I looked at her face and saw tears streaming from her eyes. She didn’t say anything, but took my head in both her hands, kissed me hard on the lips, turned and walked quickly across the road.
She stood there, not looking at me, but looking at the Hanoi-bound traffic. A four-wheel drive vehicle approached driven by a Viet with two male passengers, and Susan held up her hand. The vehicle slowed down and pulled onto the shoulder.
Well… I could let her go, then I’d regret it down the road and wind up chasing the four-wheel drive halfway to Hanoi. Or I could call out to her and tell her I changed my mind. Or I could let her go for real.
Susan was crouched down and speaking to the two Viets in the front seat. The rear door opened, and she got in without looking at me. The driver pulled back on the road.
I crossed the road and stood in front of the vehicle. The driver turned his head toward Susan, then he stopped. I went around to the rear door and opened it. I said to her, “Let’s go.”
She said something to the three Viet guys, who all smiled.
She got out, and I slammed the door. The vehicle continued on.
Susan and I crossed the road, and she put her backpack in a saddlebag. We mounted the motorcycle. I turned to her, and our eyes met. She was crying again, but silently, which I don’t mind too much. I said to her, “If you’re lying about being in love with me, I swear to God, I’ll blow your brains out. Understand?”
She nodded.
I started the engine, kicked the bike into gear, and we got on the road.
We continued farther into the mountains toward Dien Bien Phu, where an army had met its fate, and where my fate had been waiting patiently.
CHAPTER FORTY
We continued northwest on Route 6. It was just before noon, and the fuel gauge showed less than half a tank. We weren’t going to make it all the way to Dien Bien Phu without refueling. If Susan wasn’t on the motorcycle, I might have been able to reach Dien Bien Phu on this tank of gas. Then again, if Susan wasn’t on the motorcycle, I might be in a military prison answering difficult questions.
But to take it a step further back, to the rooftop restaurant of the Rex Hotel, my life had taken a wrong turn sometime between my second lucky beer and dessert, and so had this mission. I had the perceptive glimpse into the obvious that everyone involved with this mission knew a lot more than I did, and a lot sooner than I did.
Mud slides, caused by overlogging, covered sections of the bad blacktop, but had the advantage of filling in the potholes. I was averaging only about sixty KPH, which was better than most four-wheeled vehicles were doing. In fact, I spotted two four-wheel vehicles at the bottoms of ravines.
Back to Ms. Weber, who was not riding with her arms around me any longer, but who was holding on to the C-strap. The tears had been real, and so had the tears in Apocalypse Now. This was a woman who was as conflicted as I was about life, Vietnam, and about us. But so what? I don’t like being manipulated or lied to any more than anyone else, and when my life is at stake, I like it even less. With a guardian angel like Susan Weber, I didn’t need to worry about meeting the Angel of Death, which led me to the thought that if Susan had been instructed to take care of Tran Van Vinh, then maybe she’d also been instructed to take care of Paul Brenner, if necessary. But I couldn’t come to terms with that, so I put it out of my mind. But not completely.
The road dropped into a highland plain, and I could see Montagnard longhouses in the hills. A wind swept over the open area from the northeast, so I had to keep compensating by leaning into the crosswind. Plus, it was starting to rain, and I slowed down to see what was in front of me.
Another thought on the subject of this very strange mission was, Why me? Surely there were more gung ho individuals in the CID who couldn’t wait to risk their lives and go to Vietnam, and who knew how to follow orders.
But maybe Karl had calculated correctly that Paul Brenner was the guy they needed. My most obvious asset was my status as a non-government employee, thereby giving everyone lots of plausible deniability if things went bad. Susan, too, I was certain, appeared on no government payroll, and she had all the Vietnam stuff necessary to the mission: knowledge of the land, the language, and the culture; Viet knowledge that American intelligence had forgotten over the last quarter century. Plus, she was a female, which was less suspicious to the Viets, who didn’t think much of women.
It all looked good on paper, I guess, but there’s always the problem of agents of the opposite sex getting the hots for each other. It happened to me and Cynthia. Karl, however, had convinced his colleagues that Paul Brenner was in love with Cynthia Sunhill, and Paul was a monogamous guy, who had a good, if not perfect, record of keeping his dick in his pants on the job. Plus, Susan Weber was very involved with Bill Stanley, CIA station chief, Saigon office.
Last thought was that Karl really did care about me and wanted this for me, for career purposes and personal reasons, partly having to do with my strained relationship with Cynthia. And as for Cynthia, I had no idea what she knew, or what she’d been told, but I’d bet half my retirement pay they hadn’t mentioned Ms. Weber to Ms. Sunhill.
We passed through a small agricultural town that was actually signposted and whose name was Yen Chau. There was a big produce market on both sides of the road, and the people seemed to be mostly Montagnards in traditional garb. A lot of vehicles were parked under the roofs of the produce stalls, their drivers talking and watching the rain as they smoked. A dark green military jeep sat on the side of the road facing me, but the canvas top was up, and the two men inside were smoking, not looking at anyone.
I pushed on.
The road made a few thrilling twists and turns, and I had to keep the speed down so we wouldn’t skid out. The ravines were so deep, I’d still be falling past my visa expiration date.
We passed through a small Montagnard village where a steel and wood bridge crossed a rain-swollen gorge.
About an hour later, the rain eased off, and I could see signs of civilization ahead. Susan said to me, “Son La, right ahead. Provincial capital.”
We entered the small town of Son La, which looked like a Wild West town strung along Main Street. There were a few guest houses and cafés on either side of Route 6, which was very narrow here. A faded wooden sign in French pointed to a side road and read Pénitentiaire. The French really knew how to pick some lousy prison locations. I mean, this place made Devil’s Island look like Tahiti.
Many of the inhabitants of Son La appeared to be Montagnards in modern dress, and many of them wore berets. There was an old French concrete kilometer marker on the side of the road which said Dien Bien Phu, 150 KM. I looked at my gas gauge and estimated that I had about another one hundred kilometers of fuel, maybe less.
Susan asked me, “Want to stop for gas?”
“No.”
We pushed on through the outskirts of Son La. The Department of Public Works ran out of dong, and the road became a thin mixture of mud and bitumen. I was skidding and spinning a lot, and the road was all upgrade.
We were going into the high hills again, and the road became steeper and narrower. In front of me was a wall of fog which I entered. It was surreal riding through the mountain fog, and if I let my imagination run away, it was like flying the motorcycle through turbulent air.
Susan said, “This is Pha Din Pass. I need to stop.”
I stopped on the road, and we dismounted. I wheeled the motorcycle to the edge of a shallow creek and kicked down the stand.
Susan and I used the facilities. We were splattered with mud, and we washed up in some frigid water running down the side of the rocks, then drank some of the water.