The Shadow of Arms (15 page)

His decision had gone morally astray from the beginning. The shame did not leave him until the collapse of Diem's regime. It was then that he made a firm resolution. Never would he take any responsibility. Neither would he make any choice. He became a nihilist. Rather, he refused to become an “-ist” of any kind. He decided that what he would do is just take money, hard currency. He would keep saving money and then he would sneak out of the country. His destination would be the paradise of the East: Singapore. Whenever he was out on dusty Route 1 performing inspection duties, he always found himself imagining nightlife in Singapore.

Looking into his notebook, Pham Quyen thought how the charts and diagrams he had planned could be embellished. All he had to do was send an order down to company-level staff and the officers there would have it done beautifully within two days. He could have as many copies printed as he liked of the blueprints, the program summaries, the photographs of the foreign communities used as models.

The main problem was how to entice about two hundred thousand peasant farmers to resettle to the three hundred phoenix hamlets. First off, half the funds and materials and grain would be utilized as incentives, and then an enormous amount of agricultural subsidies and fertilizers and medical supplies and . . . Pham Quyen realized that from then on he would need to concentrate more than half of his time on the phoenix hamlet program. The general's enterprise was at the same time his own enterprise. The business of this enterprise was almost infinite: PX requisition matters, military supplies, military conscription, and so on and so on. Pham Quyen had to bring order to all of it.

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10

The American master sergeant in charge of the canteen was kind enough to bring out a stack of contract papers. There were twenty-eight sheets in all. The payment details were written on the back of each contract, but the documents contained little information helpful to the investigation. Stage names had been used for the singers, and for the dancers all that was recorded was the number in each performing group. It would not be possible to identify Koreans who had joined Thai or Filipino troupes—an agent received payment and distributed wages to the performers. Among the agents, the Hong Kong Group appeared most frequently in the booking records.

Yong Kyu gave up for the time being and asked the canteen sergeant, “How many times has the Korean Army Band performed here?”

The fat American with a tattoo of a rose and dagger on his hairy forearm pretended to be surprised.

“Wait, what's this about? You said you were investigating black market dealings, so I thought . . . in that case I can't answer.”

“Fine. I'm not here to make problems. They used to be professional musicians as civilians back home. Since they're underpaid, it's only natural they do a little moonlighting.”

As Yong Kyu diffused the tension, the sergeant blinked and laughed out loud.

“About four times.”

“Thank you.”

As Yong Kyu started to leave, the sergeant followed him around the table, a bottle of whiskey in hand.

“Come see us again.”

Yong Kyu nonchalantly accepted the bottle. When he got into the car, Toi whistled.

“This is yours.”

“Thanks. You're good at this.”

“Not really. I got him on a soft spot.”

“At the first meeting? In less than five minutes?”

Yong Kyu just smiled and switched on the wireless transceiver and asked for a number. He was connected to the desk at HQ. After listening to Yong Kyu's question, a voice asked him to hold on and then read him a report.

“Market at campside, near the navy hospital. Second shop down from the Hue bar. Make inquiries to fifty-eight-year-old Vietnamese merchant by the name of Liao. Eight cartons of C-rations.”

“Got it. Roger, out.”

Yong Kyu looked over to find Toi already turning the Land Rover left in the direction of their destination.

“Goods from that side usually slip across the Thu Bon.”

“If it's across the river, then wouldn't it be the locals who are eating the stuff?”

“Conditions have improved, then.”

“They collect taxes in the cities.”

They parked and then walked slowly into the neighborhood near the navy hospital. The makeshift huts and crude shacks looked like the toadstools that sprout from rotting tree stumps. There were souvenir shops selling flags, handcrafts, and cheap embroidered clothes; restaurants, soda stands, and lounges doubling as brothels. The storefront signs were written both in Vietnamese and in English. Some shops were completely covered with signs.

Children were running and playing soccer in the middle of the street. Only at the sound of horns honking would they slowly disperse to let traffic pass. Young streetwalkers loitered about, peering into cars and making their offers in sweet voices.

“Quite an eyeful, this.”

“Mmm, it's broad daylight now. You'd be shocked if you came back and saw this place at night. And this is only one of many.”

“How many satellite villages are there around the camps?”

“In Da Nang? Six in the city and ten or more on the outskirts and around the bases. But these places have nothing to do with us.”

“Why not?”

“In these places you just do whatever you can to survive. They're under the jurisdiction of the Vietnamese national police and sometimes the ordinary MPs. That's the way it is.”

This time Toi led the way. They went into the shop. It was about four hundred square feet, with nothing much inside except for beer and cigarettes displayed in the front window, one old Sanyo refrigerator, a table, and two chairs. The proprietor, dressed in a white shirt and black Vietnamese pants, was busy hunting flies with a fly swatter. They sat down at the table and Toi ordered beers. The owner came back with two cans of beer on a filthy tray. When Toi asked him something in Vietnamese, the shopkeeper's expression suddenly changed and he poured out a stream of angry words.

“According to him, there's not a single store that isn't holding some C-rations. They liked the price, so they set a delivery date and bought up all they could with the military payment certificates they'd saved up. He'd bought about twenty cartons but was caught at the checkpoint by the river because he didn't have any invoice. An American MP came and confiscated the goods. The Vietnamese police intervened and wrote him a cash receipt for the value of what they confiscated. But there's nobody who will pay him the interest on so high an amount, he says. I'm not too happy about it, either.”

“The quantity of C-rations is too much, that's the problem. Tell him that.”

“Each shop has its own stash, he says. But they aren't doing house-to-house searches, so others don't get caught. He was just unlucky, he says, and he shouldn't be singled out.”

“Ask him about the woman. Tell him if we find the woman fast, he'll get his money back right away.”

“Tall. Fair skin. Not Vietnamese, but not Western. Came with a Vietnamese driver. He thought she might be an Indian.”

“An Indian?”

“Interesting. This old man's saying she had a big mole on her forehead. There're lots of Indian mixed-bloods living in Da Nang.”

“All right. What did he pay?”

“He says six hundred forty dollars. The time before a different store did the buying. But there's loyalty among the merchants, so he won't say who it was.”

“What kind of car was it?”

“A three-quarter ton. Vietnamese army truck.”

Yong Kyu paid for the beer. They went back and got in the Land Rover. Toi shooed away the children that had gathered snooping for something to steal. Someone grabbed Yong Kyu by the arm. Upon turning around he found himself face-to-face with a smiling Vietnamese girl, around sixteen years old and frail. Yong Kyu was surprised that she wasn't wearing any makeup.

“She knew you were a foreigner,” Toi translated as the girl spoke.

Half listening to Toi, Yong Kyu untangled himself from the young girl. The girl turned to a little boy, perhaps her brother, and shrieked at him to go away. The boy had been muttering at them the whole time.

“Do the boom boom. Very good,” the girl yelled.

Toi shouted something back at her, then they left.

“Shit. We missed lunch,” Toi grumbled.

“Good. Let's go back to the rec center, we can get a free lunch there.”

“Are you really going to find that woman and report her to the captain?” Toi asked.

Yong Kyu paused for a moment to think before he answered. “I'm a soldier. I have a duty to obey the order of a superior. But I want to be tactful in carrying out my orders. I'm no career soldier. It's up to you to train me.”

“I like you. Very wise. I understand you Koreans very well,” Toi said, patting Yong Kyu on the shoulder. “Your duty is to report faithfully all the details directly related to the war and to the Korean forces.”

“I'll tell you right now that I don't make black market deals. I'm not looking to profit from this war. But the captain and I both intend to protect Korean interests.”

Toi took one hand off the steering wheel and grasped Yong Kyu's hand, then released it.

“I'm your friend. Sergeant Kang was not. As far as the black market is concerned, the Americans don't trust Koreans.”

“That's not our concern. They're the ones who got us into this in the first place. Our recruits from farm villages came here for the sake of progress and industrial development. Their petty dealings in the black market, helping themselves to some gifts to bring back home, are not worth mentioning. It's a kind of hazardous duty allowance.”

“Better not talk that way at headquarters. Don't ever argue with the Americans.”

“The captain already warned me.”

“I know what your men are shipping from Da Nang port in those crates. Appliances like refrigerators and televisions. Do you know where they come from?”

“Aren't they duty-free PX goods?”

“That's not what I mean. They're all made in Japan. Hitachi, Sanyo, Sony, Sharp, Akai, National, Asahi, Canon, and who knows how many others. In Vietnam everything is Japanese, from transistor radios to Honda motorbikes to women's lotions, all of it.”

Yong Kyu wondered what kind of man Toi was. He remained silent. Toi now seemed very different from his first impression. Why had he gone to work as a CID agent? His pay probably would be about twenty dollars a month, thirty at most. In his early forties, what about his family? What had he been doing in the Quartermaster Corps? As a youth? He needed to look him in the eyes.

“Do you wear those ugly glasses all the time?”

“I didn't use to.”

Yong Kyu tried to take his sunglasses off, but Toi roughly pushed his hand away. Yong Kyu immediately regretted his move. He had let down his guard and revealed an attitude that was too friendly.

“Don't worry about it. I lost an eye. That's the only reason. Lost it because of some shrapnel from a rocket.”

The Land Rover was entering the rec center compound. A few minutes earlier they had been surrounded by trash, but now they were at a South Pacific resort. The beach was already swarming with people. The snack stand was selling hot dogs, fried chicken, sandwiches, Coke, Foremost ice cream, Sunkist drinks, Big Boy hamburgers, and fruit stamped with the California seal of approval. There were beach umbrellas everywhere and, as if a section of Tahiti had been shipped in, big high-ceilinged huts stood in a line with conical thatched roofs, bamboo railings and wooden steps, their walls open for the ocean breeze to blow through.

Inside each hall were half-naked American soldiers, civilians, and an occasional white woman drinking and dancing to the music. Fluttering among the customers were Vietnamese bar girls with long hair swaying down their backs and red plastic roses stuck behind their ears. They wore Tahitian-style grass skirts with their breasts wrapped in colorful swaths of cloth. But there were others who did not seem to fit in the scene; who were they and where had they come from? Vietnamese civilians, looking like tourists, were sitting under parasols with their families and sipping beers.

The American soldiers looked carefree. The entire beach was carefree: surfers were focused on riding the waves, others were playing ball or water polo, sailing, barbecuing on the beach, rubbing on suntan oil, practicing archery, frolicking in the water with Vietnamese whores, glued to slot machines in the clubhouse. Others were playing poker in small groups.

It all reminded Yong Kyu of something he had once heard from a Vietnamese. He had said an army that has its drinking water air-freighted in, eats cookies mailed from Mom, uses battery-run flush toilets in the field and air conditioners in jungle barracks, that can even offer hot showers to platoons out on combat operations, that was an army gasping for breath in the swamps of Vietnam.

They parked at the gate and walked down the beach. The far end of the beach was closed off with a barbed wire fence, beyond which the Korean rec center could be seen. The place was unfinished and since no troops had been on leave to use it yet, the whole area was very quiet. They walked into the office tent where they found Sergeant Yun flopped down asleep and the other soldiers absorbed in the same game of Chinese checkers as before. Yong Kyu rapped the sergeant on the feet a few times and the latter awoke with a grimace.

“Again? What is this? It's like flies to a honey pot.”

“Careful . . .”

Sergeant Yun looked sorry for having been irritated but said, “Give me a break, will you? There's no reason for you guys to give me such a hard time, eh?”

“What's got you so scared . . . must have done something fishy. This time we're here for a free meal. We missed the lunch hour back at the hotel.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, it's my big chance to bribe you real good. What'd you like?”

“Anything you've got.”

“How about some rice and so on stuffed in seaweed, good old
kimbap
?”

It was a Korean favorite hard to come by in Vietnam.

“Any hot pepper paste?”

“Sure, last year we made
gochujang
with Vietnamese red peppers. It'll scorch your tongue.”

“Some rice mixed with that will be good enough.”

“Good, what about your friend?”

“Give him a steak or two. And some beer.”

The sergeant barked orders to the soldiers, then took out a bottle from his private refrigerator. Cognac.

“How about a drink of this, eh?”

“Can't.”

“Can't, my ass. Hey, this stuff does wonders for a soldier's lips. The aftertaste is great.”

They each had a glass. Yong Kyu spoke.

“Actually, there's something I need to find out. Have you seen a tall Korean woman with a prominent mole on her forehead?”

“Shit. You slimy bastard, I should've known. You came all the way back here just to ask me that, didn't you?”

“Just tell me if you've seen her or not. And let's finish off the bottle while we're at it. My duty for the day is a lost cause.”

“Wait a minute . . . mole on the forehead, you say?” Sergeant Yun hesitated. “You're not going to send an innocent bystander to the dungeons, are you?”

“Nothing like that. It's just to keep up appearances. Looks like those American bastards are trying to measure our job performance.”

“Is that a fact?” Sergeant Yun hurriedly poured himself a drink and gulped it down. “I've seen her once.”