by Eric Helm
Gerber smiled at the metaphor.
“But instead of going to the South, my unit was sent into Cambodia to help build a training and indoctrination camp for new recruits conscripted from the South. That is how I came to know something of this area. Building the camp was very hard work, and there was little food. Many of the soldiers in my unit took sick, and some died. Conditions were even worse than they had been in the North, and they were made more unpleasant for me by one of our officers who seemed to think that I could serve the Front best by serving him personally. I repeatedly refused his advances, but he persisted until it became unbearable. Then one night he sent a runner to tell me that I was ordered to report to him in his quarters. I went, thinking that he wished to see me on some matter regarding the unit. When I got there, he raped me.
“He was very cruel, and he hit me several times and called me names, and then he held a knife to my throat and raped me. It was very strange. All the time, while he was lying on top of me, he held the knife to the side of my throat. I thought surely he would kill me. But when he had finished, he got up and put his uniform back in order, sat down at his desk and lighted a cigarette. Then he started working on some papers, as though I was no longer there.
“After a time, when I no longer thought he was going to come back and kill me, I got up off the floor. And when I did, he said to me, ‘That will be all. You may go.’ My clothes were in tatters, I had bruises all over my body, and I had been raped, and he acted as though nothing at all had happened.
“I started to walk out, but he called me back and made me stand in front of his desk. I was so afraid that I obeyed. ‘You must salute me before you may leave,’ he said. He made me stand there in front of him with my breasts falling out of my torn shirt and my trousers in rags about my ankles, the blood oozing from my nose and mouth, and salute him. Then he said, ‘That’s more like it. Now you may go.’ I ran out the door and straight into the jungle and kept on running until I collapsed.
“They caught me and brought me back, of course. Where can you run to in the jungle without food or clothing or a compass. I told my story, and he denied everything. That was when I learned the full measure of the Front’s justice and mercy. For trying to desert, I was publicly flogged. I know that you have seen the scars yourself, yesterday, while we were burning the leeches from each other.
“It took me nearly three months of planning and biding my time before I could attempt another escape. Interestingly, the man who had raped me no longer seemed to have any interest in me, once he had had me. Perhaps he was developing an interest in one of the other women. Or perhaps he would have come back to me for more eventually. I do not know. At any rate, he never got the chance. One night after they had stopped watching me to make sure I didn’t try to desert again, I gathered all my gear, and some food I had been hiding, and I left. But not before I paid him one last visit.
“Part of the equipment I had been issued was a knife. It was a Russian-made knife, and the steel was very hard and difficult to sharpen, but I had been working on it for three months, and it was very sharp. It would have given me more satisfaction to have emasculated him first, but I could not risk the noise he would certainly have made. I killed him as he slept, and then I cut off his genitals and nailed them to the top of his desk before I left. That is how I came to be a Viet Cong soldier, Captain, and that is why I will now help you kill VC.”
There was a long silence that seemed to stretch interminably in the hot sun of the little clearing. At last Gerber cleared his throat uncomfortably.
“Maybe I ought to introduce you to Staff Sergeant Krung. The two of you seem to have a lot in common.”
“Krung? I’m afraid I don’t understand,” said Kit.
“Never mind. I’ll explain it some other time.”
“Thank you for listening to my story, Captain,” said Kit abruptly. “I apologize for burdening you with the story of my problems, and I do not seek your sympathy. As I said, it has been a long time since there was anyone I felt I could really talk to, and I needed someone to listen. I picked you because I felt that you were different from the rest of the men and might care enough to take the time to really listen, and not just humor me as a prelude to getting into my pants. When I gave you every opportunity to take advantage of me but you didn’t, I was sure that I could trust you. You will have to decide for yourself whether or not to trust me. It is strange. In a way, a part of me regrets that you did not take advantage of me, but I am glad you did not. I will not bother you any longer. We still have a long way to go, and I am very tired and need to rest before we move again.”
Gerber couldn’t have said why he did it, except perhaps for the natural protective instinct some men exhibit toward a bird with a broken wing, even if the bird happens to be a sharp-beaked, sharp-clawed falcon. Many months later he marked it down to the fact that he was just a natural sucker for any good-looking woman with a sob story. As Kit rose and turned to go, he reached out and touched her arm lightly.
“There’s a nice, warm spot right here,” he said.
She looked at him, and their eyes locked for a long moment. Then she sank slowly back to her knees.
“You are not afraid of what the others might think?”
“Here in the daylight the others will be able to see that nothing unusual happens,” Gerber told her.
She smiled, remembering their conversation at breakfast.
“Nothing unusual is going to happen,” she told him. “At least not yet.”
She stretched out next to him on the ground and laid her head against his chest. After a minute or two, Gerber spoke again.
“Kit, may I ask you a question? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
“What is it?”
“When you killed the man who raped you, how did it feel?”
There was no hesitation in her voice. “It felt good.”
“Mmm,” said Gerber. He did not speak again.
After a time, they both fell asleep in the hot afternoon sun.
CHAPTER 10
CARAVELLE HOTEL, SAIGON
Robin Morrow detested the rooftop bar of the Caravelle Hotel. Not because it wasn’t a nice enough bar. The bar was just fine. It was the clientele she couldn’t stand.
Especially this time of the day. The Five O’Clock Follies had just ended down at MACV headquarters, and the Caravelle bar would soon be crawling with pseudojournalistic creeps and media personality newsreaders. Already there were too many of them hanging around to suit her taste.
Morrow had no use for those members of the Saigon press corps who seldom, indeed never in most cases, ventured into the war with one of the combat units to find out what was really happening in the countryside. The pretty boy TV screen faces with their camera crew and sound engineer hangers-on made her feel sick to her stomach when she overheard them refer to themselves as journalists.
The worst offenders, though, were the reporters for the big papers and magazines. The TV entertainment specialists at least had the excuse of all the staff they had to drag along with them. What military commander in his right mind would allow a bunch of noisy, undisciplined civilians, burdened down with cameras and klieg lights and sound equipment, who stomped around in the brush like a herd of water buffalo, to accompany his unit on a mission to the field? With that kind of albatross hanging around his neck, the only contact he’d be likely to make with the enemy was when they ambushed his men.
The print reporters had no such excuse. They could go to the field. Ernie Pyle had done it in the Second World War, and Morrow did it practically every day. But most of the real reporting on the war was being done by stringers for small-town newspapers and little-known magazines, frequently freelancers who had wrangled themselves a set of credentials from half a dozen smalltown weeklies, and served as both reporter and photographer. They weren’t overly afraid of being shot at and didn’t have well-padded expense accounts to keep them living like kings in Saigon. When Morrow occasionally ran ac
ross one of them, it was like bumping into an old friend from home, but the others were disgusting. They acted as though they actually believed that sitting around Saigon drinking booze at company expense and attending the daily press briefings at MACV HQ, where some disinformation officer from Pentagon East told them all about how we were winning the war, was all there was to reporting on the situation in Indochina. The TV camera crew brave enough to actually go out and visit a relatively secure fire support base was a rare bird indeed. And if they weren’t busy telling one another what great journalists they were, or soaking up Scotch on the home office tab, they were hitting on the few Western women about, like Morrow.
But today Morrow had no choice. She had to visit the Caravelle. That was where Jerry Maxwell, resident superspook for the CIA could be found, savoring the single rum and Coke he allowed himself daily at this time. The Caravelle would be relatively free of snoopy reporters who might ask him questions they knew he had no intention of answering, and then make up the answers he hadn’t given them, crediting the answers to “a highly placed source in the intelligence community.”
Morrow couldn’t put her finger on it, but something had been bothering her ever since her visit to General Billy Joe Crinshaw’s office earlier in the day. Part of it, she admitted with reluctance, was just a gut-level feeling that something was amiss with the mission Mack Gerber and his bunch had gone out on. But another part — and she didn’t like to admit this — stemmed from a suspicion of the Kit Carson scout assigned to Gerber that was probably founded more in jealousy than in journalistic curiosity.
What really had her bugged though, was Crinshaw’s attitude. He had been cooperative, almost friendly. And Billy Joe Crinshaw wasn’t one to behave in a friendly fashion toward anyone. Not unless he wanted something in return. But Crinshaw had asked for nothing, and that had Morrow worried.
Morrow knew that getting anything out of Jerry Maxwell that might alleviate some of the worry was about a billion-to-one shot. Maxwell had a reputation of being so tight-lipped with journalists that the Saigon press corps called him the dirty white clam, a reference to the permanently rumpled white suits he always wore, and to his uncommunicativeness. Morrow didn’t know if a good-looking woman might have any more luck getting information from Maxwell or not, but she was prepared to give it one heck of a go. Having flown to Saigon only with a change of shirt and cutoff shorts because she’d expected to return to Camp A-555 on the next available flight, she’d had to go out and spend money she really couldn’t afford on a new skirt, blouse and shoes. Maxwell, she knew, also had a reputation for having an appreciative eye for the female form, and Morrow hoped that if he saw her as a woman first and a reporter second, she might have a bit better luck getting what she needed out of him.
She stood next to the elevator, scanning the bar for a bit, and finally spotted the familiar form, looking like a giant crumpled piece of paper as he hunched over a small table near the railing with his back to her. She braced herself for the encounter, daringly unfastened the top button of her blouse so Maxwell would have just the hint of the upper curve of her breasts to hold his attention and walked over and introduced herself.
“Excuse me. Aren’t you Jerry Maxwell? I don’t know if you’ll remember me. I’m Robin Morrow, Mack Gerber’s friend.”
Maxwell sighed deeply, as though greatly distressed by the intrusion.
“I’m sorry, but I’m really not feeling very well. Would you mind terribly—”
He broke off abruptly as he turned slightly in the chair and looked up at her. For a long moment he gave her a look of frank appraisal, then smiled and indicated the empty chair opposite his, gesturing for her to sit down.
“Well, well. Of course. Take a pew. It would be pretty hard not to remember you, Miss Morrow, after that court-martial charge you helped Gerber get his two boys off of. I didn’t recognize you without your camera and your combat boots. I must say this is quite an improvement.”
“Thank you,” said Morrow, taking a seat, not at all sure she should be thankful for such a left-handed compliment.
“You were at the airport as I recall. If you don’t mind my mentioning it, I thought you flew off with Gerber and his bunch for a look at the Triple Nickel. What happened? Did that cute little fortune cookie with the black hair and the violet eyes upset your plans?”
Morrow felt like throwing the ashtray at him. It took every ounce of self-control she could muster to smile.
“Yes, in a way she did. But not the way you mean it, and you know it. What’s Mack Gerber doing in Cambodia this time, Mr. Maxwell? And why does he have a female Kit Carson scout along with him?”
“Cambodia? What’s Cambodia?”
“Come on, Jerry. Don’t try to play dumb with me. I saw you bring them to the airport.”
“Bring who to what airport?”
“Gerber and his new replacements and that Kit Carson you dredged up from one of the houses on Tu Do Street.”
Maxwell smiled. “Carson, Carson. Kit Carson, you say? He was some kind of western hero or other, wasn’t he?”
“Christ, Maxwell, you’re hopeless. You’ll never get to buy me dinner if you won’t answer any of my questions.”
“Seems to me that you’re the one should be buying me dinner. After all, you’re the one looking for answers.”
“I can see the headline now. ‘CIA Agent Tells All for Price of Dinner.’ I didn’t realize you could be had so cheap, Maxwell.”
“I can be had, lady, but not cheap,” said Maxwell sourly. “Some days I can be had cheaper than others, but the price is never really cheap.”
Maxwell’s tone, as well as his statement, seemed a bit out of place to Morrow, a sort of combination of depression and disgust.
“Well, anyway, you have to buy if we’re going to have dinner. I spent all my money on clothes so you wouldn’t have to take me out in combat boots.”
“What’s the matter? Don’t you have an expense account like the rest of these vultures?” Maxwell quickly held up a hand to stave off the impending storm from Morrow. “Okay, okay, you win. Dinner’s on me. But not here. This place will be full of TV news boys in another twenty minutes. Let’s have a drink and then get out of here.”
He signaled for a waiter and ordered a Scotch and water for Morrow and a rum and Coke for himself. Morrow noticed that there were already two empty glasses before him. For Jerry Maxwell to be drinking three rum and Cokes in the same day, something must be very wrong indeed.
The waiter brought the drinks and left, taking the empty glasses with him this time. Maxwell didn’t fail to notice the meaningful look Morrow gave the departing empties. Indeed, there was little of anything that Jerry Maxwell failed to notice. Beneath the strategically rumpled white suit and the carefully cultivated crude mannerisms was a mind like an IBM mainframe computer. Maxwell was one of the finest intelligence officers in the business, and one of the Company’s very few experts on Southeast Asian politics and culture. One of the main reasons he was so effective was because he didn’t look or act like he would be effective at anything. The man didn’t even seem to know how to tie his necktie properly. And for the past seven years while the Communists scattered about Asia had been largely ignoring Jerry Maxwell as a figure too comical to be any kind of real threat, Maxwell had been carefully building one of the finest networks of agents since the Cheka of Czarist Russia.
That amazing ability to appear incompetent, without carrying it to the extreme where it would become suspect as a clever cover ploy, coupled with the ability to think fast on his feet and look you square in the eye and convince you the sun rose in the West, had gotten Maxwell out of a couple of pretty tight spots in East Berlin before he’d come to the Company’s Asian bureau. This time, though, it wasn’t quite enough.
“You’re right, of course,” said Maxwell. “I have been drinking too damned much lately. Starting earlier and earlier in the day, too. Pressures of the damned job, I guess. Maybe I’m just getting too damned old for this ki
nd of work.”
“Cut the bullshit, Maxwell,” Morrow told him. “About the only thing anybody really does know about you is your drinking habits. One rum and Coke a day, always at the same time, always here at the Caravelle. You ought to change your drinking habits. One of these days some VC spook is liable to recognize the pattern and decide to take you out while you’re going out the door downstairs. Any day you have three drinks it’s got to be a bad one. What happened? China decide to send ten million advisors to the Viet Cong, or did all of South America declare war on Guam?”
Maxwell made a mental note to do exactly that, reevaluate his drinking habits. The one drink each day at the Caravelle was part of his carefully prepared cover. It gave him an excuse to be in a public, crowded place every twenty-four hours in case he needed to arrange a message drop or pickup, or a direct meeting with one of his many field agents. They could pass each other in the crowded bar and exchange information without seeming to make contact. But the damned woman reporter was right. Setting a pattern of any kind left you vulnerable to attack. He’d have to reexamine the situation and decide whether the advantages outweighed the risk.
“Miss Morrow, you are absolutely right. About setting patterns, I mean. Why, I was thinking that myself just the other day. Self, I said, you need to drink in other bars more often. But you know, I’m so used to coming here I just plain forgot to go somewhere else, so I decided the only way to break the pattern was to have several drinks. If that works, maybe in a month or two I’ll try giving up drinking altogether for four or five months, and then go on a real good binge. What do you think? Will that be enough variety to keep me from becoming a marked man, or should I try a new drink as well, maybe give up my rum and Coke for a vodka Collins or something?”
