The Three-Nine Line

by David Freed

  “By asking the impossible we obtain the possible. Isn’t that what they always say at Langley?”

  Underwood looked away and wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his left hand. “I don’t work for Langley.”

  “Just get me the file, Carl.”

  “Fine. I’ll ask, but don’t hold your breath.” He stood, then he said, “A friendly suggestion. If I were you, as long as you’re in Hanoi, I’d watch my back.”

  I watched him walk away. He had a gawky, shambling gate that, for some reason, reminded me of a scarecrow. When he got to the boulevard, he flagged down a taxi, got in, and was soon gone. I checked my phone, hoping there might be a message from Phu Dung saying he’d tracked down the jealous husband and religious artifacts shopkeeper, Jimmy Luc, but nobody’d tried to reach me.

  Sunlight dappled the trees. Flowers perfumed the air. Across the way, two old men were playing chess. Mothers pushed their babies in prams, chatting with each other. The capital of Vietnam definitely had its charms, if not its secrets. I glanced around to see if I was still under surveillance. If they were there, I didn’t see them.

  I recalled something Colonel Cohen had said during one of his lectures at the academy, how one could never truly appreciate differing philosophies without first attempting to understand their historical and cultural contexts. It dawned on me, sitting there, that if I hoped to achieve my objective in Hanoi, I had to know better what I was up against.

  V

  Maison Centrale were the words painted over the entrance of the French-built Hỏa Lò Prison, a seven-minute cab ride from the park and statue of Lenin where I’d met with Carl Underwood Jr. In English, the name meant “central home,” a misnomer if there ever was one. To the captured American servicemen who were imprisoned there, “homey” was the last adjective they would’ve given the place. In mocking irony, they dubbed it the Hanoi Hilton for its less than hospitable accommodations. With its quaint stone exterior painted a cheerful mustard yellow, though, the place didn’t look so much like one giant torture chamber as it did some elegant maison de maître transplanted straight from the French countryside. Only when factoring in the Medieval-looking iron grate hanging above over its arched entryway and perimeter walls topped with not only barbed wire, but rows of multicolored glass shards designed to shred any prisoner attempting to escape, could one begin to understand the building’s true purpose.

  The Hanoi Hilton was now a glorified tourist trap, mostly dedicated to heralding the story of how the Vietnamese were abused by their colonial French masters, rather than how the Vietnamese brutalized others. A ticket kiosk sat to the left of the entrance. Security guards in black slacks and short-sleeved sky blue shirts milled about, smoking cigarettes, looking bored. I paid the 10,000-dong admission fee—about fifty cents—and walked in. You didn’t need to be clairvoyant to feel the spirits that haunted the building, or to hear their anguished screams.

  Gone was the sprawling compound that once housed hundreds of downed US pilots. The prison yard and outlying buildings had been demolished to make way for an ultramodern, high-rise residential complex that accommodated mostly wellheeled foreigners, while the museum itself was a masterwork of propaganda. Nothing suggested that American prisoners had experienced anything other than civil if not cordial treatment at the hands of their North Vietnamese captors. Black and white photos showed POWs playing basketball and volleyball, even billiards on a makeshift pool table. Many wore strained smiles. They looked fit and well fed, if not tense. Had I not known otherwise, I might’ve convinced myself that the snapshots were of large boys at summer camp. I peered closely at them, wondering if any of the faces belonged to Cohen, Stoneburner or Billy Hallady, but I recognized none of them.

  I paused to listen to a young docent, who could’ve been a graduate student, leading a tour of mostly older Europeans. He explained to them in English how, even after raining bombs down on innocent women and children, shot-down American airmen were treated with nothing less than dignity. The Vietnamese were too refined a people to have ever tortured anyone, the tour guide said straight-facedly; allegations to the contrary were all lies.

  “This is why the Americans called it the Hanoi Hilton. Because it was like a hotel to them.”

  None of the tourists called bullshit on him. They snapped photos. They said nothing. I left before they did.

  A true Buddhist wishes ill on no one, his enemies included, because harboring hateful feelings toward others invariably comes full circle. It’s called karma. Still, I couldn’t help but think that if Mr. Wonderful had done half the things he’d been accused of to guests at the Hanoi Hilton, he definitely deserved a knife in his chest. I didn’t necessarily like myself for feeling that way, but I didn’t dislike myself, either. Ice enough people who deserved it and eventually you don’t even give their deaths a second thought except, perhaps, in the wee hours, when their faces come to you in dreams, the fear in their eyes when they realize you’re about to end their lives.

  V

  Phu Dung texted me the address of a restaurant where he wanted to meet for lunch. He said he had fresh information, but said he wanted to save it until we were face-to-face. The restaurant was called Tran Thanh Tong, which also happened to be the name of the street on which it was located. When I told the taxi driver where I wanted to go, his eyebrows danced. I understood why the minute I walked in.

  Tran Thanh Tong was a cross between a Czech beer hall and Hooters. Leggy young Vietnamese waitresses in short-shorts, tank tops, and push-up bras ferried overpriced drinks to mostly businessmen in suits. Wall-mounted, flat-screen televisions were everywhere. Each screen seemed to show a different fashion show, with haughty, scantily dressed European fashion models plying the runways.

  Phu Dung was sitting in back, his back to the wall. With his shaved head and white mesh workout top, he wasn’t hard to spot. He was working on a platter of spring rolls. He gestured: help yourself.

  I sat and did, shouting over the disco music pounding out of the bar’s sound system. “Interesting place.”

  “Beautiful women,” Phu Dung said.

  I agreed.

  A waitress of about twenty-two glided over. Her long hair was straight and the color of midnight. Her angelic face was the kind about which men write poems. Phu Dung asked me what I wanted to drink. I went with water.

  “No beer?” the waitress asked me.

  “Just water, thanks.”

  She gave me a sad smile, like she felt sorry for me, and left.

  “I found Jimmy Luc,” Phu Dung said.

  “Outstanding. Let’s go see him.”

  “Can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  Phu Dung calmly sipped his beer. “Because Jimmy Luc is dead.”

  THIRTEEN

  Phu Dung said he had a hunch that the girl I’d talked to at Jimmy Luc’s shop knew more about her boss’s whereabouts than she’d initially let on. He’d gone to see her a second time. His hunch had paid off.

  What Linh hadn’t revealed to us the first time was that Jimmy’s body had been fished out of the Red River three days earlier. Authorities were calling it a suicide: diagnosed with terminal cancer, Jimmy, they claimed, had chosen to end his life and spare himself the indignities of a slow, painful death.

  “How did the girl find all this out? Who told her?”

  Phu Dung sipped his beer. “She did not say.”

  “What kind of cancer?”

  “This I don’t know.”

  “How do they know it was a suicide?”

  Phu Dung rubbed the back of his neck and looked away, watching the waitresses. He was growing uncomfortable, me asking him questions.

  “How do we know Jimmy’s really dead?”

  “She is a young girl. She would have no reason to lie.”

  “Everyone has reason to lie, Phu Dung, even young girls.”

  V

  I made him drive me back to Jimmy Luc’s shop. The girl saw us coming and ran. The sidewalk was thick wi
th pedestrians. She was easy to catch.

  “Please,” she pleaded, melting under my grip like a wild animal caught in a predator’s jaws.

  “I’m not going to hurt you, Linh. I just want to ask you some questions.”

  Tears coursed down her cheeks. She wouldn’t look at me.

  “Did you know Jimmy was sick, that he had cancer?”

  She shook her head.

  “Who told you Jimmy killed himself?”

  “Please . . .”

  She tried to pull free, sobbing.

  “What are you so afraid of?”

  “He tell me, ‘No talk. Nobody.’ ”

  “Who told you that?”

  A white four-door Toyota bearing Hanoi police markings approached. The girl turned away, hiding her face from the three uniformed cops inside the car. They cruised past without seeming to notice either one of us.

  “Was it the police who told you not to talk? It’s okay, Linh. You can talk to me.”

  She nodded tentatively, wiping her eyes.

  “Do you remember their names, who they were, which police?”

  “Jimmy, his friend.”

  “That photograph I saw hanging in the shop, the one with Jimmy and the police officer. That was the friend you’re talking about? He was the one who told you Jimmy committed suicide?”

  “. . . Yes. But I think maybe Jimmy, he not . . .” She shook her head, trying to find the words in English.

  “You don’t think he killed himself?”

  “No.” The girl was now trembling.

  I gave her a reassuring hug. “I want you to do something for me, Linh. Think you can do that?”

  A scared nod.

  I wasn’t sure what had happened to her boss, but I sure as hell didn’t want anything happening to her. I peeled off two 500,000 dong notes and handed her the money. “I want you to stay somewhere safe. Maybe outside the city. Just for a few days. Will you do that for me, Linh?”

  She stared at the money. “Okay.”

  “Good. Now, I want you to do something else for me, okay? My name is Barker. I’m staying at the Yellow Flower Hotel. If you think of anything else that might be helpful, anything at all, I want you to call me. Do you think you can remember that— Barker, the Yellow Flower Hotel?”

  Slowly, she raised her eyes to mine. “You are not Jimmy friend?”

  “No, Linh, I’m not.”

  “You lie to me.”

  “Yes. I did.”

  She ran, vanishing into the crowded streets of the Old Quarter. I walked back to Jimmy Luc’s shop. Phu Dung was leaning against his motorcycle, talking on his cell phone. He quickly hung up as I approached, as if he didn’t want me overhearing his conversation.

  “Colonel Tan Sang,” I said. “He was the one who told the girl that Jimmy Luc’s dead. How convenient.”

  “Convenient?” Phu Dung’s expression told me he didn’t get the American concept of irony—my version of it, anyway.

  “Tan Sang’s convinced the American POWs killed Mr. Wonderful. So even if Jimmy Luc was the real killer, it doesn’t matter much now because Jimmy’s dead. Tan Sang can still pin the murder on the Americans.”

  “You make it sound like Tan Sang killed Jimmy Luc,” Phu Dung said.

  “Look, all I know is, Tan Sang’s got it in for the Americans because his mother died in the war, and he blames them. He wants vengeance, not truth and justice. A guy with motivation like that will do just about anything to get what he wants, including murder.”

  “It could be what he told the girl is true. Jimmy was sick. He was going to die. He killed himself.”

  “Could be. I want to see an autopsy report.”

  Phu Dung shook his head. Bodies, he said, were fished out of the Red River all the time. Rarely were the victims of suspected foul play autopsied. Rarer still were arrests made in their deaths. Most murders in Hanoi went unsolved.

  A kid with a severe case of acne tried to interest me in a selection of cigarette lighters that he carried in a tray strapped around his neck. Phu Dung said something sternly to him in Vietnamese. The kid moved on.

  That’s when the thought hit me.

  “Duy Van, the other guard who worked with Mr. Wonderful, he was the one who told us about Jimmy Luc and how jealous he was that Mr. Wonderful had slept with his wife, remember?”

  Phu Dung nodded.

  “Duy Van also told us that Mr. Wonderful was tight with somebody in law enforcement, somebody who provided him protection.”

  “And you think it was Colonel Tan Sang?”

  “Possibly.”

  “If it was Tan Sang,” Phu Dung said, smiling to himself, “he did not do a very good job. Mr. Wonderful is dead.”

  I couldn’t argue with his logic.

  V

  I took my time walking back to the hotel, purposely taking several wrong turns down twisting, narrow lanes where momand-pop merchants, operating out of open-air stalls, sold everything from baby clothes to French colognes. I loitered periodically, pretending to shop, checking to see if I was being followed. I wasn’t.

  Clouds were scudding dark and low over the city, taking the afternoon light with them. The air smelled of rain. Then, as if someone turned on a tap, the skies opened up and it poured. I was ducking into a little flower shop on Hang Hom Street to stay dry when Buzz called.

  “The White House just woke me up. They want to know what the hell’s going on over there. They want a full brief. I told ’em be patient, I’ve got my best man on the case, he’ll give us a situation report when he’s able. They don’t care about any of that. They’ve got their own schedule and they want answers. So, my question is, Dr. Barker, what in the hell is going on over there?”

  “It’s raining.”

  “I don’t give a damn if it’s snowing cornflakes,” Buzz said. “Why haven’t I heard from you?”

  “I’ve been busy, Buzz.”

  “We’re all busy, Logan! I didn’t send you over there to chill out and eat barbequed dog or whatever it is those people do these days. I need a detailed sit-rep from you. Did one of our guys do the deed or not?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Well, when will you be sure?”

  A short-haired, middle-aged Vietnamese woman with a cherubic face was making floral arrangements behind the counter. I gave her a friendly nod. She eyed me warily. The rain was coming down outside in sheets.

  “I’m not in a position to talk specifics right now, Buzz.

  I’ll check back in with you in thirty mikes.”

  “I’ll be waiting. As will the president.”

  No umbrella. No coat. I ducked out the door and sprinted through the downpour. The hotel was about six blocks away. Given the intensity with which the rain was falling, in wind-whipped sheets, it really didn’t matter whether I walked or ran; I’d be drenched all the same. I ran anyway.

  Elvis the doorman saw me coming, deployed a big black umbrella that had a yellow sunflower printed on it, and held the door open with an empathetic smile. “Crazy,” he said, looking up and shaking his head at the leaden skies. It was one of the few English words he seemed to know. Then he tilted his head subtly, as if to warn me of some impending danger awaiting me in the hotel lobby.

  Colonel Tan Sang set his teacup down as I entered. Flanking him were two leather-jacketed toughs wearing their sunglasses. Both could’ve come straight from central casting, heavies in a kung fu movie.

  “Where have you been, Dr. Barker?”

  “Sightseeing.”

  “I think not. I think you have been doing what I specifically instructed you not to do. Asking questions. Harassing people. Making trouble.”

  He snapped his fingers. One of the goons handed me a digital camera. In the camera’s viewfinder was a grainy photograph of me sitting on a bench in Lenin Park with Carl Underwood Jr. from the US Embassy.

  “How do you explain this?” Tan Sang asked.

  Rainwater puddled around my waterlogged shoes. I was wet and cold and in no mood
to cooperate. I tossed the camera back to Tan Sang. “I’m a United States citizen. I have every right to meet with a diplomatic representative from my nation’s embassy. Even in Hanoi.”

  “You said you were sightseeing. Why did you lie?”

  “Why are your people following me?”

  “We both know why. You are no psychologist. You are an intelligence officer, a spy. In Vietnam, spies are shot.”

  A muscle twitched under his left eye. The carotid artery on the right side of his neck pulsed noticeably. Tan Sang was working hard at conveying an imperious, in-control air, but he was clearly nervous. Was it because he feared how much I’d learned of his ties to Jimmy Luc and the late Mr. Wonderful? I could’ve spelled it all out for him to make him back off, but a good fighter pilot locked in combat never uncorks his strongest moves until his weaker ones have come up short. I still had a few left, including bluster and bluff, before going nuclear.

  “You’re out of your league, Colonel,” I said. “I have official authorization from your government to provide humanitarian assistance to two American citizens who you’ve all but tried and convicted without having introduced a single shred of incriminating evidence against them in a court of law. You want to arrest me on espionage charges? Fire away. But fair warning: it won’t be me begging for any do-overs at the end of the day.”

  Then Mai walked in from the rain. She was wearing black heels and a short, peach-colored skirt suit that showed plenty of thigh. The top buttons of her black silk blouse were undone, revealing a décolletage ample enough to turn heads, specifically Tan Sang’s.

  “There you are,” she said, shaking out her wet umbrella and walking up beside me to kiss my cheek. “My goodness, you’re soaked to the bone.”

  Tan Sang seemed surprised she knew me. “You know this gentleman?”

  “Who doesn’t know this gentleman? Dr. Barker, the world-famous American psychologist.”

  “Miss Choi was kind enough to show me around Hanoi this afternoon before it started coming down,” I said. “She had some business to attend to, so I came back to the hotel.”