But he spoke of the Viet Cong with a quiet respect and I began to wonder if he were secretly still with them.
We became friends.
Eight weeks later, he became very sad and serious as he walked his bicycle beside me down the road. He proposed that I express my sympathies for the Communists and offer myself to them. The Viet Cong were always in need of morale boosting — and perhaps I might sing for them. They were scattered throughout the Iron Land, just north of my village. [Editor’s Note: The Iron Triangle was an area of concentrated Viet Cong influence, the southern tip of which lay some thirty miles from Saigon. It was among the most vigorously bombed, shelled and defoliated areas of the war. The triangle’s points were the villages of Ben Cat and Ben Suc, and the junction of the Saigon and Thi Tinh Rivers.] Some of the people of An Cat, I know, were Viet Cong by night. Lam told me that I was risking my life to spy on the Viet Cong. He seemed both eager and afraid for me. With the disappearance of my father still fresh in my heart, and the stories of murder and torture by the Communists, I agreed to try. Even as a girl, I always felt the need to support one’s beliefs with action. It may have helped that I was seventeen and rather naive. If more of the Vietnamese had felt that way, our homeland would not be under the Communists today.
To become sympathetic with the Communists was easy. A word here, a comment there, and soon, I was approached by a young man who began to share his ideas with me, to “educate” me. This was over a period of weeks. I accepted his theories with eagerness. The inevitability of Communist victory was easy enough to feign. I made a point of letting him hear me sing and play. In modesty I will say that I had a very lovely voice.
Months later, he first offered to lead me into the Iron Land. There was a need, he said, for singers in the tunnels. I believe he regarded me as a lucky catch. He said I might meet the great poet Pham Sang, whose troupe of actors was famous for its underground performances. I would have my own theater and my own audience. One part of me was very flattered and nervous and one part of me knew that I could aid the cause of freedom by playing this dangerous game.
It was long after dark that I met him by the creek and we rode bicycles along a trail that led back to where the trees were dead and the bomb craters looked like volcanoes under the moon. I had my guitar strapped to my back. We rode and rode. When we were perhaps ten miles from An Cat, I began to wonder if this man was deceiving me. Would he go to such elaborate lengths just to rape a village girl? The trees naked from defoliation stretched their bony branches toward us. The trail became too bad to ride on. Walking my bicycle behind him, I realized that he had simply seen through my own deceit and was taking me out here to be tortured, raped, and murdered by the Viet Cong. And me, innocent enough to have brought my guitar! Still, I followed, because escape was not possible.
We left our bicycles by a twisted tram tree and hiked up the steep side of a hill. Two men watched us. They wore black-and-white checked scarves, so I knew they were the Viet Cong, I could sense people around us, but could not see anyone else.
From the top I looked down into the huge bomb crater below us. And there was my stage!
The audience sat in this natural amphitheater, along the sloping walls. There were no lights or sets but people all around to hear me! And a band of musicians! I was led past the Viet Cong by my guide. At the bottom was the small, earthen stage. The musicians said they knew some of the songs I asked them for. We played ten in all.
The guitar player played with a green stick so as not to be loud. The drummer had an old snare drum with tent canvas on it, which made a dull thump-thump when he hit it with his sticks. For one cymbal he had an American helmet, and for the other a canteen. There were watchmen all along the perimeter of the crater, with their backs to me, looking for the enemy.
I sang love songs. Our performance was well-received. The audience was not permitted applause, but a low humming sound of approval came after my first song.
After the show, the Viet Cong colonel in charge told me that I was to sing no more songs of love, only songs of struggle and victory. He was a twisted, angry man. But he smiled before he dismissed me and said I had the loveliest voice he’d ever heard.
I met the poet Pham Sang that night, and he told me very quietly to damn the Communists and sing whatever I wished. He said we artists must be free from all tyranny of thought. He was a thin, sad-faced man and I liked him.
For a few minutes I sat with other performers and a few Viet Cong soldiers. We talked of the war and drank bad tea.
Early that morning I returned to An Cat, my heart filled with contradictions. I did not like the Communists’ ideas, but the people seemed good people. They liked me. I loved to sing to an audience, but they were an audience of enemies.
It was one week later, after performing three more nights, that I passed along my first information to Huong Lam. It was about new tunnel work near Cu Chi, the exact place that an underground munitions shop was being constructed. Sympathetic villagers were helping move the fresh earth by hiding it beneath the false bottoms of their water baskets. It was good intelligence. And with those words of betrayal my life was set. The only thing more intimate than betrayal is trust. I was now an enemy of the Communists, and that first secret I told guided my life from that point as surely as a rudder guides a boat.
Frye closed the manuscript and looked again at the dried footprint on his floor. Amazing, he thought: after all that Li went through in the war, she’s kidnapped from a stage in California. He looked out the window to the pure blue sky outside and wondered how it must have been. For Li. For Bennett. In a lot of ways, they purchased that window right there, they purchased that sky — for me. They paid.
Cristobel Something or Other’s dog thumped his tail against the floor and looked at Frye with an expression of total understanding. Frye read on.
One day Lam said it was time for me to meet with his commanding officer. This was the man to whom my information was passed. It was unwise for me to be seen too often with Lam, and very dangerous to be seen with an American. So, his friend, known to me only as Tony, was to often serve as my contact. Tony was a Liaison Officer, a loyal man who followed Lam everywhere and did all that Lam wished.
Toward evening we left the marketplace. We walked the road toward my home as we sometimes did together. But when we were out of sight of the village, we cut through the jungle on a small trail that I had never known about. The foliage was dense but the trail was good. Lam was ahead of me and I followed his back. For a Vietnamese man he was large and his back seemed like a powerful ally to me. Every few seconds he would turn to look back at me. In his eyes I saw strength and purpose. I also — for the first time — believed that I saw doubt, I told myself there was kindness there too, but I suspected that I was only Lam’s tool, his spy — not truly a resident in his heart. That was how it should be. Always with Lam I had the feeling that his true thoughts were kept from me. Yet I believed in him.
We walked the trail to where it intersected the road to Saigon. We crouched in the bushes for nearly five minutes. Three American vehicles went by, going south toward the city. Then three more. A moment later, a jeep came slowly toward us and stopped. It had a blue scarf tied to its antenna. Lam rushed me into it and jumped in behind me. We went down the highway only half a mile before turning into the jungle on a small road. I recognized it as one of the roads to the rubber plantation. Tony pointed the way.
I was sitting next to an American soldier with dark hair and thick, strong arms. I could tell because his sleeves were rolled up as he drove. Like most Americans, he seemed large, but later I found out he was actually shorter than the average GI. He looked at me once, nodded, and said nothing. A necklace bounced around his neck along with his dog tags as we bumped over the road. It was an ocean wave inside a circle, made from silver. Squeezed in the back with Lam and Tony was a huge black man, very frightening, who neither looked at us, nor spoke.