Susan translated, and Mr. Vinh stared at me, though I couldn’t tell why. Finally, he said something, and Susan said to me, “He says he can still attach no meaning to it.”
I wasn’t going to give up that easily, especially after we’d risked our lives to get here and killed four men in the process. I said to Mr. Vinh, “Perhaps my memory of the letter is not good, and perhaps the translation of the letter was not accurate. Could you please re-tell the story as you remember it?”
Susan translated.
Mr. Vinh took a deep breath, as though he didn’t want to tell a war story, and didn’t reply.
I said, “Mr. Vinh, no one likes to re-live that time, but since I’ve been here, I’ve visited the sites of my old battles, including Quang Tri, and also the A Shau Valley. I have re-lived those times in my mind, and I’ve told these stories of war to this lady, and I believe this has been good for me. I ask you now to re-live this time, only so that some good may come of it.”
Susan translated, and Mr. Vinh said something, which she translated as, “He does not want to speak of it.”
Something was wrong here, and I said to Susan, “Are you translating accurately?”
She didn’t reply.
“Susan, what the fuck is going on here?”
She looked at me and said, “You really don’t want to know, Paul.”
I felt a shiver run down my spine. I said, “Yeah, I really fucking want to know.”
“Paul, we’ve come a long way, and we’ve found Mr. Vinh alive. Now we need to see if he has more souvenirs, then go back to Hanoi and make a report.”
I glanced at Mr. Vinh and saw that he understood that his guests were having an argument.
I took the wallet and held it up. I said to Mr. Vinh, “Souvenir?” a word that most Viets understood. “Souvenir de guerre? Dai-uy souvenir? Captain’s souvenir? Trung-uy souvenir? Lieutenant’s souvenir?” I pointed to the wicker chest. “Beaucoup souvenir? Biet?”
He nodded, stood, and went to his war chest.
I looked at Susan and asked, “Do you know what this is about?”
“I do.”
“You saw the true translation of the letter?”
“I did.”
“You’re a lying bitch.”
“I am.”
Mr. Vinh returned with a few items in his hands, which he put on the table.
I looked at them. There was an American military watch, whose second hand had stopped long ago, a plastic army canteen that would still be in use by Mr. Vinh, except it had shrapnel tears in it from some other battle, a gold wedding ring, a set of dog tags, and some papers in a canvas pouch.
I picked up the dog tags and they said Hines, William H., followed by his serial number, then his blood type, and his religion, which was Methodist.
I looked at the ring and inside was inscribed Bill & Fran, 1/15/67, about a year before he was killed.
I opened the canvas pouch and found a bundle of letters from Fran, from Mom and Pop, and other people. I put the letters aside and found an unfinished letter that he’d been writing, dated February 3, 1968. It said:
Dear Fran,
I don’t know when or if I’ll be able to finish this letter. As you know by now, the VC and NVA have attacked all over the country, and have even attacked the Citadel here at Quang Tri. MACV Headquarters has been hit by mortars, and we’ve got lots of wounded guys who can’t get medical attention. The ARVN soldiers have cut and run, and the MACV guys are fighting for their lives. So much for this soft job as an advisor. I know this letter sounds very pessimistic, and I don’t even know if you’ll get it, but maybe you will, and I want you to know
And there it stopped. I put the letter down.
Also in the canvas pouch was a small notebook, and I opened it. It was a typical officer’s log, showing radio frequencies and call signs, codes, names of South Vietnamese army contacts, and so forth. Plus Lieutenant Hines had used the pages as a diary, and I flipped through it and read a few dated entries. It was mostly stuff about the weather, staff meetings, thoughts on the war, and other random notes.
One entry, dated 15 January, caught my eye. It read, “Capt. B. much beloved by sr. officers, but not by me or others. Spends too much time wheeling & dealing on black market & every nite in whorehouse.”
I closed the diary. It sounded like Capt. B. was enjoying his war, until Tet.
I looked at Mr. Vinh and pointed to the stuff on the table, then to myself.
He nodded.
I looked at Susan and said, “The Hines family will want this. They’ll also want to know how Lieutenant William Hines died.”
Susan said to me, “You know how he died. In battle.”
“Sorry. He was murdered.”
“They don’t need to know that.”
“Well, I can’t speak for the Hines family, but I was sent here to find out who killed Lieutenant Hines.”
“No, that’s not why you were sent here. You were sent here to see if the witness to this murder is still alive. He is. And does he have any souvenirs? He does. And can we get those souvenirs? We have. The people in Washington already figured out the name of the murderer — the other guy in these photos, obviously — and neither you nor I need to know that name. You don’t want to know.”
“Wrong.” I looked at a folded sheet of yellowed paper on the table, the last souvenir from Mr. Vinh’s trunk. I’d recognized it as a unit roster, and I pulled it toward me. It had been typed on an old ditto stencil, and the names were hard to read, but not illegible. The paper was headed U.S. Army, MACV, Quang Tri City, RVN. It was dated 3 January 1968.
I scanned the names and saw that there were sixteen Americans in the advisory group, all officers and senior sergeants. It wasn’t a particularly dangerous job, until something went wrong, as it had during the Tet Offensive.
The commander of the group was a lieutenant colonel named Walter Jenkins, and his executive officer was a Major Stuart Billings. The third in command was a captain, the only captain listed above a string of lieutenants, which included William H. Hines. The captain’s name was Edward F. Blake.
I stared at the name awhile, then pulled the photo pack toward me, and looked at one of the pictures, the one where the captain was wearing a tie. I looked at Susan and said, “Vice President of the United States Edward Blake.”
She lit a cigarette and said nothing.
I took a deep breath. If I’d had a Scotch and soda, I would have downed it. Edward F. Blake. Capt. B.
Vice President Edward Blake, one heartbeat and one election away from becoming the next president of the United States. Except he had a problem: He murdered someone.
I glanced at Tran Van Vinh, who sat patiently, though perhaps he was getting bad vibes now. I tried to look cool and calm so as not to upset Mr. Vinh. In a normal tone of voice, I asked Susan, “What are the chances of our host here recognizing Vice President Edward Blake?”
She drew on her cigarette and replied, “That’s the question, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. I mean, TV reception is not real good out here.”
She said, “We discussed all of that in Washington. They asked me my opinion.”
“What’s your opinion?”
“Well, my opinion is that almost every Viet in the country can recognize the president and maybe even the vice president of the United States from pictures in the newspapers. Newspapers here, as in most Communist countries, are universal, cheap, and available to the masses, who are almost all literate. That’s what I told them in Washington.”
She added, “Also, the news is heavily political and focuses on Washington. The Viets are not badly informed, even in Ban Hin. Plus, we have the television set down at the schoolhouse. And as you might know, Vice President Blake, when he was a senator, was on the Foreign Relations Committee and the MIA Committee, and he has made numerous trips to Vietnam. You may recall that he’s a close personal friend of our ambassador to Hanoi, Patrick Quinn.” Susan glanced at Mr. Vinh and said, “There could be a potential problem, especially if Edward Blake becomes president.” She looked at me and asked, “What do you think?”