The Price of Blood Part 44

In from the sticks and utterly lost in the big city of death.

There were still occasional farms, set among meandering white furrows garnished with green.

"Sweet potatoes," explained Trin. "The only thing that really grows out here." He slowed and pointed. Two rusty teardrop-shaped projectiles lay by the side of the road, marked by a stick and strip of white cloth. Old mortar rounds.

They left the meager farms behind and entered rolling dunes patched with scrub, spindly willow trees. The desolation was interrupted only by the remnants of abandoned hamlets, their outlines softened by the shifting sand. And one more military cemetery-out all alone in the dunes.

"We're almost there. You can smell the sea," said Trin. And Broker saw it, a band of glittering blue-green between the dunes. The dizzy relief of a breeze swayed the spindly willows.

"Now we walk," said Trin. They got out and Broker carried two of the beer cases. Trin hauled the other case, the smokes, and the camera. They plodded toward a red flag flying over the willows and came through the trees onto a sand beach. The sea blended placidly into a deceptively calm, baked-enamel blue sky. A buckled cement ramp poked from the sand, all that remained of the old Cua Viet Riverine base. Down the beach Broker saw a tall, new white lighthouse.

Two young men in tan shirts, brown trousers, and bare feet hailed Trin from the beach. He called back. One wore a wide-brimmed brown hat with a visor and had green epaulets on his shoulder and a red armband.

"Militia sergeant," said Trin. "He's a good guy."

Three more young soldiers were in the small head-quarters tucked into the willows. On the way in Broker marked the radio cord draped from a field antennae that leaned, unsteady on its sloppy guide wires. Inside, Trin stacked the beer and handed over the cigarettes amid much deferential gab and more than a few bows.

The radio lead came in through a window and stopped. No radio. A stout, padlocked chest-high wooden bureau took up one whole wall. Maybe the radio was in there, with the guns. The militia had no apparent means of transportation besides their feet. n.o.body was armed. n.o.body seemed concerned. Maybe they weren't really soldiers. Maybe they just all bought their clothes at the same place.

The militia insisted they sit down for tea at a rickety table. Ho Chi Minh smiled down on them like a big-eyed alley cat from a calendar tacked to the wall. "The camera," said Trin. Broker took the camera from its cardboard box and fumbled in the heat. Sweaty fingers dripping on the instructions, he loaded the film.

All smiles, the militia straightened their tunics; one of them combed his hair; the sergeant struck a matinee idol pose. Broker hoped the camera worked.

"They have guns?" Broker wondered.

"Oh yes. AKs and grenades and one RPD machine gun," Trin a.s.sured him.

The camera worked. Broker continued to take pictures as more members of the militia platoon arrived. He handed over the sheets of film as they popped out. The militia boys cl.u.s.tered around, chatting happily as their pictures swam up from the chemistry. "Do they have a radio?" he asked.

"Yes. Locked up, with the guns."

Broker wondered if the Communist party trusted them with the key. "Do we have a radio? At the home?"

"No. We have a truck. We'll send somebody in the truck or the van, at the right time."

Broker clicked his teeth. They had pimples. They were kids. "What are you telling them?"

"Oh, just talk, about their families." Seeing Broker's consternation, Trin rea.s.sured him. "Don't worry. They've never been shot at before, so they'll be very eager. When we tell them that American pirates are stealing antiquities they'll be tigers."

"Antiquities?"

"Yes. There has been a big party campaign about foreigners taking our treasures, since eighty-nine."

Broker wasn't rea.s.sured. He sat in an isolation booth of language, with flies crawling on his fingers. Trin smiled. The militia smiled. Heat-induced paranoia scripted the casual conversation. This dumb f.u.c.king American is going to show me where a fortune is buried on the beach. Some more dumb Americans have a big boat. The hole the treasure is in will be big enough to bury them all...

When Trin's socializing was concluded, they left the camera and the last roll of film with the militia and walked back to the van. They backtracked up the sandy road and turned left and drove through the dunes.

"This is a long drive," said Broker after almost an hour bouncing on a rutted cow path.

"Not far," Trin minimized. "Five kilometers."

They turned again and headed back toward the sea. Trin stopped and pulled the emergency brake. "See. Not far." They left the van at the pylons of an unrepaired bridge and trudged the rest of the way, coming out of the willows onto a beach. Ribbons of breakers eased into a small cove. A decrepit fishing sampan was moored to a rickety dock, rocking gently in the surf. A baleful Chinese eye glared on the bow. A sail was furled to a boom off the mast.

"A sailboat?" Broker groaned.

"It has a motor," said Trin quickly. Immediately Broker went down to inspect the boat. He climbed over the gunwale and made a face. What looked like the rusty vertebrae of a mechanical dinosaur filled the stern of the boat. An automotive engine, off a Willis Jeep maybe, coupled to some kind of marine transmission with some kind of universal joint. A fifty-five-gallon drum served as the gas tank. He kicked it. Empty. The stirrups next to the motor were absent a battery. The boat was like the militia: unusable. He glanced at Trin dubiously.

"It runs," said Trin. Then he pointed to a whitewashed building that sat on higher ground among the willows. A different flag tossed from a pole in the sea breeze: red and blue with a yellow star. The first VC flag Broker had seen.

"He can make it run," said Trin. A scarecrow shadow in sweat-stained gray cotton separated from the shade of the porch. His left pant leg hung empty as he hobbled on a crutch down a lane between rows of vegetables. As they walked up the beach to meet him, Broker shielded the sun with his hand. The old man's skin was a mahogany shrivel over knotty muscle, his stringy gray hair was tied in a pigtail. His right eye gleamed like a Greek olive in a salad of scar tissue. A black patch covered his left eye.

"That's Trung Si, my old battalion sergeant major when I was in the Front. Welcome to Jimmy Tuna's home for down-and-out Viet Cong," said Trin with a sardonic hung-over grin.

62.

TRIN INTRODUCED BROKER TO TRUNG SI, WHO WAS under the initial impression that he was Jimmy Tuna, their benefactor. With that cleared up, the weathered cripple hopped off to a well and hauled up a net full of chilled beer bottles. Broker accepted a bottle. San Miguel. "Jimmy liked this beer," he said, making conversation.

Jimmy was dead.

"Yes," said Trin.

"Yes," said Trung Si.

Trin recounted how Jimmy had bought an old truck for the home. The rest of the men had driven it into Hue to have their artificial limbs reset. One man had stayed behind. A double amputee, legs gone above the knees, who remained inside, withdrawn, sitting on a sleeping platform. A set of artificial legs lay discarded on the floor by the bed. The man smiled politely when Trin introduced him and then looked away.

Back out on the porch, Broker said, "We need to get the boat running."

Trin scratched his head and seemed dazed by the sun. "It's too hard for the men to manage. They use little round wicker boats to fish."

"We aren't after fish."

"Yeah," said Trin. He barked to Trung Si, who barked back, and they had a heated discussion that Broker couldn't understand. In the end, the old man, b.i.t.c.hing, and refusing Broker's offer of help, stalked off one-legged with a tool box, a battery, and a five-gallon tin of gasoline piled in a small wagon that he insisted on pulling all alone. His loud alien profanity carried up from the beach as he thumped down the dock. In a few minutes the engine coughed under a cloud of smoke. One by one the cylinders kicked in like firecrackers. Trung Si threw off the lines and reversed the old boat into the cove. He piloted the tub in a circle.

"That thing won't take the sea," said Broker.

"No, it's a river boat," said Trin.

Trung Si made a dock landing, secured the boat, killed the engine, and jerked back up the beach, still swearing.

"What'd he say?" asked Broker.

"He says why fish when we have meat." Trin pointed to an old bolt action hunting rifle hanging from a peg on the wall. "They took the truck up north yesterday and got a deer in the hills. So we'll have venison tonight. Right now we should try to get some sleep. It's going to be a long night."

Broker didn't want to sleep. He wanted to keep busy. His eyes wandered up the beach, into the dunes. He'd never felt desolation like this. He didn't know what to call it. Nina's earlobe was a dry lump in the napkin in his pocket. Morbid. Didn't know what to do with it. Hang on to it until he saw her again.

"I know," said Trin gently. "You're worried about her. And you're worried about me. You're afraid to go to sleep because Trung Si and I might brain you with a skillet and take your map. There's a lot to worry about. Always."

"Don't like being this helpless," said Broker.

"We're not helpless. And she's tough. It doesn't do any good to dwell on it. We have what they want. Tonight we'll go find it." Trin paused and bit his lip. He cleared his throat. "I should have a look at that map, Phil."

Broker unzipped his security pouch and unfolded the worn laminated sheet. Trin placed it on a table on the porch and secured the edges with sea sh.e.l.ls. "We're here," he pointed.

Broker tapped the grid square that he'd memorized. "We look for three old graves, with the curved walls."

"That puts it about four klics up the beach." Trin smiled. "That close. All these years. There's a road we can take most of the way that ends at an abandoned hamlet. Here." He pointed.

"We need a compa.s.s," said Broker.

"No problem," said Trin. "I'll line up the tools. You try to rest."

Broker looked up. Trung Si hovered over him. "You better let him look at your thumb," said Trin.

The old cripple untaped the slightly swollen, infected finger, rinsed it in rice whiskey and went back to his cook shack. He returned and applied a foul-smelling poultice and bandaged it tightly with adhesive.

"What is it?" Broker asked.

Trin shrugged. "I'm a city guy. Who knows what they do out here."

The home had one long room with a cook shack built off the back. A dozen sleeping platforms lined the walls, part.i.tioned off for privacy. Broker lay on a hard plank platform across from the silent brooding amputee and couldn't sleep. At least the steady sea breeze fended off most of the flies. Nothing could dilute the rancid odor of years of acc.u.mulated nuoc mam sauce that smelled like dirty p.u.s.s.y. The dressing on his thumb itched and tingled.

Trung Si puttered and hummed in the kitchen. Trin swayed in a hammock on the porch-twelve-stepping it after his explosion in Dong Ha-drinking Pepsi-Cola from a can.

Sleep wouldn't come. Broker couldn't stop imagining, in great detail, all ways in which Nina could be dead, injured, debased, violated, and tortured. He had fifteen years of crime scenes to draw from. He didn't think restraint was part of Cyrus LaPorte's method of operation. Not with Bevode Fret for the hired help.

Mercy was not an option.

Basic desperation was a new sensation that he explored like a wild animal inspects its cage. He was stuck on this foreign spit of sand in the middle of nowhere with flies crawling over his skin. In the graveyard of the f.u.c.king iron elephants. He had lost initiative: now he was controlled by events. Cripples and barely trained kids for backup. A shipwreck named Trin for company.

The fixed eyes of the double amputee stared past him, through him, a brown study in dead ends. Broker fell asleep to escape the man's presence.

Broker woke with a start and didn't know where he was. He heard the chug of motors and faint voices. Fishing boats. A battered varnish face-the one-legged, one-eyed man loomed over him. "Nuc," said Trung Si. He made a scrubbing motion to his face with his hand. "Rua." His crutch banged a bucket of water at the foot of the platform.

Broker nodded, rolled off the plank bed, and squatted to the bucket. He stripped off his T-shirt and dashed water on his face. Something missing. The staring double amputee was gone.

Trung Si jerked energetically into the room with the pogo stick grace of a one-legged stork, both hands free, his crutch wedged in his armpit. He handed Broker a small gla.s.s bottle with a gla.s.s stopper. Broker opened the bottle and smelled moonshine, home-brewed million-proof rice whiskey. Then the old man pointed at Broker's trousers and raised his hand to the side of his head and tugged on his ear.

After several demonstrations Broker understood. Trin must have told him. He removed the napkin from his pocket. Trung Si unpacked the shriveling ear part and earring and cleaned off clinging bits of thread and dirt. Then he dropped the grisly memento into the gla.s.s jar, which he plugged tight. He set the bottle on a shelf.

Then he brought a charcoal brazier from the kitchen shack and set it on the table on the porch. He put a screen over it and laid out strips of meat.

"Trin?" asked Broker.

"Yes," said Trung Si, smiling, and going back to his kitchen. He hopped back with a tall gla.s.s of steaming black coffee.

"Where's Trin?" asked Broker, blanking out on even the simplest Vietnamese.

"Yes," said Trung Si, again smiling politely. He gave Broker the gla.s.s and pointed to the porch. Broker went out on the porch and sat down, lit a cigarette, and watched the afternoon shadows lengthen down the beach. A rattle of metal preceded Trin, who came around the corner of the house looking like the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz, loaded down with a fuel oil lantern, a tin of fuel, two short shovels, a longer-handled shovel, two mattocks, a coil of rope, and two huge banging buckets.

Trung Si muttered something.

Trin held up one of the short snub-nosed shovels. An old surplus North Vietnamese army shovel. It was worn from use and the wooden handle had been shined smooth by sweat and callus. He laughed. "Trung Si says this shovel won the war."

They sat down to eat, picking strips of meat off the brazier and mixing it with rice and raw vegetables laced with cilantro and chopped chilies and garlic. Flies settled on the table. Trung Si grumbled and shooed them with his chopsticks. The slender sticks flicked; he shot out a hand and plucked a single fly from midair. He flashed a grin at Broker and tossed the crushed insect aside.

The sound startled Broker. At first, lulled by the surf, he thought it was the call of a loon. Then he located the source and saw the double amputee sitting on a dune up the beach, bent over a bamboo flute. His wide face shone in the muzzy light, fiery with music.

Trin smiled. "It is a very old song. For us."

The notes were a sinuous blend of pastoral and savage and Broker, who came from a place where old didn't really mean "old," asked, "How old?"

"Oh, a thousand years. It's a village song. A young man takes a wife but then he must go to the mountains to fight the invaders." The cripple's breath soared through the wooden flute like adrenaline in a fighting man's blood.

"Do you live here?" Broker asked.

"Sometimes. I have a room in Hue. A bed, a desk, a chair, and some books." Trin squinted in the failing light. "Don't worry. I'm good." He held up his Pepsi can as evidence.

Then it was time to go. Trin handed Broker a bucket packed with a tall Chinese Thermos, two flashlights, six liters of bottled water, and some kind of lunch wrapped in bamboo leaves. Trin picked up a similarly packed bucket. They both grabbed a shovel and a mattock.

"Compa.s.s," said Broker.

"In my pocket."

Trung Si took the hunting rifle off the peg on the wall and loaded it. Trin said, "We'll post Trung Si up the trail from the beach. If anybody comes he'll signal."

Trung Si shouldered his ancient rifle. The flute marched them through the long shadows as they walked up the sandy track to the van. Without speaking, Trin guided the van through the dunes keeping to a faint trail. He stopped twice to consult the map. The third time he stopped for good by the skeletons of abandoned houses, foundations, and one wall that framed a solitary window. "Trung Si waits here. Now we walk," he said. "It should be up there, in the willows."

Silently, Trung Si hobbled over to a block of cement sticking from an old foundation and sat down with his rifle. With their tools and loaded buckets Trin and Broker headed toward the slosh of breakers rolling on the beach. Except for the bang of tin on steel and the rhythm of the sea it was perfectly still.

"Are we walking on bombs?" asked Broker.

"Iron elephants," grinned Trin. "A whole herd of them sleeping below us."

Broker stopped and stared. Just ahead. Hundreds of raised rectangular stone markers slept in the wind-rippled dunes. The low walls of the military cemetery were irregular, slurred in the sand. The central monument was shorter, squatter than the others he'd seen. The sand and salt wind had eaten the color from the pitted stone star. It sparkled, a gritty molten ocher, in the rays of the dying sun.

He picked his way carefully through the field of stone and sand, and suddenly he stopped and c.o.c.ked an ear at the vast silence. It occurred to him. He hadn't heard a single helicopter since he'd arrived in Vietnam.

They left the boneyard behind and walked up a slight rise, ankle deep in sand. Trin stopped, studied Jimmy Tuna's map and pointed. "There are your graves."

Just like Jimmy said. Three old graves. Gray and embroidered with moss and big around as wrestling rings. A masonry screen blocked the entry to each tomb. Inside the walls, a simple circular cairn of rock.

"Jimmy chose well," said Trin. Below the graves the beach tucked in a gentle sloped ravine for two hundred yards down to the waterline. The sea in front of them was quiet, shielded on either side by natural breakwaters.