“You’ve done an excellent job, Mr. Conway. Sleep well tonight.”
“Thank you.”
He put out his hand, but I said, “Hold on. I almost forgot.” I opened my overnight bag and handed Mr. Conway my Danielle Steel book.
He looked at it curiously, as though there were some special significance or meaning to the book.
I said, “I don’t want that found at home if I don’t make it back. Understand? Give it to somebody. You don’t have to read it yourself.”
Mr. Conway looked at me with some concern, then again put out his hand, and we shook. He left without even thanking me for the book.
I opened the plastic bag left on the table, putting the money, tickets, hotel vouchers, letter, and visa in my breast pocket. I put the malaria pills, antibiotic, and The Lonely Planet Guide in my overnight bag.
At the bottom of the plastic bag was something wrapped in tissue paper. I unwrapped it and saw it was one of those stupid snow globes. Inside the globe was a model of the Wall, black against the falling snow.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Asiana Air 747 began its descent into Kimpo International Airport, Seoul, Korea. After fifteen hours in the air, I wasn’t sure of the local time, or even what day it was. The sun was about forty-five degrees off the horizon, so it was either mid-morning or mid-afternoon, depending on where east and west were. When you’re circling the globe, none of this matters, anyway, unless you’re the pilot.
I noticed that the landscape below was covered with snow. I listened to the hydraulic sounds of the aircraft as it made its initial approach.
The seat next to me was empty, and I hoped I was as lucky on the final leg of the trip.
Then again, there might not be a final leg if I was turned around in Seoul. Of course, the chances of that happening were near zero, but they always put that in your mind as a happy possibility. I had a similar experience the first two times I was headed to Vietnam. My orders said “Southeast Asia,” instead of the V word, as if I might be headed to Bangkok or Bali. Right.
It was time to read the letter that had started this whole thing. I took a plain envelope from my pocket, opened it, and drew out several sheets of folded paper. The first sheet was a photocopy of the original envelope, addressed to Tran Quan Lee, followed by an abbreviation, which I supposed was his rank, then a series of numbers and letters that was his North Vietnamese army unit designation.
The return address was Tran Van Vinh, followed by his rank and Army unit. In neither address was there a geographical location, of course, because armies move, and the mail follows the soldiers.
I put the envelope aside and looked at the letter itself. It was a typed, three-page translation, and there was no photocopy of the original letter in Vietnamese, making me again wonder what was missing or altered.
Regarding the provenance of this letter, I tried to imagine the North Vietnamese army postal system during the war, which must have been as primitive as a nineteenth-century postal system; letters handed from person to person, to couriers, making their way slowly from civilians to their soldiers, or from soldiers to family, or soldiers to soldiers, as in this case, and very often, the recipient, the sender, or both were dead before the letter was delivered.
In any case, it must have taken months for letters to reach their recipients, if at all. I thought of the three hundred thousand missing North Vietnamese soldiers, and the million known dead, many of them vaporized by thousand-pound bombs from B-52 strikes along the infiltration routes.
It was a miracle, I realized, that this letter ever got out of the besieged city of Quang Tri, another miracle that the letter found its recipient, Tran Quan Lee in the A Shau Valley, nearly a hundred kilometers away, and a further miracle that the letter was found on Lee’s body by an American soldier. The final miracle, perhaps, was that this American soldier, Victor Ort, survived the war himself, saved the letter for almost thirty years, and then made an attempt to get the letter to Hanoi via the Vietnam Veterans of America.
The letter, however, had been rerouted to Army CID Headquarters in Falls Church, Virginia, because of some sharp-eyed person at VVA, an army veteran, whose instinct would be to go to Army CID instead of the FBI. If the FBI had gotten it first, I knew, the CID would never have heard about it, and neither would I. But as it turned out, it was a CID case with FBI help, an arrangement that probably satisfied no one, myself included.
I looked again at the typed translation, not quite ready to read it until I’d come to fully understand how this thing landed in my lap.
And then there was the question of why I was doing this. Aside from Cynthia, there was duty, honor, country, not to mention boredom, curiosity, and a little macho posturing. In fact, my separation from active duty had not ended on just the right note, and this assignment would certainly be the final note, high or low.
I looked at the letter and saw it was dated 8 February 1968. I read Tran Van Vinh’s words to his about-to-be deceased brother:
My beloved brother Lee,
As I write this letter, which I hope finds you well and in good spirits, I lay wounded with several of my comrades in the city of Quang Tri. Do not worry, I am not badly injured, but have received some shrapnel wounds to my back and legs which I know will heal. We are being tended to by a captured doctor from the Catholic Hospital, and by medics of our own People’s Army.
The battle for the city rages around us, and the American bombers come day and night, and their artillery falls without end. But we are safe in a deep cellar of the Buddhist high school outside the walls of the Citadel. We have food and water, and I hope to return to duty soon.
I looked up from the letter and recalled those days around the city of Quang Tri. My battalion was to the west of the city, and we never saw any of the fighting within the city, but we did see North Vietnamese soldiers straggling out of Quang Tri, which they’d held for only a week or so before the South Vietnamese army rooted them out. The enemy began exfiltrating in small groups, trying to reach the relative safety of the hills and jungle to the west, and my battalion’s mission was to intercept them. We’d managed to find, kill, or capture some of them, but not all of them. Statistically, Tran Van Vinh’s chances of making it out of the city were small, and his chances of having survived the final seven years of the war were even smaller. And if he had survived, would he be alive almost thirty years later? Not likely, but this case already had a few miracles in the equation.
I went back to the letter and read:
I must tell you of a strange and interesting occurrence that I witnessed yesterday. I was lying on the second floor of a government building within the Citadel, having been wounded by the shrapnel of an exploding artillery shell which killed two comrades who were with me. There was a hole in the floor, and I was looking down through the hole, hoping to see some of my comrades. At this moment, two American soldiers entered the building. My first thought was to kill them with my rifle, but I didn’t know how many others were close by, so I held my fire.
These two Americans did not make a search of the building that was half destroyed. Instead, they began talking. I could see from the rank insignia on their helmets that one was a captain and the other a lieutenant — two officers! What a good kill I could make! But I held my fire. I could also see that both men had the shoulder insignia of the helicopter cavalry, who are numerous in this area, though I had not seen them in the city before.
As I watched, ready to kill them if they saw me, they began to argue with each other. The lieutenant was being disrespectful of the higher ranking officer, and the captain was very angry with him. This continued for perhaps two or three minutes, then the lieutenant turned his back on the captain, and walked toward the opening through which they had entered.