar. His brain plucked a similar one at random from its memory—an image from a helicopter, a flight out to Khe Sahn early in his tour here, when he was still being tested.

  When he was still fresh meat.

  “You’re here to assuage your guilt,” said Qui.

  “How’s that?” Dean asked.

  “You’re a do-gooder. Most do-gooders, if they’re not young, are making up for something. You’re making up for the war, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t think so,” Dean answered without thinking. Belatedly, he realized he should have said she was right—it fit with his cover.

  “It’s all right,” said Qui. She turned and smiled at him. “I’m a bit of a do-gooder myself.”

  66

  TOMMY KARR TOOK a sip of the white liquid, swished it around in his mouth, then swallowed.

  “Good?” asked the old man who had offered it to him.

  “Good’s a relative concept,” squeaked Karr. The liquid tasted like digested coconut mixed with rubbing alcohol.

  “You want?”

  “I’ll take a Coke, I think.”

  The man gave Karr a small bottle of the cola. Karr held out a ten-thousand-dong note for the man. A look of disappointment spread across the vendor’s face.

  “No American?”

  “How much American?”

  “Ten dollar.”

  “For a Coke? I want soda, not cocaine.”

  The old man didn’t understand.

  “One dollar,” said Karr, reaching into his pocket.

  “Five dollar.”

  “Then I pay in Vietnamese.”

  “Two.”

  “Tommy, Thao Duong is leaving his office,” warned Rockman from the Art Room. “He told his supervisor he’s going for lunch.”

  “Here, take the soda back.” Karr thrust it into his hand.

  “OK, Joe. One dollar.”

  “Next time!” said Karr over his shoulder as he jogged for the bike.

  “Fifty cent!” sputtered the old man. “Dime! You pay dime!”

  KARR REACHED THE front of the office building just as Thao Duong came out. The Vietnamese official turned left, heading in the opposite direction. Karr turned at the corner, then spun into a U-turn, barely missing two bicyclists and another motorcycle.

  “Don’t get into a traffic accident,” hissed Rockman.

  “You know, Rockman, you take all the fun out of this job,” said Karr.

  As he joined the flow of traffic on the main street, Karr saw Thao Duong walking about a block ahead. He was headed down in the direction of the port, just like yesterday. Karr drove ahead four blocks, pulled up on the sidewalk, and parked. Then he leaned back against the side of the building, waiting for Thao Duong to catch up.

  Karr was still waiting ten minutes later.

  “Tommy, what’s going on?” asked Marie Telach.

  “Must’ve gotten waylaid somewhere,” said Karr, starting up the street in search of Thao Duong.

  “All right, it’s not a crisis if you lose him,” said the Art Room supervisor. “He may be trying to spot you.”

  “Gee, thanks, Mom. Hadn’t thought of that,” said Karr.

  Karr checked the storefronts along the street as nonchalantly as he could. When he reached the block where he had spotted Thao Duong earlier, Karr turned right down the cross street. There were a dozen noodle shops lined up on both sides of the block. He guessed that Thao Duong was inside one, having an early dinner, but most were located in the basements of the buildings and it would have been difficult to spot him without being seen himself.

  “What’s the situation, Tommy?” asked Telach.

  “Must be having lunch somewhere down this block,” said Karr. “No way to find out without exposing myself.”

  “Hang back then.”

  Karr felt his stomach growl. He was debating whether he might not go into the noodle places anyway when he spotted someone who looked like Thao Duong coming up from one of the shops near the end of the block. Karr slapped a video bug on the light pole near him, then walked up the street.

  “That him?” he asked the Art Room.

  “That’s him,” said Rockman.

  “You see where he came out of?”

  “He was already walking when the bug turned on. Why? You think he met someone there?”

  “No, I’m starting to get hungry and I was hoping for a recommendation.”

  67

  IT WAS STARTING to get dark by the time Dean and Qui reached Pleiku, a city in the Central Highlands roughly three-fourths of the way to Tam Ky. The streets were unlit, but Qui had no trouble navigating, driving down a small side street and stopping in front of a two-story stone building whose facade was covered with moss. Dean felt a surge of adrenaline as he got out of the car; they’d been driving so long that he was glad to have his feet on the pavement again. He took his bag and walked into the house behind Qui, muscles tensing, ready for action.

  An older man in dark blue denim pants and shirt greeted them inside a small foyer. The man knew Qui, though he had not been expecting her. When Qui told him in Vietnamese that they needed two rooms for the night, he led them inside to a small room that was used as both a livin
g room and office.

  “You’re going to have to pay, Charlie,” Rockman reminded him. “That’s the custom. It’s cash up front.”

  Dean bristled at Rockman’s interference but said nothing. The fee for both rooms came to ten dollars.

  “His wife will make us something to eat,” Qui told Dean as they walked toward their rooms. “There’s a terrace in the back. It will be pleasant there.”

  “I’ll see you there,” Dean told her.

  DURING THE WAR, an American base known as Camp Holloway had been located just outside Pleiku, on the site of an old French air base. Helicopter transports and gunships, light observation and ground-support airplanes used the base. It had been attacked by Vietcong many times. The nearby city had suffered greatly; much of Pleiku had been burned during the North’s final offensive after the Americans left.

  “He’s offering to take you to the old base tomorrow,” Qui told Dean, translating the old man’s offer of a tour. The hotel proprietor clearly thought Dean was a visiting veteran who had fought here and wanted to see what had become of the place.

  “No, thanks,” Dean said. “I’d like to get to Quang Nam as quickly as possible.”

  Even before Qui translated, the old man’s disappointment was clear. He told her that Dean was not a man with much curiosity or interest in the world. Qui softened his assessment when she translated it for him.

  “You’re not very nostalgic,” she told Dean.

  “I guess I’m not.”

  “Did you serve near here?”

  Dean shook his head.

  “Of course not,” said Qui, remembering what he had told her earlier. “You were a Marine. You would have been near Da Nang or Khe Sahn, or up in Quang Nam. Where we’re going.”

  Marines had served in other places throughout the country, but Dean didn’t correct her. She was, after all, right on the crucial point.

  “Is that why you’re going back?” she asked.

  “It’s a coincidence.”

  “Really?” she asked, but she let it drop.

  The old man began talking about how much better things were when he was young. It wasn’t clear from what he said exactly what was better or why—except that he was younger. Dean listened to him describing the countryside and the villages. There was no running water and no electricity. The villagers sold fresh fruit to people in the city, and got prices good enough to live on.

  “We had a great festival for Vu Lan Bôn,” said the old man. “From many, many miles, people would gather to honor their ancestors.”

  “What kind of holiday is that?” Dean asked.

  “It’s Buddhist. Bôn. The fifteenth day of the seventh month. For ancestors who have gone to the Holy Land,” said Qui.

  “The hungry ghosts,” added the old man’s wife. “If you do not feed your dead, they wander the world, hungry.”

  It was the living who wandered if the dead were not peacefully at rest, Dean thought to himself, but he said nothing.

  68

  THAO DUONG WENT home after eating. Karr followed, keeping his distance as the Art Room had directed earlier. Shortly after he sat down at the café a block away, Marie Telach came on the line with new instructions.

  “Tommy, we want to be in a position to pick up Thao Duong if necessary. You’re going to have to find a way to get a tracking bug on him.”

  “Aw, man.”

  “I don’t think it will be impossible. I was thinking you could plant one of the horseshoe bugs in his shoe. We’ve done that in heels before. We saw on one of the surveillance shots that he wears thick Western-style dress shoes.”

  “Nah, that’s not what I was complaining about. It’ll be easy. But I was just about to order some food,” Karr said, getting up. “Now I have to get back to work.”

  “Didn’t you just eat?”

  “Snacks from street vendors don’t count,” said Karr.

  He found a shoe repairman whose shop was still open a few blocks away. Considering the language barrier—even with the translator talking in Karr’s ear, he struggled to get the tones right—he thought he did fairly well to buy an entire shoe repair set for fifty bucks. The cobbler even had his apprentice shine Karr’s shoes as part of the deal.

  He was wearing sneakers, so it wasn’t much of a shine. Still, the thought was there.

  Karr hoped that Thao Duong would veg out in front of the television and call it an early night; he’d break into the apartment and doctor the Vietnamese bureaucrat’s shoes once he was sleeping. But around eight o’clock, Thao Duong put on his things and went downstairs to his own motorbike.

  Karr had already bugged the bike, so he let Thao Duong stay about two blocks ahead. It wasn’t long before Karr realized where they were going—the same red-light district that Cam Tre Luc had visited the night before.

  “Ten bucks he’s headed to Saigon Rouge,” said Rockman. “I had a hunch these guys were connected.”

  “Where’s my ten bucks?” said Karr as Thao Duong passed by the street where Saigon Rouge was.

  “He’ll come back,” said Rockman. “Don’t get too close.” Karr turned to parallel Thao Duong as he drove deeper in District 4. Finally Rockman reported that Thao Duong had stopped a few blocks away.

  The buildings in the area Karr drove through were mostly one-story shacks, a patchwork of mismatched metal and discarded wood. Men clustered in the shade of the streetlights, eying the large motorcycle driver suspiciously.

  Thao Duong had stopped on a block with large buildings, five-and six-story warehouses made of crumbling cement. Karr spotted the bike in front of a narrow five-story building whose bottom-floor windows were covered with pieces of cardboard boxes and whose upper windows were empty. He circled the block. A chain-link fence topped with barbed wire set off a tiny junkyard immediately behind the building. As soon as Karr stopped, a trio of large dogs ran at him, smashing into the fence as they yapped.

  “Guess I’ll wait somewhere else,” he told the dogs, revving the bike and driving away.

  “Thao Dung’s bike is moving,” Rockman said.

  “You sure?”

  “Bike’s moving. I don’t know if he’s on it.”

  “Yeah, around here, it could easily have been stolen,” said Karr. He zipped around the block, but rather than following Thao Duong, he cruised slowly in front of the building where he had been, pulled a U-turn at the end of the block, and came back.

  “Tommy, what are you doing?” asked Rockman.

  “We can always find the bike,” explained Karr.

  He pulled his bike up on the curb, and cruised slowly down the sidewalk to the front of the building. Though uneven, the cement was in far better shape than the nearby structures. Karr stopped next to a telephone pole, casually steadying himself there with his left hand—and planting two video bugs at the same time.

  A fireplug of a man came out of the building, yelling at Karr in Vietnamese. Karr waved at the man, then gunned the bike away.

  “Are you interested in knowing what he said?” asked the translator in the Art Room.

  “I’m thinking it had something to do with my ancestry,” laughed Karr.

  “Good guess.”

  “Thao Duong’s bike is back at his apartment,” said Rockman. “It was him—he’s inside. OK, we’re listening to him.”

  “You have any information on that building?” Karr asked.

  “Negative.”

  “See what you can dig up for me. I’ll check it out later, once the genealogist goes to sleep.”

  By the time Karr got to Thao Duong’s apartment, Thao Duong had already gone upstairs and was watching a Vietnamese soap opera. Karr cruised the neighborhood, making sure he hadn’t been followed, then found a restaurant several blocks away where he could get something to eat while waiting for Thao Duong to go to bed.

  Three plates of Vietnamese barbecue ribs, two dishes of steamy noodles with shrimp, and a whole chicken later, Thao Duong was still awake and watching television.

  “Di
dn’t anyone ever tell him that stuff rots your mind?” Karr told Rockman when he gave him the update.

  “Guess you’ll just have to chill.”

  “Yeah. Good thing I saved room for dessert.”

  69

  THE DOCTOR WHO had examined Forester was one of three part-time coroners, all paid a modest retainer by the county to be on call. Full-time, he was a general practitioner, and his days were very full—or at least his office was when Lia went to see him. Even so, he squeezed her in between two appointments without her having to read more than one of the issues of Glamour magazine piled in the waiting room.

  “Do you get a lot of gunshot wounds up here?” Lia asked, after the doctor had reviewed the basics of the autopsy report.

  “I know what you’re getting at.” He smiled, but there was an edge to his voice. “Small-town guy, looks at a homicide maybe once or twice a year, if that. Right? Part-time guy. How’s he supposed to know what he’s looking at, right?”

  “It crossed my mind.”

  “Admittedly, we don’t have many homicides here. Which is why the coroners are part-time.”

  He reached down and pulled a file from the bottom drawer of his desk, opened it, and slid a photo forward. It showed what the bullet had done to the back of Forester’s head. Lia had seen a black-and-white copy; it looked more gruesome in color.

  “I have seen that sort of thing before,” said the doctor. “A lot, actually. I worked in trauma medicine in New York City for about five years after my internship. I have to tell you, this is a textbook case.”

  Lia leafed through the rest of the photos the doctor had. Most hadn’t been included in the formal report, though nothing in them jumped out at her.

  “The Secret Service has copies of the report,” said the doctor. “They had their own doctors look at the body, of course.”

  “Isn’t it true, though, that you can’t tell whether it was suicide from the wounds?” Lia asked. “Someone could have held the gun to his mouth.”

  “Technically, you’re right. But his mouth was closed around the barrel, the direction of the bullet was exactly as you’d expect if he were holding it himself, there were no signs that he was being held down or that he’d been in a fight.”