Charles Mccarry - The Tears Of Autumn

Christopher’s envelope, containing fifty one-hundred-dollar bills, still lay untouched on the desk. Yu Lung had not acknowledged its existence. Christopher walked along the hallway behind Yu Lung. Outside Yu Lung’s bright modern office, they were back in China. When Yu Lung drew close to shake hands, he gave off the bitter unused smell of an old man.

Pong was late. Christopher crossed the street and stood with his back against the wall of a tin shack. Cyclists and pedestrians moved over the beaten earth of the street. No one turned a face in Christopher’s direction; he might have been as invisible as one of the spirits Yu Lung had spoken about. A new moon shone beyond the mist of Saigon’s lights.

Pong came into the street driving too fast, blinking the lights to clear people away from the car. As he reached Christopher, he threw open the front door and slowed only enough to let him scramble into the seat beside him. Pong’s eyes were fixed on the rear-view mirror.

“That gray Simca picked me up after I left you,” Pong said. “I lost them for a while, but you can’t hide this big car.”

“Do you think they’re still on you?”

“They were five minutes ago. They’ve got yellow headlights.”

Christopher looked out the rear window. “Go out to the quais and head west,” he said. “Let them find us.”

“We should go back to the house.”

“They’d be outside when we came out again. Let them follow.”

Pong turned the car toward the canals. The two-way radio crackled. Christopher switched it off. “Turn off the dashlights,” he said. “You may have to drive in the dark after a while.”

As they made the long curve where the Doi Canal turned south, yellowish light flashed from the mirror onto Pong’s face. “There they are,” he said.

“Keep going,” Christopher said. “When we get into the paddy, turn off the lights and drive fast. They can’t keep up.”

They were still within the city limits, but the car was racing through the swamps and paddy of the rural Seventh District, on the southwestern edge of Saigon.

“You know there are VC all over the Seventh District at night, don’t you?” Pong asked. He pulled his revolver from its holster and laid it gently on the seat between them.

“I know. How far to the first big curve, so you can stop without their seeing your brake lights?”

“Maybe two kilometers,” Pong said. “Just before the Cho Dem ferry.”

Pong switched off the headlights and trod on the accelerator. The car pulled itself into the darkness, swaying on its soft springs over the uneven roadbed. Pong cursed as a wheel ran off the pavement and threw a burst of clods against the inside of the fender.

“Barney says driving this car is like screwing a fat woman -you don’t know exactly where you are,” Pong said.

Christopher pulled the submachine gun off the dashboard and worked the action. “This is what we’re going to do,” he said. “Listen, because I only have time to tell you once.”

Pong listened. “Barney said no shooting,” he said.

“Barney’s not here,” Christopher said.

Midway through a long curve, Pong pulled the automatic transmission into low gear and turned off the key. The car bucked and ran down to a stop, Pong touching the brakes lightly only twice.

Christopher got out while the car was still moving. He lay down on the slimy earth between the road and the paddy; the Simca had turned off its lights, but he could hear its motor far back and see flashes of red as the driver braked to keep it on the road.

The Chevrolet, its lights still out, stood broadside on the pavement. Christopher saw the rice move near the Chevrolet as Pong waded into the paddy, his revolver held above his head.

The Simca came around the curve with its tires shrieking, swaying from side to side. The driver saw the Chevrolet at the last moment and switched on his lights. For some reason he sounded the horn, and in the glow of the instrument lights Christopher saw him pulling the steering wheel to the right, hand over hand like a falling man clawing at the face of a cliff. The Vietnamese in the passenger seat braced his feet against the dashboard, his teeth bared in fear.

The Simca flew for an instant after it left the road. Christopher had no real idea of its speed until it struck the paddy, sending a great sheet of water into the air. There were three sounds one after the other: the hard slap of the flying car on the surface of the paddy, the splash of water hitting the road and the parked Chevrolet, and a brief shriek of pain from inside the wrecked car. The Simca turned end over end and settled into the paddy on its top. Its yellow headlights shone over the water, then sank below it to glow among the stalks of rice for a moment before they went out. It was very quiet; Christopher heard water filling the car and, when that stopped, the faint rustle of the rice, disturbed by the wind.

Pong, wet to the waist, came out of the paddy with his pistol in his hand and stood at the edge of the road. Christopher stood up.

“I thought they hit you,” Pong said. He walked back and ran the toe of his sneaker, smeared with dark mud, along the skid marks.

Christopher waded through the paddy, still holding the submachine gun, and looked at the car. All four windows were under water. He beckoned Pong and together they rocked the car until it tipped over on its side. Pong opened the door; both men were crumpled together behind the wheel. He clambered onto the car, seized one of them by an arm, braced his feet against the door frame, and pulled the limp corpse out of the seat. He threw it into the paddy and pulled out the other body. Christopher helped him carry them through the water to the tar road, which was still soft from the afternoon sun.

Pong searched the bodies methodically, finding nothing but weapons and a little money. The man who had killed Luong had not attached the silencer to his.22; Pong found it in his trousers and held it up for Christopher to see. When he was done, Pong stood up and threw a handful of coins from the men’s pockets into the water. He started to roll the bodies back into the paddy.

“Wait,” Christopher said. “Do you have a camera in the car?”

Pong nodded and opened the trunk. He came back with a Polaroid camera, fitting a flashbulb into its reflector. He offered the camera to Christopher. “No,” Christopher said, “you do it.”

Pong knelt and took pictures of the dead men. The flashgun erased the shadows from their faces, so that they looked as Luong had looked, lying on his back with the morning sun shining into his extinguished eyes.

“Take two of each,” Christopher said.

At Luong’s house, the old woman who had given Christopher food that morning told him that Phuoc had gone away to pray. Christopher found him in the Xa Loi Pagoda, where the Ngos’ enemies had waited for arrest only a few weeks before. He sent Pong, a Buddhist, into the pagoda. Phuoc came out alone and got into the car without hesitation.

Phuoc looked at the submachine gun and the two-way radio and turned his body in the seat, watching Christopher’s profile. Christopher gave Phuoc the Polaroid photographs Pong had taken and turned on the interior light.

“These are the men,” Christopher said. He opened the glove compartment and brought out the long-barreled.22 pistol. “This is the gun.”

Phuoc examined the dead faces of his brother’s murderers. Christopher turned off the dome light.

“How did they die so quickly?” Phuoc asked.

“They drowned. It was an accident. I wanted to talk to them, but they went off the road and overturned in a paddy.”

“You wouldn’t have killed them?”