Nam-A-Rama

by Phillip Jennings

  “Yes, you would be hungry by now. I’ll see what I can arrange.”

  He spoke rapidly to the two soldiers who had been standing just outside the door. They nodded and hastily left down the hall.

  “I’ve given them your requests, and you will be taken care of.”

  “What’s with the monkey suit?” Gearheardt asked.

  The Brit looked down and smoothed his tuxedo jacket, then adjusted his bow tie.

  “I was at a reception for the visiting Chinese, if you must know. Purely social affair, with atrocious food, I might add. This Hanoi assignment is not all that you would assume.”

  “I guess I would assume that living in Hanoi when the most powerful country on earth is bombing the shit out of it wouldn’t be all that great,” I said, beginning not to like Whiffenpoof.

  His smile covered the distaste his eyes signaled. “I suppose you have a point.”

  We looked at one another for a moment and then he drew himself up. “I’ll take Miss LaFirm to a hotel so that she can freshen up. When I return, we can discuss your mission. I’ll need to know the details if I’m to assist you. Good evening, gentlemen.”

  Gearheardt stepped aside so that Whiffenpoof could open the door. Butty took his arm and left, smiling over her shoulder at Gearheardt.

  “Miss LaFirm?” I said.

  “Everybody’s got to be somebody,” Gearheardt said. He sat down behind the interrogation table, took off his sandals, and began to rub his feet. “So what do we do now?”

  “I guess we have to trust Whiffenpoof. The President said to find him and let him help us. So here we are.”

  “The President also said to kill him if we wanted to. That doesn’t give me a lot of confidence in relying on old Poofy,” Gearheardt said.

  I rubbed the cut below my eye gingerly. I was beginning to be able to see out of it, which was a relief. “I won’t dignify the situation by asking you if you have a better plan.”

  “Jack, the Poofter is obviously a goddam spy. You can’t just—”

  “As was everybody else you have met since we got off the boat, Gearheardt. Of course he’s a spy. He spies for us. We’re sitting on our fat asses in downtown Hanoi with our dicks in our hands, and you’re looking for spooks under the table. Figure something out, for Chrissakes!”

  Gearheardt rose from the table and walked to the wall opposite the door. He studied a calendar hanging at eye level. After flipping through the months quickly, he dropped back into the chair. “Jack, every damn month is a different picture of a piece of Russian farm equipment. We can beat these guys, Jack.” He slammed his palm hard down on the wooden table. “And their furniture is shit.”

  “I’m sure that was a consideration in the Pentagon, Gearheardt. But listen, did you notice how Butty walked out of here?”

  Gearheardt grinned. “Well, I don’t want to brag, but—”

  “Oh give me a damn break, Gearheardt. I mean the way she just walked out with a guy that she supposedly had never seen before. Didn’t that strike you as odd?”

  “Well he did have on a decent-looking tux. And he wasn’t a slope. That’s two pretty good reasons.”

  “Don’t call them slopes, Gearheardt. You know it bugs me. I know it’s stupid, but—”

  “But it’s okay to waste them with a daisy cutter or a few napalm cannisters.”

  “Let’s get back to Butty and our current situation. I assume that Whiffer—”

  “You mean Poofer.”

  “You know who I mean. I assume that he will be back soon. Let’s say he is able to fix up the meeting with Ho Chi Minh. Then what are we going to do?”

  Gearheardt dropped the front legs of his chair to the floor. The sound was loud in the room. After a moment of staring at me he picked up the chair and brought it to my side of the table, sitting down facing the back, his knees almost touching mine.

  “Jack, you really haven’t figured it out yet, have you?”

  “Evidently not. And I suppose you have?” I leaned back in my chair and folded my arms across my chest.

  “We’re here to waste him, Jack. We’re assassins. Double-O-Sevens. Hit men. Executioners. Our mission is to see that Ho Chi Minh is a martyr to his cause. Are you getting the idea?”

  “We’re supposed to kill him?” My mouth was trying to give my brain time to catch up.

  Gearheardt nodded and smiled.

  “How about making a deal with him?”

  “We can try that. What do you think our chances are?”

  Starting with the fact that neither of us spoke Vietnamese, I had to admit to a low probability.

  “But theoretically we could? Right?”

  “You’re a good human, Jack. Sure. I suppose so.”

  “But say we can’t and we have to kill him. Then the assumption is that the North Vietnamese will just not have the leadership to continue the war, or—or what exactly?”

  “I would imagine that is the assumption, after we bomb the piss out of them for a while longer. And assuming that we kill Giap too.” I could see Gearheardt losing interest in the conversation. He was no longer looking at me but studying his fingernails, biting at a cuticle occasionally.

  “We have to kill Giap?”

  “He’s the strategist for the war, Jack. Plus I’ve heard he’s an asshole.” Gearheardt was clearly getting impatient now.

  I took a deep breath. Maybe a part of me had always suspected this. I knew that I would begin to worry about the logistics in a short while, as in we had no weapons at the moment, but I was still grappling with the enormity of being hours away from assassinating a world leader. Even if he was the leader of a little pissant country, as the President called it.

  “But we can try to make a deal, right? We don’t just walk in and start shooting. Assuming we have something to shoot with. Right?”

  I didn’t think that Gearheardt was even listening by this time, but he answered.

  “Oh, sure.”

  “We’ll have to get the Poof to help us,” I said. “Maybe he can find the gunny. That would be a big help.”

  “And get our guns,” Gearheardt said. “Got to have some guns.”

  The door opened, and Whiffenpoof strode in. He was followed by two Vietnamese army officers, who grinned and saluted.

  Marines don’t salute indoors, but they were grinning so I returned their salute.

  Whiffenpoof beamed and held his arms out wide. “Let’s get the rest of your gear and then you’ll dine. Tomorrow you will have your meeting with Ho Chi Minh. And I understand that General Giap will attend also.”

  Gearheardt looked over at me and winked. “Goody,” he said. “Let’s go eat.”

  Outside the room we found all of our gear. It felt better to be dressed and booted. Even our weapons were there, my Walther PPK—I had long ago thrown away the Marine Corps-issued .38—and Gearheardt’s .357 Magnum Police Special. These were carefully handed to us by the Whiff.

  Whiff smiled as we laced our boots and strapped on our weapons. “At the curb you will find your driver. He will take you to your quarters. Not very luxurious, unfortunately, but after all you are knocking the locals about a bit with your bombing. Tomorrow morning you will be picked up by the same man and I will meet you at Ho Chi Minh’s condominium and headquarters.”

  “Ho Chi Minh has a condo?” Gearheardt was always surprised at the strangest things.

  “Godspeed, chaps. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  He turned to the soldiers and spoke seriously to them. As the door closed behind me I was sure that I heard the Gunny’s name.

  The street was dark and deserted, quiet except for the steady grumble of the car that stood at the curb.

  “What a shit car,” Gearheardt said. “Leave it to the French to build this damned thing. It looks like the winner of Madame LeFeu’s ‘draw a car’ contest.”

  “Get in,” I said, tired, hungry, and my needle bouncing on the don’t-give-a-shit mark.

  Gearheardt squeezed into the backseat, such as it was
, and I dropped wearily into the passenger seat in front, looking in the dark at grinning white teeth, black wavy hair, and an extended hand. “Gon Norea,” the teeth said, slurring the syllables into one word. “I will drive you to your quarters and also fetch you food, no? Did your president send a message for me?”

  “He told us to kill you,” Gearheardt said from the backseat.

  The driver threw back his head and laughed as he pulled away from the curb. He seemed familiar.

  “He is a funny man,” he said.

  “It was Whiffenpoof he said we could kill, Gearheardt,” I said, behind my hand. “Do you actually know the President of the United States?”

  “Oh, I know many people, many people. I am a triple agent you should know. I am a Cuban, although I was born in Panama. Trained as a Cuban agent, torture and traffic control my specialties. But I tired of the communist. So much learning and talking. Talk, talk, talk. I take boat to Florida. America send me back to Bay of the Pig. I swim back to Florida. They put me in the jail. So I agree to work for the British intelligence on behalf of the Americans. Good idea, no? But as they say in Mexico, where my mother is from, ay caramba. I had the misfortune to make my deal with the British intelligence who worked for the Russians. So now I must work for the Russians too. And since I have such knowledge of the Cuban operations, the Russians have assigned me to work for the Cubans and spy on them also. Sometimes it is confusing, no?” He was jolly as a farmer as we drove through the Hanoi night. His mood darkened when he discussed his pay—the Brits insisted on ten percent off the top, since they had gotten him the job—but he brightened again as we ran over a dog.

  “Tonight the streets are very quiet. It is easy to drive and very fast. But during the day … Ay yi yi, as my mother would say. The people, the traffic, the bicycles, ai yi yi the bicycles, and during the air raid, well, it is impossible to move. They do not understand traffic control. And you do not want to know their methods for torture. Simple peasants in my country, even without the training and certification that I have achieved, could torture many, many times better. But that is why I here.”

  From the backseat I heard the click of Gearheardt cocking his .357, which, from the range of two feet, would have pretty well vaporized the driver’s head.

  “Hold it, Gearheardt. Driver, do you mean that you are here torturing American pilots? My friend is about to remove your head—watch the old man on the bicycle—and I thought maybe you should have a chance to explain yourself.”

  The man was a pro. In fact he threw back his head and laughed again. “Oh no, no. You have caught me, my friends. I will have to admit to you that I am very recently become a—what would you call it—cuatro agent? Quadripple? Something like that, no? You see, I work for the Americans once again. Full circle, as you say in the great America. I would never hurt them. I am an honorable man, my friends. In the spying business I am what you would call a whore. But in the business of life, the business of my friends, I am an honorable man.”

  “Of course you are, senor,” Gearheardt released the hammer slowly. He then settled back against the seat and closed his eyes. “Wake me when we’re there. This is an honorable man.”

  “You said the magic word, driver.” I was exhausted, anxious, and hungry still. The drive through downtown Hanoi at night with a Cuban quadruple agent was anticlimactic.

  “That I am an honorable man?” Gon asked.

  “That you are a whore,” I answered, leaning my head against the back of the seat and closing my eyes. “Gearheardt trusts whores.”

  I heard the driver laugh again. “I am the best,” he said. “The número uno.”

  Once again, adrenaline depletion caused me to doze off. When we stopped in the suburbs of Hanoi, a light clicked on in a first floor window of the nearest villa. A skinny man in his underwear opened a door, greeting us with the charm of one who is gotten out of bed by authorities and ordered to accommodate two people who had been bombing his country.

  “Bon soir,” I said as I approached him, hoping to lighten the scene with my schoolboy French.

  His response was in a universal language. He hawked and spat at my feet, then turned to go into the cramped, tiny, littered office. Gearheardt hurried to catch the door. As I stepped behind him, I felt someone pull on my arm.

  “Senor,” the driver said. He was out of the car, standing in an awkward, stooped position on the sidewalk. “Some advice from a friend. The Whiffer is not always to be trusted.”

  “The Whiffer?” There was something very American about calling someone the Whiffer.

  “Sefior Poofter. Something is not quite right, my friend. And in Hanoi he is often seen with my countryman, Juanton NaMeara. Perhaps you know all this, but you should be very careful.”

  “And what’s all this to you, driver? What’s your angle?”

  “Because you have many weapons and very good infantry, I have placed many pesos on the Americans, my friend. For you to lose would be a financial disaster for me and my poor Mexican mother.” His thin brown face was pulled long; his brown eyes glistened in the dim light from the open door. Then he smiled and stuck out his hand.

  “But how could that be, my friend? These people”—he looked around at the deserted, dark streets—“they have no such weapons and they eat foul, rotten fish. We will beat them, no?”

  Tired as I was, the driver was strongly familiar.

  “Driver, if you don’t mind my asking, what in the hell is the story on your back? How can you walk around looking like you’re tying your shoes all the time?”

  The man turned his butt away and looked back through his legs at me. A gold tooth flashed in the light of the open door behind us.

  “Devil of a war, ain’t it, mate?” He grinned beneath his butt.

  “Gon! You’re the British spy we saw in Qui Nhon. Jesus, what—Oh, hell it was those damn Koreans with their barrel, wasn’t it? Jeez, sorry about that, Gon.”

  He grinned again.

  “Oh, it is a danger of the spy trade, my friend. And not so bad in the morning. As the day goes on my back begins to be a pretzel, no? By nighttime I am kissing the ass.”

  He laughed and patted himself on the butt.

  “Is tough business, spying. I also was forced to give up eating spicy food. Ay yi yi. I learn my lesson.” With a great effort, he straightened himself enough to return to his car and get behind the wheel. Now I noticed that his feet were on the dash on each side of the steering wheel and wondered how he braked and accelerated. And he seemed not particularly concerned with what Gearheardt and I were up to.

  The thought crossed my mind a few inches below consciousness that Gon was not up to speed on what Gearheardt and I had in mind here. Or was he? Did everyone in the chain know that we were going to kill Ho and Giap? I had just found out, and I hated to think I was the last to know.

  Gon started his Citroën—it sounded more like a motor scooter than a car—and was gone. Inside the building I found a scowling woman with a lantern waiting to show me to my humble, very humble, quarters. I was asleep almost as soon as my head hit the wooden pillow.

  19 • Hanoi Hoche the Perfect Host

  Gearheardt burst into my room.

  “What happened to that dinner that Poofter promised us last night?”

  I sat up and saw my night’s bunkmate skitter through a hole in the wall, a large strip of the tongue of my flight boot trailing. I felt terrible.

  “Remind me where we are, Gearheardt, and please don’t tell me we’re in some shit-hole hotel in Hanoi with plans to kill Ho Chi Minh today.”

  I rubbed my eyes and tried to move my neck around to work out the stiffness.

  “Ix-nay on the ill-kay stuff, Jack. We’re in the land of the enemy you know.”

  He sat on the edge of what I had used for a bed, a wooden bench covered with a threadbare grease-rag. Grease being the most hopeful description I could imagine at the time.

  “I talked to Gon this morning. He came by to see what time we wanted to head over
to Ho Chi’s headquarters. Did you know that he was that British spy that came to see us in Qui Nhon? Damn good accent. I told you he was a Mexican.”

  “Cuban.”

  “Anyway, I told him to go rouse the Poofter and come back and get us and bring some chow for us to eat on the way. You look like shit.”

  “Thanks. I was afraid that I looked a lot worse, like how I feel. So what’s the plan?” I swung my legs to the floor and picked up my gnawed flight boot. Gearheardt watched me as I began to put on my boots.

  “Well, my boy,” Gearheardt said in a low, serious voice, “we got guns, we’re Marines, and we’re going to meet the leader of the band.”

  I searched in vain for a cigarette and finally took one of Gearheardt’s.

  “Gearheardt, listen to me. It’s time to get serious. Why is this so easy? Why are they letting us run around Hanoi with guns when they have scores of guys just like us caged up in prison not a mile from here? Don’t you think there’s more to it than that?”

  Gearheardt got up and shut the door after craning his head down the hall. He sat back down on the bench, close to me.

  “Jack, you’re my best friend. Probably my only friend. I’m going to go back on an oath and give you the scoop. Promise you won’t tell a soul.” He put his arm around my shoulder. “The fix is in, Jack.”

  I waited for him to go on. He didn’t, but kept looking at me squarely.

  “The fix is in. That explains exactly what?”

  “You never heard of fixes? Look, you know the President asked me to meet with Ho Chi and offer him a deal to stop the war. What you don’t know is that there are secret peace talks going on in Paris. That’s right. Surprised you there, didn’t I? Problem is that Ho Chi wants a side deal or it’s no go in Paris. Right now they’re hung up on furniture, but that’s none of our concern—”

  “They’re hung up on what?”

  “They want the Americans to sit in highchairs and wear little bibs. Shit, I don’t know. I told you that it’s no concern of ours. The real deal is here. You and me, pal. We’re going to make a deal that Ho Chi can’t refuse. Or at least we were.”

  Gearheardt looked away and I didn’t like it.