Up Country (75 page)

I sat there with my beer and mystery meat. Jealous men don’t like their women out of their sight. I’m not a jealous man, but I’ve learned that I shouldn’t let Susan out of my sight.

She returned a few minutes later with a few brochures in her hand, sat, and scanned one of them. She said, “Okay, here’s a little map of Sa Pa, and I see the road to Lao Cai. You want to hear about the road?”

“Sure.”

“All right . . . surrounding us are the Hoang Lien Mountains, which the French called the Tonkinese Alps . . . the area is home to an abundance of wildlife, including mountain goats and monkeys—”

“I hate monkeys.”

“It’s very cold in the winter. If we’re hiking, and I guess we are, there are no mountain huts or shelters, and we’ll need rain gear and a heating stove—”

“Susan, it’s only thirty-five kilometers. I can do that in my underwear. Do we have to go through any villages?”

“I don’t think so . . . doesn’t say . . . but there are Red Zao tribesmen in the mountains, and it says here they’re very shy and don’t like visitors.”

“Good.”

“Okay . . . twelve kilometers from Sa Pa is the Dinh Deo Pass, the highest mountain pass in Vietnam at 2,500 meters. On this side of the pass, the weather is cold, wet and foggy. After we cross the pass, it will often be sunny.”

“Even at night?”

“Paul, shut up. Okay . . . there are strong winds over the pass, but only a few hundred meters down, the weather starts to get warmer. Sa Pa is the coldest place in Vietnam, and Lao Cai is the warmest. That’s good . . . the Dinh Deo Pass is the dividing line between two large weather systems.”

“Can I speak?”

“No. About ten kilometers out of Sa Pa is the Silver Waterfall where we can ditch the motorcycle.”

“It says that in the brochure?”

She looked up from the brochure and said to me, “They told me in Saigon that this guy Paul Brenner had a reputation of being a difficult-to-work-with wiseass. They didn’t know the half of it.”

I informed her, “They told me in Washington you were a businessper-son who was doing a favor for Uncle. They didn’t tell me one percent of it.”

“You lucked out.”

I said, “Let’s get out of here before we have company.”

We paid the bill, walked outside, tipped the doorman, and got the motorcycle.

Susan said, “It’s cold out here.”

“It’s sunny on the other side of the pass.”

We put on our gloves, leather hats, and Montagnard scarves, mounted up and drove off. We went back into the town, and Susan directed me to the road leading north to Lao Cai.

The dark, foggy road climbed higher into the mountains. The road was paved, but the visibility was so bad I had to keep the speed down to between ten and fifteen KPH.

About forty-five minutes out of Sa Pa, I could hear the crashing of a waterfall ahead, and a minute later we saw the falls cascading from a high mountain off to our left front. There was a drop-off on the side of the road, and I dismounted. I couldn’t see down through the fog, so I picked up a big rock and threw it. A few seconds later, I heard it strike another rock, then another, until the echoes died away. I said to Susan, “Well, as the brochure said, this is where we ditch the bike.”

We left the engine running, and we both pushed the BMW Paris-Dakar off the edge of the road. About two seconds later, we heard it hit, then hit again and again, until we couldn’t hear it any longer. I said, “Good motorcycle. I think I’ll buy one.”

We continued on foot, up the steeply rising road. It was bitter cold, and the north wind was blowing in our faces.

It took us almost an hour to cover the two or three kilometers to the Dinh Deo Pass. As we approached the crest of the pass, the wind began to howl, and we leaned into it and trudged on in silence.

At the top of the pass, the wind was so strong we had to stop and take a break on the leeward side of a boulder. We sat there and caught our breath.

Susan spent a few minutes getting her cigarette lit in the wind. She said, “I need to stop smoking. I’m winded.”

“It should be better on the downslope. Are you okay?”

“Yeah . . . just need a break.”

“You want my jacket?”

“No. This is a tropical country.”

I looked at her in the dim light, and our eyes met. I said, “I like you.”

She smiled. “I like you, too. We could have a hell of a life together.”

“We could.”

She put out her cigarette, and we both started to stand, then she froze and said, “Get down!”

We both dropped to the ground and lay flat.

I heard the engine of a vehicle over the noise of the wind, and I could see yellow lights refracted in the fog. We lay there, and the lights got brighter as the vehicle approached from the direction we’d come from. I caught a glimpse of a big military truck as it passed.

We lay there for a full minute, then Susan said, “Do you think he’s looking for us?”

“I have no idea, but if he is, he’s looking for two people on a motorcycle.”

I let another minute pass. Then we stood, came around the boulder, and walked on into the wind. I pushed the scarf down to my neck and raised the flaps on my leather hat so I could hear better. Now and then, I looked over my shoulder for lights. The chance of anyone in a vehicle spotting us on foot before we heard or saw them was slim. But we needed to keep alert.

We crossed the crest of the pass, and the wind picked up, but it was downhill now, and we made good time.

About five hundred meters from the top of the pass, the wind became a breeze, and I could actually feel the air get warmer.

Five minutes later, I saw yellow fog lights coming at us and heard the sound of the engine, carried toward us on the wind.

There was a drop-off to our left, and to our right was a narrow stream between the road and the wall of the mountain. We hesitated half a second, then fell into the ice cold stream.

The vehicle approached slowly, and the engine got louder and the yellow lights got brighter.

We lay there, motionless.

Finally, the vehicle passed, but I didn’t get a glimpse of it.

I gave it thirty seconds, then got up on one knee and looked south. I could see the lights climbing up toward the pass. I stood. “Okay. Let’s move.”

Susan stood, we got back on the road and continued on. We were soaked and cold, but as long as we were moving, we wouldn’t freeze to death.

There was not a single sign of habitation along the route, not even a Montagnard house. If the Viets and hill people thought Dien Bien Phu was cold, they definitely wouldn’t live up here.

Two hours after we crossed the pass, the fog lifted, and the air was warmer. We were almost dried off, and I removed my gloves, scarves, and leather hat and put them in my backpack. Susan kept hers on.

Within half an hour, we could see the lights of a town down in what appeared to be a deep valley that I guessed was the Red River Valley, though I couldn’t actually see the river.

We stopped and sat on a rock. Susan took out one of the tourist brochures, which was soggy, and read the brochure by the flame of her lighter. She said, “That must be Lao Cai, and on the northwest side of the river is China. It says Lao Cai was destroyed during the Chinese invasion of Vietnam in 1979, but the border is open again, if we want to visit the People’s Republic of China.”

“Next time. What’s it say about transportation to Hanoi?”

She flicked on the lighter again and said, “Two trains run daily. First one is at 7:40
A.M.
, arrives in Hanoi at 6:30
P.M.
”

I looked at my watch, but it wasn’t there. I asked Susan, “What time is it?”

She looked at her watch and said, “Almost one
A.M.
Where’s your watch?”

“I gave it to Mr. Vinh.”

“That was nice of you.”

“I’ll send him a new battery next year.”

She asked me, “What do you want to do for the next six hours?”

“Have my head examined.”

“I can do that. You want to hear it?”

“No. Let’s get down to a warmer elevation, closer to Lao Cai, then find a place to hide out until dawn.” I stood. “Ready?”

She stood and off we went, down the road.

The mountains became foothills, and we saw huts and small villages now, but no lights on. The road dropped steeply toward the valley, and I could now make out the Red River and the scattered lights of two towns on both sides of the river; this side was Lao Cai, and the town on the other side, up river about a kilometer, must be in China.

I only vaguely remembered the 1979 border war between China and Vietnam, but I clearly recalled that the Viets kicked some Red Chinese ass. These people were tough, and as I said to Mr. Loc on the way to the A Shau Valley, I wanted them on our side in the next war. And I guess, in a way, that was partly what this mission was about.

I mean, I didn’t want to be accused of upsetting the global balance of power; the military and political geniuses in Washington were obviously working hard to forge a new Viet-American alliance against Red China. Somehow, Vice President Blake was important to this alliance, and he needed to become president. All I had to do was forget what I’d seen and heard in Ban Hin, and with luck, we’d have Cam Ranh Bay again, and the sailors of the Seventh Fleet could get laid a lot in Vietnam, plus we’d have some new oil resources, and we’d have a big Vietnamese Army poised on that border right ahead of me, and we could all kick some Chinese butt— or at least threaten to if they didn’t stop acting like assholes. Sounded good.

Even better, I could blackmail President Blake into making me Secretary of the Army so I could fire Colonel Karl Hellmann, or bust him to PFC and put him on permanent latrine duty.

Obviously, lots of good things could happen if I just shut my mouth— or maybe I’d get it shut for me.

I didn’t know, nor would I ever know, if Susan Weber was supposed to terminate my career and turn my pension into a death benefit for Mom and Pop. The stakes were high enough for her to be motivated into such a course of action—I mean, if Washington had threatened to kill Mr. Anh’s whole family if he turned rat, then certainly the stakes were high enough to add Chief Warrant Officer Paul Brenner to the hit list.

During the war, the Phoenix Program had assassinated over 25,000 Vietnamese who were suspected of collaborating with the Viet Cong. Add to that number a few Americans in Vietnam who had VC sympathies, and some local Frenchmen who were outright VC collaborators, and other Europeans who lived in Vietnam and leaned too far left. It was an amazing number—25,000 men and women—the largest assassination and liquidation program ever carried out by the United States of America. And I could assume that some of those Americans, who had been involved with the program and who were my contemporaries, were ready, willing, and able to whack a few malcontents and troublemakers like me at the drop of a hat.

On a happier note, I had found the girl of my dreams. Right here in Vietnam. A guy shouldn’t be so lucky.

As we walked toward Lao Cai, I said to Susan, “You understand that I’m going to blow the whistle on Edward Blake.”

She didn’t reply for a while, then said, “Think about it.” She added, “Sometimes, Paul, truth and justice are not what anyone wants or needs.”

“Well, when that day comes—if it hasn’t already arrived—then I’ll move to someplace like Saigon or Hanoi, where at least no one pretends that truth and justice are important.”

She lit a cigarette and said, “Underneath it all, you’re a Boy Scout.”

I didn’t reply.

She said, “Whatever you decide to do, I’m with you.”

Again, I didn’t reply.

We found a thicket of bamboo and made our way into it, then unrolled our ponchos and lay on the ground. I’m not a big fan of bamboo vipers, and I hoped it was cold enough to keep them snoozing until the sun warmed them. That’s what it said in the escape and evasion manual.

Susan slept, but I couldn’t. The sky was clearing, and I could see stars through the broken cloud cover. Some hours later, the sky began to lighten,
and I could hear birds that sounded like parrots or macaws squawking. I also heard the stupid chattering of monkeys somewhere in the distance.

We needed to get moving before the bamboo vipers did, and I shook Susan awake. She sat up, yawned and stood.

We got back on the road and continued on.

To our right was a wide stream, flowing swiftly out of the mountains to the Red River. There were clusters of huts near the road, but it was too early for people or vehicles to be out and moving.

The road flattened, and we were on the valley floor now. Within thirty minutes, we entered the incredibly ugly town of Lao Cai.

I could tell that all of these buildings were relatively new and that the entire town must have been destroyed in the 1979 war. At least this was one destroyed Vietnamese city that no one could blame on the United States Army, Marines, Navy, or Air Force.

There were a few people around, but no one took any note of us. I saw a group of about fifteen young backpackers sitting and lying in a group in the marketplace, as though they’d spent the night there.

I said to Susan, “With our backpacks, we can pass for college kids.”

“Me maybe.”

Susan stopped a Vietnamese lady and asked, “Ga xe lua?”

The woman pointed, pantomimed something, and spoke.

Susan thanked the woman in French and I thanked her in Spanish, and off we went.

Susan said, “We have to cross the river.”

We crossed the Red River on a new bridge, and I could see pylons of two destroyed bridges further upstream. Also up the river, where it split into two branches, I could see buildings with Chinese characters painted on them.

Susan saw them, too, and said, “China.”

I looked around as we came off the bridge and saw a few ruined buildings on the Vietnamese side that hadn’t been rebuilt. It had been an odd war, and I couldn’t even remember what it was that got the Chinese and Vietnamese at each other’s throats so soon after the Chinese had given aid to the Viets during the American War. Basically, they didn’t like each other, and hadn’t for about a thousand years. It probably wouldn’t take much to get them at each other’s throats again.