“Do you speak English?” Yong Kyu asked him.
“Very little. A few words for business,” the man mumbled with a thick guttural accent.
“If Major Pham sent him, he must be in on the dealing channels on their side. . do you know anything about this man?”
“No, not yet. Perhaps within three days I’ll be able to tell you about his cousins’ cousins. I talked with him a little before you came in, and it seems he’s got channels to the town merchants throughout the central region, including Quang Tri, Hue, Bien Hien, Hoi An and as far south as Quang Ngai. I’d say you could count the men in Da Nang with his kind of trading network on your two hands. Looks like he’s been doing business with the provincial government for a very long time.”
“Ask him if he owns a store.”
“A merchant like him wouldn’t bother with retail selling. He probably has warehouses and vehicles.”
Toi asked the man something, then interpreted the reply for Yong Kyu.
“He has eight big transport trucks. As for warehouses, he has two small ones in the Le Loi market and a bigger warehouse across the river.”
“Good. Can he rent a store in Le Loi market we can use?”
“He says we can share his younger brother’s office. Of course, we should pay a little as rent.”
“What kinds of things does he need?”
Once again Toi did not relay the question and instead looked scornfully at Yong Kyu.
“Confident, are you? So, you planning to empty all of Turen yourself? This man wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the order from Pham Quyen, and I can tell he doesn’t have a very high opinion of us.”
“Ask him anyway.”
Toi asked the man, who looked at his watch and then curtly mumbled something.
“He says demand for salad dressing is pretty high right now.”
“I see. If he wants, I can deliver the goods this time on Monday. Price?”
“Instead of talking price, isn’t it more urgent to settle the delivery procedures and the method of sale? The price can be negotiated at a suitable amount when the market is checked.”
Toi had a point. Yong Kyu sunk back into his chair.
“You’re right. I don’t now. Discuss it with him your way.”
Toi spoke with the middle-aged man in Vietnamese. “Have you done many deals with Major Pham?”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t see what that has to do with what we’re doing here.”
“My friend here says he’ll bring the salad dressing you want this time next Monday. How do you want to handle it?”
“What’s the quantity, exactly?”
“Well. . about one truckload.”
“If it’s only a single truck, then it won’t be more than two pallets. Ordinarily a pallet is twenty cartons, so it’ll be forty boxes altogether. But in case of cans, it may be different. Twelve cans make one box, and the total quantity is less. Anyway, for that amount we won’t need a full container, a conex box will be fine and down at the pier terminal there are plenty that belong to the provincial administration. We’ll give you a number and a key and you’ll deliver the goods down there. Be sure not to forget the key. When we pay you for the goods, you just hand over the key to us. That’s all.”
“You said you have your own warehouse, so why ask us to deliver the goods to storage?”
“Depending on the market situation, the goods might go to our warehouse or end up across the river. But deals of this kind are generally done with keys and drops. In case we want to resell to another party, we can just leave the goods in the conex box for them to pick up.”
“We haven’t settled on a price.”
“It fluctuates quite a bit. In a business like this we have to trust each other. A dealing line is like a lifeline we both are holding onto. The going rate for salad oil has been around 2300 piasters for a large box and 1900 for a small one.”
“Can you pay in dollars?”
“You mean hard cash?”
“No, military dollars will do.”
“We can pay however our partner wants. But if you ask for military currency, there’s a service commission of 20 percent. Stateside cash would cost up to 30 percent. So if payment is in military currency, the large boxes will be eighteen dollars and fifteen for the small. Depending on what the seller wants, in some cases we can also pay in gold, in money orders, or in the currency of a third country.”
“So, you’re in the money-changing business too?”
“There are ways to get it done.”
“How about doing our deal in military currency?”
“We’ll prepare it that way.”
“What other items would be good?”
The merchant thought for a while.
“The goods we’re handling are already set, and we’re not intruding on the business of others. I’ve mainly been dealing in rice, and it was only after getting to know Major Pham that I laid my hands on cement. Processed food is also one of our lines. There are a few others, but they only handle a bit of the military supplies.”
“Can we go and see the office now?”
“You mean, my office?”
“We’d like to see both yours and your brother’s.”
The merchant grinned and showed his cautious side. “I know almost nothing about you people. Once the deal starts, you’ll have to come by anyway. Well, I think I’ll excuse myself now. I’ll see you here on Monday same time.”
The merchant spoke to Toi, then he turned to Yong Kyu who had been sitting there like an imbecile and said in English, “See you again.”
After the man left, Toi and Yong Kyu had fried chicken and beer for lunch. Yong Kyu checked the time and reported to the captain over the phone.
“I’ve just come from Turen, sir. I also met the man sent by the Vietnamese side.”
“Let’s have lunch together.”
“We already finished lunch, sir.”
“Anything you need?”
“Well. . not over the phone.”
“All right, I’ll be over in a minute.”
Yong Kyu turned to Toi and said, “Pointer said he’d come over here.”
“Should I leave the two of you alone?”
“No, that’s not necessary.”
Shortly afterwards Captain Kim appeared in the doorway. Dressed in white pants and a white T-shirt, he looked like he was on his way to a tennis club. When the captain took a seat in front of them, Yong Kyu briefed him on the developments to date.
“We’ll be needing about three hundred dollars, sir.”
“That much for the principal?”
“Half of the sum will go to making friends with that boy from Turen, Leon. It’ll cost at least a hundred, anyway. I have about a hundred fifty on me, though.”
“Fine. The question is how fast we can track down the NLF dealing lines. Once we accomplish that, the rest of our dealings can be justified.”
“The American team probably has Vietnamese out running their investigation. On our side, Toi and I plan to run the store ourselves.”
Spreading butter lightly on his bread, the captain murmured, “Right, if the two of you are planted in Le Loi market, we’ll get a line on most of the dealers in Da Nang one at a time. We’ve got to get a grip on all the black market channels of the Koreans, including the Hong Kong Group. Once we have them in our hands, we can squeeze them by the throat.”
“Even now we can put a squeeze on the Hong Kong Group, sir. If we blockade the PX, those guys will come begging on their own.”
“It won’t be that easy thanks to our team leader. He’s shown their chairman too many vulnerable spots.”
Yong Kyu thought about the staff sergeant. In three months he would be headed back home. For him, ten thousand dollars was a considerable sum. He’d once said that he would love to buy some land in the countryside, to save his family from the life of tenant farmers. Had he not said that he volunteered for the army to escape a hard life as a farmer with too many mouths to feed? His replacement with a new sergeant would not bring any major changes to the current situation. If the leader stayed, for Yong Kyu it would mean a not-so-inconvenient continuation of the status quo for another three months. Counting the time in his head, Yong Kyu plotted it out month by month.