A Dangerous Friend (7 page)

No, she's a wonderful child, Sydney said. She's doing fine. He was mildly offended at the intrusion.

I mean the divorce, Madame said pleasantly. It's so hard for the children. In France it's very difficult to secure a divorce. The state discourages it. And the church. It's better to stay together and make do the best you can. There are always alternative arrangements. Naturally each situation makes its own demands, that's well known. And now you've left them both to serve your government in Vietnam. No doubt it's for the best. Still, young children—

She's fine, Sydney said shortly.

That's what worries me, she said. A child in such a milieu.

Sydney nodded. He could not imagine raising a child in the middle of a war.

I thought you said you weren't military, Monsieur Armand threw in.

I'm not, Sydney said.

Yet you can stop the bombs.

Sydney said, The civilian representative has authority in his own sector. That's the way it's set up. Not in all circumstances at all times, but in some circumstances at specific times. Each situation is judged on its merits. Its contribution to the overall effort. As I said, I'll look into it when I get there. And I'll do what I can. Naturally Claude would like to—get on with his business without interference. If he intends to continue, as you say he does, with his wife and child. And perhaps there are ways he can help us out. It's a common effort after all. We're on the same side. And no one wants the Communists in charge. How many Vietnamese does he employ?

Monsieur hesitated, apparently making an effort to recollect. This was unsuccessful, for he shook his head at last and said, I have no idea.

A dozen? Two dozen? One hundred? It's a large plantation and would require many workers. A serious payroll.

I have no idea, Monsieur repeated.

But you were there, Sydney said softly.

For two weeks only, Monsieur said. We went to the beach at Cap St. Jacques. Dede took us into Saigon for lunch and sightseeing. We bought souvenirs. We went to the zoo. We didn't talk business.

Rostok had warned him that the interview would be difficult. They're not like us, Ros had said. They're not straightforward. They're not aboveboard. They're not interested in product, they're interested in logic. And when an idea visits them, it never leaves. When they have a grievance they'd rather nurse the grievance than settle it. With the French, everything was personal.

So there are all these factors, Sydney said. He took another swallow of wine.

In what way would Claude help you out? Monsieur said slowly, an edge to his voice. How would Claude fit into your war from his plantation? What do you expect Claude to do for you? He watched his wife rise and begin to collect the dishes, Missy moving to help her. But Monsieur put his thick hand on her forearm, indicating that she should remain to help with the translating.

I have not thought about that precisely, Sydney said. But it's not only our war, it's your war, too.

We are finished with it, the old man said.

But it's back, Sydney insisted. It's at Claude's doorstep whether he wants it to be there or not. And we're in it together.

Monsieur Armand hesitated, and then he said, You would expect him to collaborate, then? As a friend and ally.

Be helpful, yes.

Claude and the other plantation managers?

If they wished, yes.

And in return you'd stop bombing his rubber trees.

We're getting ahead of ourselves here, Sydney said.

Monsieur Armand allowed himself a wintry smile. You
wouldn't
stop bombing his rubber trees?

I would speak to the military command after I had the facts. And after Claude and I had a talk.

About how he might be helpful to you, Monsieur said.

Yes, Sydney said, thinking that he had gone further than he intended. His plan was to take things step by step but the old man across the table was intent on forcing the issue. So he decided to bring the conversation into more neutral territory, no more talk of collaboration. He thanked Madame Armand for the meal, superb in every way, surely superior to anything he would find in Vietnam—

Thank you very much, she said, but Vietnamese cuisine is excellent, especially the fish.

You seem to have given quite a lot of thought to my brother, Monsieur said abruptly.

Missy has always spoken warmly of your family, Sydney said.

I mean lately.

It would be a pleasure to meet Claude, Sydney said.

No doubt, Monsieur said.

Perhaps he wouldn't want to, Sydney said thoughtfully. I suppose I can understand that. It could be awkward for him. Perhaps risky, depending on the circumstances. He has a wife. And soon he will be a father. He would not want to expose himself more than necessary. The Communists were ruthless and adhered to the old rule, My enemy's friend is my enemy. Sydney took a swallow of wine and observed that it would take courage to meet openly with Americans, the occupying power; and the moment he said the words he knew he had blundered, the phrase all wrong. Monsieur Armand grew red in the face and bellowed a furious burst of French, and then he threw down his napkin and left the table. When Sydney asked Missy what he had said, she blushed and shook her head. But she was smiling.

Tell me, Sydney said.

Papa said Claude has balls to his knees, Missy said.

***

Monsieur Armand did not reappear; and shortly Madame followed him to bed. Missy and Sydney did the dishes, not talking much. They both knew he had made a careless error. He had committed a simple mistake of language, wanting to move back from the precipice only to discover that he had been walking a high wire, the old Frenchman willing him to fall. Certainly this would not have happened if there had been a common language along with ordinary common courtesy. And Missy had been no help at all, her loyalties lay with the Armand family. But he had a better idea now of just how suspicious the French were, and how determined to preserve their—he supposed the word was neutrality. He wondered if Dede had the same instinct. Dede from rat-a-tat-tat Chicago, wife of devilish, naughty, balls-to-his-knees Claude. In a rational world Dede would be eager to confide in a compatriot, but Sydney knew now that the world was not rational.

Probably you should leave tomorrow, Missy said.

I'm sorry about it, Sydney said.

Yes, she said. So am I. There's a morning train.

God, they're stubborn, Sydney said. They get an idea—

They're very nice people, Missy said.

—and then they try to nail you.

I think you were trying to nail
him.
He just got there first. If you had told me, I might have been able to help.

A mistake all around, Sydney said.

What did you want from him actually?

A friendly letter of introduction to his brother. Something that said I was a friend of the family. Didn't have horns and a tail.

I could have given you that, she said.

You could?

Yes, of course. You still don't understand. The Armands are my family.

It's obvious now, he said.

She shrugged and turned away, drying her hands on a towel.

So how about it? Sydney said.

Not now, Missy said. Now that I know what you want.

I don't want so much, Sydney said.

You want Claude to collaborate. That word has a particular meaning here. Don't you know that?

We are not Nazis, Sydney said evenly.
We're not Nazis.

I don't know anything about it, Missy said.

Whose side are you on? Sydney demanded.

Not your side, Missy said.

The clock in the hall chimed midnight. Sydney stacked the dishes and carried them to the cupboard, looking again at the photographs of the Abidjan and Xuan Loc Armands, Dede so openly American and relaxed as she stared into the camera's lens. He wondered who or what had brought her to Embassy Saigon, a hardship post half the world away from the Near North Side, Astor Street, North Dearborn, one of those probably—or a suburb, Winnetka or Lake Forest. He knew she was a country-club girl by looking at her, the shape of her chin and the way she held it and the way she did her hair, no different from the girls around the tennis courts and paddocks of Darien in the summer. Smith or Vassar, a degree in art history or English literature; he'd stake his life on it. Yet she had married an expatriate Frenchman and was living in no man's land, a war zone no longer under embassy protection.

I'll find a way to meet her, he said to Missy.

I'm sure you will, Missy said.

And in the shadows, the Bangui Armands standing in front of a filthy gray Land Rover, lush jungle all around. Felix wore a djellaba, his wife a long flowered dress. Two small children peeked out from behind her skirts, the children round-faced and the color of café au lait. Their mother was black as oil, a kind of luminous silky blue-black. Felix looked unnaturally white beside her, his pale skin suggesting exhaustion or illness. Her hand rested heavily on his shoulder. She was the one with the authority, or perhaps it was only local knowledge. Sydney stared at the photograph a long time, wondering at the story behind their courtship and marriage, and how Felix had adapted to an unfamiliar continent. He wondered what urge had sent Felix to Africa and into the bed of a native woman, and how that had changed his life. Perhaps it hadn't. He would be an outsider in Bangui regardless of his living arrangements. Sydney had forgotten now what it was that Felix did. It was either mining or farming. But he did not look like a miner or farmer. He looked like a drifter, a nomad despite the Land Rover. Bangui seemed a very long way from this village in the Pyrenees, farther even than Abidjan or Xuan Loc.

Sydney shivered in the sudden chill. He wondered if a spring snow was on the way and looked out the window, to the Roman wall and the high hills beyond it. The wall was bathed in pale moonlight, its contours crisp and indomitable. Sydney turned to say something about it to Missy but the kitchen was empty. She had gone upstairs without another word, leaving him to find his own way.

D
USK AT PARIS-ORLY
. Someone had given him Malraux's early Cambodian novel for the long flight east but he could not read it, and he set it aside somewhere over Switzerland. The references escaped him, the sentences too zealous in the antiseptic atmosphere of the Boeing, its dull-blue cabin a world apart from the earth below. The plane was half empty. Sydney dozed between fitful passes at
Fortune
and
Time
and an unsuccessful attempt at conversation with the businessman across the aisle, a Lebanese en route to Singapore via Bangkok. The Lebanese was either buying a ship or selling one, it was hard to tell which. His language was as dense as Malraux's, and when he learned that Sydney was going on to Saigon, he lost interest.

Dawn in Delhi, where they were brusquely offloaded to wait for hours in the damp heat while a labor dispute was adjudicated. Families lay sleeping in every corner of the terminal shed while a clamor rose in waves; all flights were delayed. Aloft again, mountains were visible in the far distance, and then Sydney realized they were the foothills of the Himalayas. The time was early morning when they arrived in Bangkok, but the relief crew was still at the hotel downtown, so the plane was delayed hours more. Lifting off on the final leg, leveling at fifteen thousand feet, Sydney looked out the window to observe Cambodia below. The land of a thousand elephants had every aspect of the Mississippi Delta, just as Rostok had said.

The Boeing was noisy now with Americans returning from a holiday in Bangkok. Only a few of the Paris passengers remained. Stewardesses hurried up the aisle with trays of bloody marys; drink fast, boys, the flight's short. But the Americans knew that. Sydney, glass in hand, looked down to South Vietnam, villages here and there, narrow rivers, roads with traffic. Beneath the green fields, water glittered like a spray of diamonds. He thought of veins under the skin. When the plane banked, he was momentarily blinded by the sun and moved to shade his eyes with Malraux's novel. Probably the Frenchman was lucky to have discovered Indochina in the 1920s when it was not far removed from Conrad's day, time measured by the thrust of a prow, Saigon sleepier even than Singapore, the interior as remote as any interior on earth; yet in the villages a revolution was struggling to be born. When the plane touched down at last it rolled past scores of American military aircraft, fighters, helicopters, olive-drab Pipers, burly transports. Soldiers lounged in the shade of the wings. When the Boeing halted in front of the terminal, the Americans erupted with a loud sarcastic cheer; one of the stewardesses took an exaggerated bow. The raucous laughter and conversation reminded Sydney of the atmosphere in a fraternity house the night before graduation; the last carefree hours before the serious business of earning a living.

The stranger next to him yawned and shifted his body. He had not bothered to cinch his seat belt over his vast stomach for the aircraft's descent. He turned and said, New here?

Sydney nodded. First time.

Well, he said. Good luck.

You too, Sydney said.

Yup, the stranger said, finishing his drink and tucking the plastic glass into the seat pouch, the plastic cracking with the sound of crumpled paper.

Been here long?

Ten months and thirteen days. He looked at his wristwatch. And eight hours and thirty-five minutes, give or take. Six weeks to go.

You're short, then, Sydney said.

No, no, the stranger said emphatically. I'm not short. You're not short until you're a week or less. It's bad luck to talk about short when you're long. Jesus Christ, don't talk about short. That's asking for it. He scowled at Sydney, then rapped twice on the wooden handle of his valise. Remember that, he added as he moved ponderously up the aisle.

When Sydney cleared customs at last, Dicky Rostok was nowhere in sight. Tan Son Nhut was quiet at midmorning, pokerfaced Americans arriving on one side of the sawhorse barriers and resigned Vietnamese leaving on the other side. He was startled by the whispering of the Vietnamese, an incomprehensible seven-toned murmur of women; the men were mostly silent. The uniformed officials at passport control handled each Vietnamese travel document as tenderly as a purloined love letter, weighing it in their palms and thumbing each page, looking from the traveler to the photograph and back again, and then once more, sniffing and squinting to make absolutely certain—while on the arriving side of the barrier the scrutiny was routine, almost apologetic, the green passport opened, the visa located, the stamp applied, the passport returned with a blank administrative smile. Meanwhile, the Vietnamese inched forward and the murmur continued to rise and fall in the long lines that reached from the interior of the terminal to the teeming sidewalk outside.