Word of Honor (2 page)

CENT ARRIVALS sat

a tall stack of them,

red, black, and white

spines facing him. The

top of the stack was

3 crowned with a stand

ing display copy. Ty-

son took the copy and leafed through it.

Interspersed with the text were photograph sections, and every few chapters there were classical military map drawings of Hue and environs. The book fell open to the title page, and Tyson saw that it was autographed by Andrew Picard.

"The author was in here yesterday."

Tyson looked up into the eyes of a young woman dressed in jeans and a T-shirt that said "New York Is Book Country. "

She continued, "We just got those in last week. He bought I I

12 * NELSON DEMILLE

a copy for me and signed it. I read part of it last night. I try to at least scan the major books that come in."

Tyson nodded.

She went on, "It's in the style of the big battle through the eyes of little people." She appraised Tyson closely. "Were you there? Nam, I mean."

Tyson replied, "Quite possibly."

She smiled, "Well, I'd recommend it as a good readif you were there. Not really my taste."

Tyson said, "There's supposed to be a part in here about a massacre of a French hospital."

She grimaced. "Right. Really gross." She thought a moment, then said, "How could we do something like that?"

Tyson marveled at how the young used the first-person pronoun to include and indict themselves for the depredations of the government and the military. He said, "It was a long time ago. I'll take the book."

Tyson went to the comer of 42nd and Second and entered Ryan McFadden's, a sort of upscale Irish pub. His eyes adjusted to the dim light, and he moved to the long bar, taking an empty stool. The establishment's clientele was eclectic: foreigners from the nearby U.N., local media people from the WPIX-Daily News building across the avenue, and a smattering of literati whose presence seemed a mystery to the owners, who did not encourage that sort of trade. it was not the type of place frequented by businessmen, and he did not expect to run into any of his associates. One of the owners, Dan Ryan, greeted him warmly. "Ben, how's life been treating you?"

Tyson pondered several answers, then replied, "Not too bad. "

Ryan ordered him a Dewar's and soda, with the traditional Irish publican's

"Good luck."

Tyson raised his glass. -Slaint~.

Ryan moved off to greet a group of newcomers. For the first time since he'd opened Picard's book that morning, Tyson's thoughts turned exclusively to his wife: Marcy was not the type of wife one saw on the news, standing staunchly

WORD OF HONOR 13

beside a prominent husband accused of political corruption, embezzlement, or sexual wrongdoing. She was very much her own woman and gave her loyalty selectively, as it should be given. She was not, for instance, a good corporate wife, and in fact had a career of her own as well as a mind of her own. She had been and still was violently antiwar, antimilitary, and anti-anything that didn't fit neatly into her own left-of-center view of the world. Her reaction to the book would be revealing, Tyson thought.

Tyson opened his attachd case and took the book. He set it on the bar and scanned the pertinent chapter quickly, unwilling to actually read or comprehend any more of it, like someone who has gotten a Dear John letter or a telegram about a death. His name jumped out at him in various forms: Tyson's platoon; Lieutenant Tyson; Tyson's men; Tyson's medic; Tyson's radio operator....

He shut the book, finished his drink, and ordered another. After some time he opened the book to a page he had dogeared, and read a passage: As the platoon approached, they were presented with three conflicting signals: the Viet Cong flag, the Red Cross flag, and the white sheet. The latter may have lulled them into a false sense of security as they crossed the exposed courtyard in front of the building. Suddenly shots rang out, and Larry Cane was killed instantly. Moody and Peterson were hit. The platoon took cover and returned the fire.

Of the two wounded, Moody's injury was slight, but Peterson's wound was critical. The morale of the platoon, not good to begin with, became worse. There was a feeling of helpless rage and impotence among the men, a feeling that they'd been duped and deceived.

Tyson nodded to himself. Yes, that was an accurate description. Rage and impotence. They'd been played for suckers. Not only by the enemy, but by their commanders in the field, their commanders at headquarters, their com-14 * NELSON DEMILLE

manders in Washington. They were looking for something or someone to strike back at. In retrospect, Tyson realized those people in the hospital never had a chance.

Tyson skipped a page.

On entering the hospital, Tyson demanded immediate medical attention for his two wounded.

The hospital's chief of staff, a Frenchman named Dr. Jean Monteau, explained rather peremptorily to Tyson in passable English that the hospital was on the triage system: i.e., there were so many patients and so few staff and, supplies that those who were clearly dying-like Peterson---could not be helped and those who were lightly woundedlike Moody-would have to wait. Whereupon, Dr. Monteau turned his back on Tyson and began attending a Viet Cong soldier whose arm was shredded by shrapnel and who apparently fell into the proper category to receive care.

Dr. Monteau's medical judgment may have been sound, but his judgment of the situation could not have been worse.

Tyson looked up from the book. "You got that right, Picard. " He tried to picture the face of Dr. Jean Monteau but he was able only to conjure up a sneering caricature of an arrogant little Frenchman. Surely, he thought, this was a defense mechanism of his mind, a justification for what happened. The real Dr. Monteau had addressed him with some dignity and politeness. What may have seemed at the time like peremptoriness was fatigue. He thought again, then concluded, No, Monteau certainly was an arrogant little son of a bitch. But he didn't deserve to die for it.

Tyson stiffed his drink, then read again at random: Tyson's platoon, as I've mentioned, had been operating independently of its company for over a week. They had already suffered high casualties in the preceding sixteen days of the offensive. Out of an original platoon of forty men, nineteen reWORD OF HONOR * 15

mained. Also, they had gone without rest or resupply for the seven days prior to this incident.

These facts are not meant to suggest extenuating circumstances for what happened. They are provided only as background. Certainly soldiers have been more sorely tried, more lacking in comforts, more exposed to hostile action and the general horrors of war than this unfortunate platoon, without reverting to-Tyson slammed the book. He lit a cigarette and watched the smoke rise, then abruptly turned the book over and looked closely at the picture of Andrew Picard. The photo seemed oddly bluffed, but he saw the profile of a bearded man of about his own age, dressed in a light shirt with military-style shoulder tabs. There were lines running across the photograph, and Tyson saw that they were actually names. He suddenly realized that the photograph was of Picard's image reflected in a dark, glossy surface, and he comprehended that the surface was the black granite wall of the Vietnam memorial in Washington.

Tyson stared at the extraordinary photograph for some time, reading the etched names of the dead that ran across the black wall, across Picard's mirrored image, out to the edges of the dust jacket-that ran, he thought, across time and space; the army of the dead.

Tyson opened the book to the inside flap and read the short biography: Andrew Picard is a graduate of Yale University. He served with the Marines as a Public Information Officer in Vietnam at Hue during the Tet offensive.

He lives and works in Sag Harbor, Long Island.

Tyson nodded. Yale. Probably went to Platoon Commander School the summer after graduation but had gotten himself a cushy public relations job and managed to avoid actually having to lead a combat infantry platoon.

Sag Harbor. A little town just north of the Hamptons. Tyson had rented a summer house out there some years before. He could vaguely recall a roadside mailbox that he passed often with the names Picard/Wells on it, but couldn't remember exactly where. It appeared that the lines of his 16 * NELSON DEMILLE

life and Mr. Picard's had converged without touching: once in 1968 at Hue, then in the summer of '76, and most recently in a bookshop on 42nd Street.

It appeared too that they were somehow fated to meet.

Over his third Scotch, Tyson recollected an incident nearly two years before; he had received a telephone call at his home from a man who said he was researching a book on Vietnam. Tyson recalled being as unhelpful as possible without being obviously evasive. Some weeks later the man had called again. Tyson had been abrupt and hung up. Andrew Picard. Tyson nodded in recognition.

Tyson thumbed through the book and regarded the photograph pages. There was the usual lineup of military commanders: Americans and their South Vietnamese allies on one side, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese on the other. Like a football program, he thought.

Then there were the shockers: the uncollected dead, the trucks and armored vehicles hauling the collected dead, the civilians on their knees weeping and wailing over inert bodies, the grotesquely wounded, and finally the mass graves. And it was all in black and white which he thought was wrong. World War 11 was in black and white. This war was in color.

Tyson stopped turning pages and looked down at a halfpage photograph.

Grouped around the ruined hull of an enemy armored amphibious vehicle were the men of the First Platoon, Alpha Company, Fifth Battalion, Seventh Cavalry. There were nearly forty of them, a team shot, taken before the Tet season began, before injuries cut the roster by more than half.

They were, he thought, a cocky-looking crew, arrogant and unfrightened.

A good deal of that was posturing, of course. But he remembered that the picture had been taken in December 1967, around Christmas-before that first fateful day of Tet, January 30, 1968, when Alpha Company had lost a third of its people one morning in a village called Phu Lai.

December, though, had been a good month. The rain was light, the winds warm, and the sun not so cruel. Casualties were zero that month, and they'd tallied some kills on their side of the scoreboard. Christmas, if not a Currier and Ives

WORD OF HONOR & 17

one, had at least been bloodless. Ergo the smug faces of the men of the First Platoon of Alpha Company.

Tyson saw himself poised in the turret of the enemy vehicle, the warlord atop the scarred castle turret of the vanquished enemy, his victorious soldiers gathered about.

He scanned the faces more closely and was able to pick out the ones who were fated to die and those about to be wounded.

He studied the faces with the intensity of a man studying a high school yearbook before an upcoming reunion.

Tyson closed the book and slipped it into his attach6 case. He picked up his drink and noticed the slightest tremor in his hand. He replaced the glass on the bar and drew a deep breath.

He headed for the door, stepped out into the bright sunlight, and began walking. By the time he reached Fifth Avenue, his mind had settled back into the present. He considered the consequences of this public exposure.

He reflected for a while on his courses of action, his family, friends, and career.

The danger seemed unreal and remote at the moment, but that was the worst kind of danger: the kind you cannot or will not meet head-on. The kind that is amorphous at first, incorporeal, but which takes shape while you're busy denying it exists and then hardens into a physical entity.

It was very much, he thought, like when the jungle suddenly became quiet at night. Nothing out there. Then the bamboo would click in the wind, but there was no wind. Moon shadows would move across the outer perimeter, but there was no moon and no clouds to make shadows.

Then suddenly, between the beats of a speeding heart, the silent and shapeless shadows would appear, black-clad in the black night, dropping all pretense of not existing, moving toward your pathetic little perimeter of invented safety. _

Tyson stopped walking and wiped a line of perspiration from his forehead.

He looked around as though to assure himself he was on the sidewalks of New York. Then his mind went back once again to that rainy morning in Hue. It seemed that it had happened on another planet, in another life, and to another person. That Ben Tyson, he thought,

18 * NELSON DEMILLE

was twenty-five years old, unmarried, had never held an infant in his arms or seen a corpse outside a funeral home. That Ben Tyson had only a vague conception of love, hate, tragedy, compassion, or even morality.

Nothing in his sheltered American life had prepared him for Hue, 15

February 1968.

The question at hand, however, was this: Had anything since then prepared him to face the consequences of that day?

I Ben Tyson boarded the 1:40 out of Penn Station and took a seat in

CHAPTER the smoking car.

The train moved out

through the dark tun

nels of Manhattan,

passed under the East

River, then broke free

into the sunlight of

Queens.

4 At Jamaica Station

there were the usual

garbled PA announcements and the search for the right track before he boarded the correct train.

Twenty-two minutes out of Jamaica, the train came to a halt at Garden City station, and Tyson stepped out onto the sunny platform near the quaint station house.

He could smell the flowers, great colored protrusions of them, growing wild along the track beds. Out of instinct he turned right toward his house, then reversed his direction and walked along the raised platform toward the center of

19

20 0 NELSON DEMILLE

the village. He descended the short flight of steps and crossed Hilton Avenue.