“Maybe?” Rafferty says.
Vladimir fingers the cleft in his chin and looks disappointed. “Please,” he says. “You think my name Vladimir? Him, you think his name Janos? This one Pierre? We think your name really Poke?”
“Of course not,” Dr. Evil says. “But Murphy, that’s what he called himself then. Sometimes Murph.”
“Where? When?”
“Wietnam.” Vladimir is watching Rafferty’s eyes. “American in Wietnam, not always white hat, you know?”
“I know.”
Dr. Evil leans in and lowers his rustle of a voice to the point where Rafferty has to strain to hear him. “Murphy was Phoenix.” He straightens a bit, watching for a reaction. “You know about Phoenix?”
“Targeting?” Rafferty says. He read something about this years ago. “Targeting … targeting what? Collaborators, Vietcong sympathizers?” He knows he’s about to hear something he doesn’t want to hear.
“Arnold, he know Murphy,” Vladimir says sleepily, his eyes half-closed. “Arnold say Murphy hard-core. Wery hard-core.”
Dr. Evil says, “To be hard-core in Phoenix is to be very, very hard-core.”
Silence falls again. The three men gaze at Rafferty as though they’re waiting for him to wave his hands and materialize their dinner, and Rafferty says, “Back in a minute.” He gets up.
“Thirty thousand,” Vladimir says. “Ten, ten, ten.”
8
Wery Bad
He plunges into the thickening dusk, the fumes of the beer clouding his head. Part of him wants just to keep going, not return to the dark bar and what he’s about to learn. But instead he rounds the nearest corner to make sure he can’t be seen from the bar, grabs a huge, anxious breath and blows it out, then pulls his remaining money from the hip pocket of his jeans. He’s got forty-seven thousand left of his combined assets, plus a salad of small bills. With a quick glance over his shoulder, he counts out thirty thousand, all in thousand-baht bills. He puts the remainder back in his pocket, then pulls out five thousand more to cover the bar tab they’re running up. Heading back to the bar, he wonders where he’s going to sleep this evening and what he’ll use to pay for it.
He nods at the bartender, who looks straight through him, and moves toward the booth. When he gets there, the three of them are huddled together over the table, all talking at once. They fall silent and sit back as he slides in. He makes a show of reaching into his pocket and counts out the thirty thousand, putting a stack of ten in front of each of them. Janos reaches for his, and Rafferty says, “Ah-ah. Leave them there for now.”
Vladimir says, “Okay. I talking, everybody else keeping mouth closed. If I make mistake, Janos, Pierre, you fix.” Vladimir puts his hands on the table on either side of the money, palms down, as though preparing for a magic trick, and clears his throat. “The Phoenix Program,” he says. “Some of it wery bad. Murphy maybe the most bad. Ewen some Phoenix guys, they tell boss, no, they not working with him no more.”
“How would you know that? Phoenix was military, right?”
“Under CIA,” Vladimir says. He touches the side of his beak with a straight index finger, a gesture that’s apparently full of meaning that Rafferty doesn’t understand. “William Colby, yes? Later head of CIA. Right now,” he says, “we have two CIA here, in this bar.”
“Maybe you should bring them over,” Rafferty says, “and we’ll split the money five ways. Six thousand each.”
“Or maybe,” Vladimir says, “you pay twenty thousand more.” He smiles like a man braving pain.
“What do they know that you don’t?”
“I was other side,” Vladimir says. “Pierre was working with Chinese. Maybe we know more than CIA.”
“I’m going to listen,” Rafferty says. “And if I feel shorted, I’m going to start peeling bills off the stacks, and then we’re going to get the CIA guys.”
“You know,” Vladimir says. He knocks back half of his drink and picks up the thought. “You know, when you talking, you not learning.” He makes the other half of the whiskey disappear and refills the glass. “So. Looking for Wietcong supporters, yes? Problem in Wietnam is, nobody know who is this side, who is other side. Ewerybody Wietnamese, ewerybody have family ewerywhere, have family in north, have family in south. Ewerybody wear black pajama. Gowernment in South wery unpopular. So who is who, yes? Difficult question.”
“Okay.”
“The Phoenix Program, big project. America think big, always think big. So CIA decide, ewery month, find secret traitor. How many, Pierre?”
“Eighteen hundred,” Dr. Evil says.
“Only eighteen hundred? In the whole south?” Rafferty asks.
“Ewery month,” Vladimir says, tapping the table with his fingernail on each syllable. “Eighteen hundred ewery month. One year more than twenty thousand.”
“And do what with them?” Rafferty asks. He gets a flat look from all three of them, and it makes him feel ten years old.
“Supposed to double some of them,” Vladimir says, the tone of his voice making it clear what he thinks of the notion. “They work for Hanoi but supposed to be they work for U.S., but really you know they work for Hanoi, ewen if they take U.S. money. U.S. never get one good double in whole war. We have hundreds, you don’t have none. You was on wrong side.”
“So,” Dr. Evil says, with an impatience that suggests he wants to pocket his money, “since they couldn’t double them, they took some of them out of the picture.”
“I see.”
“No.” Vladimir is looking at the center of the table, which has nothing on it. “You don’t see. Not so nice like shooting. Not ‘Hello, you are traitor,’ bang. Nothing nice at all. Not Murphy. First, have problem, find Wietcong guy. Wietcong spy is name Nguyen, yes? And he live in this willage. Ewerybody in willage is name Nguyen. Have five willage same name. Ewerybody in all of them name Nguyen. So Murphy, he find somebody, maybe working in rice paddy, maybe walking with buffalo. Murphy and three or four ARVN-South Wietnam troop-they beat the guy up, hurt him bad. Then they say, ‘You tell us what house is Nguyen or we kill you.’ So man say, ‘That house, ower there.’ Maybe right house, maybe wrong. Maybe house is mother-in-law, maybe somebody guy owe money to. How can Murphy know?”
“Well,” Rafferty says, “how could he?”
“He don’t care,” Vladimir says, waving the question away. “Somebody say, ‘This is Nguyen,’ okay, no problem. He can play game. He like game. Wait until dark, use makeup and make his face look bad, like dead for long time. Old clothes, many hole. Smell like dead animal. Puts around his neck-” He draws a broad U dangling from his shoulders.
“A necklace.”
“Made from these.” Vladimir tugs on his right ear. “Two rope full. Like Elizabeth Taylor, but with ear. Ewen ARVN soldier afraid. Murphy go alone into willage, make woices-”
Fighting the image of the ears, Rafferty says, “Woices?”
“Voices,” Janos says. Dr. Evil is drumming his fingers on the tabletop; he’s heard the story already.
“Many woices. Man woice, lady woice, ghost woice. Talk Wietnamese, talk English. Woice come from ewerywhere.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute.”
“Ventriloquism,” Dr. Evil says. It’s nearly a snap. “This is the most famous part of Murphy’s legend. He was the Voice Man.”
“I am talking again now?” Vladimir asks from an affronted height.
“All yours,” Rafferty says.
“Ewerybody run inside. Dead man in willage, ghost woices, bad smell, ewerybody run. Murphy goes to Nguyen house-maybe, maybe not-and kick open door. Then he kill ewerybody inside. Babababababa.” Vladimir mimes a machine pistol with a jerky right hand. “Ffffft,” he says, and blows on his finger. “Murphy goes home, makes line through name Nguyen.”
“Seventeen hundred ninety-nine to go,” Janos says.
“Helicopter,” Dr. Evil says.
Vladimir says, “I don’t think-”