Bleeding in Black and White

by Colin Cotterill

  The signpost at the first intersection told them to go straight if they wanted to hit Din Quan town center. Hong walked on but Bodge stood reading the second pointer. “’Ho Tri An’, that’s a lake.”

  She stopped. “Good boy.”

  “Does it connect to a river?”

  “Of course.”

  “Does that river go to Saigon?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are the chances of renting a small boat?”

  She smiled and came back to join him. “Poor.”

  “Damn.”

  “But for the cost of a night at Madame Vin’s we could probably buy one.”

  The detour took them through suburbs of dowdy shacks where timid people crouched in corners on platforms raised above the flooding. When they reached the grubby shore, there was no clear line as to where the street ended and the lake began. Bodge hid behind a banana leaf fence while Hong negotiated with a fisherman. Inside the hood of her poncho and without makeup she looked anything but the Emperor’s concubine. Their conversation sounded more like the staccato of spice market bartering. She yelled and spat and once they’d come to an agreement she slapped the man’s palm.

  When Bodge emerged, the fisherman suddenly recalled there were one or two extra costs for foreigners. Hong laughed and ignored the hopeful surcharges. She climbed on to her new sampan, Bodge close behind, the fisherman last. The man got a spark from the little diesel engine and took them a hundred yards out and back. Satisfied, Hong handed over the cash and the man left them alone, counting and recounting his good fortune.

  Hong bought some food and supplies in the half-submerged village and Bodge played with the steering shaft that angled into the water. By the time she got back he had a pretty good idea how to control the thing.

  “So, what do you think?” she asked.

  “I knew I’d own a boat some day. Did you get any champagne? We need to christen it.”

  “What name do you have in mind?”

  “Something hopeful, like ‘USS Please Don’t Sink’”

  “All right. ‘USS Please Don’t Sink’ it is.”

  There was something in the air other than the threat of more rain. On their walk from the car Bodge felt their relationship had transformed into something tense. It was an apprehension as if the inevitable were lurking in the rice fields about to flap out at them. Nothing had been said but Bodge could feel a magnetic field around Hong. Whenever he stepped into it his heart missed a beat. He was certain she could feel it too. At least he put so much hope into her sharing his feeling he knew some of that hope had to infect her. But he’d learned his lesson well enough not to act on his instinct this time.

  “I was talking to the villagers,” she said at last. “They advised us against going down the river in the dark. There are Viet Minh units all over. They only come out at night but then the waterway pretty much belongs to them. They stop river traffic and scrounge cargo and fish. I think they’d consider you a good catch.”

  “So what do they suggest we do?”

  “They say we should go to the south of the lake and find a safe mooring for the night. We can camp there and head onwards at first light.”

  Bodge’s stomach had been engaged in a lot of unnatural turning and churning since Hong came into his life but now it was rolling like an old mangle. How on earth could he spend the night with her feeling the way he did? “What about…what about mosquitoes?” he asked, even though it wasn’t the question at the forefront of his mind.

  “All taken care of.” She patted her bag.

  As there was no longer any urgency they did a relaxed tour of the lake to find a suitable spot. The sun, after a day of struggling to free itself from the clouds, made an appearance just in time to perform a moody sunset. They’d tied up in a small inlet that led nowhere and had no smugglers’ paths opening onto its shore. Hong grilled fish on an open fire and Bodge peeled fruit. With his hands shaking as they were he was a menace with the knife.

  She’d hung the mosquito net inside the canopy of the sampan. They’d agreed to retreat there as soon as the vampires of the riverbank began their evening quest for blood. Bodge looked up at the green mesh from time to time. There was only one net visible. He was honestly more nervous than he’d been at any stage over the past four months.

  The sky behind the black clouds was purple. Bodge and Hong sat beside the fire watching the color bleed into the lake. They swigged from a bottle of apricot rice wine that gave them a heady feeling of peace. Neither of them had spoken since the meal. They listened to the cicadas’ final concert, the baby birds calling home their mothers, the rude burping of frogs and the splashing of water rats. Bodge wasn’t at all expecting Hong’s question.

  She spoke in a breathy French whisper. “Bodge, do you like me?”

  He had no idea how to answer. ‘Like” was such an inappropriate word he was tempted to say, ‘no’. “Why do you ask?”

  “I’ve been so…so mercenary. If I were you, I’d hate me for using you, or planning to. But you seem so calm about the whole thing.”

  He couldn’t open the sluice gate and let all his feelings pour out all at once. In fact he wasn’t sure he should pour at all. He didn’t want to frighten her. He didn’t want to lose this tentative grasp of her companionship. He had to turn the tap lightly and dribble a little affection at a time.

  “I can’t think of anyone I’d sooner be used by,” he said, displaying neither affection nor sympathy. Confessing love was an art he really had no skill for.

  “That’s very gallant of you,” she smiled, both of them still looking up at the sky. “I’m really not as awful as I’ve been behaving. It’s just that once I decided to get away, I had no chance but to be a bitch about it. I had to lie a lot.”

  “You do it very well.” He bit his tongue again. “I don’t…”

  “You do hate me. I was afraid of that.”

  “No. I don’t. In fact, I …”

  “I feel safe with you. I certainly wouldn’t be alone in the forest with any other man I’ve met. You’re a gentleman. This wine…” She took the bottle from Bodge and swigged from it. “It’s making me brave. Can you tell? I don’t talk with too many men. I’m usually too afraid of what might happen. But, I’m not at all afraid of you.”

  Bodge looked at her vanishing in the new blackness. A mosquito was sucking at his neck, but he didn’t want to damage his image by smacking at it. She knew he was safe. She knew he wouldn’t dream of acting on all those erotic thoughts that were dancing in his mind. She knew that however desperately he wanted to take her in his arms and make love to her — he wouldn’t. Damn it.

  “I’m getting bitten,” she said. “Can we take the wine into the sampan and talk in there?”

  She didn’t wait for an answer. She poured water onto the campfire and carried the bottle across to the boat. He heard the strike of a match and the modest flame of a candle bathed the interior of the sampan in a grayish light. He watched her lift the skirt of the mosquito net and crawl slowly inside.

  “Bodge, are you coming?”

  Without another thought, he dispatched the mosquito on his neck to insect heaven and hurried to the boat just in time to see her escaping out of the back of the netting. Beyond the first net at the far end of the sampan, there was a second. It was incredible to him how impenetrable two layers of cotton mesh could be.

  59.

  The rainy season in Indochina isn’t something you can set a clock by. The season itself usually turns up at roughly the same time every year, but monsoons come and go. A week might go by with skies of blue and not so much as a huff of a cloud. When the little sampan putted along the Saigon River and came to a stop near the Delta Ferry port, the couple that stepped ashore were tanned dark from the sun.

  It was an easy disguise for Hong. Her skin had been plastered with foundations and makeup as thick as cake icing from the day she’d entered the royal fold. Pale skin was a symbol of affluence in this nation of farmers, and the matrons ha
d insisted she keep her face out of the sun. But her olive complexion naturally absorbed its rays and made her glow like an ember.

  On their journey from Din Quan, she’d hacked her hair short with a knife and left it uncombed. She’d donned a commoner’s pajamas and sandals, and now looked no more like a concubine than Bodge looked like Charlie Chaplin. Bodge had washed his only set of clothes in the river and dried them from the sampan mast.

  They bade farewell to USS Please Don’t Sink and took a cyclo to the hotel of the man who didn’t speak. Hong stood back like an obedient short-time prostitute while Bodge signed the card and asked for room thirteen. The old man must have remembered the American because he didn’t ask for his passport. As Bodge already had his “femme” the owner had nothing at all to say.

  Hong loved the palm tree room and commended Bodge on his choice. This, she agreed, was the perfect place to hide. He closed the door and she set to making up a bed on the floor by the window. They hadn’t so much as shaken hands but it was all still a remarkable dream for Bodge. He was certain the alarm clock would sound at any second. He didn’t believe he deserved such good fortune but still hanging over him each new day was the curse. Anyone who’d gotten close to him was dead. His love for Hong may very well have hexed her but he didn’t have the will to push her away.

  As far as they knew the authorities were still looking for Bodge. Hong decided neither of them should be walking around the streets in broad daylight. Bodge wasn’t exactly easy to disguise. But he did need to contact the embassy. If Copeland and Palmer really were one and the same there had to be a way of getting word to him without alerting anyone else. Bodge used the hotel phone and called the American Embassy switchboard. A girl who apparently had a clothespin on her nose answered in English.

  “United States Embassy. May I help you?”

  “Yes. I’d like to speak to your Mr. Copeland.”

  “Mr. Copeland? Do you know his extension number?”

  “Sorry, I don’t.”

  “Are you sure you have the name right?”

  “Yes.”

  He heard the crinkling of paper. “I’m sorry. We don’t have anyone here by that name.”

  “Miss,” Bodge said calmly. “I have an embossed name card here in my hand that says you do.”

  “I’m sorry.” And she hung up, just like that.

  He called again.

  “United States Embassy. May I help you?”

  “Miss, if you hang up on me again I shall arrange for your immediate dismissal from your job.”

  “Who do you thi—?”

  “My name is Federal Agent Robert Leon. Make sure you write that down. Robert Leon. I’m here on a fact-finding mission for the State Department. So, I’m very much in a position to fire you. I’m staying at the…(He searched his memory for the name of a hotel) “…Majestic. I expect you to find Mr. Copeland, inform him I’ve arrived, and arrange for him to meet me at the hotel at 7:30 this evening. I hope that’s not too difficult for you.”

  He hung up. He decided his real name shouldn’t mean anything to anyone at the embassy but Palmer. They’d probably contact the Majestic and discover there was nobody by the name of Leon staying there. But, word might just make its way through to his old boss.

  At seven, Bodge was already mingling with a group of French bean experts in the foyer of the Majestic.

  As they began to trail out, Bodge realized he’d be all alone in the foyer and would stand out quite badly. So, he looked around once more and joined the exodus. He walked two lengths of the street in front, keeping out of the lamplight and watching for people arriving at the hotel. He spent most of his time fending off offers from cyclo drivers;

  “We go massage today?”

  “You need girl?”

  “Boy?”

  “Ganja?”

  “Mr. Bodge?”

  Bodge looked up at the middle-aged man who was slowly peddling his cyclo alongside him. “Yes?”

  “You come.”

  No questions in French or Vietnamese drew another word from the rider. He was a short-legged man who lost contact with the pedals at the base of each orbit. He rode silently for half an hour out of downtown and toward the docks. The last three blocks took them along unlit streets with doorways ideal for lurkers. In front of a small office building the cyclo stopped and the man nodded to an upstairs window where a cloth blind held back a dim light.

  As soon as Bodge climbed down from the seat, the tricycle was off and away. Only an eerie silence remained. Bodge walked through the doorless entrance and worked his way up a pitch black stairwell. His only marker was a sliver of light around the upstairs door. He kept his eyes on that and ignored whatever might be crawling there in the shadows of each landing. In front of the door, he knocked. The reply was in Vietnamese.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Robert Leon.”

  He heard footsteps on a wooden floor and the slide of a bolt. The door was flung open and Palmer stood there with a huge, sincere smile. “Bodge! As I live and breathe.” They went into a bear hug with equal enthusiasm. “I was certain on so many occasions that you were dead.”

  “Me too,” Bodge said, not really knowing when to let go. “I have that third adjective for you. I think I’ll go with charmed.”

  They pulled apart. “So it would seem. Come in.”

  The room was a well-equipped office with electrical gadgets and filing cabinets. It looked like an operations center but without the operators. Bodge and Palmer were alone.

  “Coffee?”

  “Please.”

  A pot was percolating on the side cabinet. In the light of the room Bodge could see the changes in the older man. The skin of his jowls was hanging loose. His eyes were red and puffy. He seemed to have aged a decade since Bodge had last seen him. As always he made the coffee without asking how Bodge wanted it.

  “You’re a hard man to find, Mr. Palmer.”

  “I’m very sorry. These have been disturbing times.” He handed Bodge a steaming mug. “How much do you know about what happened?”

  “Nothing — except for the homosexual photos. I’m guessing the security section was given snaps of me sometime after those of Lou. I imagine Tuck and Jansen were delighted.”

  Palmer sat opposite Bodge. “The timing was perfect. The agency had just launched a very serious witch hunt. They were burning all the gay or alleged gay federal workers at the stake. Some espionage expert had submitted a report to Congress saying that having homosexuals in positions of responsibility was a national security risk. Actually it fitted very neatly into the euphoria that’s been spreading around the country since they introduced the Sexual Perverts Bill.

  “The way I see it, some foreign power got wind of it and decided to exploit the situation. You wouldn’t believe how many tapes and photographs have turned up from anonymous sources; how many witnesses have crawled out of the woodwork.”

  “And that was why you moved me to the safe house?”

  “No. We moved you the day of Stephanie’s car explosion. We found the housing for the bomb in your car and realized you were in ongoing danger. That’s Operations policy if we think a mission’s been compromised. We considered it a serious enough breach to relocate our offices. Security didn’t get the photos of you until after you were moved.”

  “The pictures of me were—?”

  “Pretty much the same as those of Lou.”

  “Damn.”

  “Jansen was very keen to talk to you. I refused to disclose your whereabouts. I couldn’t contact you because I was sure we were under surveillance.”

  “The Agency tailing the Agency?”

  “You’d be surprised how much animosity there is between our two departments. You can imagine the pressure there was on us when they found out that you and Stephanie spent the night together before she died.”

  Bodge looked uneasy. “I’m…”

  “Don’t worry, Bodge. I agreed with her it would be a good idea to loosen you up. I wo
uld have loved to be in the meeting where they tried to fathom out what a gay man was doing in a motel room with a woman. But it still made you their number one suspect.”

  “So as far as the Security people were concerned I was wanted as a pervert and a murder suspect.”

  “They had an agency warrant out on you.”

  “Did that include ‘shoot on sight’?”

  “No. You were just to be brought in as a witness. Why?”

  “I felt a lot of hostility from Jensen.”

  “He certainly has a problem. Research in Europe suggests the most violent anti-homosexuals have latent tendencies themselves.”

  Bodge laughed. “Perhaps he had the hots for me.”

  “I doubt it. Those big military types like their boys petite.”

  They sipped at the coffee and smiled.

  “I hear you were in Ban Methuot,” Bodge said.

  “It’s the only one of our postings that’s collapsed.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, son. I don’t blame you in the least. I was even surprised you bothered to go.”

  “I believed Stephanie might still be alive. I needed to get answers to all these questions. I hadn’t planned to stick around there.”

  “I’m so sorry about what happened there. I should have read the omens and cancelled that mission. It’s been jinxed from the start.”

  “You don’t strike me as the type of person who believes in fate.”

  “In this case, fate’s been knocking on my mind since your truck encounter in DC. I didn’t listen to it.”

  “Do you suppose it’s all connected? That and the gay purge?”

  “There’s no evidence of it. Ramos was still working on it when I left. His investigations hadn’t found any links.”

  “I was hoping that finding you would solve all these mysteries.”

  “I’m sorry, Bodge. I haven’t been of much help to you, have I? What are you planning to do next?”

  “I’m going back.”

  “I’m not sure if that’s a good idea, considering.”

  “I’m not the most popular person here either, you know?”