Tree of Smoke (64 page)

“Describe what you mean. I’m here to help.”

“What bullshit.”

“I’d say the bullshit’s all yours.”

“His three-by-five collection.”

“Oh. Yeah. Those were archives. I don’t know where they got to.”

“When did you last see the material?”

“In the PI—I was cataloging some of it, then he took it away. Check with the RSC up there. Maybe somebody knows. Check at Clark Field. That’s where I last saw the stuff.”

“Voss saw those footlockers here. In Saigon. At the CIA bungalow right after you arrived.”

“That can’t be true. Or it’s very doubtful. They were taken off my hands at Clark.”

“They were here.”

“Then they were shipped here after they were taken off my hands.”

“Skip. What kind of career path do you believe yourself to be following?”

“Kind of a corkscrew one. Pointing down. Can I tell you about the files? The files were archival in nature, very out of date, of no current interest. If I had them I’d have no reason to hide them, no motive. If I had them, I would turn them over to you immediately.”

“You know what I like about your style? We catch you lying and you forge right ahead.”

“Hook me up. I’ll pass.”

“Oh, we’ll hook you up.”

“I’ll pass. Get to it.”

“And a UA.”

Skip said nothing.

“A urinalysis?”

“Oh. That’s fine.”

“Lot of narcotic use in Five Corps. Can’t tell who might be caught in the snares.”

“Bring me a jug and I’ll piss in it.”

Crodelle stopped the recorder, stood up to lean over it and grip its cord and pull the plug from the wall. The plug came flying at his face and he dodged it and hesitated, blinking, before he sat back down to say, “Skip, I don’t believe this. I’ve never seen anybody fuck himself so thoroughly and so completely. And for no good reason. What’s the point?”

“I don’t know, man, there’s just something about you that pisses me off.”

“You’re pretty good at this. I wish you were working for our side.”

“I’m not going to touch that crap.”

“Excellent. Let’s meet the machine. I’ll be back.” He went out, leaving Sands alone.

Within seconds Sands heard activity in the hall. Escorted by a black civilian, Nguyen Hao passed the open doorway.

For ten minutes Sands sat alone at the conference table with his thoughts banging against nothing.

Crodelle came back with a middle-aged man, apparently civilian, and introduced him as Chambers, the technician. “Chambers has been doing this longer than any of us have been telling lies.”

“Is that true?”

“Twenty-plus years,” Chambers said.

“I’m down the hall if you need me,” Crodelle said, and went out while Chambers sat next to Sands and peered beneath the table.

When he sat up again he said, “You’ve been polygraphed before.”

“Yes. One time. What’s under the table?”

“Just making sure it’s unplugged.”

“Oh.”

“This is the dry run.”

“Oh.”

“So you’ve been polygraphed. Just the once?”

“Yes. For clearance.”

“All right, now, this exam. We’ll probably be taking you through the same steps you went through when you were polygraphed originally for your security clearance. What we’re after is minimal exam-created stress. In other words, ha-ha, relax, buddy.”

“I’m relaxed.”

“Sure you are. So, okay. Couple questions.”

“Okay.”

“Have you been schooled in methods for evading the truth while being polygraphed?”

“I’ve been told. Not schooled. I’ve just—it’s been mentioned.”

“You haven’t been trained, using an actual machine.”

“No. Never.”

“After the session, you’ll be examined physically. We’ll check your tongue for signs you’ve been biting it, palms for nail marks, and so on.”

“I’ve heard about those things, but I don’t remember when you’re supposed to use them. Whether it’s when you’re lying, or when you’re telling the truth, or—”

“Have you been schooled in techniques for slowing your breathing, staying calm under stress, that kind of thing?”

“Not for these purposes. Not schooled. Just—‘Keep a tight asshole when the guns go off, breathe shallow when your heart beats too fast,’ that kind of thing.”

“So, first step: This test consists of twenty questions. I have the questions here, and you will read them silently to yourself. We do this in order to eliminate any reaction of surprise from the graph. Do you understand the purpose of seeing the questions in advance of the test?”

“Yes. We’re eliminating reactions of surprise.”

Chambers opened his manila folder and handed it over. The questions were typed on a single sheet of paper bound to the inside cover by a paper clip. Sands looked them over.

“At this point, is there anything you need clarified about the process?”

“Will there be more tests? Subsequent to this one?”

“Oh, right, good. The exam itself consists of four tests, each with different questions, although some questions may be repeated in subsequent tests or in all four tests. Sorry. I forgot to say that. Anything else you need clarified at this point?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Anything you need clarified at any point, just ask. Now. In order to familiarize you with the procedure in advance, I’m going to hook you up without turning on the machine. The machine will not be operating. Do you understand that the machine will not be operating?”

“The machine’s off. Yes.”

“When the machine is operating, this scroll will be moving along, and these three needles will move up and down to create lines across the graph.”

“I understand.”

“I’ve got to ask you to remove your shirt, please.”

Sands complied and laid his shirt across the arm of his chair.

“And the watch. Just lay it on the table. Are you right-or left-handed?”

“Right.”

“Will you place your right arm here on the table, please? Lay it out flat.” Chambers wrapped a blood-pressure cuff around Sands’s bicep. “We’ll record blood pressure, and breathing, and galvanic skin response. If you’ll lean forward, please.” Sands leaned forward and Chambers wrapped a beige rubber tube around his chest and joined its ends together with a small metal clamp. “Too tight?”

“No. I don’t know. You’re the technician.”

“These clips go on your fingertips here. That gives us skin temperature.” After the finger clips, Chambers touched the attachments gently, the cuff, the tube, the clips, making small adjustments, and sat back in his chair. “Comfortable?”

“Definitely not.”

“Well, nobody ever is. You’ve read the questions, correct?”

“Yes.”

“To you some of them seem stupid, probably, and some seem irrelevant. Others seem obviously true or obviously false. That’s how we get a reading of your response to different categories. I’m just assuring you it all makes sense.”

“I understand.”

“Very good. At this point in our dry run, I’m going to read the questions to you so you hear them in my voice and we eliminate the random stress of any surprises. You don’t answer the questions. I just read them. You can stop me at any time to discuss any question.” Chambers picked up his manila folder and opened it on his lap. “Ready?”

“Begin.”

“Is your name William Sands?…Were you born in Miami, Florida?…Do you know the whereabouts of footlockers containing the files of Colonel Francis Xavier Sands?…Did you graduate from Indiana University?”

“Excuse me.”

“Yes.”

“I have two degrees, a BA from Indiana and an MA from George Washington. So I wouldn’t know exactly—”

“Okay. Bachelor of Arts from Indiana University, correct?”

“Correct.”

“All right. The question will read as follows: Do you have a Bachelor of Arts degree from Indiana University?”

“Okay.”

“Okay. The queries continue as follows: Do you know Trung Than?…Are you the nephew of Colonel Francis Xavier Sands?…Am I wearing a shirt with short sleeves?…Do you enjoy telling lies?”

“Wait.”

“Yes.”

“The one about whether I’m a nephew—I assume I’m someone’s nephew whether they’re living or dead.”

“Hm. You know what? I have to check on that one. Excuse me.”

Chambers stood and left the room, taking with him the manila folder.

Sands waited and watched the door left open, past which he now believed any of his acquaintances might be seen drifting, Minh, Storm, Trung, his mother, uncle, father, a parade of ghosts.

When Chambers returned he said, “We’ve changed two queries. I’ll continue with my little recital here, and then you can read it all to yourself again, okay?”

“Yes. Okay.”

“Do you know the whereabouts of Trung Than?…Were you born in the month of December?…Are you stationed in Cao Phuc, South Vietnam?…Do you know the whereabouts of files compiled by Colonel Francis Xavier Sands?…Have you ever met a man named Trung Than?…Do you have a son named John?…Are the lights on in this room?…Has Trung Than ever been a VC operative?…Did you ever witness Trung Than having direct contact with Colonel Francis Xavier Sands?…Do you know where the colonel’s files are at this time?…Do you have a master’s degree from George Washington University?…Do you know the probable whereabouts of the colonel’s files?…

“That’s it. Let’s get you unhooked.” As Chambers removed the cuff and chest tube and finger clips and Sands slipped his arms into his shirt-sleeves, Chambers said, “I’ll leave the query sheet with you for a bit. Look over the questions again while I excuse myself again.”

Sands sat looking over the questions without seeing them.

“If you button your buttons,” someone said, “we can go to lunch.”

Crodelle and Voss stood in the doorway with something of the air about them of older brothers who’d just paid his fare at a brothel.

“What?”

“Lunchtime.”

“Lunch?”

“It’s two-fifteen,” Crodelle said. “Are you hungry?”

“You mean go out?”

“Yeah. The Rex or someplace. Let’s go to the Rex.”

“All right.”

“All right?”

“Fine with me.”

“It’s a lull. You’ll read better if you hear the questions and then forget about them awhile.”

“Forget about them. You bet.”

He followed them down the hall past the marine sergeant and the digit pad and the electric lock and up the stairs.

Before descending the steps outside, Crodelle stopped to place his green beret on his head and get it snug. The beret-flash was one Sands hadn’t seen before, black and white and gray, edged with yellow. They walked toward the concrete traffic barricades and Skip said, “Your hair’s a little long for uniform, isn’t it?”

“I’m not often in uniform.”

“What’s your insignia there,” Skip asked, pointing at his beret-flash.

“JFK Special Warfare Center,” Crodelle said.

“Where’s that located?” Skip asked, and as they stepped beyond the barricades he took off running, pounding along in a full-out sprint until he came up against a cross street, heading right, continuing along the path of least resistance. Where a woman guided her two children into the motor traffic he slowed to a walk and joined them and they threaded themselves through the deranged flow of small vehicles to the other side, and he ran again, following a series of right-angle zigzags through the city for half a mile, not once looking back. On Louis Pasteur he took to the park under the massive trees and adopted a pace he’d learned in the Boy Scouts of America, fifty paces walking, fifty paces jogging.

He observed the activity of the streetside beyond the trees and saw no one but the denizens of Saigon, gripped by a lust for survival, making their way through the moments. To reach here he must have leapt over sandbags and in and out of the street, must have paused, reversed, dodged left and right like a linebacker, and knocked some of these fine people to the pavement, but he kept no impression of any of it.

Coming out of the park he hailed a cab and collapsed perspiring in the backseat and sent the driver to the Cho Lon depot. This late in the day the buses had probably already stopped running. Until they started again in the morning he’d take refuge in a barroom. Or in a temple or a church. A whorehouse, an opium den. A fugitive, a traitor.

His cordovan shoes stank of the gutters he’d run through. He cranked the window down.

He regretted having to miss the exam. Of the questions they’d prepared for him, he saw one as relevant:

“Do you enjoy telling lies?”

“Yes,” he would have answered truthfully.

G
enerally Dietrich Fest took his lunch at a soup place on the far side of Tu Do Street, the big thoroughfare a couple of blocks from the Continental. For supper he’d found better places, nothing with a German flavor but good enough that he worried about his weight. By now he was familiar with every restaurant he could walk to. He didn’t like the taxis. He dealt more easily with the cyclo boys.

He used the message drop in the Green Parrot’s lavatory only once—to change the location of the next drop. He chose a restaurant across the plaza from the Continental where he could watch the people going in and out. Only Major Keng used the drop.

He told the management his room was too small, and they moved him to another on the western side that got too much sun in the afternoon. That night he put the air conditioner at its coldest setting, and by morning its labors were muffled and its vents clogged with frost. He called downstairs to complain. Two workmen arrived and said if he set the controlling dial at medium the ice would melt and the machine would work better. They went away talking to one another in a language he found twangy, shrill, grating, a kind of buzzing whine.

He’d planned on a couple of weeks in Saigon. He’d been here almost two months.

Every few days he came to the management with a reason to move to another room.

His target lodged in a room in a mixed Chinese-Vietnamese neighborhood at the edge of the Cho Lon District.

Across the street from the site of completion, a single shop sold fabric and perhaps also made women’s dresses. On that side the rest of the block presented closed doors and a couple of alleyways in which noisy women and children appeared to pass most of their daily lives: crates for tables and boxes for chairs, fuming hibachis and leaking wooden tubs and lines of washing. Fest could watch a little, but there was no café on the street, no excuse for his presence. He stood next to the fabric shop as if waiting for someone.