T. Parker - Little Saigon

“If the government wanted the pipeline stopped — would they have taken out Li?”

Bennett shook his head. “They’d have taken out both of us. DeCord is protecting the agency, he’s just doing his job. But they would never have taken Li like that. There are much simpler ways.”

“Is Li a bit player, or the star?”

Bennett hunkered inside his coat, lighting a smoke. “DeCord paid us money here for basic operational expenses, but the bulk of it was wired straight to Switzerland. Li made the pickups in Zurich to pay off our people at that end. Those tapes she always took? They had songs and news and propaganda on them, but also code. Meeting places, drop locations, contacts inside Vietnam, times, dates, places. Plans to coordinate military strikes with terrorist moves were coded into the programs themselves — the order of the songs, the first letter of the titles — things like that. We set it all up ahead. Li didn’t know what exactly was happening until she got there and played the tapes. That way, if they caught her, the whole operation wouldn’t be gutted. Li wasn’t just another part of the resistance — operationally, she was the key.”

Frye tried to collate the information now, make some sense of the details with this new light on them. “Who knew I had that tape, besides you?”

“Donnell. Nguyen Hy. And Kim, the woman you took to the airstrip.”

“Then one of them is a traitor?”

Bennett nodded. “One of them.”

“What about Kim? If it was her, what happens to the Secret Army? Will she let them tail her in, expose the network?”

Bennett sighed. “She made Vientiane. She was supposed to connect with our people, go south through Thailand, then slip into Kampuchea. The guns we flew from the Paradiso would be waiting in a village controlled by the Khmer Rouge. We haven’t heard anything, Chuck. Silence. We got confirmation that Thach was in place yesterday. That tells me Wiggins’s story of Thach being under house arrest isn’t true. But Kim’s silence either means she’s under the gun and holding her breath, or she’s sold out and my people are being greased while we sit here.”

Frye considered. “How much good does the Secret Army do? What do they accomplish?”

“Lots, Chuck. Programs broadcast on the Secret Radio, straight into Hanoi. Recruitment of the disenchanted. Gathering up the villagers who’ve been smashed down by the Communists. They blow a bridge, attack a depot. Harass the regulars.”

“It doesn’t seem like much.”

Bennett looked at him. “It’s how Ho Chi Minh started. We’re how revolutions breed. We’re how history gets written. That’s why Hanoi throws the muscle at us. That’s why they’ve cut Thach loose against us.”

“The radio transmissions from Saigon Plaza. Are they talking to Thach?”

Bennett nodded. “That’s my guess.”

Frye applied a little gas, easing the Whaler into a gentle bank that took them into deeper water. They chugged into the harbor through a canal. Once past the peninsula bridge, Frye could see the lights of the big restaurants wavering on the water, hear the halyards of the big pleasure boats pinging against their masts in the breeze. A bunch of people on the Warehouse patio lifted their drinks and waved.

Bennett stared up at them, then at his brother. “From where we are right now, Thach is the key. If Kim is working for him, the entire Secret Army will be slaughtered.”

“And you plan to kill him at kilometer twenty-one.”

“How did you know that?”

Frye told him of Nha’s request, of the film he developed. “I put it together with something you were saying in your office Tuesday night. On the phone.”

Bennett sat upright, a smile on his face. “I should have enlisted you a long time ago, little brother. You’re a good soldier.” The smile retreated. “We’ve tried to get to him a half dozen times. No luck. We’ll try again tomorrow night. Nine, our time.”

“And if you succeed?”

“I can quit. At least for a while. I want our prisoners back too, if there are any. I suspect it’s a game played by Hanoi — I don’t think they’ve got any Americans there who don’t want to be there. But I won’t stand in the way of them, if there are.”

Frye wondered again at this man in front of him, at his passions and secrets, his plans and campaigns. He’s holding off the CIA with one hand and Thach with the other, trying to assassinate enemies halfway around the world. Benny, always your own agendas. You just never give up. You don’t know when to stop. Down deep inside, it’s the biggest thing we have in common.

Bennett’s dark hair shifted in the breeze. For a moment he was still, clutching the gunwales in his hands, his stumps centered on the bench for balance. He looked up to the restaurant as the Whaler glided by. Pale lights washed across his face. In the long silence that followed, the first rain started to fall, resonant upon the boat. The harbor water began to boil. Bennett had the thousand-yard stare, all right.

“It was a night like this — rain coming down, and thick sweet air. Man, it was a hundred shades of green. Everything drooping and slow. You wouldn’t believe what I’d been going through with Lam and Li. I knew that one of them was tight with Charlie. Our patrols were getting intercepted. The fucking villagers would clear out way ahead of time. Some of Li’s information turned out wrong. But was it wrong when she gave it to us, or did it get wrong when she, or he, tipped the Cong? Which one? Lam or Li? Or was it both?”

Bennett looked up into the rain. The big drops slapped against the Whaler, a drumroll of water on aluminum. “I was in love with her, and he hated me for it. I could see it in his face. With Lam, you were either a friend, or he wanted to grease you. He didn’t have anything in between. I’d never known a guy so... singleminded. You know who I wanted the traitor to be — but how could I know?” Bennett shook his head. “So I set up my own trap. I asked Li to move to base with me. I knew that if she did, it meant she was innocent. And I knew that if Lam saw her moving to me, he’d know I suspected him. He’d try something. Our little triangle was over. Chuck. And I hated to see it go. Back when it started, we had it all. We were friends, and we got things done. Li’s information was the real stuff.”

Frye eased the Whaler into deeper water. The warm rain had soaked him.

“The night she was supposed to show, I waited. I really didn’t know what would happen. I was past thinking about it, past caring. When I saw her coming down the path, man, it was the best feeling in the world. She came through a stand of bamboo and stood a few yards from me. The jungle was black and shiny behind her. She had a guitar, a basket full of clothes, some cooking stuff, and this pack on her back. That was all. Her face was white. She was dripping wet. She stood there and I’ll never forget what she said. ‘Benny, there is something on me. Lam put it there, and said we must open it together.’”

Bennett lit another cigarette, cupping it in his hand. Frye watched his face glow orange.

“Fucking gift from Lam, right? So I helped her off with it. Real careful. I could tell by the weight that he’d packed in enough shit to blow a whole platoon away. I put it in an empty mortar pit, took her by the hand, and led her to a hootch I’d set up near the perimeter. I let her inside and helped her get arranged. The whole time I was thinking of Lam. He’d played the same game I had. He’d used Li. The difference was, I loved her enough to let her live, and he loved her enough to kill her. And me. So I got my ‘sixteen, and eight men, and hauled ass to the trail by Lam’s hut. I figured he had five minutes on us.”

The rain changed gears now, a steady shower of big warm drops. Frye guided the Whaler into a loose turn, heading back toward the Island. The ocean water boiled harder, and a mist rose from the surface.