Naked in Saigon (18 page)

He nodded. “Yes, I know. The Pathet Lao have a camp not very far away from here. I have heard he is their prisoner.”

“Is he still alive?”

He shrugged: perhaps.

“Can you take me to him?”

The headman conferred with his son who shook his head and said it was possible but it would be very dangerous.

Reyes brought out a thick wad of kip from his shirt pocket and put it on the bamboo mat. “All I want is a guide to show me their camp.”

“Perhaps they will take you as their prisoner as well,” the headman’s son suggested.

“What’s their commander like? Do you know of him?”

“I have heard he is a practical man. He used to be a big teacher in the university in Vientiane many years ago. Perhaps he will listen to you. Who knows?”

They brought him a teenage boy, Tou, and said he would guide him. He was young but he was able and cool-headed. But it was too late in the day to start now. They would start first thing in the morning. Reyes was frustrated at the delay but he knew the headman’s word was final; he would have to do as he advised.

With nothing else to do he slept through the breathless heat of the afternoon, and that evening he wandered out into the fields to watch the women harvest the opium. The seed pods had grown fat and green and the women used a special three-bladed knife to scour the skins, letting the thick white sap ooze out of the cuts. The sap would congeal in the cool night air, and turn from white to the jelly-like opium, the colour of molasses.

Traditionally the Hmong only used the opium themselves as a medicine for the old and the sick. He supposed these women could not possibly imagine that it could one day find its way into a briefcase in a Saigon bar, nor could they conceive of the astonishing amounts of money it would attract.

The sun settled over the vast jungle, green and gold. He went back to the headman’s hut and he paid for another chicken for dinner and then drank the rest of the whisky with the headman. Afterwards the old man had a pipe of opium to help him sleep. Reyes lay on his bamboo mat in the darkness and listened to him snore. He lay in the darkness, staring into the rafters, and wondered what the next day would bring.

Chapter 28

Tou didn’t say much but he could not seem to stop smiling. The fact that he might be about to get himself killed amused him no end. They set off at first light, just as the women were heading back to the fields to collect the new opium before it spoiled in the sun.

Steam rose from their backs and his cotton drill shirt was soon soaked through. After an hour they stopped to get water from a stream and Tou made him a cup from a piece of bamboo.

The jungle closed in around them, dark and brooding, the sky blotted out by the jungle canopy. Somehow Tou knew which way to go, sometimes using his machete to cut a way through the undergrowth. They were either climbing or hacking their way downhill, but the boy had the lungs of a mountain goat and Reyes struggled to keep up. Occasionally they reached a ridgeline and Reyes was afforded a brief glimpse of the vast forest and then they plunged on again.

Reyes said if they didn’t slow down he was going to die. Tou just smiled.

By his watch they’d been walking for about three hours when Reyes heard a sharp metallic click very close by and he saw Tou freeze. Soldiers in jungle greens and forage caps appeared from nowhere, holding M-16s. Pathet Lao.

They looked very young and very nervous. Reyes supposed they were
siclo
drivers or rice farmers no more than a year ago and they didn’t have a clue what they’re doing. They looked as scared as he was. There were no more than a dozen of them but they were all shouting at once, telling them to get on the ground and Tou shouted back, saying they were friends, they were unarmed.

Reyes was wrestled to the ground and kicked. This had happened to him before, so he held his hands up in the air and didn’t resist. He didn’t want to spook them. They had Tou on the ground as well, he was still smiling, and he caught his eye and winked at him and Tou winked back. The chief was right. The kid was all right.

They tied their hands behind their backs and searched them. Reyes tried to work out who was their commander, saw one of them searching his knapsack, he was older than the others--he had a bandana and carried a pistol instead of a rifle. He kept shouting the word ‘spy’ at Tou and Tou shouted back, “No, not spy, friend.”

He kept quiet. It wasn’t the time for talking just yet. They had to get these guys calm again, let them take charge. They didn’t want any guns going off by accident; it was the sort of thing that could happen when young men got excited.

If they were still alive in ten minutes, they probably had a fair chance.

They were dragged into a seated position, and the guy with the bandana pulled the papers from his shirt pocket. It was his accreditation papers showing he was a journalist for
Time
magazine, fakes Buzz had given to him before he left Saigon. He studied them as if he knew what they were, even though he was trying to read them upside down.

This isn’t the guy you have to talk to, Reyes thought. Or at least I hope not. He looks at the papers as if he knows what they are, pretending to be a lot smarter than he is. Last year he would have been riding me around Vientiane in his cyclopousse. Now he got to kick a white guy around. I just made his day.

Reyes followed most of the conversation between him and Tou. He wanted to know what they were doing here, and Tou told him Reyes was a writer with a big magazine and he wanted to do a story about the Pathet Lao and how they were beating the Americans. The guy clearly didn’t know what to make of it. When you can’t read, what the hell is a journalist? But he liked being important enough to have an American prisoner.

Reyes looked back at Tou who gave him yet another smile. Things were going well. They hadn’t been shot yet. Things could only get better from here.

Chapter 29

There were no more than a dozen huts in the clearing, surrounded by dense jungle. Reyes imagined you could fly right over the top of them and not see them from the air. They were brought in at gunpoint and some women and children came out to stare. The guy in the bandana strutted along in front of them as if he was bringing in Richard Nixon himself.

He guessed this was a big moment for them. Once they were at the forefront of the fighting, but now the NVA had taken over the pursuit of the war.
It must rankle with them
, Reyes thought. They were wild cards, like the Viet Cong, an irritation in Hanoi and Beijing now the war was swinging their way.

They were led to a hut at the edge of the compound. Two men with M-16s stood guard outside. They were shoved inside and a bar was thrown over the door.

Reyes rolled onto his back. So far things had gone much as he had expected. He waited for his eyes to get accustomed to the dark. There was an overpowering smell from the pigs rooting around underneath the hut. “Are you all right?” he asked Tou.

The boy said he was but his wrists were hurting where they had tied the ropes too tight.

Reyes sat up. He could make out a pile of rags in the corner and slowly the rags sat up and stared back. He realised there was someone else sharing their five star accommodation.

“Hello, Connor,” Reyes said.

“Reyes? Is that you? What the fuck?”

“This is my pal, Tou. He doesn’t speak any English, but he says he’s pleased to meet you. We were passing by and we thought we’d drop in.”

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“I heard what happened to you and I had an ugly guess that they hadn’t killed you yet. Seems I was right.”

“Have you brought help?”

“No, there’s just me and Tou. How are you doing?”

“I don’t understand.” His voice cracked. “Jesus. I don’t want to die, Reyes.”

“You’re not going to die,” Reyes said, though that remained to be seen. “I’m going to get you out of here.”

“How?”

“Well, I haven’t worked that out yet.”

“Did the Embassy send you?”

“No, the Embassy doesn’t give a hot goddamn about you, Connor. You got to admit, you haven’t exactly charmed anyone down there. Now how the hell did you get into this mess?”

“I heard about the CIA and their guns for opium program up here. I wanted to see it for myself.”

“Did you have a guide?”

“He tried to run and they shot him.”

“Well, hang in there, Connor, I have a few plays up my sleeve. Are you all right?”

“I don’t think my hand’s too good. I think it’s infected. It feels like it’s the size of Japan.”

So that’s what I can smell
, Reyes thought,
it’s not just the pigs
. “It’s going to be all right,” Reyes said with a lot more confidence than he felt.

He didn’t know how to feel about things. He was glad he had found him, for his conscience’s sake; but now, even if they made it out alive, Magdalena still had a husband. Still, that was a problem for another day. First he had to try to sweet talk his way out of this.