The next picture was of the three of them standing outside the cottage. They had their arms around each other. The jungle had practically choked the old colonial building. Frye could see a guitar propped against the wall.
Then a close-up of Li. Frye quickly saw the same things in her that Bennett must have: a simple beauty and dignity, a composure born of acceptance, a natural gentleness that emanated from her. He could see her strength, too, inseparable from her as water from a river or heat from fire. It’s what she needed to get through — he thought — the psychic national currency. Spend what you need to survive, and save what you can. Li, at least, had enough of it.
“She tell about that place in her story to Smith?”
Frye nodded, transfixed by Li’s face. “Sort of.”
“Beautiful little place. Not so big as the Michelin Plantation or the Fil Hol. Right in the middle of Three Corps Tac Zone, which was squat in the middle of the Viet Cong. Fuckin’ COSVN was less than a hundred miles northwest. It sat out in the middle of that jungle like a temple or something. Got run down after the French were kicked out, used for a bunch of different things. I used it to debrief Li. Was close enough for us all to get to, remote enough so we wouldn’t get seen and shot at.”
Frye looked at the slouching wall, clenched by vines. The fountain was in the foreground. Then a shot of Huong Lam, Bennett, and another Vietnamese man. Bennett had a bottle of champagne in his hand. Around Lam’s neck was the silver wave necklace that Frye had made for his brother.
Bennett drank down half a glass of gin. “The other Vietnamese guy we called Tony. He was Lam’s liaison. Never could get rid of him when there was a camera around. That necklace meant a lot to Lam, because he knew it meant a lot to me. What’d you make that thing out of, Chuck?”
“A quarter.”
“Nice work. Must have taken forever to file out that little wave.”
“Washington’s head is the top of the curl.”
“On patrol, Lam wrapped it in tape, so it wouldn’t jingle against his crucifix. He was a... weird guy. He was, like, half civilized and half savage. I never saw anybody fight with such a vengeance as him. You couldn’t tire him out. He’d take chances you wouldn’t believe. If we found tunnels, he’d go down. Most of the Vietnamese, they were too scared of those things. Not even Tony would go down there. We found a new hole one time, outside An Cat, hidden under a bunch of brush. Li’s intelligence told us where it was. We stood around for a minute while Lam got ready. He stripped down to just shirt and pants, took a knife in his teeth, a flashlight in his left hand and a nine-millimeter Smith in his right, and went in. We had tons of tunnel gadgets sent to us. Special shot-pistols, and headlamps like miners wear, radio transmitters that would strap to your back with the mike taped to your neck so your hands would be free. Lam never used that shit. All he had was a silencer for the pistol, because down there, a pistol shot could just about deafen you. He wouldn’t take a radio because things were too intense to be talking back with us. He wouldn’t smoke or drink or chew gum when he knew he was going down, because you really need your nose. Lam told me he could smell the Cong down there in the dark. Actually smell them. And he said he could feel them too, like sonar or something — he could feel their eyelids opening and closing, their muscles getting ready to move, their thoughts echoing off the tunnel walls.”
Frye could feel it himself, the solid darkness closing around him like fingers of a huge fist, squeezing his fear together, compacting his terror like a press.
Bennett drank again. “Thirty seconds later we heard three muffled shots. That meant he’d found another trap door. He’d always fire off three quick rounds through it before he went in. Then, two more of his shots, and one of theirs, way louder. Contact. After he got deep enough, we couldn’t hear much of anything. We’d just wait and hope he’d show again.”
Bennett stared at the picture of Lam. “He always would. They’d booby-trap those tunnels like crazy. They’d use snakes and spiders, spears and stakes, one-shot traps that would take your face off. They’d set crossbows in the walls and a trip wire in front you couldn’t see. They’d use fucking Coke cans to make grenades and fill them with rocks and broken glass. You set off one of those in a little tunnel and you were meat. One time he found three rats tied to a stake, and a vial and syringe not far away. He brought one of the animals out and we tested it — bubonic plague. The fucking VC version of germ warfare. Or they’d build a false wall and wait behind it. You got close enough, they’d whack you out with a fucking spear. They’d hide a claymore near the entrance ‘cause they knew when someone went down, a bunch of us would stand around and listen and watch. When the tunnel rat went in, the Cong would detonate the mine from inside and blow off the people above ground. But Lam, he was hip to all that shit. He knew. Sure enough, he came out all bloody and grimy. He’d found three VC and wasted them all. Lam didn’t say much more until later. He was too scared to talk. But when we got back and his nerves settled, he told me what went down. Turned out that time that there were four VC — all women. He’d taken out three and just couldn’t waste the last one. She was backed against a wall, not even bothering to hide anymore because she didn’t have a weapon and she knew he was gonna kill her. Lam just turned away and let her be. That’s what I mean about him being half civilized, too. He’d be unbelievably cruel, then do something like that. Lam had his own channel. Hell, we talked about everything. Looking back, I know I told him some shit I shouldn’t have. And he used it against us later.”
Bennett drank again and considered the picture. “He fooled us all, right up to the end.”
Another shot of the plantation, this one apparently taken by Houng Lam. Bennett and Crawley hugged Li, while a grinning Tony edged into the far side of the frame. The next picture was of Bennett and Li, crammed into a booth in a bar. Crawley sat beside her and three other soldiers were pressing into the shot, all drunken smiles. Frye noted a familiar face, far right.
“The Pink Night Club at the Catinat, Chuck. Helluva place. Li got a few gigs there. I got her an apartment on Tu Do Street in Saigon just a few weeks before I got blown up. Look at this one! That’s Li and Elvis Phuong. Great singer, that fuckin’ Elvis. He sings at the Wind sometimes. Li did a set with him and the band and Elvis backed her up. I thought she’d come unglued she was so nervous. Everybody loved her. She had that something about her. Now check this! There she is on stage.”
Li stood, mike in hand. Frye could see the muscles in her neck straining beneath the pure white skin. She had on a black miniskirt and a pair of matching boots.
“Nice, Benny. Burke Parsons, on the right?”
Bennett nodded and drank again, shaking his head. “Burke was CIA, so our paths crossed and we hung out some. He came and went. That was the spooks.”
The next picture sent a chill of sadness through him. Bennett was leading Li to a dance floor, her hand in his, her face beaming up at him, his trousers pressed tight around his good strong legs.
Bennett stared at the picture a moment. “They still itch and ache sometimes,” he said. “And my fucking knee gets sore. Remember the knee?”
“Football.”
“Back then, I thought torn ligaments were a bummer” — more gin — ”But I never complained, Chuck. And I’m not gonna start now.”
“Maybe it would do some good.”
“Fuck complaints, little brother. Fuck you and fuck me. Now here, this is the kitchen of our place on Tu Do.”
Frye’s heart sank as he looked at the screen. Li was sitting at a table with a cup of something raised to her lips, caught unaware, a look of surprise on her face. The apartment looked small and almost empty, washed in a rounded, yellow, distinctly eastern light. There was a vase with no flowers in it on the table in front of her. Frye felt an overwhelming sense of solitude in the shot — the solitude of a girl without her family, of a soldier far away from his, of a small room in a big city soon to fall. Two solitudes, really, vast and hemispheric as two halves of the earth, coming together for reasons more desperate than either of them could have known.