Chuck Logan - The Price of Blood

Broker gazed at the place where he’d been young. He didn’t recognize it. Which was okay. He wasn’t young anymore.

“You want to see where the citadel was?” asked Trin.

Broker shook his head. Looked around. “They can’t use a white guy to tail us, not here,” said Broker.

“More likely a Vietnamese, on a motor bike. Keep a sharp watch.”

They turned down a side street past the market and Trin talked rapidly with a man who sat in the shade of his porch. Trin handed the man some money. “Our driver. I’m giving him the next two days off.” Broker followed him in back of the house and they got in a gray van with Vietnam Hue Tours printed on the side.

“The van will draw attention,” said Broker.

“But it will help us if we get stopped by some unfriendly militia, along with this.” He tapped the travel itinerary folded in his chest pocket.

They drove to the congested market and got out. Trin marched ahead, happy at the prospect of spending Broker’s money. He swaggered through the heaping stalls, yelling in Vietnamese. Broker stuffed a wad of dollars into his hand and, thus empowered, Trin seemed to grow several inches. They emerged from the market with three cases of Tiger beer, four cartons of Dunhill cigarettes, and a Polaroid camera and film. “Very important,” said Trin about the camera. “You’ll see.” He held his index finger up in that disturbing grand gesture that now annoyed Broker.

“Before we head for the coast, there’s a stop I want to make,” said Trin abruptly. And Broker, with no leverage, realized that he was no longer the center of his own tragedy.

They got in the van and Trin drove north up Highway 1, toward Dong Ha. Out of their way.

Once desolate expanses of rice paddy had separated QTC from Dong Ha. Now the road was clogged with new brick buildings and worldspeak billboards: Sony, Samsung, Honda. The air was pure motorscooter exhaust. Only the red flags separated the scene from anywhere Developing World squalor. Glum, Broker held his tongue. Waited.

The road got wider, the buildings reached a three-story crescendo of pastel clutter. Trin stopped. “There,” he pointed. Broker saw a vast children’s playground behind a chain-link fence. Slides, swings, merry-go-rounds.

“Do you recognize where you are?” asked Trin. Broker shook his head. Trin grinned. “They built the playground on the site of my old regiment’s base camp. We’re at the intersection of Highway One and Highway Nine. The bridge and the river are right up there, next to the market.”

Broker looked at a tall modernist structure of white concrete. The market. Dong Ha was unrecognizable, overrun with people, motorscooters, and houses. Trin made a U-turn and drove south, finally. Then he pulled a hard right and they were off, down a crowded street.

“Trin,” said Broker irritably.

“This won’t take long,” said Trin. The road dipped and turned hilly. The homes were dense at first, wall to wall. Then they spread out, more expensive. And then Broker managed to orient himself, using their travel time from the corner of highways 1 and 9. He’d been this way before.

When Trin stopped the van and got out, Broker didn’t know the place. Then he saw the stone griffin. Now it was upright, clean, the centerpiece of a carefully tended garden. Bonsai. The shapes of animals: an elephant, a deer, a lion.

The stone slab still guarded the door. And now the terraces and patios were meticulously landscaped with flowering bushes. The back of the estate was walled off and drenched in hanging vines. Broker couldn’t see the small hill where the graves had been. A crushed gravel driveway meandered through the gardens and a gleaming black Toyota Land Cruiser was parked at the end of it. The letter A was prominent on the license plate.

Trin stood on his tiptoes and craned his neck. He called out in Vietnamese. Broker took his arm to lead him away.

“No,” insisted Trin. “They are home. The car is here.” He yelled again. There was movement on the patio, in the shade of a trellis dripping with flowers. A middle-aged man wearing gray slacks and a white shirt open at the throat stepped from the shadows. He held a newspaper in his hand. He put on sunglasses.

Trin barked at him and his musical native tongue now sounded like wooden blocks being pounded together by an angry child. This time Broker put a firm hand on Trin’s arm and yanked him back.

The man on the patio responded curtly in a voice tired, but husky with authority. A lean woman in a dark pants suit joined him on the patio. She had wide cheeks and broad lips and beautiful jet-black hair. Even at a distance, Broker could feel the strike of her precise eyes. Two little Communist flags.

She made a dismissive, shooing underhanded gesture toward Trin. And went back in the house.

Now infuriated, Trin shouted and whipped a handful of American currency-Broker’s unreturned change from the market-from his pocket and brandished it. The man waved his newspaper in a weary disgusted gesture and retreated inside the house.

Trin pulled away from Broker and started up the driveway. Broker was on him; from the corner of his eyes he saw people coming into the street. Trin yelled one last time, then spit on the money in his hand, and contemptuously flung it at the ground. Crumpled twenty-dollar bills, pocket change, and assorted pocket lint littered the driveway. Spent, he let Broker drag him back to the vehicle.

“Calm down, goddammit,” seethed Broker. Trin sulked behind the wheel, turned the key, and drove quickly from the neighborhood.

“What was that all about?” Broker demanded.

“He’s a pig,” spat Trin. “They’re both pigs. Big-shot Communists. He works in the customs office. She’s the fucking mayor of Dong Ha. When I got out of the camps I discovered that the party had given them my house. I offered to pay if he would allow me to visit the graves.”

“Trin, we have more important things to worry about.” Broker’s nerves were way past anxiety. He found himself riding shotgun with a time bomb of folly. He wondered if any Americans of a diplomatic stripe lived in Hue City, the nearest big town.

“I’ll show him,” muttered Trin with a fatal glow in his hot eyes.

They turned on Highway 1 and drove south, and Broker really began to worry. Could be worse than folly. A lot worse.

They were about a mile south of Quang Tri City and Broker realized that he was looking for a bridge. A bridge that Jimmy Tuna had blown up twenty-three years ago. Trin slowed as he came up to another North Vietnamese Arlington on the right side of the highway. He pulled on to the shoulder and put the van in neutral.

Trin addressed his outburst in Dong Ha in roundabout fashion. “Look at this fancy cemetery. And these are only the northerners they couldn’t identify to send home. The losers are not allowed cemeteries. We cannot look for our missing. Some of us cannot even visit our family graves. We all smile and say ‘yes’ but sometimes it gets very hard. Very hard,” he repeated, gripping the steering wheel.

“Trin, Jesus,” Broker ran his hand through his hair, “you have to control yourself.”

“I will,” said Trin, determined. “You saved my life that night in Hue. They were going to put me up against a wall.”

“The militia? Do any of them speak English?” Broker asked gently.

Trin’s eyes flashed. “I’m all right now, Phil. I can do this. I used to do things like this all the time.” He closed his hand around the tiger tooth that hung around his neck and made a fist.

As Trin put the van in gear and pulled back onto the road his expression was carved in black teak. The worst possible thing had happened. He had lost face. In front of a foreigner. And, considering what Trin had been through, Broker could have accepted the mood swings in an ordinary man. But he wasn’t willing to grant Trin the luxury of being ordinary.