"You mean they have to be racially pure to have rights?" asked Remo. He had heard this bandied about often in the States when it was obvious that Vietnam had become a bloody concentration camp. Otherwise, why would people flee?
This man, whose every other sentence was about fighting fascism, was unwittingly spouting the fascist line. He could have been a Nazi and not known he wasn't a humanitarian. The last thing in the world of which he could conceive was his own stupidity. By the time the plane touched down in Hanoi it was resolved that the American media grossly distorted the progressive nature of the Hanoi regime.
The news release for tomorrow was to be about the bombing of Vietnamese rice fields that destroyed the ground and created agricultural problems.
The truth committee was still working on the draft denying Hanoi still held American prisoners, but they had to get that cleared first by the Vietnamese military.
When they arrived in Hanoi there were reporters waiting for the leader of the group to read his statement. He tousled his hair and opened his shirt to look like a newsman. He read the statement with a sense of remorse that his own country's media were distorting the nature of a people whose only desire was to live in peace.
The committee had been scheduled to read a statement at the hotel about industrial progress, but they were late. The rickshas had broken down.
The nice thing about communism for this actor was that if the towels were dirty you didn't have to wait for new ones or suffer insolence from the help, the maid was beaten right on the spot by a policeman.
"How are we going to find the beam?" said Kathy. "It's obviously hidden."
"If it is hidden, then someone has hidden it. Therefore, someone knows where it is."
"How do you find that person?"
"Well, if it is not a person but the government, and everything in these places is, you grab the highest government official and get him to tell you about anyone who might know about a new device."
"What if he doesn't talk?"
"They always do."
"But if he honestly doesn't know."
"Too bad for him."
"I love it," said Kathy O'Donnell. "I love it. Start with that guy with the machine gun and the pith helmet."
"I'll start where I want," said Remo.
"Where are you going to start?"
"I don't know," said Remo. The streets were bleak and plain; even the trees seemed to be stripped of bark. Apparently the people had eaten it. No wonder there wasn't any garbage on the streets of Hanoi. The lucky ones had already found it and made it their dinner.
Soldiers were everywhere. Slogans were everywhere. Remo rcognized old Chinese formations of letters. Much of this land had belonged to China at one time. Chiun had talked of insidious rebellions against the Chinese emperors. What differentiated an insidious rebellion from other kinds was whether the emperor had paid a Master of Sinanju.
Often just a few people were behind a rebellion. What they did was work on the grievances of the many and get the people to follow them. The new liberation movements of the world were 3,500 years old at least.
Looking around the streets of Hanoi, Remo noticed that the only fat people he saw were of high officer rank. Everyone else was thin beyond belief.
"Look at how thin the people are," Remo said.
The leader of the truth committee heard this. He was standing in front of his hotel, stuffing a caramel bar into his face.
"Capitalism doesn't encourage them to eat properly," he said. He dropped the wrapper. The doorman fell to his knees to lick it, but was kicked away by the manager of the hotel, who also had the rights to lick the crumbs off the Americans' shirts.
The American actor was told what an intelligent man he was. He was told this often. He was also told how much smarter he was than the average American, who did not know the real truth about the world.
"I owe it to my countrymen," the actor said, "to make them aware of the real world, not some comfortable beerswilling Formica version of it."
"What is Formica?" asked a Communist minister.
"It's a shiny material that you can spill things on, and it never stains and you wipe it off easily. Always looks new. No character," said the actor.
"Could you get us some?" asked the minister. The actor laughed. They asked again. He was sure they couldn't want something as bourgeois as Formica.
He asked to be taken to visit a typical Vietnamese family. Remo understood what the two officials were saying, but not word for word because he had only been taught the emperor's tongue. Rather, little snippets of phrases these officials never knew had come from old Chinese lords. The Chinese this committee so casually dismissed as having no rights in Vietnam had been in that country longer than the Normans had been in England.
The words Remo recognized were, "Stall the fat fool until we get the family set up correctly."
"Won't he be suspicious?"
"If that fat pig can think he is intelligent by saying things that people write for him, then he will believe anything."
"Yes, he does have the mind of a wooden puppet." The American actor put on his most concerned intelligent face for the photographers. He also asked to be taken to the scenes of brutal American bombings.
"Americans have a right to know what their government has done in their name," he said.
Remo let the group go off, even though some official was pushing him to follow. He was getting quiet within himself.
Remo walked around Hanoi with Kathy and a guide all morning in what seemed like an aimless pattern. The guide, of course, was not a cultural "enhancement," as he was called, but a Vietnamese police officer.
One building among many, not an especially large building, gave Remo the sense by the way the people walked by it that it was a building of authority.
"You can't go in there," said the cultural enhancer.
Kathy gave Remo a nod. Even she could understand his sign that the building was important.
"How did you do that?" she asked.
"I just did it. You keep looking, that's all."
"Would you teach me?" she asked.
"Teach me how to use that camera?" asked Remo.
"You cannot go there. No, no, no," said the cultural enhancer.
"Remo, you put the carrot film into the bunny's mouth. You point the camera at the person and then you press the bunny's nose."
"I did that," said Remo. There was a tinge of hardness to his voice.
"No camera allowed in liberated country," said the cultural enhancer. "No camera. No talking. You go back to group to get real story of truth of Vietnam. Real truth. Real peasants with real truth. Our truth the good truth. You see. Good truth. Yes."
"I had trouble with the film," said Remo.
"I don't see how," said Kathy.
"Well, I did," said Remo.
"You go. Now," said the cultural enhancer.
Kathy shrugged and looked at the building. The man's real genius was going to show itself now. She sensed an uncontrollable excitement seize her, almost mesmerizing her, making her limbs weak, her body warm. She imagined all the people Remo was going to have to kill in a building like that, the one the guide had confirmed was a security place of the government.
"That place is big enough to house the beam in any one of its many rooms," said Kathy.
Remo moved toward the building. The cultural enhancer grabbed one of his arms, but his hands closed on air. Inside the building, a Russian with a microphone and a tape recorder commented dryly:
"He is coming toward us. Mark that the subject might be initiating action."
As he spoke another Russian was making notes. Halfway up the page was a comment that positive identifications had been made on the plane and reconfirmed at the airport. The female was Dr. Kathleen O'Donnell. The male was the American.
"We're not ready yet," came a voice from behind him. The man with the tape recorder looked around with contempt. He was also afraid. The microphone was becoming significantly moist in his hands. He had ordered many people killed in his life, but now he was actually going to have to see the results of his orders.