The Cover of War (16 page)

Nash is coming.

Amai wanted to
run, but she had a job to do. 'Who are you and what are you doing in
Saigon
?'

He gave her a
dopy stare. 'I love you. You're so beautiful.'

'Just answer
everything I ask you, truthfully,' she said.

'Okay.'

'Who are you?'
It seemed an odd question, but it was at the top of Triet's list.

'Clark Miller.

Amai was taken
aback. She thought:
What?
And said: 'So you're not Major Randy Johnson?'

'A cover.'

Her surprise
became shock. 'A cover for what?'

'Security.'

'Security for who?'

'A private
company - I don't know.'

'Okay, from the
start. What's this private company doing in
Saigon
?'

'We're pinging
for oil.' He pointed toward the coast. '
South China Sea
. No one can know. Top-secret. You're gorgeous.'

Amai felt
deflated. She wasn't sure what Triet was expecting to get from Johnson, but
this wasn't it.

I'm doing my
job,
she thought.
That's all he can ask.
'What
oil?'

'Ho Chi
Minh's
oil.'

Amai had never
heard of such a thing. You'd better tell me what's going on, Major - Mr.
Miller.'

His eyes drifted
in and out of focus, like their batteries were dieing.

'God you're so
beautiful.'

'C'mon Major,
hurry-up, there's
something
I need to tell you, too.'

'There's a
shit-load of oil out there. Everyone knows it, but no one knows exactly where.
We're using the cover of the war to find it. We can't let
China
,
France
, or Ho Chi Minh find out. If they did-' He made a low whistle.

Amai found a
ballpoint pen and a scrap of yellow paper and started scribbling notes. 'Go
on,' she said. 'Details.'

'Our survey ships
drop explosives in the ocean and map the echoes. A gook fishing junk is snooping
the survey ships. We can't be found out.'

'Will the junk
be attacked?'

'A SEAL team
will take it out at zero-five-hundred.'

Amai jotted down
the information.
'Where?'

'The Callou
Bank.'

'That's
somewhere out at sea?'

With no warning,
the Major jumped up as if suddenly unaffected by the drug. He came toward her
and she took a step back, but she could see that his eyes were out of focus,
his coordination gone. He put his arms around her neck. She shoved him back,
but he was as unresponsive as a drunk.

Then he fell on
top of her. She collapsed under his weight; the back of her head hitting the
floor; the air crushed from her lungs.

Then she heard
the worst possible sound: the screeching of brakes out at the guardhouse.

Nash!

Vehicle doors
slammed. She struggled uselessly under the Major's bulk.

I'm pinned.

She heard voices
on the path.
I'm caught
. The voices reached the front door. She writhed
beneath Johnson.

The front door banged
open.

Panic coursed
through her muscles, giving them strength, and she forced herself out from
under the unconscious man. She gripped the scrap of yellow paper between her
fingers and ran from the room. A passage took her to the rear of the villa. She
came to the back door and grappled with the knob.

Boots drummed
the floor behind her.

She opened the
door and went out, spending valuable seconds to quietly close it.

Then she
remembered her problem.
The wall.

She couldn't go
back out through the night-gate. Even if she got past Nash, the MPs would gun
her down. She looked up at the eight-feet of smooth concrete and knew that the
wall couldn't be climbed. She turned right, tiptoed along the veranda, and
slipped the yellow paper into her pants' pocket. Then she saw what she was
looking for.

A large tree
stood between the house and the wall. She ran to its trunk and pulled herself
up through the branches. Once level with the top of the wall, she crawled out
onto a limb and peered down into Mac Dinh Chi, expecting to see soldiers.

It looked clear.

She looked back
at the villa. From a second story window, a naked Vietnamese woman with small,
perky breasts was watching her.

Amai dropped to
the top of the wall, lowered herself down the face, and then dropped to the
pavement outside the Embassy grounds.

She ran.

* * *

Captain Nash found Major Johnson's prone
body on the living room floor.

The big African
American didn't appear to be breathing. Nash searched for Johnson's carotid
pulse and felt a slow, weak throb against his fingertips. 'He's alive.'

Beside him,
Mancini picked up something from the floor and held between his thumb and index
finger. Nash looked closer. Mancini held the crushed remains of a tiny glass
tube.

Nash slapped the
floor. 'She's drugged him, Goddamn it. Search the place from top to bottom. She
can't be far.'

Mancini went
away. Some MPs came in.

Nash knelt
beside the unconscious Major. 'She's done it to me again,' he screamed,
slamming his hand repeatedly against the polished timber floorboards.

33

December 28, 0051

Phu Tho,
Saigon

10°45'58.67"N
106°39'42.19""E

A
mai ran through the dark and quiet streets, toward Triet's
headquarters.  

She needed
Triet's protection; the story about the Navy SEAL's attacking the junk would
justify coming in the night. 

He will
want to warn the junk,
she thought.

She ran up to
Triet's building. The Viet Cong guards recognized her and took her inside. She
felt safer. A teenage boy led her to a small back room where Triet was sitting
at a desk. Amai wasn't surprised to find him awake - usually he took only a
couple of hours sleep around four in the morning.

Triet looked up.
'What's wrong?'

Amai quickly
relayed the evening's events, and then handed Triet the hard won scrap of
yellow paper.

For several minutes
he studied her scribble, his fingers tapping his lip, saying nothing. His eyes
lifted off the paper, locked hers for a second, and then returned to the page.

'It's not what
you expected, Amai said. 'But the junk can be saved.'

When Triet spoke
his voice was barely controlled rage: 'You want to side with Americans - then
you should know what they are capable of.'

Amai felt
instantly paralyzed. 

'To beat the
French,' Triet continued. 'We took a massive shipment of weapons from
America
. . . free-of-charge. Without them
we would not have won at
Dien Bien Phu
.' He looked at her. 'Now they want their payment. Now they want our
oil.'

'But
America
was on the French side.'

'Were they?'

'They were
supplying the French with weapons.'

'Exactly,' Triet
said. 'But why would they want the French here, sitting on all this oil?'

Amai didn't
really understand. 'Let me get this right. The Americans want our oil as
payment for the weapons they gave us to beat the French?'

Triet's face
hardened. 'That was the deal. Ho Chi Minh went back on his word. Now we are at
war.'

Amai felt
insignificant; there was a bigger picture here - one that had been kept from
her.

Triet went on:
'The fishing junk that the Major spoke of is ours. It's equipped with high-tech
Soviet sonar, and has been shadowing the American survey ships, recording the
locations of the oil deposits. Our coast holds as much oil as the Middle-East -
the capitalists won't stop the war until they know where every last barrel
lies.' He clenched his fists. 'But the Americans only want to sit on our oil.
Control the flow control the price. They want to trickle it out to maximize
their profits, sucking the life out of every economy on Earth.' He looked
directly into her eyes. 'Still like Americans?'

Amai shook her
head. She didn't trust Triet to stay calm. 'The oil,' she said. 'They can't get
away with just taking it?'

'We will
eventually be forced into making a deal,' Triet said solemnly. 'But if the Tet
Offensive succeeds, we can drive them out before they can finish their survey -
we can take the oil for ourselves.'

Amai gasped.

Triet said:
'When
Vietnam
is free, we will
need the profit from this oil to rebuild our country. That is the importance of
Tet. It will drive the Americans off the oil - at worst get them bargaining for
it instead of taking it.'

Amai felt the
room shrinking.    

Triet's body
inflated. 'Oil will be the blood of victory in this war, Amai - but freedom is
still the beating heart of
our
struggle. Remember who you are fighting
for.'

Amai's eyes were
wet from fear and exhaustion. She hoped Triet would mistake her emotion for
loyalty.

'Leave,' he
said. 'I need to think.'

Amai was
drained. The constant fear of capture, and the effort required to maintain the
ruse had taken a toll. She had taken the information from Major Johnson - or
whatever his name was. She had done her bit. Now she needed rest.

Triet shut the
door on her. The boy returned and led her across the lane to a two story house.
The boy explained that the house was occupied by an old woman, sympathetic to
the Viet Cong. The old woman met Amai at the door, silently chewing betel nut.
She led Amai upstairs to a bedroom that overlooked the lane. Amai flopped onto
the mattress, but couldn't sleep. She felt sick with indecision.  

The Americans
are here for oil,
she thought.
Money. Tet will
drive them out.
She imagined the civilian bloodbath and felt trapped
between loyalties.
Whose side am I on?
Her mind spun.
Should I report
Tet to the Americans - or not?

She curled up
into a fetal position, her moist eyelids shutting. Sleep overtook her. She
dreamed of Danny and Triet. She saw her niece as an older woman, with two
grisly stumps for hands.

Amai woke in the
dark and unfamiliar room, dripping in cold sweat, unaware of how long she'd
been asleep. She heard something down in the lane and got out of bed. Through
the bamboo blinds she saw Triet's sentries, milling about, smoking in the
doorway. She tensed; she could
hear
engines. Then she saw the line of
windscreens and wing-mirrors and knew it was a raid.

The column of
jeeps stopped in the lane and the shooting started.

* * *

As soon as the Cholon target had started
broadcasting, Nash's radio direction finding team discovered his exact
location. They had used a simple process of signal triangulation to pin-point
The Ghost's position.

Two radio
direction finding crews had been waiting impatiently for his broadcast. They
knew the location was somewhere in Phu Tho, and each team had taken up position
on opposite sides of the district, with their aerials aimed in the most likely
directions.

The moment The
Ghost's radio went live, the two teams traced the signal strength, and took
bearings. Where they crossed was The Ghost's location.

He had only been
on the airwaves for a few minutes, but it had been enough.

* * *

Triet heard gunfire on the street and knew
instantly what it meant.

The crash of the
door and the drum of boots in the hall confirmed that there was no escape.

He had only
moments to react.

He grabbed the
radio's code book and slipped it under its loose floor board. Then he took a
bottle of fish oil from the bench and smeared it over his forearms. With
precious seconds left, he stuffed a handful of fishhooks and sinkers into his
pockets.

The soldiers
stormed the room with surprising force.

The last thing
Triet saw was the butt of a rifle, smashing into his face.

* * *

Amai watched from the second floor window,
feeling strangely detached.

Two American
soldiers loaded dead bodies into the back of the lead jeep. Triet was put in
the front. His body was limp, but he looked alive. Amai wished he had been
killed. She felt ashamed, but her world would be a safer place without him in
it.

The jeep took
Triet away and she wondered if she would ever see him again. She hoped not, but
a deep, nagging feeling told her that she wasn't free of him yet.

Amai kept
watching the lane. More jeeps arrived. Some
US
soldiers went into Triet's Headquarters, and some stayed in the
lane smoking. Then a feeling of dread crept over her: the officer-in-charge was
pointing to her building. Three soldiers threw down their cigarettes and walked
to her front door.

Amai thought:
I
need a way out.

She racked her
brain but couldn't think of an exit. The building backed onto a factory wall.
It had no rear windows or doors. The only way in or out was the front door, or
one of two windows, all of which opened to the lane.

This time she
was
trapped.

The soldiers
would have her description. She
would
be arrested.

A blunt fist
pounded the front-door.

Amai froze; she
had no idea what to do. It was the old woman who reacted. She came into the
room, took Amai by the shoulders, and steered her into a small kitchen.

The thumping on
the front door became impatient.

The old woman
dragged back a heavy bamboo mat. The mat hid a trapdoor; and the trapdoor hid a
small space. Amai heard the front door splinter, and then heavy boots thumping
up the stairs.

She crawled into
the hole and lay flat on her back. The space was only inches high, but was wide
enough to hide several people. The old woman closed the trapdoor and covered it
with the mat. Then she lay down and cried out; Amai realized she was pretending
to have fallen.

The soldiers
burst into the kitchen. Through gaps in the floor-boards and the broken weave
of the mat, Amai could see everything above clearly.

The old woman
wailed helplessly in Vietnamese, and Amai thought:
She's done this before.

The men helped
the old woman up, and then started questioning her. Amai could hear everything.
The old woman played the part well, but the soldiers remained suspicious. They
went out. Amai could hear their boots on the floorboards as they searched the
house.

Amai began to
shake.
They're searching for me.

They started in
the far room and worked their way back toward her. Then they returned to the
kitchen. Amai saw their faces through the cracks and felt sure that they would
see her shape, or the whites of her eyes, or hear her breath, which sounded
like a hurricane.

All three
soldiers came into the kitchen and stood on the mat, directly above her.

She held her
breath.

Boot soles stood
inches from her face. She could smell the dirt in their treads. The trapdoor
flexed toward her face, creaking suspiciously under their weight.

It's too
obvious
, she thought.
If they lift the mat-

Automatic
weapons' fire crackled down in the lane. The soldiers ran out of the kitchen
and banged down the stairs.

They're gone,
she thought.

Relief washed
over her like a drug. But as the effect dissolved, she felt empty and alone.
Over the last twenty-four hours, in the turmoil of deception and fear, she had
pushed the thought of Danny from her mind. Now images of his face plunged into
the void.

Oh Danny, my
love,
she thought.
Where are you?

In her mind's
eye, she pictured him lying dead. She saw him zipped into a black plastic bag
and then thrown onto a pile like luggage from a train.

Is he alive?
She thought.
Or is he dead?

She desperately
needed to find out. He was the man she loved, and she needed more than anything
else in the world to be with him.