Phantom Leader Part 41

Frederick had taught Flak that one cough equaled one tap; two coughs equaled two taps; clearing the throat was three taps; a cough and a spit four taps; clearing the throat and spitting was five taps. A hock-tooey and a cough was a V. Hegdahl transmitted the news.

GUARINO IN STOCCS AT ZOO BEARING UP.

STRATTON SEZ BACCUS.

NEW GUYS SAY US GIRLS WEAR VERY SHORT.

SCIRTS CALLED MINI.

Flak didn't know who Stratton was or what BACCUS meant. He knew Guarino was a tough SRO. When Hegdahl pa.s.sed from sight and sound, Flak got down from his observation post. He lay on the slab and dozed until some hours later he heard the "shave-and-a-haircut" tap from Frederick's wall. He answered with two taps-"two bits."

HOW U, Frederick tapped.

GREAT. U HAD A V IN UR ROOM WHO TRIED TO TAP ME UP. The POWs referred to the Vietnamese as the V.

I WAS AT QUIZ. THEY WANT PEACE LETTER.

U DOING ALL RIGHT.

COPING.

WHO IS STRATTON AND WHAT IS BACCUS, Flak asked.

STRATTON IS NAVY GUY SRO. BACCUS IS STOCDALE POLICY. B NO BOW IN.

PUBLIC WITHOUT FORCE. A STAY OFF AIR NO RADIO NO TAPES. C CRIMES DONT.

ADMIT TO BEING CRIMINAL. C IS CISS DONT CISS ENEMY FOR FAVORS.

WHAT CISS, Flak interrupted.

CISS, CISS. U KNOW. U CISS A GIRL ON THE LIPS.

OCAY, LICE CISS MY a.s.s. Flak finally remembered the letter C could stand for a K.

YEAH. US IS UNITY OVER SELF. SRO MUST a.s.sUME COMMAND WHEN NEEDED EVEN.

IF TORTURED. THAT IS BACCUS.

I C SOME OF OUR GUYS IN BLUE AND WHITE PJS. WHO THEY.

EARLY SHOOTDOWNS. MAROON AND GRAY PJ NOT GIVEN OUT TIL 6 7.

WHAT U WEAR, Flak asked.

BLUE.

WHY CALL AREA WHERE ROOM EIGHTEEN N NINETEEN LOCATED HEARTBREAC HOTEL.

BECAUSE NEW GUYS PUT THERE THEN BEAT UP TO SEE WHETHER PROGRESSIVE OR.

NOT.

WHAT U MEAN PROGRESSIVE.

I MEAN BELIEVE THE COMMIE HORSEs.h.i.t.

HOW THEY ACT DETERMINES WHERE THEY GO FROM HERE. ALL THE HEAVIES R IN.

SOLITARY.

WHAT HEAVIES.

THE SROS.

WHY YOU HERE, TED.

I THINE I LEAVE SOON. THEY BEAT ON ME MUCHLY.

YOU MEAN ESCAPE. EVER THINC ESCAPE.

ALL THE TIME. GOT ANY IDEAS.

NOT YET. WILL WORC ON IT. YOU WANTA BUST OUT OF HERE OR WHAT.

I WANT TO BUST OUT.

GOOD. THERE MUST BE A WAY. GN GBU.

THERES ALWAYS A WAY. GN GBU. Flak lay on his back and studied the glow of the dim bulb. There's always a way, always.

The glow seemed to dim and brighten as Flak stared at the bulb. It dangled from two wires. Flak stood on the slab to get a better look.

The wooden-slat ceiling was one foot above his head. The wires were old and covered by crumbling black insulation. One bare wire was wound around the threads, the other was soldered to the base connection. It occurred to him that the bulbs he had seen in the torture rooms were hanging in the same fashion. The French must have really cleaned this place out when they left in '54, he thought to himself. Even ripped fixtures from the jail.

He looked at the round hole in the wooden slats the two wires came from.

It was about four inches in diameter. Flak could see the tiny holes where the original fixture had been screwed to the slats. He stuck his fingers in and felt around, careful to keep away from the 220-volt wires. He felt a small pellet and pulled it out. It was a rolled-up piece of toilet paper. He sat down and smoothed it out, and read the words written in pencil: Hey GI, why you look up here? This numbah ten place.

32 days stocks but hanging on. The V taking me elsewhere soon. GBU.

Tuna, USN.

Tears sprang to Flak's eyes. He knew Tuna was the code name for Navy Captain Jim Tunner. What a guy, humor and hanging on. He'd heard that Jim Tunner was taking heavy torture for his attempt at organizing the Las Vegas area. He was now rumored to be out by some power plant as a human shield against possible bombing. If Tunner could hang on, so could he. Flak rolled the pellet, climbed up, and tucked it off to one side of the hole, then started testing the strength and fit of the slats. He tugged slightly at the concave edge of one and felt that it would come loose easily.

He stopped and listened carefully for sounds of the guards in the halls.

When he heard nothing, he tugged harder at the slat and found he could slide it loose from its tongue-andgroove track. It was about four inches wide and three feet long, he estimated. The segment next to it came out easily, as did the next. Careful to avoid the bare wires, he bent the light bulb up and looked up into the rectangular opening a foot above his head. His heart jumped. He could see a crawl s.p.a.ce up there that was at least four feet high up to the apex of the tin roof, room enough to explore and hide if need be.

The closest ceiling joist was a st.u.r.dy 2-by-8 board that looked dry and hard as iron. Probably the French used teak when they built this place, he thought. He could pull himself up into the s.p.a.ce, maybe even cross to other rooms, look down the light bulb hole, make contact. Oh my G.o.d.

His heart started pounding so hard he had to sit down.

After a moment he calmed, raised himself again on the slab, and tried to chin himself on one of the crosspieces. His left arm wouldn't support his weight. He sat back down.

Dear Lord, he prayed, I'll give it all I can, would you take care of the rest? Please. Please, Lord?

Flak took a deep breath, willed the adrenaline to flow in his body, climbed on the slab, and chinned himself on the joist. A kick of the legs and he was up and into the crawl s.p.a.ce, heart pounding, muscles quivering. If we did it once, G.o.d, we can do it again. Squatting on a joist, he quickly glanced about, saw that he could step from joist to joist throughout the whole length of the eight cells in the building the POWs called the Mint. He saw the rusty sheets of tin forming the roof, saw the electric wires running parallel to each other, separated by round ceramic insulators nailed to the joists, saw that the end of the attic toward a street outside of the compound was of brick. He picked up a six-inch piece of leftover copper wire and dropped it through the hole onto the slab. Barefoot, he eased down a joist to the wall, peered through a triangular vent in the bricks, and saw a quiet street below.

Then he painstakingly stepped across the joists to look down a corridor light bulb hole. He couldn't believe he was looking at his own cell door. Then across to the hole above Frederick's cell. He couldn't see in. He pulled a small string from his blue shorts and carefully hung it on the wire that supported the bulb. Enough for the first reconnoiter.

It was awkward squatting on the joist, duckwalking about. His leg muscles quivered. He crossed back to his own hole, grabbed the joist, let himself down, pulled the light bulb to hang straight down, and quickly slid the slats in place.

He tapped the challenge to Frederick. When he got the response, he gave him the news.

U WONT BELIEVE THIS BUT I WAS IN ATTIC. WE CAN GET OUT.

YGTBSM. (Fighter pilot talk for "You got to be s.h.i.tting me.") DONT YOU THUD DRIVERS TRUST ANYONE.

LOOK AT BLUE THREAD ON WIRE TO YOUR LIGHT BULB. There was a pause, then Frederick tapped: 0 MY G.o.d.

In a flurry of taps they exchanged ideas and information.

They had to knock it off twice as they heard guards open doors into the Mint.

Flak told how he had seen the street. It had no streetlamps, just the glow from kerosene lanterns in the wretched houses and in small shops open to the cracked concrete sidewalks. No repairs had been done since the French had departed fourteen years before, in 1954. The two men discussed what to wear, how to act, where to go once they got out. They never once doubted they could get out. That was the easy part; where to go from the prison was the problem.

GOT IT, Flak tapped. ILL WEAR TURBAN. ACT AS A SICH.

WHAT IS SICH.

SICH AS IN EAST INDIAN.

DO U LOOC AS A SICH.

NO, BUT ILL FROWN A LOT. U BE BRIT JOURNALIST. WE GO TO BRIT EMBa.s.sY.

ILL GIGGLE A LOT AND TALC ABOUT b.l.o.o.d.y AMERICANS. s.h.i.t MAN, WERE ON TO.

IT.

YEAH.

After the night gong and almost until daylight, they rapped out how they would do it. Flak would bend and snap the copper wire into two pieces, drop one to Frederick, and they would sharpen them into needles and make over their prison garb into street clothes. They would weave straw into what could pa.s.s for shoes and attach them to the rubber sandals they had been given. They would study the roof and the surrounding wall for barbed wire, electric fencing, and guard shacks. They would exercise to be in shape, particularly arms for chinning and legs for duckwalking.

They were getting feverish with excitement. Just before daybreak Frederick tapped a question.

HEY FLAC. WHERE BRIT EMBa.s.sY. There was a long pause.

I'll FIND A WAY TO FIND OUT. THERES ALWAYS A WAY. GN N GBU.

GN N GBU. They slept until the wakeup gong.

0930 HOURS LOCAL, FRIDAY 23 FEBRUARY 1968.

HOA Lo PRISON, HANOI DEmocRATic REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM "So," Fidel said to Flak Apple, "you want to see me. They say you yelled 'bow cow' until someone would talk to you.

Very good. Maybe you are learning, Algernon, maybe you are learning."

Bao cao was the Vietnamese tenn the men had been taught to call for the guards. Flak stood at attention in front of Ceballos' desk. He was dressed in his maroon-and gray pajamas. POWs were forbidden to wear their blue shorts anywhere but in their cells or to and from the washroom and waste tank.

"You wanted me to talk to you," Flak said. "You told me you were an educated man and that we could talk. You wanted to know about my life in the United States."

Ceballos nodded eagerly. Flak Apple looked around. His gaze lingered on the tray with condiments and plastic bottles of juices against the wall. The tray under the pictures of Castro and Ho Chi Minh. The tray under the map of Hanoi.

Ceballos followed his eyes. "Help yourself," he said.

Flak walked to the tray and slowly poured a gla.s.s of the sticky orange soda, his back to Ceballos. He drank very slowly, head bent toward the tray, but eyes raised up to range over the map.

He and Frederick had been studying and memorizing as much of the Hoa Lo area as they could see, and gleaning bits of information from all the POWs they could talk to. They had learned that the D-shaped prison had been built years before by the French to house Viet Minh and others who opposed French colonialism. Current leaders had probably once spent time behind these walls. Someone said Hoa Lo meant "fiery furnace." A ma.s.sive sixteen-foot-high, thick gray stone wall surrounded the prison.

The wall was topped by electrified barbed wire and six-inch greenish gla.s.s shards set in concrete. The Mint, where the cells of Flak and Frederick were located, backed up to one of the walls.

Flak stuffed his mouth with peanuts and tried to read the tiny print of the Mapa de Hanoi. He had just found the D-shaped Prisi6n Hoa Lo when Ceballos spoke.

"What is it, Algernon? What do you wish to speak of?

How you were mistreated in the United States? How you wish to write to Ho Chi Minh for forgiveness?"

Flak frantically scanned the city. He found the Embajada Sueca, which he guessed was the Swiss or Swedish Emba.s.sy.

"Come over here, sit down. We will talk," Ceballos said in a soothing voice. "You can bring a gla.s.s with you."

Reluctantly, Flak tore his eyes away from the map and walked to the chair in front of Ceballos' desk. G.o.d, what was he going to talk about?

"Ah, you said you were an educated man, Mister Ceballos."

"I am an educated man, yes."

"Ah ... well . . ." Flak dug frantically in his mind for a subject.

"Do you like mathematics?" he blurted out.

Ceballos frowned. "Mathematics? Yes, I like them. Why do you ask?

Were you denied learning them?"

"No, not at all. Ah, look ... can I get some more soda?"