Back to the present, I noticed my cabdriver looking at me in the rearview mirror. He asked me, “What airline?”
I looked out the window and saw we were at Dulles. I replied, “Asiana.”
“Where you heading?”
“Vietnam.”
“Yeah? Thought you were heading for someplace nice. Saw you smiling.”
“I just came back from someplace nice.”
As per my e-mail instructions from Herr Hellmann, I went directly to the Asiana Airlines lounge, known as the Morning Calm Club.
I was buzzed in, and as instructed, showed my passport to the pretty East Asian lady behind the desk, whose nametag said Rita Chang. Normally, you need to be a club member, or need to show First or Business Class tickets to use an airline lounge, but Ms. Chang looked at my passport and said, “Ah, yes, Mr. Brenner. Conference Room B.”
I went into the cloak room and left my suitcase there, then checked myself out in a full-length mirror and combed my hair. I was wearing khaki trousers, a blue button-down shirt with no tie, a blue blazer, and loafers; suitable travel attire for Business Class, and for the check-in at the Rex Hotel in Saigon, according to Karl.
I took my overnight bag, went into the lounge, and got myself a coffee. There was a breakfast buffet that included rice, octopus, seaweed, and salted fish, but no chili. I took three bags of salted peanuts and put them in my pocket.
I went to Conference Room B, which was a small, paneled room with a round table and chairs. The room was empty.
I put down my overnight bag, sat, and sipped my black coffee. I opened a bag of nuts and popped a few in my mouth, waiting for whomever.
I’d obviously come up in life since my last departure to Vietnam, but what I was feeling in my gut wasn’t much different.
I thought again of Peggy Walsh.
She had insisted that we go to confession before I left for Vietnam. Well, I’d rather get a punch in the jaw from Peggy Walsh than face Father Bennett’s wrath when he listened to me telling him I’d been screwing his second favorite virgin.
But what the hell—I needed absolution, so I went with Peggy to Saturday confession at St. Brigid’s. Thank God Father Bennett wasn’t one of the priests hearing confession that day. Peggy went to one confessional booth, and I went to another. I can’t remember the priest’s name, and I didn’t know him, but he sounded young behind the black screen. Anyway, I started off easy, with stuff like lying and swearing, then got down to the big one. He didn’t totally freak out, but he wasn’t real happy with me. He asked me who the young lady was, and I told him it was Sheila O’Connor, who I always wanted to screw, but never did. Sheila had a wild reputation anyway, so I didn’t feel too bad about substituting her for Peggy. I’m a real gentleman.
This priest was probably going to hand me about a million Hail Marys and Our Fathers, but I said to him, “Father, I’m leaving for Vietnam in two days.”
There was a long silence, then he said, “Say a Hail Mary and an Our Father for penance. Good luck, my son, and God bless you. I’ll pray for you.”
I went to the communion rail, happy that I’d gotten off easy, but halfway through my Hail Mary, I realized that saying you were going to Vietnam was like saying “Father, have mercy on me,” and a cold chill ran down my spine.
Poor Peggy spent about an hour on her knees reciting the rosary while I passed around a football with some guys at St. Brigid’s High School playing field.
Afterward, we’d both sworn to be sexually faithful for the year I was gone. There were probably about a half-million such vows made that year between parting couples, and maybe some of those promises were kept.
Peggy and I talked about getting married before I shipped out, but she’d defended her virtue for so long that by the time I discovered she was a hottie, it was too late to get the marriage license.
In any case, we were unofficially engaged, and I hoped officially not pregnant.
This story could have had a happy ending, I think, because we wrote to each other regularly, and she continued living at home and working at her father’s little hardware store where her mother also worked. More important, she didn’t go weird like most of the country did in ’68, and her letters were filled with patriotic and positive feelings about the war, which I myself did not share.
I came home, in one piece, ready to pick up where I left off. I had a thirty-day leave, and I was looking forward to every minute of it.
But something had changed in my absence. The country had changed, my friends were either in the military, or were in college, or were not interested in talking to returning soldiers. Even South Boston, bastion of working-class patriotism, was divided like the rest of the country.
In truth, the biggest change was within me, and I couldn’t get my head together during that long leave.
Peggy had somehow regained her virginity and refused to have sex until after we were married. This at a time when people were fucking their brains out with total strangers.
Peggy Walsh was as pretty and sweet as ever, but Paul Brenner had become cold, distant, and distracted. I knew that, and she knew that. In fact, she said something to me that I’ve never forgotten. She said, “You’ve become like the others who have come back.” Translation: You’re dead. Why are you still walking?
I told her I just needed some time, and we decided to give it another half year until I was out of the army. She wrote to me at Fort Hadley, but I never wrote back, and her letters stopped.
When my time in the army was up, I made the fateful decision to re-enlist for three years, which eventually became almost thirty years. I have no regrets, but I often wonder what my life would have been like if there was no war, and if I’d married Peggy Walsh.
Peggy and I never saw each other again, and I learned from friends that she’d married a local guy who had a football scholarship to Iowa State. They settled there for some reason, two Boston kids in the middle of nowhere, and I hope they’ve had a good life. Obviously, I still think about her now and then. Especially now, as I was about to return to the place that had separated us, and changed our lives.
My contact still hadn’t shown up, and I was finished with my coffee and two bags of peanuts. The clock on the wall said ten after eight. I considered doing this time what I should have done last time—getting the hell out of that airport and going home.
But I sat there and thought about this and that: Vietnam, Peggy Walsh, Vietnam, Cynthia Sunhill.
I took my e-mail to Cynthia out of my overnight bag and read:
Dear Cynthia,
As Karl has told you, I’ve taken an assignment in Southeast Asia. I should return in about two or three weeks. Of course, there’s the possibility that I may run into some problems. If I do, it’s important for you to know that it was my decision to take this assignment, and it had nothing to do with you; it has to do with me.
As for us, this has been what’s called a stormy relationship from day one in Brussels. In fact, fate, jobs, and life have conspired to keep us apart and keep us from really knowing each other.
Here’s a plan to get us together, to meet each other halfway, literally and figuratively: During the war, the single guys would take their one-week R&R in exotic places where they could loosen up a little. The married guys, and the guys in serious relationships, would meet their ladies in Honolulu. So, meet me in Honolulu twenty-one days from today, the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, reservations under both our names. Plan on a two-week R&R in one of the remote islands.
If you decide not to come, I understand, and I know you’ve made your decision. Please don’t reply to this, just come or don’t come.
Love, Paul
Well, that wasn’t too embarrassingly sloppy and sentimental, and I didn’t regret sending it. Everything was spelled right, rare for an e-mail.
As of this morning, as I said, there was no reply, which could mean she hadn’t opened her e-mail, or she took me at my word when I said, Please don’t reply to this, as Peggy Walsh had taken
me at my word when I told her not to come to the airport.
The door opened, and a well-dressed man about my age entered, carrying two cups of coffee and a plastic gift store bag. He put the bag and the coffees on the table, then put out his hand and said, “Hi, I’m Doug Conway. Sorry I’m late.”
“I’m sorry you’re here at all.”
Doug Conway smiled and sat opposite me. “Here, this coffee’s for you. Black, correct?”
“Thanks. You want peanuts?”
“I’ve had breakfast. First, I’ve been instructed to thank you for taking this assignment.”
“Who’s thanking me?”
“Everybody. Don’t worry about that.”
I sipped the coffee and studied Mr. Conway. He looked pretty bright and sounded pretty sharp so far. He was wearing a dark blue suit, subdued blue tie, and looked sort of honest, so he wasn’t CIA. Also, I can spot CID a mile away, and he wasn’t that either, so I asked, “FBI?”
“Yes. This case, if it has any resolution, will be a domestic matter. No CIA involved, no military intelligence, no State Department intelligence. Just FBI and army CID. It sounds like a murder, so we’ll handle it like a murder.”
Well, he did look honest, but he wasn’t. I asked him, “Will anyone in the Hanoi embassy know of my presence there?”
“We’ve decided to limit this information.”
“To whom?”
“To those who need to know, which is practically nobody. The embassy and consulate people are about as useful as tits on a bull. I didn’t say that. But fortunately, we’ve got an FBI guy in the Hanoi embassy, who’s on assignment to give classes to the Vietnamese police on the drug trade. His name is John Eagan, and he’s been briefed on your trip. He’s your guy if you’re in trouble and need to contact the U.S. embassy.”
“Why doesn’t John Eagan go find this guy I’m supposed to find?”
“He’s busy giving classes. Also, he has less ability to travel around than does a tourist.”
“Also, you don’t want any direct U.S. government involvement in this case. Correct?”
Mr. Conway, of course, did not reply. He said instead, “Do you have any threshold questions to ask before I begin my briefing?”
“I thought I just asked one.”
“All right, then I’ll begin. First, your mission is clear, but not simple. You have to locate a Vietnamese national named Tran Van Vinh—you know that. He is an eyewitness in a possible murder case.”
Mr. Conway went on a while, doing the FBI thing, as though this was just another murder that needed to be worked and packaged up for a U.S. attorney general. I sipped my coffee and opened my last bag of peanuts.
I interrupted his legal spiel and said, “All right. So if I find Tran Van Vinh, I tell him he’s won an all-expense-paid trip to Washington, D.C. Right?”
“Well . . . I don’t know.”
“Well, neither do I. What do you want me to do with this guy if I find him alive?”
“We’re not sure yet. In the meantime, we’re trying to come up with some possible suspects, and/or the possible murder victim. If we do, we’ll get photos to you of these guys from when they were in the army. If that happens, and if you find Tran, you’ll show him a series of photos—just like in any criminal case, and see if he can ID the suspected murderer and/or the victim.”
“Yeah. I think I’ve done that a few thousand times. But my Vietnamese is a little rusty.”
“You can hire an interpreter anywhere.”
“Okay. Why don’t I take a video camera or tape recorder with me?”
“We thought about that. But that sometimes causes problems at Customs. We might have your contact in Saigon give you a video camera or tape recorder. Did you bring a regular camera?”
“Yes, as instructed. I’m a tourist. How about an international cell phone?”
“Same problem. They’re very paranoid at the airport, and if they search your luggage and find things like that, they get nosy. Visa or no visa, they can turn you around and boot you out for almost no reason. We need you in the country.”
“Okay.”
“But we may get you a cell phone in Saigon. Be advised, however, that their cell phone system is very primitive, and they have more dead zones than a cemetery.”
“Okay, so if you decide you want this guy in Washington, then what?”
“Then we might go to the Vietnamese government and explain the situation. They’ll cooperate.”
“If you don’t want their cooperation now in finding this guy, why do you think they’re going to cooperate after you tell them you’ve been snooping around their little police state and found one of their citizens who you need for a murder trial?”
Doug Conway looked at me a moment and said, “Karl was right about you.”
“Karl is right about everything. Please, answer my question.”
Conway stirred his coffee a few seconds and said, “Okay, Mr. Brenner, here’s the answer to your questions, past, present, and future. The answer is, We are bullshitting you. You know that, we know that. Every time we bullshit you, you find little inconsistencies, so you ask another question. Then we give you more bullshit, and you have more questions on the new bullshit. This is really annoying and time consuming. So, I’ll tell you a few things right now that aren’t bullshit. Ready?”
I nodded.
“One, there is more to this than a thirty-year-old murder, but you know that. Two, it’s in your best interest that you don’t know what this is about. Three, it’s really very important to our country. Four, we need you because you’re good, but also because if you get in trouble, you’re not working for the government. And if you get busted over there, you don’t know anything, and that’s what you tell them because it’s true. Just stick to your story—you’re on a nostalgia trip to ’Nam. Okay? You still want to go?”
“I never wanted to go.”
“Hey, I don’t blame you. But you know you’re going, and I know you’re going. By now, you’re bored with retirement, you’ve got a deep-rooted sense of duty, and you like living on the edge. You were an infantryman once, you were decorated for bravery, then you became a military policeman, then a criminal investigator. You were never an accountant or a ladies’ hairdresser. And you’re here talking to me. Therefore, we both know that you’re not going home this morning.”
“Are we done with the psychobabble?”
“Sure. Okay, I have your tickets, Asiana Airlines to Seoul, Korea, then Vietnam Airlines to Ho Chi Minh City, known to us old guys as Saigon. You are booked at the Rex Hotel—upscale, but Saigon is cheap, so it’s affordable for Mr. Paul Brenner, retired chief warrant officer.”
Conway took a piece of paper out of the plastic bag and said to me, “This is your visa, which we secured from the Vietnamese embassy with an authorized copy of your passport that the State Department was kind enough to provide.” He handed me a sheet of cheap paper printed with red ink, and I glanced at it.
“And here is a new passport, an exact copy of yours, which you’ll give me now. On this passport is the Vietnamese embassy stamp for your entry into the country, and the other pages are clean because the Vietnamese get suspicious of people who have too many entry and exit stamps on their passports, as you do.”
He handed me my new passport, and I gave Conway my old one. I looked at the one he’d given me. I noticed that even the photo was the same as my old one, plus, an expert FBI forger had been nice enough to sign it for me. I commented, “It’s amazing that you were able to get a copy of my passport made, use it to apply to the Vietnamese embassy for a visa, and have everything ready for me less than twelve hours after I knew about this assignment.”
“It is amazing,” agreed Mr. Conway. He handed me a pencil and said, “Fill out the emergency contact information the way it was on your old passport—your lawyer, I believe.”
“Right.” Actually a CID lawyer, but why bring that up? I filled out the information, handed him back his pencil, and put the passport
in my breast pocket.
Mr. Conway said, “Make a few photocopies of your passport and visa when you get to Seoul. In ’Nam, everyone wants to hold your passport and visa—hotels, motor scooter rentals, and sometimes the police. You can usually satisfy them with a photocopy.”
“Why don’t we send a photocopy of me to Vietnam?”
He ignored that and continued, “You’ll arrange your own ground transportation in Vietnam. You’ll stay in Saigon three days, and that’s how long you’re booked at the Rex—Friday night, which is your arrival night, Saturday, and Sunday. You’ll leave Saigon Monday. Do whatever you please in Saigon, except don’t get kicked out for smoking funny cigarettes, or bringing a prostitute up to your room, or anything like that.”
“I don’t need a morals lecture from the FBI.”
“I understand, but I have to brief you, as per my instructions from my people. I was already briefed by Karl, and I know you’re a pro. Okay? Next, you will be contacted in Saigon by an American resident of Saigon. This person will have no U.S. government connections—just a businessperson who’s doing a little favor for Uncle Sam. The meeting will take place at the rooftop restaurant of the Rex, at or about 7 P.M. on Saturday, your second night there. That’s all you have to know. The more unplanned it is, the more unplanned it will look. Okay?”
“So far.”
“This person will give you a number. That number will correspond to a map key in your guidebook.” Mr. Conway reached into the plastic bag and put a book on the table. “This is the Lonely Planet Guide to Vietnam, third edition. It’s the most widely used book over there, so if for some reason it gets taken by the customs idiots at Tan Son Nhat Airport, or you lose it, or somebody lifts it, you can usually get another one by buying it from a backpacker, or your Saigon contact can get one for you. You’re going to need this book a few times. Okay?”