Within days Linh received the expected message that Mr. Bao wanted to have a meeting. He had anticipated as much. He sent back a message that the situation was too risky to meet in the city. Instead, they would meet at the house in the Ho Bo woods.
Linh took military trucks up to Cu Chi, then rode on civilian motorcycles and bicycles the final leg of the journey. On the prearranged night, he stopped for a leisurely meal at a street vendor’s, making sure to get several men in conversation, periodically dipping his hand into his pocket, reassuring himself with the smooth touch of wire. After eating, he walked alone the final hours to the deserted cabin set deep in the woods.
The wind started up at sunset and blew with force, shaking leaves from trees, bending branches, dropping fruit not yet ready to fall. Linh had found great happiness during his weeks with Helen, but now he felt the weight and drag of that love. Ashamed at his relief to be alone again, walking on the deserted road, it occurred to him that he could keep walking and never turn around. A coward’s thought. The wind wiped away the clouds; the sky burned sharp and glittering with stars like broken glass on blacktop. Linh hurried his step.
Mr. Bao lounged at a crude wooden table, drinking from a bottle of expensive Napoleon brandy. In the light of the lantern on the table’s edge, he looked tired and smaller than Linh had remembered him. The graying at his temples, too, was more pronounced, and there were dark circles under his eyes. A pewter-topped cane was propped beside him. Many years had passed since they began their meetings. When he saw Linh, he smiled, revealing stubby brown teeth.
“Didn’t hear you approach,” he said. “Join me.”
“Why not?” Linh sat at the chair opposite.
“I hear we should be making nuptial toasts.”
Linh said nothing, only smiled.
“Indeed, when Mrs. Thi Xuan told me the whole village was invited, I wondered if my invitation had gone astray.”
Again Linh said nothing.
“Come, we don’t have all night. The question, it seems to me, is what do we do with the situation now.”
“This is good brandy,” Linh said, looking into his glass.
“You like the taste? Maybe your American can buy it for you now.”
“Why do anything? I’m still your eyes and ears. I influence coverage as I can.” Linh was confronted again with knowing how a situation should be handled but hoping against hope that it could be otherwise.
Mr. Bao laughed out loud as if he’d been told a good joke, then wiped at his eyes. “Things can’t remain as they are. Uncle is waning, the powers are realigning themselves, some will go up and some down, loyalties will be reassessed.”
“I see.”
Mr. Bao wiped his hand across his lips, jabbed his index finger on the table between them to emphasize his point. “Let’s be frank, my friend. Neither of us are political men. I’ve been on a loose rein, some would say overlooked, and I’ve allowed you the same. Now is the time to show your loyalty.”
“What are you saying?” At long last, marrying Helen, he had shown his loyalty, and they both knew it.
“What do we do with her now? What do we do with you for so blatantly acting on your own?”
Linh drank his glass of brandy down in one gulp. Mr. Bao raised his eyebrows but poured another round.
“My job was nothing more than providing what ever information came my way. We are going here; we are going there. Very little,” Linh said. He studied the hut, saw a tail of dust blowing through a crack in the wall, illuminated across the lantern’s beam as it settled on the table, on their glasses, on Mr. Bao’s wrinkled and sickly face.
“True, most of what you give us is useless. What you did was infiltrate. You are in place. You are trusted. We never gave you credit for being much of a soldier or a spy. Mainly a lover.” Mr. Bao giggled.
“Then let me go on.”
“We are both men of the world,” Mr. Bao said, his voice low and purring. “Women are hard to ignore. You and I have never believed in the war so much anyway. It is our sideline. But now we will show our allegiance, to survive.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I’ll say the marriage was to gain her confidence. Take her back to the border. Another exclusive like the one you arranged on the Ho Chi Minh trail. This time have her captured. Let her be in on it or let her believe as she does. She takes pictures that are smuggled out.”
“Too dangerous.”
“Otherwise… the obvious choice… a dead woman reporter would demoralize the Americans.”
“Think of something else.” He had let Mai down; he would not let harm come to Helen. “Let me talk with headquarters.”
“Headquarters doesn’t know who you are. Think I’m a fool? Those are your choices. Prove you’re not led by your pants. And you’ve had your bit of fun, too. Tell me, what is she like in bed?”
Linh laughed and drank down his glass. Mr. Bao had already been suspicious about him before this, so the marriage was neither good nor bad. But he was wrong about Linh. He had changed in the intervening years, had become what he wasn’t before: a soldier. “Pour us another, and I’ll tell you things. Her eyes.”
Outside the wind howled so that the thatch of the hut rustled and whispered.
“Forget eyes. Tell me about her breasts. I knew when I saw you with her scarf that time.” Mr. Bao laughed. He unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt from the heat of the drinks and the heat of the lantern in the small room.
“It was so obvious?” He knew how Mr. Bao’s mind worked; he would rather find a dishonest route than an easier, straightforward one. He would rather steal a dollar than be given it. Like so many of the Communists, he did not particularly love his country or his people, but he used the system so he could steal from them. “Milky white breasts of a goddess. What else?”
Mr. Bao sighed now and became businesslike, forehead and neck glistening with sweat. “We might convince her to come over to our cause. Help get stories sympathetic to us. But it doesn’t explain why you married her.” Mr. Bao poured another round, but this time his hand was slower and unsteady with the bottle, leaving a small ring of spilled liquid around one of the glasses.
“Maybe I did it for love,” Linh said. The truth was far, far more intoxicating and dangerous than any amount of brandy, and his heart beat hard against his chest at the released words.
Mr. Bao paused, his glass against his lips, as if considering this possibility. “That… would be the worst thing.”
Stupidly, now that the outrageous truth had been told, he wanted to insist upon it. “Why? I mean, if it was true.”
Mr. Bao looked at him now, the alcohol held in check, his reptilian eyes dark and cold. “A greedy man, a corrupt man, a man filled with lust, that’s understandable. That can be accounted for. But you can never trust a man who falls in love with the enemy.”
Linh stood and stretched, catlike. The brandy made the room seem to expand and contract as if it, too, were stretching, breathing, unsheathing its claws.
Mr. Bao reached out for Linh’s arm and grabbed it. “I mean, how lost would a man have to be to do such a thing? Uncle’s words: ‘We are from the race of dragons and fairies.’ ”
Resolved, Linh jerked his arm free. He was a soldier. “We’ll plan another trip to the Parrot’s Beak next week then,” he said, slowly moving back and forth in the small room, thumping his hand against the flat of his stomach. “Sufficiently risky area. She’ll be captured for a week. Take pictures that are released to all the newspapers. Then she’ll be released unharmed.”
“Good,” Mr. Bao said as he finished his glass.
“We’ll divorce, and she’ll go back to America. And then I’ll start building a future for myself in
