Abandoned: MIA in Vietnam (29 page)

CHAPTER 48

When Thien returned, he had refilled his glass, without ice cubes. He sat closer to Rose. She put an arm around his neck and kissed him lightly on the cheek, tears visible in her eyes. “You don’t have to continue, dear. I can tell him the rest.”

Thien shook his head. He said, “No. My life. My story. I will tell him.”

“Please,” Wolfe said softly.

Thien nodded and continued. “Seeing the pirates’ brutality, Binh’s wife, Yen, screamed from the pirate boat at Binh, ‘Do something!’ A man hit her in the face with his fist, knocked her to the deck, and started to remove her clothing. Binh raised his fists at the pirates. Two men with machetes stepped toward him. The man with the pistol laughed. He put his arm out to stop his men, and then lowered the pistol to the deck. Pulling the trigger three times, he put holes in our water cans and the bottom of our sampan. He waved the pirates back to their boat, intent on leaving the men and children on the sinking vessel.

“As he turned to jump to his boat, Stork stomped on his foot, breaking bones. I heard them snap. At the same time he grabbed the man’s pistol with both hands, pulling it downward and hitting the man in the face with the top of his head. Blood went everywhere and the two fell overboard. I hurried to the side of the boat to see what would happen. Stork pushed the pistol under the man’s chin and pulled the trigger. The bandit’s head exploded, blossoming like a red flower underwater. Then Stork disappeared under our boat.

“The man with the AK-47 began shooting at the water, trying to hit Stork. More bullets hit our sampan, putting additional holes in it. The rest of us scattered. Women and children screamed. The water deflected the bullets from Stork. Swimming under the pirate boat, he surfaced on the far side. He shot the man with the AK-47 in the back as the pirate leaned over the side of the boat looking for him. When a second man with a machete tried to retrieve the AK-47, he shot him, too. After pulling himself onto the fishing boat, Stork picked up the AK-47. Before the remaining pirates could react, he had killed them all.”

“So you were saved.” Wolfe said.

“Almost,” Thien said. “Our sampan was sinking, and it was tied to the pirate boat. It could have pulled the Thai’s fishing boat under, too. Leaving the pirates’ bodies and the raped women where they lay, Stork grabbed a machete. He called to us to bring the children and jump to the pirate ship. To prevent the pirate boat from sinking with our boat, he hacked at the ropes holding the boats together, freeing the sampan.

“When we climbed into the pirate boat, he jumped back onto our sampan. As it continued to sink, he threw water cans, and food to us. We stood on the side of the pirate ship, women crying and screaming, the men calling for him to jump clear of the sampan. After passing us the compass, Stork was waist deep in water on the deck. The boats drifted apart. Soon only the top of the cabin was visible. Suddenly, the boat rolled over, taking Stork under water. He never surfaced. We watched for an hour as the sampan drifted away. It took us three hours to start the engine on the fishing boat. By then our boat was gone.”

“It sank?” Wolfe asked.

“I assume so,” Thien said. “Either that or it drifted so far away that we couldn’t find it when we searched for it after the outboard engine started.”

Wolfe felt nauseated by the descriptions of the rapes, murders, and fighting, but he needed to finish his inquisition of Thien. “Then you went to Malaysia?”

“Malaysia turned us away. Two of my grandchildren died of thirst. In the Gulf of Thailand, a Thai destroyer gave us water and food. Then it turned us away also. Among the packages of food, I found a note with directions, ‘Go 250 degrees. Songkhla.’ One of the sailors must have put the instructions in the package. We steered 250 degrees on the compass. Two days later we arrived, nearly dead, on Songkhla Resort Island in Thailand. There was also a refugee camp there. Eighteen months later, I arrived in Canada. Once in Canada, I contacted Emily through the American Red Cross, as Stork had requested.”

Wolfe turned his attention to Rose. “And a marriage of convenience followed?”

“No,” she said. “I listened to his story and arranged for Mai Kim-Ly to come to the United States. My congressman sponsored a bill for her, since she was the wife of a dead American POW. Vu eventually followed me home, got a job here, and started studying at George Mason.”

“Wow,” Wolfe said. “I’m exhausted just listening to your tale, Vu. May I call you Vu?” Thien nodded. “Good. Call me Addy. I’m certain it was difficult to re-live your journey and the death of your son.”

“Yes,” Thien said. He seemed devastated and drained by the recounting of the ordeal. “It is difficult, even after thirty years. One never recovers from the death of one’s child.”

Wolfe stood. “Well, I have to go,” he said. “I’m afraid I need a good, stiff drink.” He stepped closer to Rose and Thien. Holding his right hand out first to Rose and then to Thien, he shook their hands. He then turned and walked to the front door. He paused in front of the screen door and turned his head toward the two.

“Good-bye,” Thien said, too emotionally drained to stand.

“Will we see you at the funeral tomorrow?” Rose asked, also remaining seated, arm around Thien.

“Definitely,” Wolfe said. “And by the way, I’m not buying it. Oh, I believe most of that yarn is true, Vu. But, I’ve heard too many times how Jimmy Byrnes has died, only to hear later of a miraculous escape and a later death. You can tell the CIA that I have proof he’s alive. Both his and a guy named Thien Sang’s fingerprints are on that high school yearbook Tammy lent me. In fact they are identical matches. They are the same person. One set is in the navy archives, the other is in Canada as an immigrant registered by the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees. And we found the prints on the page with the picture of you and your first husband, Emily. Unless the CIA can give me a believable explanation, I will tell the
Washington Post
to print the story I gave them last night. Good day.” He opened the door, stepped into the bright sunlight, and strode to his car.

CHAPTER 49

The Welcome Center at Arlington National Cemetery throbbed with hundreds of visitors. Wolfe could see why there were plans to raze all of Fort Myer, which bordered the cemetery. Arlington needed space for more graves. Dying for one’s country was a booming business. Among the multiple groups waiting for funerals, he found Tammy Kimura and her sister talking quietly with friends and relatives. Wolfe edged closer to the group, but stayed at the periphery. He didn’t like funerals, or the coat and tie he wore – his last suit and last tie. Both were reserved for funerals, including his own, despite what his wife said. He rather liked the fact that his wife called him a beach bum. It fit his personal image of himself.

Within the gathering, Wolfe spotted several people he had met over the previous weeks. In addition to the Byrnes sisters, he glimpsed Colonel Richard Rhodes, Thien Vu and Emily Rose, Pete Aikens the Ford dealer from Florida, and George Crouch the pilot. All had known Emiko Byrnes and had helped sustain her after her son’s reported suicide.

The crowd of mourners almost filled the gray navy bus that took them to the gravesite. George Crouch fell into the long back seat next to Wolfe, when the bus lurched forward. He slapped Wolfe’s knee. “Glad you made the party, Doc,” he said. “She was a grand old girl. It’s a shame J.T. can’t be laid to rest with his parents. Unless you do go back to ‘Nam and find him or his body.”

“Yeah,” Wolfe said, wondering if everyone in the bus was in on the conspiracy, or if they were all clueless. He remembered what Mrs. Byrnes had told him after her first stroke,
‘My Jimmy like you very much. You go see him. Okay?
’
Had she known?

“You seem a little distracted, Doc,” Crouch said. “Still worried about the CIA?”

“No,” Wolfe said. “I don’t think they are going to be a problem in the future.”

“Did you get permission to go to Southeast Asia?”

“No,” Wolfe said, not looking at Crouch. “I suspect my quest is over.”

“Well, if you think you need my help, you let me know,” Crouch said. Wolfe smelled alcohol on the pilot’s breath. Crouch turned and started a conversation with a younger woman to his right. “You’re too young and pretty to go to funerals,” he said. Deep in his own thoughts, Wolfe didn’t hear her reply.

The bus stopped. Wolfe knew they weren’t far from JFK’s burial site because he saw the tourist crowds wandering along in the distance.

Wolfe stood apart from the family and behind the crowd as the pallbearers bore the casket, following the chaplain to the gravesite. Mrs. Byrnes’s body had not arrived on the horse drawn caisson, but in a navy gray hearse. An NCO oversaw the placement of the American flag, over the coffin and secured against the brisk wind. With the flag in place, the chaplain faced the family members, Kimura, Barnes, and their children, and invited them to sit in chairs in the shade under the green cemetery tent.

Wolfe scanned the crowd. Slightly edgy and distracted, more than curious about how the day would end, he missed some of the ceremony. The same Buddhist priest Wolfe had seen at the Byrnes’s home followed the navy chaplain’s service with one of his own in Japanese. When the priest finished, the chaplain asked the family to rise. The rifle volley stirred him from him thoughts. He looked up, at the immaculately dressed navy seamen. Behind them, some fifty yards in the distance, he saw a white-haired Asian man facing the grave, intently watching the ceremony. He was in the shadow of a large tree, and partially hidden by smaller trees. Wolfe could not identify him.

When the bugler sounded
Taps
, the man in the distance bowed his head. After the bugler’s last note floated away to join the ending ceremonies nearby, the chaplain asked the family to be seated again. The navy NCO folded the flag and presented it to Byrnes’s daughters. Friends and relatives milled about the grave and expressed their condolences to the family. Wolfe watched as an elderly Asian woman and three young men separated from the crowd and began walking toward the man near the tree.

Weaving his way through the larger group as they returned to the navy bus, Wolfe circled the grave. With failing hearing, intent on catching the man and his family, who started toward JFK’s memorial, Wolfe didn’t hear the black sedan roll up behind him.

“Dr. Wolfe,” a voice called. Wolfe didn’t look back. He raised his hand to wave good-bye and kept his attention on the small group, which ignored him and walked swiftly away.

The sound of shoes hitting the pavement rapidly behind him drew Wolfe’s attention. He looked back to find three men in dark suits jogging in his direction.
Crap
, he thought. He hadn’t run in over a year, having had to stop for orthopedic reasons, but he hadn’t forgotten how. With a thirty-yard head start, he thought he might catch his quarry before the men caught him. He ran, as fast as a sixty-eight year-old with arthritic knees and a bad back can run.

“Sir!” the man said as he grabbed Wolfe’s elbow. “Stop!” A second man grabbed his other arm. The two men held on tightly. Wolfe was unable to wriggle free.

They pulled him to a halt, but not before he had gotten within ten yards of his goal. “Jimmy! Jimmy Byrnes!” Wolfe yelled. The couple, followed by three younger men, did not look back. They continued their walk toward the eternal flame on JFK’s grave.

“Dr. Wolfe,” the man who held his left arm said, “Mr. Narang would like to speak with you, sir.” The men pivoted Wolfe around and walked him back to the street. There a chauffeured black limousine pulled to the curb to meet them. A third man opened the back door.

Thrust into the back seat of the vehicle, Wolfe found himself sitting down and facing agents Peter Narang and Drew Jaskolski of the CIA. One man sat to Wolfe’s right. Another climbed into the vehicle on his left, pinning him in the middle of the large bench seat. The third man joined the driver in the front of the limo. “Gentlemen,” Wolfe said, only mildly surprised. “Fancy meeting you here. Was that really Jimmy Byrnes I saw?”

“I thought we had an agreement, Dr. Wolfe,” Narang said. He handed a legal-sized manila envelope to Wolfe. “And I guess you broke it. I believe you left this with a
Washington Post
correspondent the day before yesterday.”

Wolfe opened the envelope and pulled out the typewritten exposition that detailed his attempt to find Jimmy Byrnes. He nodded. “How did you get it?” he asked Narang.

“We’ve had contacts at the Post since Watergate,” Narang said. “Besides, Jeff Bezos is still feeling his way around the newspaper business. He occasionally asks us for our take on international, national, and other sensitive news. He thought this fairy-tale might involve national security.”

Slipping his narrative back into the envelope, Wolfe said, “So now what?”

“I’m afraid you have put us in an untenable position, Doctor,” Narang said. “We’ll have to have a conference at Langley.”

Resigned to his fate, Wolfe slumped in the seat and watched glumly as the limousine turned onto the George Washington Memorial Parkway and headed north toward CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.