Charles Mccarry - The Tears Of Autumn

“Mr. Christopher,” said the Truong toe, speaking the name for the first time, “I’m curious-how did you come to hear the name Lê Thu?”

“Nguyen Kim mentioned it. He seemed to think it would be a great joke to use it as an introduction to you.”

“And you thought it had great significance-that it symbolized this assassination you think we carried out?”

“I didn’t know,” Christopher said. “That was one of my questions.”

“You’ve translated the name, I understand. It means ‘the tears of autumn.’”

“Yes-if it’s a code name it’s poetic, but insecure.”

“And you wish to know the name of our relative in the North Vietnamese intelligence service?”

“Yes.”

“That is all you require to prove our guilt, and rid our country of the Americans, who, as you suggest, will destroy it for reasons of their own policy?”

“Yes.”

As Christopher and the Truong toe spoke to each other, they smiled-more broadly with each question and answer. After hearing Christopher’s final reply, the Truong toe laughed, a string of dry barks like the cough of a man who has swallowed smoke. His laughter was a compliment. Only a clandestine mind like Christopher’s, free from values and concerned with nothing but the results of action, could have conceived the proposal Christopher had just made. The Truong toe had the same sort of mind. He was delighted to encounter another brain so like his own.

“We’ve heard a good deal about you since yesterday, Mr. Christopher,” he said. “It all seems to be true. This really is a most clever provocation. I have no idea what purpose your masters think it will serve, but you may give them my answer. It is this: your hypothesis is absurd. How could we touch a Kennedy? They live in another dimension of power.”

“Murder requires very little power.”

“No, no, no. Mr. Christopher, Lê Thu is just a name. You will search in vain for any relative of ours who is a secret agent of Ho Chi Minh’s. We accepted the death of Ngo Dinh Diem and Ngo Dinh Nhu-we are weak, Mr. Christopher. How could we do what you think we’ve done?”

Christopher rose. “Very well,” he said. “I’ll go on with my work.”

“What bravado,” the priest said. “You want what-admiration? You’re mad-I’m more convinced of it than before.”

The Truong toe stood and took Christopher’s cold teacup from his hand and he drank from it with a smile. Christopher had not touched the tea. “You are not lacking in caution,” the Truong toe said. “I have something to give you.”

He reached into a pocket of his pajamas and brought out a gray envelope. Christopher opened the flap and looked at the photograph it contained.

It was a picture of Molly, smiling into the camera in surprise, a lock of her hair drawn tight between her thumb and forefinger. Half of Christopher’s face showed in the photograph. It was the picture Nguyen Kim had taken in Rome after they had had lunch together.

The Truong toe looked steadily into Christopher’s eyes. “You may have that print,” he said. “I believe Kim has the negative.”

Christopher felt a stab of panic. The Truong toe watched it flicker in Christopher’s face. He bowed slightly. His brown scalp showed like shined leather through his thin hair.

No one interfered with Christopher as he left. The Truong toe showed no surprise when Christopher opened the door into the front of the house instead of going back through the darkened warehouse.

He moved through small rooms that smelled of burnt joss and cooking. There were no windows, only a streak of lamplight sifting through a series of doors leading to the front of the house. Christopher moved quickly through the dim rooms; there was almost no furniture, nor any sign of Nicole or any other Vietnamese. In one of the rooms a withered Chinese woman sat in a large wing chair, staring at an oil lamp that burned on a low table in front of her; she paid no attention to Christopher.

He heard the noise of the street on the other side of a door, and opened it. Stepping into the crowd, he was borne along through the choked street until it opened into a larger thoroughfare. He searched the horizon for the glow of Saigon’s lights. Finding his direction, he set off for the place where he had parked the car.

The crowd, mostly Chinese, was still very think but he stood head and shoulders above it, so that he could see into its depths. One side of the street was lighted by shop fronts; the other, running along the blank backs of godowns, lay in deep shadow.

He saw the first Vietnamese with his face in the full light of an open doorway; his expression had not changed since morning. Christopher looked for the other, and when he did not see him at once, knew that he must be behind him.

He turned around and saw that the crowd had parted. The second Vietnamese stood with his feet apart, poised like a diver on the balls of his feet. He was lifting a pistol with a steady sweep of his arm, wrist locked, both eyes open, mouth relaxed. Christopher recognized the technique. He leapt sideways toward the darkened half of the street. The gunman moved his arm instead of his whole body, and lost his aim. Two soft-nosed bullets hit the wall to Christopher’s right. Two more rounds gouged shallow holes in the concrete. The gunman ducked behind the parked car, expecting return fire.

Across the street, the Vietnamese Christopher had seen first had a revolver in his hand; he was motioning people out of his way. The crowd made no special noise; people moved away from him in both directions to make room for the shooting. Christopher ran back the way he had come, past the parked car with the gunman hiding behind it. The crowd did not see him coming until he was well within it, running with his knees bent and his head bowed so that he was not much taller than the small people who surrounded him.

Christopher looked behind him. One of the Vietnamese was running after him at an easy trot, his long pistol held against his thigh, his head turning alertly from side to side. Christopher saw the other man move in the shadows by the warehouses. The two Vietnamese moved well as a team, like terriers used to hunting together. The crowd drifted toward the lighted half of the street.

Pushing bodies aside, Christopher plunged through the door of an apothecary’s shop. A young Chinese looked up in surprise, then shouted in anger as CL ristopher went through a beaded curtain at the back of the store. A family of Chinese sat around a low table, playing cards. Christopher walked over the table, scattering the cards, and into another room. A window stood open in one wall. Christopher climbed through it, scraping his back on the sash. He fell into a space between two houses. The ground was littered with broken glass, and the passage was so narrow that there was no room for his shoulders. He moved through it sideways as quickly as he could toward a strip of light at its end.

One of the men who had killed Luong stuck his head out the window, braced his pistol against the sash, and took careful aim. Christopher turned his face toward the gunman, threw his arms into the air, gave a loud wordless roar that scraped the skin in his throat, and fell to his knees. The gun wavered as a spot of bluish flame blinked at the muzzle. Christopher did not hear the round go by, and he thought it might have struck him. He felt no pain.

He staggered into a bright street and saw a canal shining at the end of it. A young Chinese grasped his arm roughly and glared suspiciously into his face. Christopher smiled at him and struck him under the chin with the heel of his open hand; the boy’s light body was lifted into the air by the blow, and he landed in the opposite gutter with his neck twisted. A knot of Chinese gathered around Christopher, shouting angrily, and followed him as he walked rapidly away.