“Do you trust me?”
“I think we did this.”
“Okay, do you believe that I’m on your side? That I believe as you do that Edward Blake needs to give a public accounting of how William Hines died?”
“Absolutely.” I finished pumping and asked her, “You got any dong?”
She paid the attendant, who was standing near us, looking us over, and checking out the BMW. Why don’t these guys pump the gas? Things will be different here when all the gas stations are American-owned and — operated. That’ll show these bastards who really won the war.
I wanted to drive, so I mounted up. Susan came up beside me and said, “Look at me, Paul.”
I looked at her.
She said, “I could not have killed that man. You have to believe that.”
I looked into her eyes and said, “I do believe that.”
She smiled and said, “You, however, piss me off.”
I smiled, but said, “It’s not a joke.”
“I know. Sorry. I make bad jokes when I’m tense.”
“Jump on.”
She got on the back and put her arms around me.
I started the engine and off we went, up Route 12, which was mostly uphill as the Na Valley rose higher.
Susan was hungry, as usual, and we pulled over and had a picnic lunch beside a foul-smelling rice paddy. Bananas and rice cakes, and a liter of water. The last good protein I’d had was the porcupine last night.
Susan lit a post-prandial cigarette and said, “If you’re wondering why they picked you, one reason was because they wanted a combat veteran. There’s this sort of bond between old soldiers, even if they fought on different sides, and I could see that immediately between you and Mr. Vinh.”
I thought about that and replied, “There’s no bond between me and Colonel Mang.”
“Actually, there is.”
I ignored that and said, “So, I was picked by a computer? Handsome, bilingual in French and Vietnamese, extensive knowledge of the country, loves native food, motorcycle license, and people skills.”
She smiled. “Don’t forget good lay.”
“Right. Tell you what — they miscalculated.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
I let that one go, and we mounted up.
About sixty kilometers and two hours out of Lai Chau, the road forked and there was actually a sign: to the left was the Laotian border, ten kilometers, and to the right was Lao Cai, sixty-seven kilometers. I took the right fork, not wanting to go to Laos on this trip, and definitely not wanting to run into any more border guards or military.
In my rearview mirror, however, I saw a military jeep kicking up dust behind me. I said to Susan, “Soldiers.”
She didn’t look back, but bent over and found the jeep in the mirror. “You can easily outrun them on a rutted dirt road.”
What she meant was that the tire ruts were very bumpy, whereas the crown in the middle was smoother. I twisted the throttle and got the bike up to sixty KPH, and I saw that the cloud of dust behind me was getting farther away.
We kept up that speed for half an hour, and I figured if the jeep was going half our speed, then he was fifteen kilometers behind us.
She said to me, “I told you a motorcycle was better.”
A lot of this trip had been thought out ahead of time, and what seemed to me random or serendipitous had been calculated. I’d made the mistake of underestimating my friends in Washington, who I knew couldn’t be as stupid as they seemed.
This was a totally desolate stretch of road, called, according to the map, 4D, which obviously meant desolate. It was getting cold and dark. I took Susan’s hand and looked at her watch. It was about 7 P.M. The sun sinks fast in these latitudes, as I found out in ’68, and you can get caught in the dark by surprise.
Route 4D was starting to climb into high mountains, and I could see towering peaks to our front. To make matters worse, a ground fog was developing. We were not going to make it to Lao Cai.
Once again, I started looking around for a place to pull over where we could spend the night. I could actually see my breath, and I guessed the temperature was close to freezing.
Just as I was about to pull over on a small patch of ground near a mountain stream, I saw a sign that said Sa Pa, and in English, Scenic Beauty. Good Hotels. I stopped and stared at the sign. Maybe it was a backpacker joke. I said, “Is that for real?”
Susan informed me, “There’s a hill station town up here called Sa Pa. Old French summer resort. Someone in my Hanoi office went there. Let’s see the map.”
I took out the map, and we both looked at it in the fading light. Sure enough, there was a little dot called Sa Pa, but no indication on the map that this was anything other than another two-chicken town. The map elevation showed 1,800 meters, which explained why I could see my breath and not feel my nose. I said, “It’s another thirty kilometers or so from Sa Pa to Lao Cai. We’ll stop in Sa Pa.”
I accelerated up the sharply rising road. The fog was thick now, but I left my headlight off and stayed in the middle of the dirt road.
Within fifteen minutes, we could see the glow of lights, and a few minutes later, we were in Sa Pa.
It was a pleasant little place, and in the dark, I could imagine I was in a French alpine village.
We drove around awhile, and the town was dead in the winter. There were lots of small hotels and guest houses in Sa Pa, and every one of them would report our check-in to the Immigration Police.
I saw few people on the streets, and most of them were Montagnards. I spotted a Viet on a motor scooter ahead of me, and I said to Susan, “Ask that guy what’s the best hotel in town.” I accelerated and came up beside him. Susan spoke to him, and he gave her directions. She said to me, “Make a U-turn.”
I made a U-turn on the quiet street, and Susan directed me to a road that climbed above the town.
At the very end of the road, like a mirage, was a huge, modern hotel called the Victoria Sa Pa.
We gave the bike to a doorman, took our backpacks, and entered the big, luxurious lobby.
She said to me, “Nothing but the best for my hero. Use your American Express. I think I’m not being reimbursed anymore.”
“Let’s have a drink first.”
There was a lounge off the lobby, and I took Susan’s arm and led her into this modern lounge with a panoramic view of the misty mountains. We put our backpacks down and sat at a cocktail table. A waitress took our orders for two beers. I looked around and saw about a dozen Westerners in the big place, so we didn’t stand out, which was why I wanted the best place in town.
Susan said to me, “I have the feeling we’re not checking in here.”
“No, we’re not.” I added, “By now, Colonel Mang may know we stayed at the Dien Bien Phu Motel, so he knows we’re in northwest Vietnam. He’d like to know exactly where, but I’m not sure what he’d do with that information. In any case, I don’t want him or the local goons joining us for cocktails. So we’ll push on.”
She replied, “I agree we shouldn’t check into a hotel or guest house, but maybe we should find a place to sleep in town, like a church, or that park we saw. Lao Cai is about two hours of dangerous driving through the mountain fog. If a military jeep came up behind us, we wouldn’t hear him over the motorcycle, and we might not be able to outrun him. If he came toward us on a narrow mountain road, we’d have to turn around, and we might not be able to outrun him.” She looked at me and said, “And you threw away my gun.”
“I thought you had two more.”
She smiled.
I said, “Well, I have an infantryman’s solution to escape and evasion at night. We walk.”
She didn’t reply.
The beers came, and Susan raised her glass to me. “To the worst three days I’ve ever spent in Vietnam, with the best man I’ve ever spent them with.”