and who, in the second instance, argued that the date stamp on the Dalat permit was for tomorrow and that therefore he should not be on the road and should be fined one million dong, about ninety dollars U.S.
Exasperation barely under control, Baker told them about the clerk at the hotel and that perhaps what he should do is have the U.S. legation in Saigon ring the officials of General Vinh in Hanoi. That did it. Albeit grudgingly, he was allowed to proceed, and once in the first hamlet, in the early afternoon, he let it be known that he was looking for information about U.S. MIAs and POWs from ‘Nam, appealing to their patriotism, telling the village headman that “our soldiers and your soldiers are fighting side by side to repel the imperialistic ambitions of the Chinese,” and that therefore the Vietnamese people and all those who had been exploited by the Chinese no- gooders had a patriotic duty to help him find any missing MIAs or POWs from ‘Nam. Then they could rejoin their comrades in the fight against the Chinese invaders. Baker had particularly balked when it came to using terms such as “imperialist,” “no-gooders,” and “patriotic duty,” but then again, why not use anything he could? He added that there would also be a substantial reward for helpful information leading to any POW or MIA.
A lot of villagers on their way back from market stared at him as they had stared for thousands of years at barbarians who smelled like dog and often, to the Asians’ disgust, grew facial hair. But beyond that, no one took much notice, other than a crowd of boys who, despite the village’s relative prosperity, soon clung about him, their hands out for money or whatever he might have had to give. The only thing he wanted to give was hope to at least some of those parents back in the States who simply did not know for sure whether their kin were alive or dead. If they were dead, then at least they would know for certain, and the grieving could begin. Police, he noticed, were everywhere in Dalat, and suddenly in the beautifully rich, clean air that had followed the downpour he realized how futile it all was.
Who would dare approach a stranger with such information with policemen sniffing everywhere? Perhaps he could do better by forwarding a request to USVUN HQ in Hanoi, or was it now in Phu Lang Thuong? Baker wished he could give MIAs’ next of kin some idea of how frustrating it was trying to follow a single lead through the tangled web of bureaucracy. It always ended like this, despite the most optimistic beginnings. And who could blame the Vietnamese? What would he do in their position, with officialdom ever ready to swoop for some reason that might rest on nothing more than a petty whim or vindictiveness?
Baker decided he would return to Dalat in the morning if he failed to get anything that would substantiate the old Chinese’s claim, made on his sampan, that there was an MIA in one of the Lat villages. There was no hotel in Lat, but for the twenty dollars he’d given Ha Ha, it had been arranged that he would stay overnight in one of the village thatched-roof houses built high on stilts. Without knowing it, at least at that moment, the American was among people who, if they knew anything, would most likely tell him, for the Lat villagers were made up of old men who, along with other minorities, had helped the Americans in the early seventies.
The evening meal was rice and some kind of meat that they told him was pig — which he doubted — and black beans. They told Baker through a local translator that “you see the hill people, the Montagnards, were correct. They always said the Americans, the green faces”—they meant Green Beret commandos’ face paint—”would not desert them, that they would come back.”
“It’s been a long time,” Baker said by way of apology.
“What is time to us?” the family elder said, smoking his pipe at full blast. “The important thing is they came back.”
One of the younger men shook his head from side to side. “The important thing is, will they stay?”
“No,” another man said matter-of-factly as he held the rice bowl close to his mouth, shoveling with his chopsticks. “The question is, what will Salt and Pepper do?”
“Who cares what they will do?” the old man said angrily. “There is always one rotten banana in the bunch.”
“One!” the younger man said. “In this case there are two.”
“Who are they?” asked Baker. “Montagnards?”
“No, no,” the old man said, waving aside the mention of Montagnards. “They are rebels.”
“From what tribe, then?” Baker inquired.
No one spoke, busily eating and drinking tea, the silence growing heavier by the second. Baker felt his gut tighten as if he’d swallowed a slime ball along with his rice. Slowly he put down his bowl. “Are they Americans?” he asked quietly.
“Yes,” the young man said.
“Do you know where they are?”
The old man’s chopsticks waved in a wide gesture toward the peaks of Lang Bian Mountain. “Up there.”
“Why do you call them Salt and Pepper?”
The young man shrugged nonchalantly. “One is white, one is black.”
“You’re sure they’re Americans?”
“Yes,” the old man said, offering more tea.
Baker was simply lost for words. He’d come looking for MIAs and possibly POWs, not renegades. He blew on the hot tea. “Could you contact them?”
The old man shrugged. “I don’t know. Who wants to talk to such vermin?”
Baker conceded the old man’s point. Who
“What do they do?” Baker asked. “I mean, so they turned and ran for the other side — the Communists — but they can’t still be running against our men — I mean the U.S. has been long gone.”
“The U.S. has come back,” the younger man said. “The renegades will run with whoever runs against the U.S. — the Chinese or the Khmer Rouge. Sometimes they transport heroin from Laos into Vietnam.”
Baker felt himself sweating despite the cool air of the Lat village. The very mention of the Khmer Rouge from Cambodia — the Khmer Rouge being one of China’s allies in the south — filled him with the kind of fear and loathing some of his Jewish friends experienced upon hearing the names Auschwitz and Buchenwald — run by power-crazed madmen bent on genocide. China would welcome a Khmer Rouge attack against the Vietnamese anywhere on Vietnam’s western border.
“Have you heard any rumors of a Khmer Rouge invasion?” he asked.
“Yes,” the old man said. “Porters are being recruited to move ammunition and supplies along the Cambodian-Vietnamese border and the Laotian-Vietnamese border using some of the old Ho Chi Minh trails.”
No one spoke for several minutes, the only sounds those of the fruit birds from the hill country and the sipping of tea. Finally Baker, still trying to absorb the shock of the information and the implications of it for the war should the USVUN forces be hit on another front, determined that the USVUN field commander, General Freeman, should be advised of the impending likelihood of an attack on his left flank. But Baker’s thoughts immediately returned to the subject of the two American renegades.
“Do you know what rank they hold?” Baker asked. “These two?”
“No.”
“Have you seen them yourselves?”
“I did,” the young man said. “Once. It was a drug line moving toward Saigon.”
“Ho Chi Minh City,” the father corrected.
“Saigon,” the young man repeated, and Baker knew he had an ally. “I saw them for only a moment. They were in NVA uniforms with the big metal rings on their backpacks. Remember? The rings were for attaching camouflage — leaves and such — so that, unlike an American, an NVA soldier could move his head around without any camouflage moving. They had gone past so fast you could not see them clearly. But the white one was much smaller than the black one.”
“Would you recognize them again?”
“No, though I have heard they never separate and the white one is bigger than most Vietnamese. Sometimes they move from place to place by air, but it is said they only transport drugs on foot.”
Baker sat still, both hands cradling the cup, accepting the offer of more tea. Then he sipped the tea, and a crisis had passed because he had resolved what to do. The moment he got back to Dalat — hopefully tomorrow evening — he would send a message to USVUN’s HQ. He’d get shit for not having notified State first or the Pentagon, and not going through normal channels, but he took comfort from the words of Field Marshal Von Rundstedt, who once declared that “normal channels are a trap for officers who lack initiative.”
