The two of them headed out side by side. Thach offered Minh a cigarette. Once they were outside Minh noticed a change in the expression on Thach’s face — he seemed to have become an entirely different man. A few minutes before he had been talkative and constantly smiling with wrinkles gathering at the corners of his eyes, but now his eyes had grown hard and his demeanor subdued.
“Seems everything worked out fine. Any sign of suspicion from your brother?”
“No, sir. Because I’m his own family.”
“Good. The problems of your military service and getting a job here at the warehouse worked out perfectly.”
“The day after tomorrow is the cell meeting, sir. Do I have orders from the committee?”
“Yes,” Thach replied curtly and stalked on ahead. “We’ll talk while we eat.”
They slipped out of the marketplace and stepped into a bar. The interior was dark with partitioned tables. Not a single customer could be seen. There were no waitresses, either, but two waiters stopped loafing and came over to greet them. They took a table in a corner and ordered shrimp curry and beer.
“The committee wants further training for you guys. We haven’t yet been entrusted with any full-dress mission. A company force of another fifteen is scheduled to arrive here to reinforce the Da Nang Special District. My comrades and I will be conducting missions as their operation agents. This week’s mission for cell C is to distribute NLF leaflets through all the campside villages down by the smokestack.”
“No combat, sir?”
“We aren’t given combat missions during the training period,” Thach whispered flatly and took a sip of a beer. “We start by carrying out small-scale tasks and then move up to larger, more important missions. Cells A and B will cover the areas of Dong Dao and Turen. You, Comrade Pham Minh, will also be responsible for contacts with those two cells. Cell A is having its meeting today, cell B tomorrow, and cell C the day after. I had the leaflets delivered to Chrysanthemum Pub. Divide them up and deliver a bundle to each cell. The cell A rendezvous is to be at the bookstore down on the corner of Doc Lap Boulevard. The time is always twelve noon sharp. As for cell B. .”
Minh took a notebook from his pocket and was about to write down the information when Thach raised his finger and shook it.
“No. Writing is forbidden. Whatever the order, you always must commit it to memory with no errors. The contact point for cell B is a teahouse called ‘Hoa’ down at the edge of the pier.”
“How will I recognize them?”
“Ah, no need to worry about that. Members of the same company know each other’s faces, no? They belong to a single family, so to speak. It was unthinkable a few years ago when the cells weren’t as solid as now. Back then nobody could be trusted. We used to have three steps before any contact, but things are different now. The 434th Special Action Group has had only two instances of betrayal in the last year. One informant was eliminated in advance by a cell trial and the other defected. Since we realized the defector was a traitor before he left, we had time to sever the contact links and we didn’t even have to track him down for retaliation. Now, can you repeat to me everything I’ve said so far?”
Pham Minh repeated it all item by item to Thach.
“Good. Now go and retrieve the stuff at the Chrysanthemum Pub, then go to the bookstore.”
Minh rose. Without even looking back he walked out of the bar. When he reached the pub, he took a seat inside, ordered a cup of tea, and asked the waiter as he was leaving, “Would you check and see if the things I forgot this morning are here?”
“What did you forget?”
“Some books.”
“I see. Yes, I’ll get them for you.”
The young waiter came back with three bulky volumes with dictionary covers. Pham Minh picked them up and left the pub. He looked around outside. It would be better, he told himself, to take a rickshaw than to walk. There were plenty of rickshaws scattered around the parking lot. He signaled for one with his hand.
“Doc Lap Boulevard.”
“You can walk that far.”
“You’ll be paid, so what’s it to you?”
“Got a point there, but I don’t feel too proud of taking your money to go that far.”
“Let’s go.”
The rickshaw slipped through the crowded market. Minh called for the driver to stop at the corner across the intersection from the bookstore. He paid and crossed the street. That edge of Doc Lap Boulevard was always quiet in the early afternoon. The central avenue leading to the pier crossed at the next block down. Where he was, Doc Lap was mainly lined with government offices, hotels, and upscale shops. The traffic whizzed by but few pedestrians were on the sidewalks. The nearest school was some distance away. Once school let out, a flock of students would descend on their bicycles and scooters.
Without pausing, Minh walked inside the bookstore. A middle-aged woman sat behind the counter, her face buried in a newspaper. Wary of the entrance, Minh kept his face directed at the shelves. There were textbooks in French, volumes of poetry, and all sorts of Vietnamese translations of foreign literature. He checked his watch: twelve thirty. He and the proprietress were the only ones in the store. Siesta, the dullest hour of the day, would start once lunch hour ended at one. Anyway, the bookstore was only busy before school in the morning, between one and one thirty when students were en route home for the siesta, and in the late afternoon when school let out for the day.
Someone walked into the store. Out of the corner of his eye, Minh recognized him as a youth he had often seen at the assembly camp. He was dressed in a clean white shirt and gray pants, with his hair neatly combed back. The black horned-rim glasses he had on were unfamiliar, so at first sight Minh had difficulty placing him, but he had kept the same moustache. Minh, standing with the three bundles of printed matter at his feet, turned around and gave him a questioning look. The youth strolled past the shelves and halted at his side. He then pulled a book down from the shelf and in a low voice said, “I’m the leader of cell A.”
Pham Minh glanced down at his own feet and whispered, “Take one.”
“Any other orders?”
“It’s all in there.”
The youth casually stooped down and picked up one of the books, then made a round of the store before leaving. Minh put the remaining package under his arm and picked a book at random from the shelf to buy and went farther inside the store. Before handing it to the owner he checked the cover and discovered that it was a collection of Baudelaire’s prose.
“Wrap this up, please.”
The woman wrapped the book without showing any sign of having noticed anything out of the ordinary.
“Two hundred piasters, please.”
Minh paid and the woman nodded in a cursory bow to him. Once back out on the street, Minh wondered where he should head next. The streets were still relatively quiet. He had no choice but to go home. It would still be two days before he could start working at Cuong’s warehouse. He had no idea what he could do with the bundles of leaflets for the time being. On his way home he bought some fresh pork and a can of condensed milk from a street vendor. When he arrived home, he found his mother and Mi sitting face-to-face drinking green tea.
“Come and sit down here, you,” his mother said.
Mi stared into the teacup and did not look up at him.
“Is this how you two boys are going to be? Do you think I’m a bump on a log? I hear you’ve been out to Son Tinh and seen that bitch. .”
“Who told you that?”
“So, the two of you are pouring your hearts out to each other behind my back. If your father were alive, your brother would never dare do this to me. That bitch of a bar girl has nothing to do with our family. So why did you go snooping around there?”