The Summer Garden (113 page)

At eight, Moon Lai slowly walked down the path with clean bandages and came to the last hut barely thirty feet away from the troops. Opening the door, she disappeared inside. As soon as she was in, Alexander and Ha Si, silent like tigers, made their way to the hooch. They stood, stood, and then flung open the door and in one movement were through.

Inside was empty—a grassy space, perhaps twelve feet square, and no Moon Lai. Ha Si pointed to the secret trap door in the ground. Had they not known to look for it, they never would have seen it. The huts
were
decoys, empty of life.

Ha Si pulled the grass hatch open slightly to see which way it hinged. Turned out, it just lay on top like a manhole cover. The ladder faced away from the back wall of the hut and that’s where Alexander and Ha Si planted so that Moon Lai’s back would be to them when she ascended the ladder.

Twenty unbearable mute minutes crawled by. It was damp and fluid and sticky in the hooch, it was stifling and sweaty. Though Alexander listened, there was no noise from below. “Are you a Buddhist, Ha Si? An animist?” he whispered, pulling up and kissing his cross.

“No,” Ha Si replied, kissing his own cross. “I’m a good Catholic boy like you and your son, Major Barrington.”

A slight creaking of the ladder alerted them. They both crouched, got ready, barely breathing. The manhole cover was lifted by a small, crippled hand. She struggled, having a hard time pulling herself and her belly up onto the straw floor. Her back was to them. Alexander smelled the sulfur of medicine, he smelled the salt of blood, he saw the empty opium vials she put on the ground next to the bloodied rags. Whoever she was taking care of was not only hurt but in pain.

Alexander and Ha Si waited two more seconds.

She was barely out and still on her haunches when Alexander, not giving her a chance to stand or to see them in the peripheral vision of her eye, sprang on her, knocking her down on the ground, his arm over her arms, his hand over her mouth. Instantly Ha Si pulled the manhole cover closed so no one could hear them from below. Holding her very tightly, Alexander leaned to her ear and whispered, “Where is Anthony?”

The woman went into convulsions in her struggle against him. She tried to scream, to turn her head, he had to hold her so firmly it must have hurt her, but she fought anyway and flailed her legs until Ha Si grabbed hold of them, while Alexander gripped her around her chest with one arm, keeping the other over her mouth. She tried to bite him. He had to snap her jaws shut. Turning her head to him so she could see his grim face, he said, “Stop moving. Stop fighting.” He gave her head a yank. Since he didn’t think she understood him, he jerked her head again to get her to stop her frenzy. A stick-on bandage covered one eye, but her other, seeing eye, very near his face, was black and round with—what
was
that? Strangely, it didn’t look like fear. Despite the pressure on her neck, she kept trying to bite him, kept shaking her head, kept trying to free herself from him.

“
Dâu lá
Anthony?” Ha Si said in Vietnamese, while tying her feet together with rope. “
Où est
Anthony?” he asked in French.

She kept shaking her head in Alexander’s hands. Shaking or trying to free herself?

“Where is Anthony?” Alexander asked in English. “
Gde
Anthony?” he whispered in Russian. She blinked. She blinked at
Russian
?

Alexander couldn’t let go of her mouth until he was sure she wouldn’t scream, because if she screamed they’d have to kill her and run, and their op would be finished before it began, and they still would know nothing about Anthony. “Should we take her into the trench?” Alexander asked Ha Si, panting.

She groaned, shaking her head against his hand.

Alexander looked down at her. “
She
understands me?”

She nodded. Recognition was in her eye. She was looking at him as if she knew him.

“Are you going to scream?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“You speak English?”

She nodded, but he couldn’t trust her. What if she screamed? One of her hands had gotten loose from Alexander, and she reached over and grabbed the dirty bandage lying on the ground and waved it up and down—like a white flag.

After exchanging a look with Alexander, Ha Si pulled out his SOG knife and stuck it into Moon Lai’s neck. “Listen to me,” he said. “He will let go of your mouth, but if you utter one sound above a whisper, the knife is going into your throat, do you understand?”

She nodded. Alexander still held her head in a twist. “Even before he gets to you with his knife,” he said, “I’m going to break your fucking neck if you raise your voice. Do you understand
that
?”

She nodded.

“Do you know where Anthony is?”

She shook her head.

“Do you want us to take you into the woods?” said Ha Si. “Two men to take you into the woods and keep you there until you tell us where he is? Because that’s next for you.”

Alexander frowned at Ha Si. Were these kinds of threats really necessary against a pregnant woman? Moon Lai saw his ambivalence. Ha Si, ignoring him, was undeterred. “Stop looking at him. Look at
me
. Where is Anthony?”

She shrugged again, struggled again. Alexander’s hand remained over her mouth.

“If you don’t tell us,” Ha Si said, “we’ll snatch your mother. And the little boy. Nod if you understand.”

The girl nodded.

“Where is he?” Alexander asked in a milder tone than Ha Si, despite his firm hold on her fragile throat. He applied extra pressure. “Is my son down there?” he asked her. “Is he in the hole?” When she did not reply, Alexander yanked her neck back. She gasped against his palm but did not reply. She was a pregnant woman! This was
insane
. “Please,” he said to her, moving off her body, no longer straddling her, letting her lie on her side. “Please. I don’t want to hurt you. I just want my son. Tell me if he is down below, that’s all I want.” Taking a chance, Alexander let go of her mouth.

She just lay on the ground, panting and limp, not trying to get away, saying nothing, her brown eye moist and knowing, blinking at him. Ha Si backed away a few inches, his knife still trained on her, and Alexander moved away three feet—to get away from her heaving belly. He wished he could close his eyes and not look at her. His instincts were about to fail him, looking at a tiny woman so heavily pregnant, in a physical fight with two armed soldiers. It was too fucked up. “Please,” he said, “just tell me where he is.”

Moon Lai opened her mouth and spoke softly in halting but very good English. “You know,” she said, “he assured me you would never find him. But I told him you would find a way.”

No closing of eyes now. Eyes were opened wide. “
What
?” Alexander whispered.

“It won’t do
you
any good to pretend to be surprised,” she said.

“Who is surprised? He is alive?”

“I do not know,” she said in her spare voice. “He was barely alive when they took him from here.”

Took him from here! Alexander couldn’t speak. He almost cried.

“You are too late. He is near Hanoi now,” she said. “Soon they will take him to a Castro camp near China. And then USSR.”

Groaning, exhaling, Alexander sank into the earth.

She was watching him unblinking. They were all on the ground, Moon Lai near the manhole, half-lying down. Alexander aghast and against the wall, legs spread out, Ha Si close to her, gripping the pointed knife.

“I know where he is. I will take you to him,” she said. “You come with me. He was alive when he left here. But we do not have much time.”

Alexander had lost his power of speech.

“You are a fucking liar,” said Ha Si. “Whose bandages are you changing twice a day?”

Moon Lai smiled softly. “This is a transit camp. We have other POW here,” she said. “I help them, too, the way I helped him.” Sitting up, she straightened out and brushed the straw off her face.

“Keep your hands in front of you,” Ha Si said, moving closer.

“Okay, okay.” She put them on her belly and cringed as if she were in pain. She was trying to control her breathing.

If Alexander didn’t listen to her words and looked at her mute, she was just a young
pregnant
girl pleading for compassion from men. Perhaps pregnant with Anthony’s baby. Oh God. If one didn’t look at the patch over her face, you could see how fresh she was, how small and pretty. “How old are you?” he asked numbly.

“Seventeen.”

His heart nearly gave out. He glanced at Ha Si for strength.

Ha Si, emotionless, his eyes brutal, shook his head at Alexander, as if to say, buck up, soldier. “You are not seventeen,” he said. “Maybe a hundred and seventeen. Do not lie to the major. How old are you?”

“Twenty-six,” she said. “Born in 1943. Like his son.”

Alexander was surprised; she looked young like a child. “Are there guards down there?” he asked, frowning at her lies.

“Many. Guarding the POW. But what does it matter? He is not here.”

“Armed guards?”

“Heavily.”

They were quiet.

“You lay in wait for the American patrols in Hué,” Alexander said. “You lay in wait for my son.”

“I was just bait,” she said with a shrug. “Usually we killed them then and there. Not your son. He is some warrior. He is the reason I am half blind.”

“Ah,” said Ha Si, “but in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

“I do not care for your insults about my country,” said Moon Lai without looking at him. She spoke in a gentle, non-inflammatory tone. Her manner was subservient. “It is your country, too, Bannha.” She never once looked at Ha Si. Her eye was trained only on Alexander. “In Hué, Anthony thought he was saving me. He was so noble and decent. Such an easy mark, your son,” she said softly. “The easiest. Just a few days and he was wholly addicted.” Her eye smiled approvingly at Alexander. “But really, I must tell you, you did not teach him very well. He is too trusting. Though, of course, it is probably the only reason he is still alive today. Because I was going to kill him like I kill them all—kill him with opium, with deadly vipers.” She had a lilting voice, sweet. “But he started telling me such interesting stories about his life! I waited to listen. He told me a little at a time, but when we married, he told me
everything
. I was just a Vietnamese whore he saved, a simple village girl desperately in need of his protection.” Her eye glistened and shined as she spoke of him. “He told me so much, thinking I barely understood. And I sat and listened. He told me about his mother, the Soviet escapee, and about his father, the American who came to the Soviet Union, who had served in the Red Army, who escaped twice, who killed Soviet interrogators and NKVD border troops, who escaped from a maximum security Soviet prison and was now in U.S. military intelligence.” Moon Lai looked as though she were tenderly reminiscing. “He was so thorough, we barely even had to go to your files to confirm his stories.”

“Oh, my God, who
are
you?” Alexander whispered, his hands shaking.

“I am his wife,” Moon Lai said in her most pleasant voice. “I am his pregnant wife and I was his nurse.”

Alexander was grateful he was sitting. Once he had given
all
of himself away, the same reckless way, to a small, soft, very young Soviet factory girl, whom he had barely known, sitting on a bench under the summer elms in the Italian Gardens in Leningrad. Pale and trembling, watching this girl, he asked, “How did you get him to come with you all the way here?” He was looking for something from her, a small tremulous clue to one thing and one thing only: Where was Anthony?

Moon Lai shrugged. “He came peacefully. When he got suspicious, a few miles south of the DMZ, I helped him go to sleep, and when he woke up, he was here. It was not even a fight.”

Alexander was mute, struck dumb by the vision of his son, waking up to find himself here.

Moon Lai continued in a murmur. “But once here, Anthony suddenly needed so much persuasion to keep on talking! Which is when all our trouble with him began. Because when he did talk, he told us the most damnable lies about the American military positions. He sent us on crazy missions that ended in large losses for us; we kept walking right into ambushes and booby traps. And he kept trying to kill our guards, succeeding three times, twice while he was still shackled! He became very dangerous. We had no choice but to incapacitate him and then to transfer him.”

Incapacitate him
? mouthed Alexander.

“Every
other
word out of your mouth,” said Ha Si, “is a fucking lie. He is down there right now.”

“No, he is not,” Moon Lai said without argument. “But there
are
fifty guards there with the prisoners. You two want to take them on in the dark tunnels by yourselves? Please—go right ahead.”

“Fifty guards?” said Ha Si. “How many prisoners do you have down there?”

Not answering, Moon Lai said to Alexander, “Tell your Bannha to take his weapon from me, Commander. I am your daughter-in-law. This child could be your grandchild. The knife comes off my neck
right
now.”

After a frayed moment Alexander motioned to Ha Si who, with supreme reluctance, moved himself and his weapon away and behind Moon Lai.

“Is it…Anthony’s child?” Alexander asked haltingly.

Her one eye stared right back at his two, all three brown-hued, a telescoping triangle playing for keeps, all unblinking and unflinching. “Commander, what are you asking me? You came to Vietnam, abandoned your family, put your own life in mortal danger, all to see your son again. I am about to help you do that, if you will be reasonable, and you are sitting here asking me about”—she pointed to her large belly—“this? What does it matter?”

Now Alexander flinched and blinked. “What does it
matter
?” He exhaled. “It matters a great, big, fucking deal. Don’t evade me, don’t defraud me. Can you say one fucking thing without dissembling? It’s a simple question. Yes or no. Is it his child?”