“I’ll be direct again,” Christopher said. “I hoped to shock you into speaking about the things I mentioned to you.”
“You’ve shocked us,” the Truong toe said. He paused, as if reluctant to say something rude. “If you are right in what you think, you must expect that we will kill you. Why, then, come here?”
“Let me ask you this: why waste a gesture, like Nicole in a Paris suit?”
“You know her.”
“You must know I’d have come in answer to a telephone call or a note.”
“And you must know that such things leave traces. An American dining at the Continental with a Vietnamese girl leaves no trace. It’s the sport of the times.”
“Were those your men who followed us across the river?” Christopher asked.
The Truong toe’s eye sockets were filled with shadow; when he turned his face toward Christopher, he showed as little expression as an animal. “Now you waste a gesture,” he said.
“Let me explain something to you,” Christopher said. “What I said to you about Diem was honest-I thought him a great man in his way and I regret his death. I would tell you who killed him, if I knew.”
The priest was scratching his skin now with great violence, as if he was glad heroin had given him this evidence that his nerves were alive. “And in exchange for this worthy intention,” he said, “all you want is for us to confess the murder of an American President and a plan to destroy the American army with heroin.”
“Briefly, yes.”
“Then you’re a fool. What do you think this is-a film? We tell you everything, you escape with the truth, the world is saved. I believe you’re insane.”
“Then you should be frightened,” Christopher said. “We’re alone in this room. You are old. Even if I have no weapon, which is illogical, I could kill you both with my hands before anyone came. You don’t seem to be afraid of that.”
The Truong toe moved his face into the light. “Nothing is gained by this,” he said. “Why exchange these threats?”
“It’s useless,” Christopher said. “I want to ask you a question. If I’m right, and your family arranged such a colossal revenge as the murder of Kennedy, what is the point of keeping it a secret?”
The priest threw his arms wide and began to speak; the tic was moving in his cheek again. He subsided when the Truong toe raised his palm. The Truong toe kept his eyes fastened on Christopher’s face.
The Truong toe said, “Go on.”
“You are the head of the family,” Christopher said. “What do you want for it?”
“That it should continue,” the Truong toe replied.
“No-that it should rule. You had power when Diem and Nhu were killed, and Can was put into prison. How long did it take you to achieve that? The whole length of the family’s life. Are you content to wait another hundred generations for another Diem?”
The Truong toe made a brusque movement of his fingers, as if to summon the words from Christopher’s mouth.
“If you kill a man for revenge, and he does not know why he died, and no one knows,” Christopher said, “then what have you accomplished? Your own emotional release-and what use is that?”
The priest began to reply, but the Truong toe silenced him with another gesture.
“Say what you mean,” the Truong toe said.
“I mean you have everything to gain and nothing important to lose by letting yourselves be identified as the assassins of Kennedy.”
The priest had begun to sweat and tremble. He reached into his pocket with a fluttering hand and produced an envelope of heroin. With his eyes fixed on Christopher, he drew the white powder into his nose. After a moment he was quiet again.
The Truong toe returned his attention to Christopher. “That’s certainly a novel idea,” he said, his dry lips opening in a faint smile.
“It’s logical,” Christopher said. “To complete the act, you must be discovered. There may be a certain elegance in killing an American President with ignominy-using a man who appears to be a lunatic so that the assassination will be regarded as a bit of random madness. But it accomplishes nothing.”
“Accomplishes nothing? The man is dead.”
“But not his policies. When Diem was killed, he and Nhu were desperate to end American influence in Vietnam. They had no chance. But you do. Let it be known that Kennedy was shot in Dallas in revenge for the death of Diem and Nhu, and there will be such revulsion in the United States against Vietnam that you won’t see an American face in your country, or an American ship in your harbors, for a generation to come.”
The Truong toe flicked open his clenched hand as if releasing a bird into flight. “You’d give this country to the Communists?”
“Why not?” Christopher said. “Diem and Nhu were prepared to do so. At least the Communists are Vietnamese. Some of them are members of your family.”
The Truong toe relaxed on his divan, steepled his fingers, tapped their ends together. The priest spoke to him in rapid Vietnamese. Christopher watched the Truong toe’s impassive features and the priest’s face, one side of it as unreadable as the Truong toe’s and the other side in spasm. “Kill him tonight, in the street, anywhere,” the priest was saying. “No, he can do no harm,” the Truong toe replied. Christopher realized the old man knew he understood Vietnamese.
“Mr. Christopher,” said the Truong toe, speaking the name for the first time, “I’m curious-how did you come to hear the name Lê Thu?”
“Nguyen Kim mentioned it. He seemed to think it would be a great joke to use it as an introduction to you.”
“And you thought it had great significance-that it symbolized this assassination you think we carried out?”
“I didn’t know,” Christopher said. “That was one of my questions.”
“You’ve translated the name, I understand. It means ‘the tears of autumn.’”
“Yes-if it’s a code name it’s poetic, but insecure.”
“And you wish to know the name of our relative in the North Vietnamese intelligence service?”
“Yes.”
“That is all you require to prove our guilt, and rid our country of the Americans, who, as you suggest, will destroy it for reasons of their own policy?”
“Yes.”
As Christopher and the Truong toe spoke to each other, they smiled-more broadly with each question and answer. After hearing Christopher’s final reply, the Truong toe laughed, a string of dry barks like the cough of a man who has swallowed smoke. His laughter was a compliment. Only a clandestine mind like Christopher’s, free from values and concerned with nothing but the results of action, could have conceived the proposal Christopher had just made. The Truong toe had the same sort of mind. He was delighted to encounter another brain so like his own.
“We’ve heard a good deal about you since yesterday, Mr. Christopher,” he said. “It all seems to be true. This really is a most clever provocation. I have no idea what purpose your masters think it will serve, but you may give them my answer. It is this: your hypothesis is absurd. How could we touch a Kennedy? They live in another dimension of power.”
“Murder requires very little power.”
“No, no, no. Mr. Christopher, Lê Thu is just a name. You will search in vain for any relative of ours who is a secret agent of Ho Chi Minh’s. We accepted the death of Ngo Dinh Diem and Ngo Dinh Nhu-we are weak, Mr. Christopher. How could we do what you think we’ve done?”
Christopher rose. “Very well,” he said. “I’ll go on with my work.”
“What bravado,” the priest said. “You want what-admiration? You’re mad-I’m more convinced of it than before.”
The Truong toe stood and took Christopher’s cold teacup from his hand and he drank from it with a smile. Christopher had not touched the tea. “You are not lacking in caution,” the Truong toe said. “I have something to give you.”