Shannon said, “I’m hungry.”
“Anyone for pinochle?”
“Lieutenant.”
“What?”
“Suppose we get her off the ground. What then?”
“We point ourselves across the mountains and try like hell to get to Laos before the Reds can get fighters on our tail.”
“Lots of luck,” Mister Shannon said.
“Aye. And then some.” McKuen batted his arms together. “Let’s not be standing out here all day in this freezing bloody rain.”
Chapter Twenty
0920 Hours
Lieutenant Chinh sat guarding his tortured hands. He said irritably, “Why do they not come for us?”
“Trying to make us sweat,” said Eddie Kreizler.
The cell stank of sweat and human filth and the exhalations of twoscore raw-gummed mouths rotted by bad food. The crowded prisoners had made a circle of space for Kreizler and Chinh. No one spoke to them or looked at them; they were outsiders, even among prisoners — the American imperialist mercenary and the Vietnamese traitor to the people.
Lieutenant Chinh said, “I have think.”
“And?”
“I not do what you say.”
“I see,” said Kreizler.
“I am not a traitor,” Chinh said. “Not what you think.”
“I know you’re not a traitor, Lieutenant. I know you too well to think that.”
“This my country, not yours. But it is a sin, what you say. To kill self is a sin.”
“All right, Lieutenant.”
“They will torture me long time. Maybe they make me talk. But when I talk I tell lies.”
“Tell them the truth. Nothing you can tell them will hurt our side very much.”
“I heard radio talk. The Colonel Urquhart come. The paratroop attack. I lie to them about that.”
“They’ll know you’re lying, Lieutenant.”
Chinh had a stubborn look. He said, “What you do?”
“I’ll jump them alone. They’ll have to kill me.” He smiled. “I know — it sounds like a coward’s way out. Maybe it is.”
“No.”
I wish they’d get it over with, Kreizler thought. A rat scurried across someone’s legs and there was a feeble shout; someone threw a sandal at the rat. It broke for cover. Kreizler stood up and found spaces big enough for his feet; he crossed the room to the door and peered out through the open slot. His face seemed amiable and unconcerned. He put one hand against the cold iron of the door. Outside, within the restricted arc of vision, he could see a pair of sentries at the gate and the electrified wire fence that ran around the little jail. Beyond the fence, a squad of Vietminh guerrilla soldiers marched in ragged double file across the compound toward a supply shed. Lights burned in the headquarters building a hundred feet away. That was where they would interrogate him. He slid his mind away from that — they wanted him to think about that. The trick was to divorce mind from body. If you did not think about pain, you did not suffer.
There was no way of reckoning time. He stood by the door until his knees began to ache. With his nose close to the open slot, breathing was more tolerable. He looked back, and he could faintly see Lieutenant Chinh’s face. The handsome detail of the Vietnamese officer’s features seemed reposed, resigned, closed up. Kreizler thought, You’re a good man, Lieutenant, and it’s a Goddamn crying shame.
A slim officer stepped out on the porch of the headquarters building and stood under the lights in a mandarin-style, cream-hued uniform with the collar standing up around his neck. He slapped a swagger stick into his open palm, looked over his shoulder and spoke a few words. A quartet of soldiers came out of the building and followed the officer when he stepped down off the porch. They came toward the guardhouse. Eddie Kreizler let his hand drop away from the door; he glanced at Lieutenant Chinh and nodded. He thought he saw a break in Chinh’s expression. He looked through the slot again: the officer was talking to the gate sentries, and after a moment one of the sentries saluted and unlocked the gate. Kreizler felt weight beside him, and when he turned his head he saw Lieutenant Chinh standing at his shoulder. “Go back and sit down. Stay away from the door.”
“I no use back there,” said the Lieutenant.
“You know what I’m going to do.”
“Yes.”
“All right,” said Kreizler.
The sentry walked from the gate to the jail door. Kreizler took a pace back. He heard the officer speak, and then the rattle of a key in the door. The door squeaked, swinging outward. Kreizler braced his feet to jump, but then a swift figure lunged past him, shouldering the door away, and as Kreizler launched himself through the opening he saw Lieutenant Chinh flail into the four soldiers like an Indian running a gantlet. Chinh bellowed, and rifles cracked. Kreizler plunged after him. He swung his fist at the sentry’s startled face. Another gun went off; he saw Lieutenant Chinh lose his footing and slip down. Someone uttered a sharp command. Kreizler turned to attack the officer. He had a brief look at a cool, narrow face, drily smiling at him, and then one of his arms was jerked up painfully behind his back and there was a gun muzzle against his belly. He strained in taut struggle, shouting obscenities in Vietnamese, but the soldier did not shoot him; his arm was pulled up toward his shoulder blade, and he felt it crackle with hot pain. The officer’s amused face moved close, and a gloved hand slapped him twice across the cheeks. “Stop that, Captain. You cannot force us to kill you.”
The rifle was taken away from his stomach. He felt his arm close to breaking; he felt faint. The officer said something in a nasal voice, and Kreizler quit struggling.
Someone pushed him roughly. He stumbled forward. His toe rammed into a soft object, and he saw Lieutenant Chinh before him in the mud. Chinh was dead, shot several times. The North Vietnamese officer spoke behind him: “Your friend was fortunate, don’t you agree, Captain?”
They prodded him across the compound and into a small room within the headquarters building. He heard the officer’s British accent: “Make yourself comfortable, Captain.” Then the officer spoke in Vietnamese: “Stay here.” He was speaking to the soldiers. When Kreizler turned around, he was alone in the room with the officer.
There was a low hard cot, a chair, a ceiling light. The room had no windows. Kreizler said, “You left the door open.”
“Did I?”
“Go back and close it — from the other side.”
“Do not be flip with me, Captain.”
Kreizler sat down on the straight-back chair and fixed a bland stare on the officer. The three silver buttons on the officer’s uniform indicated that he was a colonel. He said, “Stand up, please.”
“Why?”
The Colonel’s face was pale, ascetic. He flashed his swagger stick against Kreizler’s face and Kreizler, not expecting it, could not avoid the blow. It crushed his nose with a searing flash of pain.
He heard the Colonel say, “Stand up, please.”
He got to his feet and stood unsteadily. The Colonel’s voice reached him: “I am unaccustomed to repeating myself, Captain. I trust you will not make it necessary again.”
Kreizler’s vision cleared. He lifted a hand to his face and took it away. There was a little blood on his palm.
The Colonel said, “Sophocles observed that there is one thing worse than dying, Captain. Do you know what that is?”
“I’m a little rusty on my Greek,” Kreizler said. His voice sounded as though he had a bad cold. He breathed through his mouth. His nose throbbed and pulsed.
“The thing worse than dying,” the Colonel murmured. “It’s wanting to die, Captain — wanting to die and not being able to.”