Naked in Saigon (20 page)

“Did you write this?” hesaid.

“Yes I did, sir. The American people like Ho Chi Minh very much.”

There was another argument between them. Some of them didn’t believe him, others said we could get our pictures in American magazines and maybe we’ll meet Marilyn Monroe.

Pot Belly made up his mind. “Untie them,” he said.

“You want to take our photograph?” Pot Belly asked.

“I want to put you and your men on the cover of my magazine,” Reyes said. “You’ll all be as famous as Marilyn Monroe.”

There were still a couple of the soldiers not convinced, the one with the bandana who had captured them kept saying, “They’re lying, let’s take them out and shoot them.” But finally Pot Belly lost his patience and shouted at him, told him to go away and take his men on patrol.

“And for that you’re not going to be in the photograph,” he shouted as he skulked away. Pot Belly smiled at him. “My name is Phuong. Now where shall we take this photograph?”

Chapter 32

The soldiers took Connor and Reyes to one of the huts and showed them their gear. Connor picked up a blood-soaked bandana. “When they shot my guide I tried to stem the bleeding,” he said. He tossed it aside again, found his backpack and went through it, looking for his camera and his wallet. “They took all my money,” he said

Reyes looked over his shoulder, there was a photograph of Magdalena. Connor saw Reyes stare at it and hurriedly slipped it away again.

“Think of it as a donation to the local community fund,” Reyes said, pretending he hadn’t seen it.

Connor examined his camera. It was covered in mud and he took his time cleaning it.

“Is it all right?” Reyes asked him.

“It’ll do. Opportunity of a lifetime, man. You were making jokes about being on the front page of
Time
, but I reckon I will be after this.”

Reyes admired his balls. He could lose his fingers or Phuong could still change his mind and shoot them and all Connor could think about was his magazine piece.

Connor had Phuong and his men pose stern-faced with their guns in front of one of the huts but before he could take the shot the commander asked him for the copy of
Time
magazine with Marilyn Monroe on the cover. He insisted on holding it up for the camera.

Connor shot an entire roll of film one-handed, arranging their weapons for them, tidying their uniforms, showing them how to look fiercer. He even persuaded Phuong to give up Marilyn Monroe.

“I’ll win a Pultizer for this,” Connor said. “I’m going to tell the whole world how the CIA is running drugs out of Laos.”

“They’ll never print it.”

“Oh, someone will. You can’t keep a lid on a story like this forever.”

“You know even if we get out of here you still have the Corsicans and Angel’s boys in Saigon to worry about. Your troubles aren’t over.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

Phuong and his men invented more heroic poses with every shot.
All these millions our government is spending to fight communism
, Reyes thought,
all they needed to was promise them a date with Marilyn Monroe or their picture in
Time
and they’d jump through hoops for you
.

After Connor was done everyone was laughing and offering each other cigarettes and patting each other on the back like they’d just won the World Series. An hour ago they were going to shoot them in the head without another thought. It was like dealing with the mafia or the Kennedys.

They let him examine Connor’s wounds. As he suspected his fingers were badly infected, he had lost a tooth in his lower jaw from the beating they had given him and he suspected two of his ribs were probably broken but there wasn’t a damn thing anyone could do about that. He was in surprisingly good shape for all that he’d been through.

“You smell like a goat,” Reyes said. “You better have a bath before you get together with your wife again.”

Connor gave him a strange look but he didn’t say anything.

That night they all had dinner in Phuong’s hut and Reyes answered endless questions about Marilyn Monroe and Richard Nixon and Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. Their knowledge of American history was sketchy at best; none of them knew Marilyn was dead, and there was an argument about whether Lincoln was still in politics or had retired.

They wanted to know everything about life in America, and he lied to them, told them the people lived in abject poverty and that only Nixon and his army ate ice cream every day. They wanted to know what Americans thought about the war in Laos and he told them most Americans supported the Pathet Lao. How could he tell them the truth? That most people didn’t even know where Laos was and the pilots who bombed them didn’t give them a second thought.

The question they kept coming back to was:
what was it like to sleep with Marilyn Monroe?

When he got tired of fielding endless questions about her, he got a lecture on politics from Phuong, who really had been a professor of politics at the university in Vientiane once.

He told Reyes he had been arrested by the police for criticizing the government back in 1961, and when he lost his job because of his left wing views he joined the Pathet Lao. He still had a wife and two children in Vientiane and he missed them. He then confided in whispers to Reyes that he was disappointed with Ho, that the Chinese and North Vietnamese were trying to take over the revolution in Laos and that he sometimes feared that they might kill him too one day.

He still dreamed of a perfect political Utopia. In a lot of ways he was Connor’s twin.

The next morning Phuong himself escorted him them out of the camp with a dozen of his soldiers and they set off back through the jungle. After an hour’s hike he stopped and said that Tou would take them the rest of the way. They shook hands and clapped each other on the back. Reyes promised to bring him back a copy of the
Time
magazine personally. He felt a little sorry for him; persecuted by his own government, duped by his North Vietnamese allies and now he was lying to him as well.

He hoped the pictures of Marilyn Monroe would one day seem like a fair trade.

“How long till we get back to the village?” he asked Tou.

“It’s about half a day’s walk.”

Half a day, just enough time. Bear would be out to get him in the morning and then they would be on their way back to the world, the world and Magdalena. Who knew what would happen then.

“Reyes, I owe you my life,” Connor said. “I don’t think I can ever repay you. I misjudged you.”

“Look, Connor, just because I’m not the bastard you thought I was, that doesn’t make me a saint either.”

“I still owe you.”

Reyes didn’t want his thanks.
I wonder if you’ll thank me when your wife leaves you?
He hefted his knapsack over his shoulder. “Let’s get going,” he said.

Chapter 33

They emerged from the green corridors of the jungle onto the ridgeline. They could see the smoke of cooking fires above the trees and hear the barking of dogs echo down the valley. The mist around the distant mountains was tinted with violet in the late afternoon sun.

“How far?” Reyes asked Tou. They seemed so close, but he knew it could be deceptive-- nothing in the jungle went in a straight line.

“Just a little way,” he said, which was his answer to everything.

This scene could have been from any time in the last five thousand years, he supposed. They seemed as far away from the twentieth century right now as it was possible to be.

He heard a roar and a flash of silver appeared violently over the ridgeline. Reyes saw the blue star painted on the silver skin of the fuselage. Connor said, “It’s okay they’re ours.”

It was one of the dumbest things he had ever heard anyone say, as if those guys could even care who they were. Anything moving in the jungle was enemy for them.

It was a T-28, one of the bombers out of Long Tieng coming back from a raid, must have been buzzing the hills looking for targets. He saw the winking of the machine guns mounted along the wing before he even had time to react.

Tou shouted a warning and leaped for the trees. Reyes grabbed Connor and pulled him off the path. The hammer of machine guns ripped through the jungle, sending gouts of red earth high into the air, trees seemed to explode and topple.

Reyes rolled down the slope and lay among the thick jungle and listened. He prayed they didn’t have any rockets left under the wings or they’d torch the whole hillside. He heard the pilot bank and come around again, screaming so low overhead he thought he was going to crash right on top of them.

And then he was gone.

Reyes waited until he was sure it was safe and got cautiously to his feet. It was like someone had gone through the jungle with a giant scythe.

Reyes called out for Tou, was relieved to see him trotting back down the path, still grinning. “That was close!” he shouted.

Reyes looked down. Connor lay face down, clawing at the dirt with his nails. “I think something’s wrong,” he said.