For the Sake of All Living Things (44 page)

“Are you certain?” a Viet Namese major asked.

“We must have arms,” the Krahom leader said. “We know there can be difficulties in transit, but we’ve traced the shipments through Laos. We know they reached Prey Angkoal below the Kong Falls. As you have seen, many of our soldiers are armed only with clubs. This is not right.”

“No. No, it isn’t right. But perhaps, Brother”—Hen Samon addressed the Krahom leader without waiting for the interpreters to translate for the Viet Namese—“your yotheas are selling their weapons to the new lackey troops.”

“Bah!” Met Sar cleaned his lips. “You accuse them of what you fear?”

“Please,” Colonel Le said. He held up his hands. “Let’s break to eat.”

“Our information network is the best in Kampuchea,” the man next to Met Sar said. “Our soldiers are dedicated. We have thirteen thousand awaiting weapons. We must have them.”

“You shall,” Colonel Le answered after the interpreter finished.

“When?”

“After lunch.” The colonel smiled. “We will discuss it after lunch.”

The meeting broke. Nang, tiny, deflated, stayed, stood in the dim hootch, in the darkest corner, listening to the men chatter, their disparaging words couched in consoling tones and lavish insincere praise. Like a well-trained butler he stepped forward only when his commander’s cup or dish needed replenishment. Then he melted back against the thatch wall. For two hours the men ate, bantered, spoke of the siege of Kompong Chhnang, the plans for Kompong Thom, the ramifications of the ARVN-American cross-border assaults. Sated, Met Sar belched contentedly. He looked upon Major Huu with admiration. In his soft voice Sar said to the NVA officer, “We should be good friends.”

“Yes,” the major answered.

“I think Lon Nol’s agents try to keep us apart.”

“Most assuredly,” the major said. He smiled as if to himself he were saying, You fat brown fool, you think they want us united?

“Again the regime’s functionaries have approached us,” Met Sar continued, “but, of course, you know that.”

“Yes, we know.” Major Huu smiled.

Sar belched again. “An excellent meal,” he said benignly. Then added, “They’ve offered us amnesty.”

“What good is amnesty from a government that loses one percent of its country every day?”

“Ah, well, that’s true, Major. That’s very true.” Sar smiled softly. He turned very slightly and motioned to Nang for more tea. “The agents certainly can’t be trusted. They carry wood for all sides. They tell us Lon Nol offers us a position in the government in exchange for our support.”

“You’re intrigued, eh?”

“No. No, Major. They are losing very rapidly, though with American support they may hold out a bit longer.”

Into the Viet Namese officer’s voice crept an edge of harshness. “We’ll control Phnom Penh by August,” he said.

Sar swirled the liquid in his handleless cup. He turned, nodded to Nang as if approving the tea he’d been served. Nang inflated as he stepped forward, bulked up as he stood motionless behind Met Sar. “It’s such a shame,” the Krahom general said softly, “to have fine soldiers like Comrade Ky here and not to be able to arm them. President Lon’s agents have offered ten thousand machine guns and have said we’d be allowed to keep our units intact under FANK’s overall control.”

“You are talking to a two-headed snake.” Major Huu smirked.

During the afternoon session the meeting concentrated on specific ways the three Communist factions could cooperate with one another. Every delegate bent to extremes of false cordiality, each playing for time, committing as little as possible, attempting to gamer concessions and commitments from the others, ostensibly carving the region into three zones.

Moments before they dispersed Met Sar stuttered, “Ah...as...as to the rifles...”

“Yes, the rifles...” Colonel Le nodded. “We shall send you word about the delay.”

“Quickly,” Met Sar whispered to Nang. Again they were on the march. The meeting had dissolved as it had begun, with photographs snapped of diplomatic embraces as the North Viet Namese sealed off their perimeter and the Khmer factions withdrew in opposite directions. Accompanied by his old teacher, Nang marched his platoon southeast, toward the heart of the city they would soon attack. As they scurried along secret jungle-swamp trails led by a local Krahom guide, Met Sar quietly vented his spleen.

“Now the people will hear us.” He spoke softly in his convictions, rationally in his pious arguments, ruthlessly in his righteousness. “You are my brother in the Brotherhood of the Pure, Met Nang. You have been purified in fire. This battle will require you to swallow your pride and endure utter privation. But if you are pure you will carry us through. Tell the platoon Angkar Leou wishes all to construct themselves in the pure and proper mold. We are the sole legitimate leaders of the Khmer people. All others trespass against us. All trespassers are aliens. All aliens are enemies. If we are pure all enemies will fall to our sword, and their remains will be the compost from which a thousand-year dynasty will blossom!

“For the good of Kampuchea, Nang, we must struggle to excise that which is infected, to destroy the regime and liberate Kampuchea from the imperialists, the yuons and all the puppets who draw nourishment from them like ignorant calves from the teats of a golden cow. Americans storm the border, bomb every square meter. The ARVN loots, pillages and rapes. Expect them. Expect their bombs.” Met Sar paused in speech though continued his quick pace. He glanced from the corner of his eye at his trusted yothea, measured him, measured the impact of his words. Then he thought, Let the yuon soldiers topple Phnom Penh. Be one pace behind. In the moments between the military collapse and the shift of political power, step in, eliminate the yuon lackeys, substitute Krahom officers. It was a good scenario, a long shot, but one that could be played with minimum risk and run concurrently with other, more staid strategies.

“This invasion brings me sorrow and it brings me hope,” Sar said. “Presidents Nixon and Thieu have given their armies permission to occupy Khmer lands, to kill our children. Every Khmer is horrified. Every intellectual, every young person, every citizen who takes any pride in the nation is nauseated by this odious invasion.

“Yet more terrifying is the speed with which the yuon thrust topples the country. It must be halted. Fight beside them, behind them, but fight like a wounded soldier. Make them carry you. Let the Americans bomb their camps and convoys. If two spears are thrown at you, one behind the other, you must sidestep the first before you can deflect the second. It is
kaul chomhor
, a guiding principle, of Angkar Leou. Rebuild and replenish our forces with the arms and the yotheas we take from our enemies.”

Sullivan was hung over. His eyes would barely focus. Still he stared at the reports, at the newspapers strewn about his cot in the sleeping bunker of the teamhouse. He stared and he knew, thought he knew, the reality behind the words, the reality he projected behind the wall of present time.

By 4 May the US/ARVN incursion into the Fishhook area of Cambodia was paying off. As NVA supply units withdrew in chaos, U.S. forces advanced along Highway 13 to the outskirts of Snuol in Kratie Province—an area long controlled by the NVA, the city itself having recently fallen to total, undisguised Communist control. North Viet Namese gunners, the after-action report said, had opened up on U.S. 11th Cavalry troops as they neared the town’s airstrip. Almost immediately additional enemy fire—mortars, small arms, automatic rifle and rockets—had come from the town. For two days U.S. bombers and artillery pounded the town, reducing it to rubble. When American troops finally entered the devastated area they found no wounded or dead. The military commander concluded that all had been carried away—instead of postulating, Sullivan thought, that all had escaped via deep subterranean passages. Free world press reports labeled the seizure of the town an atrocity, reporting the story as if the town were a civilian bastion surrounded by enemy troops in turn surrounded by Allied troops. It did not help when the American commander said, “We had to destroy it in order to save it.”

“...in order to save it,” Sullivan muttered. “Real goddamned horror of Snuol is when the NVA seized the town in March, the goddamned two thousand civilians—who worked for em without choice, for the goddamned NTA, were pressed into deeper service or driven from the border area. Why don’t they report that? They were part of the wave of refugees that inundated us. Damned papers have a memory about eighteen hours long. They coulda asked me. Atrocity! Goddamned Allied atrocity of Snuol was our
complete
acceptance,
complete
dependence upon artillery and bombing as the means of subduing an enemy force in a town. That’s the atrocity. Even if there wasn’t a fuckin’ livin’ soul in the place.”

Sullivan shoved the report away, picked up the newspaper. On the campus of Kent State University, in Ohio, National Guardsmen, confronted by a jeering mass of students, had fired into the crowd killing four and wounding eleven. “Augh,” Sullivan moaned. He studied the accompanying picture, the girl’s face in the photo, her pain. He projected an ambiguous image into time beyond the present. “This sucker,” he whispered, “this is the decisive battle.”

President Nixon had infuriated antiwar people around the country by issuing a statement that included the line “When dissent turns to violence it invites tragedy.” This line was quoted four times in the article Sullivan was reading and related articles.

“Can’t win,” Sullivan grumbled. “Can’t win by winning.”

He turned back to his stack of reports. On 5 May, U.S. forces had rolled into Snuol. Other border towns—Mimot, Sre Khtum—were surrounded. In Washington the President had announced that U.S. troops would be limited to a range of twenty-one miles from the border and by a time frame of three to seven weeks. From Saigon President Thieu countered, saying the ARVN would remain if required. At Angtassom (Sullivan searched the team’s new map of Cambodia—he was not familiar with that country’s interior), FANK forces had faltered under heavy NVA assault. By the sixth, fifty thousand U.S. and ARVN troops had crossed the border from the Parrot’s Beak north to By Dop, near Phuoc Binh. Communist supplies were being found and captured so fast and in such quantities, the Allies could not evacuate all of it.

Again Sullivan studied the map of Cambodia. In the interior, 150 miles from the closest border point, 130 miles from the nearest American or South Viet Namese troops, NVA units had attacked Kompong Chhnang. They had then opened a second battle front at Kompong Som, 120 miles from the border. And due south of Phnom Penh, national troops were reported to have retaken Koki Thom.

Sullivan punched his left hand with his right. He spread the map of Cambodia over his pillow. He crushed his empty beer can. Then he tapped a finger on Phnom Penh. “Screw Travis,” he said to himself. “I’m going to be there. Within thirty days, I’m going to be there.”

8 May 1970—Alone Vathana stood at the window of her fourth-floor apartment, stood by the desk at which she’d learned the rudiments of commerce from her father-in-law. The desk was cluttered with shipping ledgers, crewmen’s pay slips and unfilled orders. On the floor behind the desk, leaning, facing the wall, was the framed photo of Norodom Sihanouk.

She put her hand on the sill to steady herself. Outside, the world seemed deserted, abandoned, gray, gray as she felt her skin to be, gray as she felt the future. Not a soul was to be seen. Communist soldiers, after again shelling the refugee camp with a few mortar rounds, enough to cause mass chaos, had withdrawn. In the two hours which followed not a refugee, not a merchant, not a construction worker had ventured out from their hovels, homes or apartments. Not a farmer rolled his oxcart toward the piers, not a single boatman or ferryman could be seen along the river. Even the riverwaters seemed still, reflecting the gray morning sky.

The view, the emptiness, made Vathana queasy in both stomach and mind. She placed a hand over her abdomen and rubbed gently, whispering a prayer as her hand circled. Then tears flooded her eyes. “What kind of future?” she whispered to that which she imagined might be growing in her. She thought to go to the kitchenette to make tea but she felt riveted to the spot by the window, felt as though not a single gram of strength remained in her thighs or knees or ankles, nothing there to propel her. She wished the radio were on but again the inertia of standing at the window froze her.

Vathana stood for another hour, barely moving, barely thinking, hoping to catch, sight of Sophan returning. A fleeting thought of her mother and father sped through her mind so quickly that after it had left she wondered what she’d thought. An image of her father-in-law in his new villa lasted longer, but the image was still, like a snapshot. Then a bitter resentment arose in her and she thought of her husband abandoning her, thought how un-Khmer was the man who had no loyalty to his wife, his family, his home. The bitterness strengthened her, cleared her eyes and ears. She stared through the window at that whose approach she’d not sensed. A low rhythmic shudder pulsed through the glass, an eerie beating concussion reached through, shaking her to the core. Then in the sky downriver she saw them looking like locusts, eyes bulging. Below them, steaming by the ferry crossing, was the lead riverine craft of an entire flotilla. More helicopters, flank security, appeared, darting over nearside piers and beyond the far bank over the swamps. The air jolted with their rotor beats. Flags flapped on the naval craft—the yellow with three red stripes of the Saigon regime and the starred red white and blue of the Americans.

Vathana watched, motionless, as the flotilla steamed in, the South Viet Namese vessels continuing past, the American docking or mooring just out of the channel. Upon the closest vessel she saw three soldiers, one half hidden, two plainly—a large white man with an enormous protruding nose and a man blacker than she imagined skin could be. As she watched, enthralled, a streak of sun broke through the overcast. Vathana subdued a chuckle. People flooded the streets. Americans, she thought. For Americans the monsoons delay. “Ah,” she sighed, and turned into the apartment to concentrate, “ah”!...but the monsoons always come.”