A Dangerous Friend Read online

  Funeral insurance, I said.

  Was it funeral?

  Black limousines, a bronze coffin, a gravesite in the cemetery of your choice, a Spanish veil for your mother, and an entertainment allowance for the party afterward. There were other benefits but I forget what they were. He made a lot of money before the company folded, 1970 was a great year for him.

  I don't know anything about that, the journalist said. I never knew him well in the war. But when anything hush-hush was going on I'd pay him a call and he'd give me some help. Dicky liked ink. Dicky had time for you. And that paid off for him. I was thinking that we all learned a lot in Vietnam, especially at the beginning when we pulled together; trying to find our way. No one wanted to be left behind. Rostok was good where it counted. I can't remember the name of that outfit of his—

  Llewellyn Group, I said.

  Yes, the Llewellyns. They were spooks, weren't they?

  They weren't spooks, I said.

  I thought they were spooks. They acted like spooks. Rostok had a deputy, wouldn't give us dick when we came around for information. What was his name?

  Sydney Parade, I said.

  Yes, Parade. Whatever happened to him?

  One of the other journalists cleared his throat and said irritably, Who the hell was Sydney Parade?

  Friend of Dicky Rostok's, I said mischievously.

  I don't remember any Parade.

  He went into teaching, I said. But I did not add that he'd retired and now spent his days alone on an island off Cape Cod, reading his books, watching the evening news, and sketching the pier that adjoined his house, one line drawing after another. Sydney believed in repetition.

  The reporter shrugged; he had no interest in anyone who had gone into teaching.

  Sydney was only there for a year, I said.

  Just a bit player in the war.

  So the end of my narrative has come at the beginning, as if you are standing at a distance and hear the echo of the bells and can only guess at their size and location. It is always necessary to look forward and backward at the same time. Only in that way can we preserve our identities and live truthfully. You know the end of things as well as I do. We cannot pretend not to know them or deny that they exist. When we relate events from the past we know the results and must acknowledge them, whether or not they bring us understanding, or consolation, or shame.

  The year is 1965, before the Effort, begun so modestly, turned into something monstrous. Take the measurements, interview all hands, and there's still a mystery at the heart of it. Sydney Parade told me Rostok's version of Conrad's tale of the Tweed and her dangerous skipper, and some of the other stories that appear in this book. Sydney was not always kind to himself, owing to his bad conscience and, by his own admission, to his naïveté in the beginning. Rostok was usually straight with the facts, though his ego got in the way of everything he did and didn't do. I have always believed that a mountainous ego resulted from an absence of conscience.

  I play no part in this narrative and will shortly disappear from it. I would not be writing it now except for my position in the middle of things. I was the only one in-country intimate with the four principals, Rostok, Parade, the Frenchman, and the Frenchman's wife—yes, and Gutterman, too. Do not forget for a moment that I was also present in Vietnam years later, when the country was unified by force, and Rostok and Parade were long gone.

  The Family Armand

  SYDNEY PARADE first learned of the intrepid family Armand from his stepmother's sister Missy, who had lived with them in France for a summer. Missy and the Comminges Armands became close that summer and subsequent summers, to the point where she became a virtual member of the family and au courant with its three branches, the Armands in Abidjan and Bangui and of course the Armands in Xuan Loc. She spoke of them as if they were characters in a nineteenth-century adventure novel. They traveled widely and lived dangerously. They chose warm climates and colorful marriages. They described themselves as industrial ambassadors, supervising the twilight hours of the French empire. Their specialties were oil, minerals, and rubber.

  When Missy graduated from college, it was natural that she return to France to live. Except for her sister, she had no family in America; the Armands of Comminges were her family. Still, she always managed a visit to Connecticut on Thanksgiving, and it was at these family dinners with his father and stepmother that Sydney learned of the brothers Armand in Abidjan, Bangui, and Xuan Loc, how difficult and unsettled their lives were compared to the Comminges Armands, Papa and Maman, their stone house next to a crumbling Roman wall on the edge of a medieval village, their three charming daughters, their devotion each to the others and to the land where they had lived, well, forever.

  Missy was only a few years older than Sydney but he found her world adult and exotic—so close to Balzac, so far from Darien—though mysterious was probably the better word, for she never disclosed anything of her personal life, the pleasures and miseries of romance, or her work at the bank. Instead she rambled on and on about the Armands, so worldly, so cultivated, so diverse in their interests, so loyal to one another, so hospitable and droll. And you should taste Maman's lamb!

  Where's Comminges? Sydney asked his father.

  Foothills of the Pyrenees, his father replied.

  And then, clearing his throat, he offered some advice. He said, Missy's promiscuous where France is concerned. She's become an expat, meaning she knows even less about her adopted country than she knows about this one. Thing about a foreign country, you never know what you don't know. Only a fool makes that mistake with his own. Then, because he was a great jazz fan, he muttered something about the Beale Street blues. She'll be lonesome her whole long life, he concluded cryptically.

  For years Missy had urged Sydney to visit her in Paris. Every snake needed to shed its skin, often more than once; in that way you adapted to the environment. You can come any time, she said. Just give me warning. She had bought an adorable apartment in the rue du Louvre; there was a guest bedroom and a good museum across the street. The river was nearby. And if you come on a weekend, we can take the train to Comminges and you can meet the Armands at last. They'd love it. I've told them all about your family, Syd. What there is to tell.

  For years plans were made and canceled, the occasion for much amusement around the dinner table at Thanksgiving, his father loudly whistling the Berigan chorus of "I Can't Get Started" while his stepmother laughed and laughed. Then the gears meshed and one Friday morning in the early spring of 1965 Sydney arrived with his bags at the church square that introduced the rue du Louvre. For a long time he stood in the chilly early morning mist looking at the third-floor window, its blinds open, lights within. He was reluctant to intrude because he felt the slightest bit uneasy that he was there with his own ulterior motives of which Missy would not approve; and she would discover them soon enough, no matter the subtlety of his approach.

  Sydney had been told that a successful meeting with the Comminges Armands would pay handsome dividends in the months and years to come. There was no logical reason why they would not want to cooperate. Cooperation cost them nothing, and French interests were involved, not to mention the man's brother. Everyone in the West was in the same boat, and they were in it for the duration.

  So Sydney picked up his bags and walked into the building, aware of the fumes of diesel fuel mixed with freshly baked bread, a specific French anomaly that made him smile self-consciously, the smile revealing his nervous excitement at the task at hand. He was nearly thirty years old, a stoutish American tourist in an anonymous corduroy jacket, chino trousers, and loafers, no tie; even the look of relief was American, for in one year he had managed to shed two skins, a wife and a job, one after the other. His wife was an ocean away in New York. Their daughter was with her.

  Missy was standing in her doorway, chic in slacks and a sweater. She had seen him standing in the square and wondered at his hesitation. There was only one rue du Louvre after all. Americans were alway
s ill at ease in Paris, uncertain what to say or do. She waved at him but he did not see her. He was looking at the window on the floor below, a mistake they always made; such a simple thing that the Americans couldn't get straight. In France it went ground floor, then first floor.

  She gave him a cup of coffee and a croissant and suggested a nap before the noon train to Comminges. The journey was hours long but they should be there in time for a late dinner. The Armands would be thrilled to meet him at last.

  Aren't you jet-lagged? she asked.

  I've only come down from Brussels, he said.

  Brussels?

  I've been in Brussels seeing friends, Sydney said vaguely.

  In Brussels? Her tone of voice suggested that no good could come from any visit to the Belgians.

  Some old school friends, Sydney said, wondering if Missy knew that one of the more obscure American military commands was located at Brussels. Probably the Pentagon would not be one of her interests. In any case, the commander's aide-de-camp was an old school friend of Rostok's. And the briefing had been useless.

  He brought her up to date on family news—her sister had bought a Buick, and she and his father had won the Darby and Joan at Abenaki, two up—while she showed him around her apartment, spacious and done in the modern style, white couches against white walls, huge white lamps, abstract art on the walls except for a pastel Laurencin nude over the fireplace. Sydney handed her a box of chocolates and a bottle of Scotch, and a package of snapshots from her sister. Missy casually leafed through the snapshots—several of the Buick, several more of her sister in golf clothes—but stopped, frowning, when she came to the one of the family at Christmas.

  She said, I'm sorry about you and—

  Karla, he said.

  Yes, Karla.

  It was time, he said.

  Missy raised her eyebrows as if to say, Time for what? She disapproved of divorce, preferring instead the many civilized alternatives. She said, You have a son, I remember.

  Daughter, he said. She's fine. We're all fine. Sydney smiled to conceal the lie. His daughter was not fine. She was a three-year-old with a broken heart. But his stepmother's sister was not entitled to that news.

  It's always good to take a holiday after emotional upset, Missy said, though Sydney showed no signs of upset. How long will you be in France, then?

  I must leave on Monday, he said.

  So short, she said, her tone of voice again disapproving; perhaps he had confused Paris with Philadelphia. Will you be returning to Belgium?

  I'm going to South Vietnam, he said.

  Oh, my goodness, she said. Why?

  That's where I'll be working. It's all arranged.

  I can't see you in uniform, she said. Then she remembered that he had taken some kind of degree in military history or the history of modern Europe and did speak some French, though with an execrable accent, painful to listen to.

  No, no, he said. It's civilian.

  She said, I don't know anything about it. We have troops there now, don't we? There was discussion in the senior staff meeting last week, an argument I didn't follow. I don't know the geography. The politics are a mystery to me. Is it about oil? Monsieur Pelliard thought the Americans were crazy to get anywhere near Indochina. He thought the Germans should be given that opportunity, it was their sort of thing. He was quite emphatic. All the senior staff agreed with him.

  The Europeans aren't in any position to lecture us, Sydney said.

  They don't learn from their mistakes, she agreed, bending forward and looking at him closely as if there were something she had missed. Except bankers, she went on. And my bank took a bath when the French were involved out there. We lost millions. So we're cautious.

  Understandably, he said.

  You didn't say who you'll be working for. Is it government? You're not with the spooks, are you?

  No, no, he said, laughing though he disapproved of the word "spooks," signaling as it did a lack of respect for honorable men doing dangerous work. I'll be in the countryside, administering foreign aid. Building schools, getting the rice to market. Economic development, building democratic institutions. When she looked at him doubtfully, he added, We call it nation-building. Such was the word from Dicky Rostok when Dicky had recruited him in New York. Nation-building was the velvet glove that complemented the army's iron fist, and everyone knew that the war would be won or lost by the caress of the glove. In the last analysis, as the President said, the Vietnamese had to fight their own war. They were good people who needed help, not only on the battlefield against the Communist enemy but against poverty, disease, and corruption. Such a simple thing as getting the rice to market or the smallpox vaccine to the clinic would prove decisive. A stable currency was worth a regiment of marines. This was what Ros had learned after a year in-country. An unimaginably complex society, the experts said. You could never learn it all, and in the beginning you had to take care not to learn the wrong things. So much misinformation, so widely broadcast. That was why they had set up the Llewellyn Group, a group separate from the aid bureaucracy already in place, with its own mission and chain of command and communications with Washington. Llewellyn Group was both inside and outside the apparatus. It's important work, he said to Missy. And we'll make it succeed.

  Missy put away the coffee things while she half listened to Sydney talk on and on, something about duty and responsibility. Her sister had told her about the breakup, a loose, painful, squalid, careless business. Sydney was not cut out for marriage. In that respect, her sister had said, the apple had not fallen far from the tree. And Karla was worse; but that was another story. Still, Sydney looked well. She thought he had filled out some since she had seen him last, at Christmas when his marriage was falling apart, but probably that was the masculine thrill of wartime duty. They loved it so. They loved it because the women were watching but not nearby.

  I don't know anything about it, Missy said again.

  While she dozed he watched the countryside slide by through dusty windows, the fields and farmsteads monotonous and unremarkable, the villages somnolent in the afternoon. The fields were utterly empty, as if a great epidemic had carried off the durable peasantry, leaving only farm animals and buildings behind. Stands of trees blocked the horizon, though now and again he caught sight of a château on its hilltop. These pastoral scenes unfolded like pictures at an exhibition, but pictures that gave no hint of the life beneath the skin of the canvas. Sydney had never been to Europe, in fact had never traveled outside the United States. There was always so much to see at home, a whole continent. He had let one opportunity after another slip by and was determined to seize South Vietnam.

  He had no idea what to expect. The books he had read were written by Americans, French, and English. The Vietnamese in them were elusive, rarely speaking, seen in silhouette. The terrain itself was no less fugitive, seen through Western eyes. He imagined it now, closed in and thick with heat, its agriculture not far removed from the Middle Ages. The fields would bristle with human life. For Romanesque churches, Buddhist temples; for fields of grain, fields of rice stalk-deep in stagnant water. In Indochina time would be measured on an ethereal scale, and still important in the general scheme of things. A herd of cows, motionless in a flat field, appeared for a moment and then vanished as the train leaned into a curve. Suddenly he was in a tunnel and the train's wheels squeaked to a halt.

  Rostok had made his pitch to the senior staff of the Foundation, everyone gathered around a refectory table with pads and pencils before them, carafes of water on a tray in the center. Sydney was invited because he was the director's assistant and because he was younger than the others; he was the youngest man in the room by twenty years, though this was not immediately apparent because he wore the same long face as the others. He knew Rostok through mutual friends, often dining together, Rostok running the table like a college professor turned talk-show host. He was then posted to the U.S. mission to the U.N., an institution he called The Building. A year a
go he had been recalled to Washington and dispatched to Vietnam. Now he was back in New York, scanning the faces that were ever alert to nuance, the sweat and glitter of the well-polished fact that led to the rosy scenario; Rostok was looking for accomplices.

  He was eloquent. Rostok began in a pessimistic vein and only got more so as he went along, stressing the novelty and mystery of the effort. Americans had never interfered in this way, except for a few small-scale operations, the Philippines, Central America, Cuba twice, never on a national scale, never in-country, hand in glove with the elected government. That was on the civilian side. On the military side the only comparison was to the Indian wars of the century before and that analogy broke down quickly enough, for a dozen reasons, not least the tenacity, skill, and coherence of the Communist insurgency in Vietnam. The Indians had no ideology, no Lenin, no Marx, no Hitler, no Ho, only Tecumseh and the various holy spirits that had let them down at important moments. The American Indians led a filthy life and could not see the future before them. They did not believe Tecumseh's vision of an entente cordiale among all the tribes; unite and prosper. All they wanted was to preserve what they had, forgetting that time never reversed itself, never, no exceptions. And on a more practical level there was the terrain. Vietnam was thickly forested, the forests broken here and there by rice fields; and the rice fields were bordered by wiry hedgerows, ideal for ambush. And the allegiance of the peasants was in doubt, allowing the guerrillas a base of operations that rendered them invisible. They don't wear war bonnets. They don't carry bows and arrows.