most part, a few hundred went to each. Still, that would have represented considerable money in Vietnam.
It probably bought a lot of AK-47s and rockets, Dean thought bitterly.
Obviously, someone decided that the money the village leaders were getting would be more useful in his pocket.
Was it the Vietcong, the South Vietnamese, or someone else?
Forester must have thought it was connected to McSweeney somehow.
Maybe he suspected McSweeney.
Or maybe McSweeney knew who did it, and was in danger because of that. Maybe the fact that he was targeted had nothing to do with his running for President.
“That’s all I know,” said Phuc Dinh.
“Do you have the e-mail Forester sent you?” Dean asked.
He shook his head.
“How did he find you?”
“I am not sure. I am not a famous man.” He broke into a grin for the first time since they’d met. “Maybe he met someone with a long memory. He claimed to have found my name in a government directory.”
“Is that possible?”
“Yes. I have contact with foreign banks. I have visited Beijing — I am in the directories. But how he knew to look, that I do not know. He asked if I knew anything about missing money. He named the date the payment should have arrived. That was all. I will not come to your country,” Phuc Dinh added. “I cannot help you more than this.” Dean took a sip of tea, savoring the liquid in his mouth as if it were expensive Scotch.
“What did you do during the war, Mr. Dean?” asked Phuc Dinh.
“I was a Marine,” Dean said. “I served in this province.”
“It was not a good place to be a soldier.”
“I’d imagine it was much more difficult to be a civilian.”
“Impossible, I would say.”
“There was an ambush near your village, Phu Loc Two,” said Dean. “You were targeted. Some reports said you were killed.”
A faint smile appeared on Phuc Dinh’s face, then faded into something close to sadness, and then blank stoicism. He scratched his ear but said nothing.
“How did you escape?” Dean asked. “Weren’t you shot?”
“Another man went in my place. We used many tricks of deception at the time, to confuse spies who might be watching.”
“The dead man wasn’t you?”
Phuc Dinh shook his head.
“But he had a scar like yours.”
“When the money did not arrive, that was a sign,” said Phuc Dinh, ignoring Dean’s comment. “From that point on, we were on our guard. The ambush was a few months later, but we were still watching.”
“There was a photo in a file,” said Dean. “The man had a scar like yours.”
Phuc Dinh pointed to it.
“Yes, like that,” said Dean.
“A time such as that brings us to the lowest point of our existence.”
“Charlie, ask him about money transfers,” Rockman interrupted. “Ask him if he had any access to bank records.” Dean ignored the runner, staring instead at Phuc Dinh.
He wasn’t a ghost, not in the literal sense. And yet he was in every other way. He had come to Dean from the past, con-juring up an entire world that Dean had passed through years ago, an unsettled world that continued to haunt him, much as he denied it.
Dean, too, was a ghost, haunting Phuc Dinh’s world, though the former VC official didn’t know it.
“I lost a friend on that mission,” said Dean softly. “A good friend.”
“I lost many friends during the war as well.” Phuc Dinh lowered his head. “The man who went in my place that day was my brother. The scars you noticed were burns from a French vicar for stealing his food when we were five and six.
He used the same poker to mark us both.”
78
“Didn’t know you were a gun nut!”
Startled, Jimmy Fingers turned to his right and saw Sam Iollo, one of the capitol police supervisors, standing nearby.
“I hope I’m not a nut,” said Jimmy Fingers.
“What is that little peashooter you got there?” asked Iollo, pointing at Jimmy Fingers’ pistol.
Jimmy held out a Colt Detective Special, a .38-caliber two-inch snubby. Though old, the weapon was in showroom shape, its blued finish gleaming and the wood bright and polished.
“Pretty,” said Iollo. “What, you don’t trust us protecting you?”
“Of course I trust you,” said Jimmy Fingers.
“Hey, just busting on you there, Counselor.” Iollo seemed to think that everyone who worked for a senator was a lawyer. He gave Jimmy Fingers a serious look. “Can you shoot a rifle?”
For a brief moment, Jimmy Fingers was filled with fear.
Surely this wasn’t an idle question, nor an idle meeting.
“Of course I can use a rifle,” he told Iollo.
“Maybe you’ll want to come out to the annual turkey shoot then. Good food, and the competition’s fun. If you’re as good with a rifle as you are with that pistol, you might take yourself home a bird.”
“Maybe I will. Let me know when it’s coming up.” Jimmy Fingers started to leave, but Iollo held out his hand to stop him.
“Tell me the truth now — you think he’s going to be President?” Iollo asked.
“Without a doubt.”
“He is looking real good. Be careful no one shoots at him again, though. Next time, they may not miss.”
“Yes,” said Jimmy Fingers grimly, before walking away.
79
Dean pushed back in the chair as Phuc Dinh rose.
“I have enjoyed our meeting,” Phuc Dinh said perfuncto-rily, his tone suggesting the opposite.
“Thank you,” Dean told him. “I appreciate your time.
And your honesty.”
Once more, a faint hint of a smile appeared on Phuc Dinh’s face, only to dissolve. As Dean watched him walk toward the door, it occurred to him that it would be an easy thing to shoot him, completing the mission he had been assigned thirty-five years before.
But Phuc Dinh had not caused Longbow’s death any more than Dean had.
Meeting his Vietnamese enemy reminded Dean not of the war but of how much had changed in the intervening years.
As a sniper, he’d seen Vietnam, the world, as black-and-white. Now he saw only colors, infinite colors. He knew his job and his duty, and would perform both. But he no longer had the luxury the teenager had of looking at targets through a crosshaired scope. What he saw was weighted with the time he’d come through, the miles he’d walked.
The ghosts he’d shared space with, haunted by and, in turn, haunting.
