"I was a teacher," she said. Her words were more breath than bite, but Remo understood them.
"And you?" Remo asked a man with tortoiseshell glasses.
"Engineer. "
"Any message you want me to carry back to the world?"
"Yes. Tell the Americans to come back." The woman nodded in agreement. Others did too.
One of the guards noticed Remo and stepped forward. He slapped the old woman. Remo slapped him back. The soldier went in one direction, his rifle in another. His helmet clanged off a wall, sounding like an old gong.
"What is this?" Mr. Hom's cry was shrill.
"This enlightened Communist slapped that old woman without reason," Remo pointed out.
"Lies! Vietnamese only strike women for politically correct reasons. What are you doing there, American? Return to the group. There is no talking to internees here."
"Why don't I wait outside?" Remo suggested.
Mr. Hom stiffened. He looked from Remo to the others in the group, and evidently remembering the image he wished to project of the new Vietnam, nodded sullenly.
"Wait on the steps. We will join you almost at once."
"Don't hurry on my account," Remo said, pointedly stepping on the prostrate soldier's stomach on his way to the door.
Outside, he watched the sun setting over a bushy ridge. He rubbed his eyes. They were caked with dried fluid. He felt tired, and wondered if it was jet lag. But jet lag was something he had banished from his life long ago.
Remo noticed the next barracks were unguarded. He drifted over and put an ear to the door. He heard breathing and low talking. Finding a sealed window, he looked in.
Looking out at him was a man with blue eyes and Caucasian features. His face exploded in shock at the sight of Remo's face.
"American, American!" he shouted in English. "You come to rescue?"
"Damn right," said Remo, taking the wooden frame in his hands. He yanked. The sash came off like a picture frame.
Remo helped the man out. He wore black pajamas, the traditional Vietnamese peasant clothes. His hair was black, like a Vietnamese's. But his face was white.
"Where helicopters?" His accent was pure Vietnamese.
"What helicopters?" Remo asked.
"Liberation helicopters. You American. You come to liberate Vietnam?"
"Not exactly," said Remo, noticing two more faces poking out the window. One was Vietnamese, but his skin was milk chocolate. Another was a girl. Her skin was Asian, but her face was freckled, her large eyes green as an Irish colleen's.
"How many of you are there?" Remo asked.
"Twenty. "
"You're not POW's, I take it," Remo said.
"Yes. Prisoner longtime."
"Not American POW's," Remo said disappointedly, as the others began to climb out the window, chattering excitedly and clinging to one another in fear. Remo looked around. So far, no guards in sight. But that wouldn't last long with the noise they were making.
The first man was talking excitedly and grabbing Remo's T-shirt.
"Yes."
"Yes, what?" Remo demanded.
"Yes, American. Half. "
"Half?" Then the tour group spilled out of the other building. Mr. Hom saw Remo and shouted in Vietnamese. Guards came running raggedly, looking around in confusion.
Hom pointed to Remo and the hole in the barracks, out of which teenage prisoners were now pouring, dressed in rags. The guards, who looked out of practice, got organized.
Mr. Hom waddled up to Remo, flanked by the soldiers. They held their rifles at the ready. Hom flapped his arms like a pelican trying to fly.
"You break camp rules," he screeched. "You break camp rules. This is nasty. You are not to see those people. What is the meaning?"
"I thought I was liberating American POW's," Remo said stubbornly.
That upset Hom even more. "There are no American POW's in Vietnam," he yelled. "We are not like that. Though you bomb us, we forgave you. These are bui doi, dust of life. What you call Amerasians. They are the mongrel children of Saigon prostitutes and American killer soldiers."
"They say they're prisoners," Remo said. The young captives crouched behind him. The girl, her green eyes fearful, clung to Remo's T-shirt. She looked all of nineteen. Her face had the look of a jib that had been cranked too tight.
"Lies! They are here because no one wants them. We feed them, give them work. They are grateful."
"Take us home, American," the prisoners whispered. "Take us to America."
"I think that speaks for itself," Remo pointed out. He folded his arms, ignoring the pointing rifles.
"You are very smug, American," said Mr. Hom. "You spit on the generous hospitality of the Vietnamese people. I think you should return to America. You will learn nothing here."
"I didn't come here to learn your propaganda," Remo said. "And I'm not budging until I know these people won't be hurt."
Mr. Hom hesitated. He felt the eyes of the tour group upon him. His next words dripped sarcasm. "Perhaps you are still bitter about having retreated from the victorious People's Liberation Army. Hmmm?"
"We didn't retreat, remember?" Remo said. "We signed a peace treaty in Paris. Your people promised to stay in the North and ours in the South. It took you about a year to muster the courage to violate it."
"We liberated the South," Hom said stiffly.
"You couldn't win on the battlefield, so you tricked us with a treaty you never intended to uphold. Then you stabbed everyone in the back."
"We won."
"Maybe it's not over yet," Remo said. His voice held an edge that made Mr. Hom wipe suddenly sweaty palms on his whipcord breeches.
Mr. Hom barked orders in Vietnamese. The guards lowered their weapons. Two went around a corner. They came back driving a Land Rover.
"You will be driven back to Ho Chi Minh City," Mr. Hom said petulantly. "There your money will be refunded and you will be put on a flight away from Vietnam. Perhaps one day you will realize the goodness of the forgiving Vietnamese people and we will allow you to return."
Remo, knowing he had no chance of doing anything for the Amerasian prisoners under the circumstances, shrugged as if it didn't matter. He said, "Okay," and turned to the huddle of frightened half-Vietnamese, half-American faces.
"Sorry," he said loudly. Then he whispered, "Sit tight. I'll be back."
Remo allowed himself to be escorted to the waiting Land Rover and driven out of the camp gates. The amplified voice of Mr. Hom followed him down the road. Hom was informing the tour group that in America, many people felt bitterness over their failure to impose their will on the Vietnamese people. But the Vietnamese were strong from thousands of years of struggle. No one would ever divide them again.
Chapter 11
Less than a mile down the road, darkness fell with the stark suddenness that Remo remembered so clearly even after twenty years.
The soldiers sat in the front of the Land Rover. Remo sat in back. The driver was preoccupied with watching the road ahead. He had only his headlights to see by. Remo reached out and squeezed the other soldier's neck until he felt the man go loose. Remo kept him sitting upright while they stumbled through ruts in the road.
When the driver slowed to negotiate a sharp turn, Remo brought his fist down on his helmet like a mallet striking a bell. The driver collapsed like a puppet. Remo shoved him onto the roadside and slipped behind the wheel. He braked, kicked the other soldier into the dirt, and spun the Land Rover around.
Remo drove until he recognized a diseased banana tree that was near the reeducation camp, and pulled off the road. On foot he crept up to the perimeter fence and went over it like a black cat.
He drifted through the camp, keeping in the shadows. The lethargy of the day had fled. He felt alert once again. Maybe it had been the heat after all.
The tour group was eating in a wooden building, and behind it Remo found several Land Rovers and a canvas-backed truck. Reasoning that the kitchen was at the back of the big building, he slipped to the door. It came open at his touch. Inside, an elderly Vietnamese cook was busy pulling wooden pallets of fresh bread from a huge oven. Remo went to a cupboard and ransacked it. When he left the kitchen unseen, two canvas sacks bulged under his arms.