The Red Lotus

by Chris Bohjalian

  She went downstairs, and Scott and Giang were already welcoming the four of them into the villa. Everyone introduced themselves, and she was struck by how firm Toril’s handshake was. She tried to recall everyone’s names, but by the time they had passed the dining room where the rest of the bike tour was eating breakfast, she had forgotten every name but Toril’s, and every detail but the fact that the older of the two police officers was a captain. She was relieved that both of them spoke English and she would not need someone to translate. This was going to be hard enough as it was.

  As they were finding seats in that beautiful library, Scott offered to get everyone coffee or tea, but Alexis alone said that she could use some coffee. He nodded and said he’d be right back.

  Toril began, and she wasted no time on pleasantries. She opened a leather portfolio with a pad on one side, used her thighs as a desk, and said, “Captain Nguyen and Officer Vu are with the Canh Sat Co Dong. The CSCD is the mobile unit that focuses on terrorism, organized crime, and—I’m sorry to use this word, Alexis—kidnapping.”

  The word was in some ways a relief because it suggested that Austin might still be alive, and Toril’s comment and demeanor struck Alexis as both eerily reminiscent of her own behavior in the ER and utterly unlike what she did. It was similar in that Toril went right to work, and it was different in that she didn’t endeavor to establish any sort of relationship. The one universality of every ER patient Alexis saw was this: they hadn’t planned on coming. The people she saw never woke up and noted a scheduled visit to the ER on their calendar or phone. And so it could be profoundly destabilizing for them, especially given how vulnerable—sick or mutilated, wounded or dying—these patients were. They didn’t feel good, that was almost an absolute. They were, sometimes literally, in shock. Frequently they were in their pajamas. Often they were stripped fast, their clothes cut away, because of the injury. Usually their breath was bad, sleepy or boozy or sickly, or it had just been too damn long since they’d had a chance to brush their teeth. The elderly on occasion were in diapers and hadn’t changed that diaper in hours. Alexis never lost sight of their need for connection when she worked, even when it was the eleventh hour of a night shift and all she wanted was to sit at the bench before her locker and peel off her scrubs and go home. Always (at least when the person was conscious and neither drug addled nor drunk) she tried to bond in some small, distinct way with whoever was on the gurney or the bed before her: remind the patients that they were, first and foremost, people.

  “So, you think Austin might have been kidnapped?” she asked the agent.

  “It’s possible.”

  The captain leaned forward. “And among the possibilities to explain your boyfriend’s disappearance, that is among the ones most likely to have a happy ending, Ms. Remnick.”

  “Yes,” she agreed, “that thought crossed my mind. And the other possibilities?” The two policemen and Toril exchanged looks, and so Alexis added, “Let’s not mince words. I know this is bleak.”

  “Well, if he wasn’t kidnapped,” the captain told her, “then it’s possible that he’s had a very bad accident: he was hit by a vehicle, perhaps, or he rode over the side of one of the switchbacks on the route. The Hai Van Pass can be a treacherous place to ride.”

  Toril jumped in: “Right now, Quang—Captain Nguyen—has a CSCD team running the roads he should have been on, looking for any sign of an accident.”

  “I assume the regular police found nothing last night.”

  The agent shook her head.

  “And then,” Quang continued, his voice grave, “there’s the possibility that he was murdered.”

  “That’s crossed my mind, too, of course,” Alexis assured him. “After all, he’s a rather obvious tourist. But would someone be so desperate as to kill a lone bicyclist for whatever cash or credit cards he had on him?”

  “Did he have his passport with him?” the captain asked.

  “No. It’s upstairs in our room. He had it in his suitcase that was transferred here by the touring company.”

  “But someone might not know that when they attacked him,” Quang said. “And then there’s this: maybe he’s run away.”

  “He wouldn’t run away.”

  “People do. It happens. I don’t personally believe that. But we can talk more about the possibility.”

  “I’m assuming there’s been no use of his credit cards,” she said.

  “We don’t know that, yet,” Toril told her. Then she raised her eyebrows: “Alexis, what was the last thing he posted on the social networks?”

  “He’s not on the social networks. He’s just not into them.”

  “None? Not even any dating apps.”

  “I don’t think so. He thinks they’re ridiculous.”

  “The dating apps or, I don’t know, Facebook or Snapchat or Twitter?”

  “He told me that he’d never used a dating app. As for the rest? He never got any satisfaction in posting party photos or kitten pictures on Instagram. It’s just not his thing.”

  “So, he was on them once?” asked the captain.

  “Yes.”

  “Where does he get his news if he isn’t on Twitter?” the FBI agent asked.

  “He has plenty of news apps on his phone. In New York, he subscribes to a paper copy of the Times and a bunch of magazines. And, in all fairness, I think he also left Facebook and Twitter a few years ago because he was creeped out by the way Russia uses Facebook and by the way some companies mine our data.”

  “I see.”

  “Have you tried tracking his phone?” Alexis asked.

  “We have. Nothing. It’s either off or disabled or out of juice.”

  “How did you two meet?” Quang asked her.

  And so Alexis told them the story of the Saturday night when he came into the ER with a bullet wound in his biceps, and as she spoke, she could see everyone in the room growing fixated on the tale. It sounded silly and sweet—downright comic—when she shared it with other doctors or friends from college, or at a party in the East Village. But she realized quickly that what she had always viewed as a quirky, idiosyncratic first meeting sounded far more ominous now that Austin was missing.

  “Look,” she added, when she could see the intensity in everyone’s gazes, “it’s an ER. I see a lot of weirdness. You have no idea how many people I treat who’ve tripped over their dogs. You have no idea how many babies or toddlers I see who’ve gotten into something nasty under the sink. You have no idea how many stab wounds and bullet wounds come through, especially between Thursday night and the small hours of Sunday morning. An urban ER is just a madhouse. It’s crazy town.”

  “Did the police ever catch the shooter? The person who shot Austin?” Quang asked.

  “No.”

  “So, it was just some junkie who was holding up the bartender and accidentally fired his weapon. When he did, you’re telling us, he panicked and ran.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “But the bullet hit your boyfriend and not the bartender? Why was he pointing the gun at Austin? He wasn’t behind the counter.”

  “He—the junkie—was waving the gun around. He fired it, we all assume, by accident. He just happened to hit Austin,” she explained.

  “This is according to Austin,” observed Toril. She sounded dubious.

  “This was according to the police, too,” Alexis said defensively.

  The captain turned to the bike tour leaders, who were leaning against one of the magnificent bookcases with the villa’s old farm records. “How common is it for you to allow your guests to ride alone? Does it happen on most excursions?”

  The two men looked at each other nervously, wondering who would stick his head on the chopping block and answer first. Scott shrugged and replied, “It happens on maybe a quarter of the tours. Maybe. There’s a rider or a couple or ma
ybe a parent and one of his or her teenage kids who clearly know what they’re doing. It’s not a big deal. So we let them carry on. And Austin was—is—a terrific rider. And this is at least his second time in Vietnam. So, I must admit, I really didn’t think twice about it. Did you, Giang?”

  “Not really. Besides, we felt bad that the ride over the Hai Van Pass was rained out on Wednesday. That happened to him last year, too. It would have been awful to deny him the chance to go where he wanted, especially given why he wanted to go there.”

  “You didn’t have a support van trail him?”

  “No.”

  “Do you usually?”

  “Look,” Scott said, his tone defensive, “we offered to ride with him, we offered to trail him. He seemed a little insulted by the very idea. Besides, there was all that emotional baggage about his ‘journey.’ His ‘emotional journey.’ We gave him the space that he wanted.”

  The captain already had what looked like a copy of the possible routes for the day, and Alexis wondered whether it was a general one from the company’s website or the actual one with the specific options they had all been given the day before. “So, he wasn’t riding alone simply because he was the only one in the group who wanted to climb Highway One? There was more to it than that?”

  “Yes,” Alexis explained, “it was sort of a pilgrimage. He wanted to see the spots—roughly—where his uncle died and where his father was wounded in the war. His father was shot in an ambush near here. He lived. But his uncle was killed when he stepped on a landmine. Austin planned to collect a few pebbles from each of the sites and bring them home.”

  The captain leaned forward and nodded. “Well, there was a hell of a fight in Hue.”

  “His family arrived after that battle.”

  “After that, it was all Viet Cong around here—and mostly up in the hills. Away from China Beach. My father was NVA: Army of North Vietnam. A little farther north. Khe Sanh. The Americans were never going to mistake him for one of the doubtfuls.”

  “Doubtfuls? That’s so interesting you’d use that word. That’s an ER word,” Alexis told him.

  “The American soldiers used it when they couldn’t decide whether one of us was Viet Cong or a civilian on their side. They used it when they had no idea whether to trust someone—or, for that matter, a whole village. When in doubt? Well, you know. We’re not all that far from My Lai. What does it mean in a hospital?”

  She averted her eyes. She hated to admit this. “It’s a triage shorthand for someone who probably isn’t going to make it. You try to save them; you try as hard as you can. But you know in your heart, you—they—never had a chance.”

  Quang smiled cryptically. “Well, back in the war, most doubtfuls sure as hell didn’t have a chance.”

  “No. I guess not,” she admitted, and she felt a deep and unexpected pang of guilt at the American legacy here.

  And almost as if he sensed it, he threw her a lifeline of sorts. “Your people were here for a decade. We fought you for ten years. But the French? A century. And before them? The Chinese. You were but a blip.” And then he reminded her that most American soldiers weren’t committing war crimes. “You probably don’t know this, but there was an antiwar protest in Pleiku from the American soldiers and nurses there.”

  She waited.

  “In November 1969, during that great Thanksgiving holiday of yours, all the troops at the base there refused to eat their turkey and mashed potatoes and, along with all the nurses, fasted for the day. Maybe your boyfriend’s father or his uncle was there then.”

  “No,” she said. “They both arrived after that.”

  “Were your boyfriend’s family marines or just regular old-fashioned grunts?”

  “Just soldiers, I guess,” she told him. “His uncle died a lieutenant. His father was a private when he was shot.”

  Alexis saw Toril straighten her back: it was almost a flinch. It was quick but it was clear: something had made her uncomfortable. She couldn’t imagine it was the conversation about a war that had ended generations ago. Clearly the captain hadn’t been offended in the slightest. Nor was it likely that anyone cared now that some soldiers and nurses once upon a time had passed on the stuffing and gravy at an army base outside Pleiku. She considered asking Toril what she was thinking, but the woman looked down at her portfolio and then directly at her: “Austin told you that his father and his uncle were near here? And his father was wounded in an…an ambush?”

  “Yes,” she said, but the tone in Toril’s voice—the incredulity—had already set off an alarm inside her. “That’s right.”

  Toril took a deep breath and steepled her fingers in front of her face, gathering herself. Then she said, her voice firm, “When you told me last night that two family members had served here, I had their records pulled. I was curious. His uncle did die in Vietnam. That’s true. But it wasn’t near here. As a matter of fact, it was up in your father’s part of the country, Quang. Near Khe Sanh.”

  The captain nodded and seemed about to add something, but stopped himself. “Go on,” he said simply.

  “Austin Harper’s father was stationed nowhere near here. He was at Long Binh. That’s where he was ’til he was sent home.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know where that is,” Alexis said, confused.

  “It’s near Ho Chi Minh City. It was army headquarters. He was a…a lifeguard.”

  Quang and the other Vietnamese officer smiled at each other. In other circumstances, they might even have laughed. Still, the captain couldn’t resist telling Toril—an inside joke, it seemed—“He was U.S. Army and REMF.”

  “So it would seem,” Toril agreed.

  “And that stands for what?” Alexis asked.

  The agent cleared her throat uncomfortably. “It means, basically, rearguard.”

  “I’m a grown-up. Tell me what REMF stands for,” Alexis said, and then, fearing she had sounded too much like her mother, added, “Please.”

  “Fine. Rear Echelon Mother Fucker.”

  “It was a term the guys actually fighting my father would use for the guys playing basketball and sitting around getting tan at the swimming pools,” Quang explained. “You were a grunt? You might get a silver star. You were REMF? You might get a silver paper clip.”

  “And they actually had a swimming pool at an army base?” Alexis asked.

  “Pools. Plural at Long Binh,” said Toril. “I mean, I don’t have the exact number, but easily ten or twelve of them. Plus the tennis courts. The softball fields. The libraries. The weight rooms. The nightclubs. The base was massive. Largest in country, by far.”

  “And Austin’s father was a lifeguard?”

  “The family has a…a pedigree, Alexis. Boston Brahmin. Patrician, old money. You must know that.”

  “I know a little. But, clearly, not a lot. I didn’t know his father was a lifeguard, for God’s sake.”

  Toril sighed. “Look, I don’t have a whole lot here. But from the little I’ve seen, I would guess that Austin’s uncle was the family rebel. He didn’t play the Harper family get-out-of-jail-free card. He volunteered and served like any grunt or any nurse from the middle of Iowa or downtown Detroit. And, in all fairness, Austin’s father probably could have gotten a deferment, if he’d wanted. Or he could have been one of the thousands of well-connected young men who joined the National Guard and kept Alabama safe from the Viet Cong. But he didn’t. So I’d cut him some slack.”

  “I’m not judging him for that. I’m not judging him at all. I’m just trying to understand my boyfriend’s lie. Was his father even really wounded?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Go on. I need to know this.”

  Toril was looking down at the paperwork before her as if she didn’t quite believe it herself. It was as if she had to read it twice. “He was injured in a go-cart accident on the base. He rolled
the cart. It was kind of a race, apparently. Broke his leg and his hip.”

  Alexis sank deeper into the plush couch, wanting to lose herself in it. She felt humiliated and betrayed, and could just as easily have laughed as cried.

  “A go-cart,” she repeated.

  “That’s what it says.”

  Her voice was small, almost girlish, when she said—and she almost couldn’t hear her own words because the thrumming inside her head was so marked it was like she was under water—“Is there any chance that all of the paperwork you have is incorrect? Wrong person or something? Austin told me that his father was shot.”

  “It’s possible, but not likely. I have the service records here of both siblings.”

  “So, he was lying. Austin.”

  “Look, I don’t know the specifics of what he told you,” the agent said. “Perhaps it’s all just a misunderstanding.”

  “Perhaps,” she said, nodding not so much because she agreed, but because she was digesting all that she’d just heard. Trying to make sense of it. She rested her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands, utterly bewildered. Was he ashamed of his father? Embarrassed by how he’d been injured? Or was it possible that it was his father who was self-conscious of how he’d served, and so he had lied to his son? She wanted to believe this, and brightened ever so slightly at the idea. But she had the common sense to know it was unlikely: it was far more logical that Austin had lied to her than that his father had lied to him.