A Dangerous Friend Read online

  Probably you should leave tomorrow, Missy said.

  I'm sorry about it, Sydney said.

  Yes, she said. So am I. There's a morning train.

  God, they're stubborn, Sydney said. They get an idea—

  They're very nice people, Missy said.

  —and then they try to nail you.

  I think you were trying to nail him. He just got there first. If you had told me, I might have been able to help.

  A mistake all around, Sydney said.

  What did you want from him actually?

  A friendly letter of introduction to his brother. Something that said I was a friend of the family. Didn't have horns and a tail.

  I could have given you that, she said.

  You could?

  Yes, of course. You still don't understand. The Armands are my family.

  It's obvious now, he said.

  She shrugged and turned away, drying her hands on a towel.

  So how about it? Sydney said.

  Not now, Missy said. Now that I know what you want.

  I don't want so much, Sydney said.

  You want Claude to collaborate. That word has a particular meaning here. Don't you know that?

  We are not Nazis, Sydney said evenly. We're not Nazis.

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

  Whose side are you on? Sydney demanded.

  Not your side, Missy said.

  The clock in the hall chimed midnight. Sydney stacked the dishes and carried them to the cupboard, looking again at the photographs of the Abidjan and Xuan Loc Armands, Dede so openly American and relaxed as she stared into the camera's lens. He wondered who or what had brought her to Embassy Saigon, a hardship post half the world away from the Near North Side, Astor Street, North Dearborn, one of those probably—or a suburb, Winnetka or Lake Forest. He knew she was a country-club girl by looking at her, the shape of her chin and the way she held it and the way she did her hair, no different from the girls around the tennis courts and paddocks of Darien in the summer. Smith or Vassar, a degree in art history or English literature; he'd stake his life on it. Yet she had married an expatriate Frenchman and was living in no man's land, a war zone no longer under embassy protection.

  I'll find a way to meet her, he said to Missy.

  I'm sure you will, Missy said.

  And in the shadows, the Bangui Armands standing in front of a filthy gray Land Rover, lush jungle all around. Felix wore a djellaba, his wife a long flowered dress. Two small children peeked out from behind her skirts, the children round-faced and the color of café au lait. Their mother was black as oil, a kind of luminous silky blue-black. Felix looked unnaturally white beside her, his pale skin suggesting exhaustion or illness. Her hand rested heavily on his shoulder. She was the one with the authority, or perhaps it was only local knowledge. Sydney stared at the photograph a long time, wondering at the story behind their courtship and marriage, and how Felix had adapted to an unfamiliar continent. He wondered what urge had sent Felix to Africa and into the bed of a native woman, and how that had changed his life. Perhaps it hadn't. He would be an outsider in Bangui regardless of his living arrangements. Sydney had forgotten now what it was that Felix did. It was either mining or farming. But he did not look like a miner or farmer. He looked like a drifter, a nomad despite the Land Rover. Bangui seemed a very long way from this village in the Pyrenees, farther even than Abidjan or Xuan Loc.

  Sydney shivered in the sudden chill. He wondered if a spring snow was on the way and looked out the window, to the Roman wall and the high hills beyond it. The wall was bathed in pale moonlight, its contours crisp and indomitable. Sydney turned to say something about it to Missy but the kitchen was empty. She had gone upstairs without another word, leaving him to find his own way.

  Dacy

  DUSK AT PARIS-ORLY. Someone had given him Malraux's early Cambodian novel for the long flight east but he could not read it, and he set it aside somewhere over Switzerland. The references escaped him, the sentences too zealous in the antiseptic atmosphere of the Boeing, its dull-blue cabin a world apart from the earth below. The plane was half empty. Sydney dozed between fitful passes at Fortune and Time and an unsuccessful attempt at conversation with the businessman across the aisle, a Lebanese en route to Singapore via Bangkok. The Lebanese was either buying a ship or selling one, it was hard to tell which. His language was as dense as Malraux's, and when he learned that Sydney was going on to Saigon, he lost interest.

  Dawn in Delhi, where they were brusquely offloaded to wait for hours in the damp heat while a labor dispute was adjudicated. Families lay sleeping in every corner of the terminal shed while a clamor rose in waves; all flights were delayed. Aloft again, mountains were visible in the far distance, and then Sydney realized they were the foothills of the Himalayas. The time was early morning when they arrived in Bangkok, but the relief crew was still at the hotel downtown, so the plane was delayed hours more. Lifting off on the final leg, leveling at fifteen thousand feet, Sydney looked out the window to observe Cambodia below. The land of a thousand elephants had every aspect of the Mississippi Delta, just as Rostok had said.

  The Boeing was noisy now with Americans returning from a holiday in Bangkok. Only a few of the Paris passengers remained. Stewardesses hurried up the aisle with trays of bloody marys; drink fast, boys, the flight's short. But the Americans knew that. Sydney, glass in hand, looked down to South Vietnam, villages here and there, narrow rivers, roads with traffic. Beneath the green fields, water glittered like a spray of diamonds. He thought of veins under the skin. When the plane banked, he was momentarily blinded by the sun and moved to shade his eyes with Malraux's novel. Probably the Frenchman was lucky to have discovered Indochina in the 1920s when it was not far removed from Conrad's day, time measured by the thrust of a prow, Saigon sleepier even than Singapore, the interior as remote as any interior on earth; yet in the villages a revolution was struggling to be born. When the plane touched down at last it rolled past scores of American military aircraft, fighters, helicopters, olive-drab Pipers, burly transports. Soldiers lounged in the shade of the wings. When the Boeing halted in front of the terminal, the Americans erupted with a loud sarcastic cheer; one of the stewardesses took an exaggerated bow. The raucous laughter and conversation reminded Sydney of the atmosphere in a fraternity house the night before graduation; the last carefree hours before the serious business of earning a living.

  The stranger next to him yawned and shifted his body. He had not bothered to cinch his seat belt over his vast stomach for the aircraft's descent. He turned and said, New here?

  Sydney nodded. First time.

  Well, he said. Good luck.

  You too, Sydney said.

  Yup, the stranger said, finishing his drink and tucking the plastic glass into the seat pouch, the plastic cracking with the sound of crumpled paper.

  Been here long?

  Ten months and thirteen days. He looked at his wristwatch. And eight hours and thirty-five minutes, give or take. Six weeks to go.

  You're short, then, Sydney said.

  No, no, the stranger said emphatically. I'm not short. You're not short until you're a week or less. It's bad luck to talk about short when you're long. Jesus Christ, don't talk about short. That's asking for it. He scowled at Sydney, then rapped twice on the wooden handle of his valise. Remember that, he added as he moved ponderously up the aisle.

  When Sydney cleared customs at last, Dicky Rostok was nowhere in sight. Tan Son Nhut was quiet at midmorning, pokerfaced Americans arriving on one side of the sawhorse barriers and resigned Vietnamese leaving on the other side. He was startled by the whispering of the Vietnamese, an incomprehensible seven-toned murmur of women; the men were mostly silent. The uniformed officials at passport control handled each Vietnamese travel document as tenderly as a purloined love letter, weighing it in their palms and thumbing each page, looking from the traveler to the photograph and back again, and then once more, sniffing and squinting to make abso
lutely certain—while on the arriving side of the barrier the scrutiny was routine, almost apologetic, the green passport opened, the visa located, the stamp applied, the passport returned with a blank administrative smile. Meanwhile, the Vietnamese inched forward and the murmur continued to rise and fall in the long lines that reached from the interior of the terminal to the teeming sidewalk outside.

  Sydney stood alone in the vast open-air lobby feeling the heat and the press of humanity, the Americans so large, bull-like shoulders bulging under short-sleeved drip-dry shirts, the Vietnamese dressed up and brittle as birds, shy in the muscular ceremony of arrival and departure; and just then he understood that he fit both categories, arriving in one sense, departing in another. He had only made landfall. His journey had yet to begin, and until it did he would remain as much a part of America as the Boeing he had just left. This airport seemed to be as much American as Vietnamese, the local police standing about with the authority of cocktail waitresses in a gambling casino. He wondered at the identity of the Vietnamese travelers, as many women as men, grinning and nervous as they made their way slowly to passport control. They would be traveling to Hong Kong or Bangkok, to shop or to transact business, perhaps to emigrate. In any case they did not seem reluctant to leave.

  The Americans were obvious enough, construction workers and government officials, crew-cut soldiers in mufti. He recognized someone from the State Department, a deputy assistant something or other who had conducted one of the endless briefings, and a woman who worked for one of the think tanks, Hudson or RAND. He remembered her from a conference at NYU. Mr. Ten-months-and-thirteen-days-and-eight-hours-and-thirty-five-minutes was nowhere in sight. Sydney recalled a photograph he had seen of the Gare du Nord in the spring of 1940, soldiers leaving for the front, civilians returning, the picture's texture dark and grainy, somber in the filtered light. Paris had never recovered from its abrupt defeat. In 1940, no one knew who was in charge and the future was in doubt. The Germans were invading once again and there was no animation or confidence in the faces of the French, one more difference between Paris then and Saigon now; and no one doubted who was in charge here.

  Those few departing Americans were provided a special gate, U.S. Personnel This Way. When Vietnamese approached this gate they were coolly waved away. Military policemen loitered close by, visually inspecting each departing American; and if there was cause for suspicion he was pulled from the line and asked for his passport and exit visa, and if the answers were unsatisfactory the suspect was moved against the wall and searched without delay, the questions suddenly official and specific, and before you knew it there were four military policemen, not two. Sydney watched the little drama unfold, an unshaven middle-aged man shaking his head no, then sighing, staring at the floor, explaining something without looking up, extending his wrists as if he expected to be slapped or handcuffed. The MPs conferred among themselves, one of them consulting a thick blue book, apparently a roster of names.

  Sydney heard the MP say, Get the hell out of here.

  Yessir, the suspect said.

  Don't come back, the MP added.

  Why would I come back? the suspect said, and moved along to Vietnamese passport control, where he was waved through. Sydney watched him hurry into the lounge, where the bar was doing an energetic pre-lunch business. So Vietnam was like Puerto Rico, as easy to slip into as it was to slip out of, so long as your papers were in order and your name absent from the roster of suspicious characters.

  Noise drifted from the bar to the terminal area. Sydney was surprised to see young Western women among those three-deep at the bar and at tables, everyone laughing and toasting each other. The women were tanned and attractive, in their close haircuts and short skirts looking like coeds on spring break, the last fitful hours before the long flight north. The atmosphere was one of high impatience, a kind of nervous flutter. Through the wide window back of the bar, Sydney could see a flight crew strolling to the Air Vietnam Caravelle waiting on the tarmac. Suddenly one of the women threw her arms around the neck of the man standing next to her and kissed him deeply; the others applauded, even the unshaven middle-aged man, who stood on the fringes of the group drinking beer from the bottle. And then Sydney realized he had misunderstood the ambiance. It was not impatient or nervous. It was festive.

  Annoyed, he turned away, looking left and right, uncertain where to go. Of course Ros had better things to do than wait for a morning at febrile Tan Son Nhut, but surely he would leave a message. Sydney watched a television crew being greeted with shouts and handshakes, Vietnamese scurrying about to load the heavy equipment into a white van with a network logo on its side panel; and then the van hurtled away into traffic. He had the address of Llewellyn Group House, Tay Thanh district, but he had no idea how far it was and whether it was safe to travel by taxi. The little blue and white Renaults did not look roadworthy, either. So he marched to the sidewalk where he stood with his suitcases in the damp heat, the sun ferocious but ill defined in the thick diesel haze, and wondered about the reliability of the taxis.

  When a Vietnamese approached and tried to hand him a card, Syd shook his head.

  You come, the Vietnamese said.

  Go away, Sydney said, but the Vietnamese was insistent, shoving the card in front of his eyes and jabbing at it with his finger. Syd saw that the writing was in English, introducing the bearer as the faithful Minh, who would drive him to Tay Thanh. Welcome to the war. See you for dinner. Rostok.

  Tired and disoriented—the dregs of the bloody mary had left a rancid lemony taste in his mouth—Sydney stowed his luggage in the back of Minh's Scout. He stood swaying in the heat while Minh patiently held the door; waiting for him to climb inside; he did not fail to notice the ideograph drawn on the door, a pair of clasped hands. The Scout stumbled into traffic and turned away from the city. Saigon's anonymous suburbs unfolded, one following another indistinguishable villages, each with its market and roadside kitchens and stagnant river, some viscous tributary of the Saigon. Traffic began to thin, sedans yielding to trucks and trucks to Solex motocyclos, rickshaws, and pedicabs. Ordinary bicycles were everywhere along with foot traffic, mostly old women with bundles and children. Every few moments Minh would tap the horn but always moved respectfully to the side of the road when a military convoy needed to pass. When the convoy was American, Minh gave a smart salute.

  And suddenly they were in the country and alone on the road. The air was sour. The fifteenth century began just beyond the broken asphalt, water buffalo hauling wood plows, a weary farmer leaning on his plow. Beyond the field was the rain forest, dense and mysterious, feral, sickly green in the midmorning light. In the far distance low hills were visible through the haze. Here and there in clearings were temples where Buddhist monks in pumpkin-colored robes moved aimlessly about, apparently in contemplation. The temples seemed in no way distinguished architecturally, and Sydney was put in mind of the makeshift shrines beside roads in rural America commemorating the dead in a traffic accident. Mongrel dogs prowled the perimeter.

  They passed a guard tower surrounded by barbed wire, causing Syd to wonder whether the wire was there to keep the guards in or the enemy out; in any case, he could see no guards. He closed his eyes, sweating in the heat, his shirt stuck to his back and chest. He was unable to assimilate the environment. Eyes closed, he sensed the world turning and he was turning with it, molecules rearranging themselves as he sat dumbly in the front seat of a government Scout with its symbol of hope, clasped hands. He would never again travel this road in exactly the same way; the vacant guard tower would soon be as familiar as the stone bridges on the Merritt Parkway. No doubt at that hour momentous decisions were being made elsewhere in the world, in conference rooms in Washington or Moscow. And in due course a bomb would fall or not fall in his vicinity or someone else's and the war would creep forward, as promised.

  Minh let him out in the courtyard, fetched his bags from the rear of the Scout, and drove away. They had not exchanged a word since
"you come" and "go away." The front door of Group House was not locked, yet there was no one present. The place had an abandoned look, as if it had been evacuated in the course of a hasty retreat. Typewriters and filing cabinets were intact but paper was loose everywhere on the floors and the ashtrays were filled to overflowing. Framed photographs of the ambassador and the President were askew on the wall; someone had drawn a moustache on the President, giving him a resemblance to Stalin. Sydney wrestled his bags upstairs to the living quarters. The bed in the big room was unmade, the towels in the bathroom mildewed. An empty whiskey bottle was lying in the tub, and women's underwear was draped over the single chair. Two more empty bottles filled the plastic wastebasket, along with discarded toothpaste tubes, aspirin vials, shaving cream, mosquito repellent, hair spray, deodorant jars, and Kotex cartons. Above the bed were various Playboy centerfolds, haphazardly taped to the plaster. An army-issue .45-caliber pistol was lying on the bedside table, the pistol as forlorn as everything else in the room. A wobbly message was written in lipstick on the mirror: Im a prisoner in the Vtnamese laundry and need help now, D. D.