Nova 3

by Anthology

  But I didn’t hardly like to tell him that his Dad was down at the cow shed, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning where the dead cows had been. Taking down the board with their names—Daisy, Cowslip, Elsie. Burning them.

  Mr. Thompson came in. He had been up at the far end of the wood. There was a young fellow there with a pair of golden retrievers pedigree dogs. The bitch was due to pup in a few days time. It was the same story. Mr. Thompson was worried because old Mr. Hugget at Rose Cottage always had a pig at the back and it seemed the pig began to sicken, so Mr. Hugget took it off to the slaughterhouse; they didn’t see anything wrong with it. Then he started smoking the sides and ham the way he had always done. But what was going to come of it when he started eating the bacon? Mr. Thompson was ever so upset over this. But I couldn’t somehow seem to care.

  It was after that the newspapermen began to come and we had our photos in the papers. It made a break like, for we were feeling that low, all of us. The cows were all going or gone. The rest of the kittens were dead. Every blessed one of my ducks and hens. Ted and the newspapermen they began totting it all up in money, what we had lost. But we couldn’t think of it that way, not at first. It was just that we had always had these living things round us, we were used to the little noises, gabble and scratch, lowing, rustling, barking. A quiet farm isn’t a farm at all somehow.

  A gentleman came down from the factory. He explained how it wasn’t their fault, they had kept strict regulations and what they were making was ever so useful, a poison spray to deal with some kind of insect that had come from abroad. He kept using long words we couldn’t make out. He offered us a check for £800 and a paper for us to sign. It seemed a lot of money to me. Most years we didn’t make the half of £800. But there was the milk and eggs that we kept for ourselves. I didn’t know.

  Dad was for taking it, saying as it wasn’t their fault and nothing in law that they was bound to do. But Ted came in and he had one of the newspapermen with him. Ted took the check out of his Dad’s hands and tore it right across. All that money! It was vexing.

  And the newspaperman he said to Dad, “Are you aware, sir, that you will have to leave your farm? It will be unsafe for stock for many years.”

  “Who says?” Dad asked dazed like.

  “That’s the verdict,” said the newspaperman, “Ask your vet.”

  “Of course if that were to turn out to be the case,” said the gentleman from the factory and he looked kind of annoyed, “we would see that compensation was on a generous basis.” All those long words and Dad and me struck all of a heap. We hadn’t thought. Not of that one. Neither of having to leave the place.

  But it was true. Mr. Thompson said so too. I’ve been to the farm since. We try and keep the glass in the windows and the tiles on the roof. But the weeds! You’ve no idea the way a decent field grows up. Nettles and dockens. And coming through in the yard everywhere. Why couldn’t this stuff kill the weeds instead of killing our beasts? You hardly see even a sparrow now.

  But they gave Dad this job, cleaning and caretaking. Maybe you would say it wasn’t a man’s job. And his heart’s not in it right enough. And they put us in a little house with roses and all in the garden, oh ever so nice they’ve been, I don’t know what we would have done but for the factory.

  THE DEFENSIVE BOMBER

  By HANK DEMPSEY

  When this story was written United States airplanes had been bombing Vietnam for years too bitter to count. While this anthology was being edited and published the bombing continued, though still without cause or reason. May it have stopped forever by the time you read these words.

  LIKE ALL TOKYO hotels the Okura was an ant nest of industry, a crush of hurrying people, rushing porters, harried clientele; a flux of movement everywhere, from the varied restaurants on the lower floors up to the bars in the tower above that looked out upon the romantic sea of illuminated smog below. The three men in dark suits were Oriental and invisible, moving through the crowd so easily that none remarked their passing. They came by different ways and met on the nineteenth floor, casually as though by chance, then walked slowly to the door of room 1913 where the largest of them waited, then knocked softly as soon as the hallway was clear. In a moment the door opened and a young man looked out at them, glancing from face to face.

  “Iran Tuan Nham?” the large man asked. The youth in the doorway nodded.

  As though this were a signal the three of them pushed forward, crowding close to Iran Tuan Nham who was startled and opened his mouth to speak. But before he could say anything there was a muffled thud, not unlike the sound of two books being clapped together, and he shuddered and died as the bullet from the silenced revolver penetrated his heart. He could not fall because the three men held him up and rushed him backward through the door which closed behind them. Just a few seconds later a bellboy trundled a laden trolley by, completely unaware that anything unusual had taken place.

  Iran Tuan Nham looked passively out of the window as they left the sun-glittering blue of the Pacific Ocean behind. The Boeing 707 of Air Japan crossed the beach-fringed, freeway-si ashed California coastline, throttling back to begin a long slow turn. Lower it fell as its landing gear thudded into place, dropping down toward the white towers of San Diego, swooping even lower until it was beneath these towers and setting down upon the runway of Lindbergh Field. Flight 398, Tokyo-San Diego had arrived. Unhurriedly, Iran Tuan Nham gathered together his belongings, took his raincoat from the rack above and joined the line of exiting travelers.

  John Patrick Hanrahan had been a United States customs officer for twenty-three years and he was used to the job. He neither liked it nor disliked it: he did it. Everything was routine including a routine alertness so that in his time he had apprehended jewel smugglers, heroin runners, hemp-heads and many others, because of their nervousness, or a beading of sweat upon the brow, something out of the ordinary. Of course it was hard with Orientals. They all looked alike for one thing. Like this guy. The picture on the passport could have been any one of them. Black hair. Sallow skin. Those eyes. Not smiling, not giving anything away. Young, twenty-three the passport said. Could have been thirteen or thirty-three for all he could tell. Occupation: student.

  “Is this your first visit to the United States, Mr. Nham.”

  “It is. I am here to attend your university. It is upon the invitation of your State Department. A scholarship.”

  “That’s very good,” Hanrahan said as his rubber stamp came down, the student already forgotten as out of the corner of his eye he sized up the next woman in line. Mink stole, sweating. Nervous or just hot? The rich ones were the amateur smugglers, that was for sure. He beckoned her forward while looking her up and down with his coldest face.

  “Will you open them up, please?” Miguel Rodriguez, United States customs officer, said. All luggage on the flights from the Orient was looked through. There were too many things out there that made a very good profit for smugglers, part-time or professional. Drugs, pearls, ivory, gems, all small, all easy to hide. With practiced skill he flipped through the neatly packed clothing, then ran his fingers lightly around the lining of the two suitcases. Nothing there, nothing of suspicion among the toilet items. A soft plastic bag in the pocket of the second case. He withdrew it carefully and held it up. Military-looking buttons, pins, insignia of some kind—marked very prominently with a red star. Holding out the bag to its owner he allowed his eyebrows to rise more than slightly.

  “These are from the uniform of a North Vietnamese flying officer,” Iran Tuan Nham said expressionlessly. “I have brought them as souvenirs to American friends who have so graciously invited me to your country where I shall study at your university.”

  “Well, now how about that!” Miguel was impressed. “Those dark spots there might even be blood. Shot down.”

  But their owner showed no desire for conversation and merely stood and watched quietly, impassively. Miguel put them back in the pocket, closed the cases and scrawled a cabalistic symbol in ch
alk upon each of them, then turned to the next man down the counter.

  Without haste Iran Tuan Nham smoothed out the clothing and relocked the cases, then, taking one in each hand, walked past the porters to the exit to the street. There was a row of waiting taxicabs here, great yellow swollen things, big as were all of the American cars that were parked row upon row in the lot beyond. This was obviously a very rich country.

  “Mr. Nham?” a voice asked. He turned about and said, “That is my name.”

  The gaily dressed youth was very nervous. He chewed at the ragged moustache that drooped over his mouth, his eyes moving from side to side constantly, looking at everyone that passed. Suddenly he leaned forward, so close he breathed in Nham’s face, his breath smelling unpleasantly of meat, and whispered.

  “. . . proportion as the antagonism between the classes vanishes . . .”

  “. . . the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end,” Nham responded. “Is there any reason why such a long countersign was needed?”

  “It’s from Karl Marx.”

  “Ahh, yes, that explains it. A very long-winded writer.”

  The young man seemed annoyed at this. “Come on, here’s the car.”

  A very unlikely vehicle shuddered to a stop just before them. The body, which was shaped like a stepped-on bathtub, was purple in color and glistened with stars. The back wheels appeared to be twice as big as the front so that the car leaned forward as though ready to spring. The rear engine was exposed and the exhaust pipe rose high into the air like a snake. The driver, also young, wore a fringed buckskin outfit and a hat of red, white and blue stripes and stars. He jerked his thumb to the seat beside him as the first man took Nham’s bag and climbed into the back. No sooner were they seated than the car leaped forward and rushed toward the exit from the airport.

  “You can call me Dick,” the driver said. “And he’s Spiro. Not our real names, you know, a precaution for later. How was the flight?”

  “A wise precaution. Very smooth, thank you.”

  “No trouble with customs or immigration or anything?”

  “None that I noticed. Of course we might be under surveillance.”

  “We ain’t being tailed,” Spiro said, watching the road behind them.

  “I’ll make sure of that.”

  The car sped up a ramp and onto a great highway where countless rows of cars hurtled by at tremendous speeds. With practiced skill the driver inserted their vehicle into the stream, cutting in and out to change lanes. The stench of burned gasoline was unbelievable, the entire scene a surrealistic one to Nham. He held hard to a handle on the dash before him as they suddenly shot across the lanes and out an exit, turning quickly into a side street between high buildings in apparent indifference to a large red sign that read STOP. The car shuddered to a halt at the curb and the driver pulled on the handbrake and jumped out.

  “I’ll wipe it down,” he said, taking a rag from his pocket and scrubbing at the steering wheel. “You two get to the other car and wait.”

  “Come on.” Spiro grabbed up the bags again and Nham hurried after him.

  “What is he doing?”

  “Fingerprints. That rig is hot. He hot-wired it at Cal West about an hour ago. The dude who owns it is still in class so he hasn’t called the fuzz. And if they’re trying to follow us they’ll be looking for that Baja buggy and not this Detroit iron.”

  He put the bags into a battered and very dirty sedan and got behind the wheel. A number of the terms he used were obscure but Nham understood the plan well enough.

  “Very well done.”

  Dick hurried up a few moments later. “No cars, no one watching. We’re clean.”

  They continued through back streets to a residential part of the city, elegant homes set among green lawns and palm trees.

  “Look, this may sound funny,” Spiro said, chewing at his moustache again. “But could you, like, close your eyes? Just for a bit. The street names, you know . . .”

  “I understand.” It was a wise precaution. He kept his eyes resolutely shut until the car stopped. They were in the driveway of a one-story house, very much like the others, and he knew that he could lead no one here no matter what forms of coercion were used. The side door opened as they approached, then was quickly closed and locked behind them.

  “This is the rest of us,” Dick said. “Pat, Martin-Luther, meet the man.”

  He first shook hands with Pat, a slim girl with very sincere eyes, long, straight blond hair and surprisingly large breasts inside a white sweater. Vietnamese girls were slight and usually very small on top. Martin-Luther was a very dark Negro with long stiff hair that had been combed out into a great sphere around his head. His grip was hard and he did not smile.

  “Listen, let’s go into the living room,” Pat said, eagerly. “Drinks there, a toast, you know, this is a historical moment.”

  “You better believe it,” Dick said, then led the way.

  “Bourbon, scotch, tequila, you name it, my dad has it,”

  Pat said. “He’s at work now, Mom’s playing bridge, we’re okay.”

  “Thank you, but I do not drink alcoholic beverages.”

  “Sure, well, there’s always coke. Or would you like a cup of tea?”

  “The coke will be fine. But if you have tea . . .”

  “I’ll make some. But, you know, we could toast first.” They stood in a circle, no longer smiling, their glasses raised. “How about you, Spiro,” Pat said. “It was your idea, the whole thing.”

  He straightened up and stopped chewing his moustache. “All right. Here’s to it then. Success.”

  “Success.”

  They spoke the word together, emotionally. There was no turning back now, not with him here.

  “Is it all right?” Spiro said. “I mean to know what your name is, really is?”

  “Of course. That is no secret now. I am Lieutenant Tran Hung Dao. Iran Tuan Nham was a student from Saigon who was on his way here. I used his passport and identity merely to enter the country.”

  “You say was . . .” Pat spoke from the doorway where she stood, holding a steaming cup. “Is he dead?”

  “I assume so. I do not know. I was not involved in that part of the operation. I was sent to Tokyo where his things were given to me.”

  “He’s dead,” Martin-Luther said it flatly. “Have you forgot there’s a war on? He’s not the first one to die.”

  “Nor will he be the last,” Lieutenant Dao said. The girl still stood with the cup before her, eyes wide with the reality of death coming that close. Dao had been a lot closer, very often. “If that is my tea I would appreciate it.”

  “Yes, sure, I’m sorry.” She hurried over with the cup of hot water, a white packet in the saucer beside it.

  “Tea?” he asked, unsure.

  “In the bag, just put it in the water, that’s right. Milk and sugar?”

  “Sugar, please, if it is not too much trouble.”

  “Everything is ready for today,” Spiro said, “if you want to do it today.”

  “I am perfectly agreeable as long as it can be done before nightfall. Everything has been arranged?”

  “All set. The stuff is back in the hills, a ranch, burned out in the fires last year so no one’s there. But it has a landing strip. We put down a deposit to rent a plane, this afternoon. I have a pilot’s license, you have to have it to rent a plane.”

  “You are a flyer then?”

  “No. I took a couple of lessons so I could talk right, sound like I knew what it was all about. But I have a fake license. It’s just a photocopy but we touched it up so it looks like the real thing. Look good to you?” He held it out and Dao bent over it.

  “I have no way of telling. It appears to be very official.”

  “We rolled a guy for it,” Dick said, smiling happily. “My department. You might say I worked my way through school that way. Rolling guys I mean. We hung around the airport until we spotted a guy parking a private plane that looked
a lot like Spiro here.”

  “The man in this photo has no moustache.”

  “I’ll shave mine off before we go.”

  “See, all worked out. I mugged the guy in the parking lot, out cold, got his wallet. Then we used the Xerox machine in the library to copy the license. Cleaned the money out, he was heeled, over two hundred bucks, put the license back in the wallet with all his credit cards then dumped it in a mailbox. That way he doesn’t cry to the pigs about it being missing and people notified.”

  “Very good. If the license will stand up to examination.”

  “They don’t look close. I hung around and watched them rent out a couple of planes. It’ll work.”

  “How is the tea?” Pat asked.

  He took a sip of the bold, bitter, badly brewed mixture. “Very good. My kindest thanks. Do you have my uniform?”

  “Rented it from a costume place in Hollywood yesterday, took all the buttons and crap off,” Dick said. “We got a French Air Force one like you said.”

  “Ours is modeled after it. If you would please bring it in I have my buttons and insignia here.”

  “I’ll set them on,” Pat said, hurrying out.

  Dao took the plastic bag from the suitcase and sealed it again.

  “I need nothing else from these cases. Would you kindly dispose of them so they cannot be found? And this passport as well.”

  Dick took it from him. “Bum this. Bury them in the country. No sweat.”

  “The wings go here,” Dao said, touching the left breast of the uniform above the pocket. “The buttons of course you know. These are my lieutenant’s insignia.”

  “You speak great English,” Pat said, threading her needle.