“Yes, sir. That’s why we need your help.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t help you. But I wish you good luck with your investigation.” He started to leave, then remembered his manners and said to Susan, “Ms. Weber, a pleasure. Gentlemen, good night.” He started to leave again, then he did something strange and came over to me and shook my hand. He turned and left the room.
Karl and Susan reached for their smokes at the same time and lit up.
I went to a sideboard and helped myself to a Scotch on the rocks.
There was an almost embarrassed silence in the room. I looked at the face of each person there, and I knew that they all believed that Edward Blake had murdered three men and one woman in the commission of a robbery, and one of the men was a comrade in arms, which didn’t sit well with Colonels Goodman and Hellman, nor with me.
But we all knew this from the beginning, and no one was shocked. They were worried. Worried about their careers, about their lives, and maybe even worried about their country. For sure, they were worried about me. In fact, I was worried about me, too.
It was Colonel Goodman who spoke first, and he said to me, “Could you find it in your heart to give Captain Edward Blake a pass on this one?”
I didn’t reply.
He said to me, “I was a young infantry lieutenant during the war… I wouldn’t expect everyone to understand that time and that place, Paul, but you and I do, and Colonel Hellmann understands. None of us would want to be called to account for that madness.”
Again, I didn’t reply.
Karl said to me, “The issue here, Paul, is not guilt or innocence, or even justice or morality. The issue here is the past. I told you, the shadows stretch from here to home. We, as soldiers, were collectively reviled and spit on at that time, and we don’t owe anyone any explanation for our actions, or any new revelations about that war. If we have any guilt, it is a shared guilt, if we have any honor, it’s amongst ourselves only. We are bound together for all time by blood and common nightmares. I tell you this, my friend, this has little or nothing to do with Edward Blake; to a greater or lesser degree, we are all Edward Blake.”
I took a deep breath and didn’t reply.
Bill said, “Paul, Edward Blake will be the first Vietnam veteran to become president of the United States. Don’t you want that?”
“Bill, shut the fuck up.”
The quiet room got quieter. I said, “Even if I bought that… and maybe I do… the other issue is all of you and your ambitions, your lying, your deception, and your bullshit. Edward Blake may have had a bad moment; you’ve had bad careers.”
I put my drink down and moved to the door. I said to Karl, “I told you to find someone else.” To Susan I said, “Come with me.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
At noon the following day, an embassy staff car took me and Susan to Noi Bai Airport, north of Hanoi. We didn’t speak much during the twenty-minute ride.
Two embassy security guys accompanied us into the terminal, and we bypassed airport security and check-in and went straight to the diplomatic lounge.
Mr. Uyen and Colonel Mang had my luggage, so I was traveling pretty light: the clothes on my back, my wallet, my passport, an airline ticket, and a diplomatic laissez-passer.
Susan wore a nice jade green dress, loaned to her by Anne Quinn, and I wore my dirty jeans, but clean boxer shorts and a horrible pink golf shirt given to me by Mrs. Quinn, who indicated that it was okay if she never saw me or the shirt and shorts again. A souvenir from Vietnam.
The diplomatic lounge was a little squalid despite its name, but there weren’t many diplomats or their families traveling that Saturday, so we had the place pretty much to ourselves. The two embassy security guys stayed with us, which wasn’t a bad idea.
The night before, Susan and I had slept on the pullout couch in the sitting room. The upstairs guest rooms had been taken by the Blakes and the Secret Service guys, who didn’t want us upstairs for some reason. As tired and drained as we both had been, Susan and I made love with the knowledge that this could be the last time.
I had my scrambled eggs in the breakfast room with Susan. Only Anne Quinn had been there, and she explained that the Blakes and the Ambassador had gone early to the embassy, and she was just on her way to join them. Susan and I expressed our regrets that we’d missed them, and Anne said she’d pass on our good-byes. We thanked her for her hospitality and a great party, and she left without extending another invitation. I think she knew something was up.
Susan and I stood now in the diplomatic lounge, looking out through a big picture window at the runways and the gray, heavy sky. There seemed to be more takeoffs than landings, like at a resort whose season was ending, though in this case, I thought it was probably the Viet diaspora, here for Tet, returning to the countries of their exile.
I was booked on an Air France flight to Paris, where someone would meet me and give me a ticket to Dulles International. This wasn’t the short-est route home, but it was the first available flight out of Hanoi, and I’d overstayed my welcome.
From Dulles, where this journey had begun, to my house in Falls Church would be a short taxi ride, or more probably I’d be met by people who wanted to take care of me. In any case, the journey home had begun, and like the last two times here, I didn’t know how I was feeling at the moment.
I’d insisted that Susan come with me, but it was Susan herself who wanted to stay in Hanoi; she’d been in Vietnam a long time, and there were many loose ends to tie up with her life, her job, and, I suppose, this mission. As for me, like the last two times, I didn’t need much notice or convincing to get out of Vietnam fast.
In the diplomatic lounge was a white door that led, according to Susan, directly out to the tarmac where a waiting vehicle would take me to the aircraft. The flight left in twenty minutes.
Susan and I didn’t sit, nor did we have a drink or coffee; we just stood there, near the white door that led to Falls Church, Virginia.
Susan said, “We have about ten minutes. Someone will let you know.”
I nodded.
She said, “I’m not going to cry.”
Again, I nodded.
We looked at each other, and neither of us knew what to say, but the time was short.
Finally, she smiled and said, “Well, we had a hell of a two weeks, didn’t we?”
I smiled.
She suggested, “We should do it again someday.”
“It’s never as much fun the second time.”
“Maybe not. But we don’t have a single photograph.” She smiled. “Not even Pyramide Island.”
I didn’t reply.
Muzak was being piped into the lounge, and they were playing tinkly piano music. We stood in silence listening to “Let It Be.”
I said to her, “Thanks for Sunday in Saigon.”
“Hey, you owe me a tour of Washington.”
“Anytime.”
She nodded and looked at me. “I should be out of here in a week or so…”
“Where will you go?”
She shrugged. “Lenox, I guess. Then to New York to see if I still have a job with AAIC. Then… I think I’d like another overseas job. I think I was born to be an expat.”
“Pick someplace nice this time.”
“I still have my book of worst places to live.”
I smiled and asked her, “Will you miss this place?”
“Terribly. But it’s time to move on.”
“It is.”
She nodded. “You know, Paul… in the Apocalypse Now lounge… when I got teary… you remember that?”