Play the Red Queen

by Juris Jurjevics

“I’m thinkin’ folks back home will flock to see it. Newsmen, TV reporters. Everybody and his missus will want a gander. Lotsa publicity wherever we send it. Tailgate picnics, mall openin’s . . . choppin’ heads o’ lettuce at county fairs? Maybe slaughter a few head at livestock shows. Could be we rent it to Hollywood.”

  “How will you get the rig stateside?”

  “Simple. Returning military get free shipment of household goods, right? I’m rotatin’ back to the world early next month when my tour’s done. The struts, blade, and casket fit into a freezer I bought. I crate ’er up, ship ’er stateside with the spin dryers and cribs gettin’ sent home by the married studs. Hell, my bunkmate is shippin’ a Studebaker Lark two-door. My crate sails on the third. I fly home Monday the fourth.”

  “How much?”

  “This baby will run me twenty-two hundred. It’ll take another three hundred to grease its way home. I got two other investors at five bills a head. There’s two shares left. It’s a great deal if you’ve got the coin.”

  “You coming back anytime soon?”

  “A week after New Year’s. Should take delivery on the freezer by month’s end. I got lots of leave comin’ to me in the Zone of the Interior. I’m thinkin’ Louisville, maybe Memphis.”

  “But you’re taking the bonus bait.”

  “Signing on the line and takin’ the re-up money, damn straight.” Flippi beamed alcohol and adrenalin. “So whaddaya say?”

  The blade shone like coin silver in the streetlight.

  “You up for a little cumshaw?”

  He eyed me, excited. “Whaddya got?”

  “Laotian horse. Half a kilo.”

  “Hells bells, yeah. We can work out a little somethin’.”

  “Might have another deal for you too,” I said.

  “That right?” Flippi pulled the tarp back over the machine and told the driver to di di as we jumped down.

  “Seems there’s an oil company guy who carries protection money to the VC on the first of every month,” I said.

  Flippi lit a joint and passed it over. “How much Cong insurance we talkin’ about?”

  “Monthly installment runs around eighty thou.” I took a toke and held my breath.

  “Eighty large?” Flippi whistled faintly.

  The dope whooshed out. “I’m thinking we might liberate November’s payout before it falls into enemy hands.”

  Flippi took back the weed. “Relieve the oil dude or the VC doin’ the collecting?”

  “The oil dude’s safer,” I said. “Unlikely he’ll have a chaperone. The company won’t want witnesses to the transaction. They won’t make a stink when we confiscate the payout, either. They’ll likely write it off their books and let the matter lie. The Cong, on the other hand, don’t look kindly on anybody screwing with them. I wouldn’t want those fuckers on my ass.”

  Flippi raised both fists. “Beau-ti-ful! Either way, nobody’s gonna go complaining to the law. Who delivers the dough re mi?”

  “Some office flunky at Dutch Shell.”

  “Shell? That’s good, that’s good. Fat and rich.”

  “So you in?”

  “Deny the enemy aid and comfort? Shit yeah. It’s fucking patriotic.”

  “I’m a bit tied up right now. Think you could figure out who actually hands it off?”

  “Piece o’ cake. My replacement’s already here. I’m breakin’ him in. Otherwise I’m free for playdates.”

  I retrieved the heroin from the hotel safe and handed it over. Cranked, Flip whooped and did a country jig. This doped-up good old boy knew how to clog dance.

  “Hoorah, Sarge!” he half shouted. “I’ll see you on the first. Anythin’ to make this little old world safe for hypocrisy.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Mrs. Lacey called early to say the intel reports and classified traffic the ambassador had requested were waiting for us at the embassy. I kissed Nadja goodbye and fetched Robeson. When we arrived, Mrs. Lacey said a room had been set aside for us on the Agency’s floor.

  “Take the stairs,” she said. “Don’t let the innocuous signs fool you.” She reminded us nothing classified was to leave the building.

  I impressed on her that a Mr. Fred Tuttle needed to get airborne immediately. Mrs. Lacey posed no questions, simply jotted down his information as I spoke. “I’ll see to it, Sergeant Miser.” I loved this woman.

  After the yokel on reception duty checked our IDs and found us on the authorized list, a Southern belle came out and escorted us to a bare office. The only decoration was a newly printed poster of Nhu in his uniform as Supreme Leader of his pistol-packing boy scouts, the Republican Guard. Had the Agency guys hung it up as a joke, or a prediction? A mountain of classified paper weighed down the lone steel table and two credenzas behind it, with more piles growing like termite mounds up from the floor.

  “We don’t need everything from the beginning of time,” I said to her.

  Eyes sparkling, she replied in Southern singsong, “This output is just October, and the month isn’t even done yet.”

  “What’s with the barrels?” Robeson asked, pointing to a pair of metal drums stenciled with skull and crossbones.

  “You mustn’t touch those,” she said. “They’re full of chemicals for destroyin’ classified papers in the event of a hostile intrusion, or an emergency evacuation of the chancery.” Her blue eyes circled the room, taking in the surfaces and the wooden floor laden with stacked paper. “It might be quicker just to strike a match. This raggedy buildin’s a firetrap. Consider yourselves lucky all this isn’t for y’all. Come this way.” She took us into an adjoining room.

  Lodge had okayed our seeing all traffic and intelligence reports related to the Red Queen. Which turned out to be nearly nothing: a thin file consisting of a silly survey put out by General Harkins’s headquarters, full of malarkey about precautions to take against further attacks by Unit Eight. And a skimpy alert from Air Force intelligence reporting rumors of an “unidentified VC female” thought to be targeting American advisors in Saigon.

  “Damn, Sarge,” Robeson said, “CIA’s keeping close enough tabs on the Red Queen to know how she did in General Lang, but somehow with all their fancy deception and gadgets, they still haven’t come up with anything we can use to locate her.”

  “Or anything they’re willing to share.” I tossed both files aside. “We don’t know how long before she aligns on her big target, and what’ve we got? These bullshit intel alerts, some itty-bitty bones, and a corner of an astrological chart Miss Blue’s poking at?”

  “There’s her calling cards,” Robeson said. “Find the printer, maybe he tells us who ordered them. Gets us a little closer to finding someone on her team.”

  “A long shot,” I said. “But I’ll give it a try.”

  “I keep thinking about her latest hit. Killing General Lang put the hurt on Nhu’s cash operations. I get why the VC would want that. But the way she did him in seemed awful intimate, you might say. Personal.”

  I saw his point. I went back to the corridor and found the Georgia peach. “Could you get us anything you’ve got on General Nguyen Van Lang?” I said. “Recently deceased.”

  “Sure thing.” She took down the name and this time returned with a meaty file. I took half of it and handed Robeson the other half.

  General Lang came from a banking family. Graduate of Infantry School, Auvours, France, 1948. Command Class, Dalat, ’53. Made general at thirty-seven. He had an office at the Directorate of Commercial Aid, housed in the Ministry of the National Economy. Another at the National Bank of Viet Nam. A desk and secretary at the Personalist Party headquarters. Like Tuttle said, General Lang managed untold public sums and reported only to Nhu. He’d been living high on the blood and bones of his countrymen when the Red Queen stripped him naked and killed him with a crystal dagger. Sounded like a fairy tale.

&n
bsp; “I think I got something. Listen to this,” said Robeson, waving his portion of the report. He ran it down for me.

  Four years ago, in ’59, Lang was province chief of Tay Ninh on the Cambodian border. Diem had sent teams of police into the provinces to root out suspected Communists among the Viet Minh Independence League veterans who’d returned home to the South after defeating the French at Dien Bien Phu in ’54. After the alleged Communists were identified, Diem’s army officers sat as judges in traveling kangaroo courts, trying and sentencing them—to prison or death—on the spot.

  Robeson said, “And the man in charge of the adjudicating and eradicating in Tay Ninh? Colonel Nguyen Van Lang. Ain’t Tay Ninh where the Red Queen made her bones with those roadside ambushes before getting promoted to Saigon?”

  “And the medallion she used to pin her card to his eye, Blue said it was the cap insignia worn by the Cao Dai army in Tay Ninh.”

  I circled Tay Ninh and Cao Dai in my notebook.

  A Marine guard appeared and had me sign for a manila envelope from Mrs. Lacey. Inside, I found a note saying that Donald had personally escorted “Mr. T” to the airport and onto a waiting plane. He would soon be over the Pacific, winging east to Manila, on to Alaska and a connecting flight to Chicago. Good news for Tuttle, but his departure also meant the Red Queen had no more loose ends to tie up from the CIP report. She could turn her full attention to taking out the Old Fox—unless she decided to check us off her hit list first.

  The envelope also contained a brief rundown on the truck bomb that had nearly done in Lodge and me. Best for last: a memorandum in Vietnamese from the interrogation of Prisoner Tam. Lodge’s juice had worked.

  The Vietnamese memo was ours to take away, her note said, so we carried it quickly to the office to Miss Blue, proud holder of a Michigan State Certificate of English Proficiency. While she began typing her translation, we read the MAAG incident report on the bombing that had mangled the ambassador’s limo. They’d sent the explosive remnants to the state-of-the-art forensics lab the CIA had built for the Vietnamese police. The arsenic sulfide and potassium chlorate mixture had been detonated with a timer from an electric stove. Same with the second bomb we’d heard go off as we evacuated the area.

  “Y’all were damn lucky,” Robeson said. “Timer was set for the wrong-minute egg or you’d be scrambled, my man, and I’d be wadin’ in these troubled waters all by my lonesome.”

  Robeson went to Blue’s desk and looked over her shoulder as she worked. He frowned. “This comes from the director of Service des Études Politiques et Sociales. Service for Political and Social Studies. That sounds . . .”

  “Like nothing,” I said. “Like our Office of Public Safety. Real innocent.” I froze as the penny dropped. “But if CIO doesn’t have Tam and SEPES does . . . Shit. Shit, shit, shit.”

  Robeson made a face. “Seeps?”

  Blue pointed to the report. “Say pay,” she said.

  I held up a hand. “Seeps, say pay, whatever. They’re Brother Nhu’s Personalist Party’s secret enforcers.”

  “Nhu’s political party has its own private goon squad?”

  “Yeah, and you better hope Governor Wallace doesn’t get wind of the idea.”

  “George don’t need no secret police. Fucker’s already got the Klan and Bull Connor.”

  “SEPES has no American advisors,” I said. “No outsiders means it’s the police force Brother Nhu trusts most. He even uses them to spy on his own loyalists. SEPES recruits people who’ve got accounts to settle with the Communists. If they’ve got Mr. Tam . . . Nhu’s thugs will bleed every drop from him and take their time doing it. Shit.”

  We waited impatiently for Blue’s translation, which took nearly an hour. When we sat down to read it, she hovered behind us, worrying.

  I, Ba Van Tam, am born 1933. Thirty years ago. Small coast city of Tuy Hòa my home place. My father, a merchant, is Leninist.

  I twelve years old when world war end and Japanese surrender. Hồ Chí Minh declare us independent but American ship bring soldier of French to Hà Nội to take back everything. In Sài Gòn, British army arm Japanese prisoner to keep order. French again recruit the puppet emperor Bảo Đại to make government. I join Vanguard Youth and haul provisions to fighters in jungle. Do this for several year until I myself am cadre. At twenty-one I fight in north’s mountains at Điện Biên Phủ in the valley of the Nam River. We defeat 16,000 foreign legionnaire and take their surrender.

  The north of my country liberated. In south, Emperor Bảo Đại appoint Ngô Đình Diệm prime minister and United States pick up fallen banner of France.

  In January 1958, committee send me to Viet Cong unit in my home region to remove enemies of revolution. Most our comrade female. Police or soldier less likely stop and question womens. None have proper identity paper, but movement for female is smaller risk than for mans. We spy on traitors the Party condemn. How live, work, pleasure. Again and again. After many week, pick place and time of assassination. More than month to plan each.

  We three executioner stay underground. After time and place chosed, we surface. Women comrade lead us to marked person. Usually we shoot. One guilty man we confront and announce people’s sentence. It too hard. Better strike and run away fast.

  We execute sub-sector chief, two informer, police captain, village headman, two hamlet chief, a judge, and three landlord. Eleven traitor. Take one year for liquidate these eleven. Verdict arrive to eliminate enemy number twelve: schoolteacher who inform on sympathizer and our agent. My comrade track her. Tuesday she linger in schoolroom, always. She to die Tuesday. We find her in empty student room. I recognize her—old classmate. She big with child—pregnant.

  Not resist, not beg. With knife to throat, she ask we wait one month until birth. She swear she accept her sentence then. My comrade want me cut her throat, like we plan. Order is order. Punishment harsh if we fail. But order say execute one, not two. Baby kick, already in first year of life. I not follow plan.

  Our political officer scream and rant for many hour. I must write confession. Say long apology for her escape. Five week passing. Two comrade go to learn where she flee. She waiting. Hire wet nurse for infant, lay out funeral attire. Letter to her parent and husband ready. Infant name Van Tam. My name: Ba Van Tam. They shoot her once, in side of head.

  In Sài Gòn, lady assassin kill American officer. Despite old disgrace, commissar assign me to second team to assist in important assassination. Need replace one of three comrade who talk between lady and cadre. They no with her except when attack. Commissar say I to help her quạt mo.

  I said, “What does that mean, Miss Blue? Quạt mo?”

  She bit her lip. “It mean—” She showed us, fanning herself with her hand.

  “His commissar wanted Tam to help fan her?”

  “No, no.” She slapped the air again.

  I raised my hands in surrender. “I don’t get it.”

  “It mean, fan fire.”

  “Help fan the fire. Stir her up?”

  “Fan spirit of Queen, yes. Mean also, hide face.” She raised her hand, fingers spread to mask her features.

  “Got it. Motivate her. Help her hide.”

  I turned back to the interrogation report.

  I can no face more killing. I flee. Surrender as hồi chánh. American captain treat me well. I tell fable, that I regular guerilla soldier. My host silent. I give more information. Hope he keep me. When no more story to tell, Americans ready me for Open Arms center. Police claim me instead. Threaten prison. Bring me to Sài Gòn to inquisitor—you.

  Your beasts beat me with rod. Torture with thong around genital and throat, run electricals to my private flesh, whip with bamboo, twist with plier, drown me. I confess everything again and again. No matter. You not stop. Every second day take me from cell. Ask nothing—just strike and twist and stab. Animal answer my scream. You
, sir, smoke. They break bone in my hand, in ankle. Cut tendon each leg to hobble me. I stoop, made old in a night.

  Torturer dig at fresh wound. I scream, retch, swear, beg. I not have shame. You write all I utter. Nothing I babble enough. Not stop pain. After last torture, throw me into pit with ash and lime. Something dead in gut. I not to survive. They not stop while I alive.

  Tomorrow another second day. You leave soon. After midnight workmen of you come and begin again. If Spirit merciful, it last time in this life. You want make of me a terrible ghost, cut something from me so I not find way to grave. Confuse. Make lost. No find grave. But I find you.

  “Amazing that they gave us even this much,” I said. “Imagine what they kept back.”

  “Poor bastard.” Robeson chewed on a fingernail.

  “You done good work, Missy,” I said over my shoulder. “Real good.”

  “Sad story,” Blue said, walking slowly back to her desk.

  Robeson pushed the report away. Neither of us had the stomach to read it again. “He didn’t give them so much as her real name.”

  “You really believe this is all they got from him? I don’t buy it. You think Tam didn’t give up a single name after all that?”

  Robeson shook his head.

  “They’re holding back plenty. We need to question Prisoner Tam ourselves.”

  “Who do we brace for that?” Robeson said. “And where do you think they’re holding him? Chi Hoa prison?”

  “Too big, too busy. They’ll keep him away from any pen full of US advisors. He’ll be someplace where there’s no long noses.”

  “What’s left? Nhu’s secret-police headquarters near the Xa Loi pagoda?”

  “CIA’s got advisors there too.” I rubbed my forehead, my eyes. “What did Tam say about creatures howling while he’s being tuned up?”

  Robeson picked up the translation, searching for the quote. Blue looked up from the torn piece of the astrologer’s chart she’d been studying. “Animal answer my scream.”