George Chesbro - Two Songs This Archangel Sings

"What blood?"

"Loan Ka told me that Veil had blood all over the front of his uniform when he came to warn the village of the attack."

"It was probably Kendry's blood."

"That's possible. But if it was Veil's own blood, it means he was wounded after he cleaned out the brothel and took the children to the Catholic Relief Agency. Kathy, the Hmong girl, was very clear on the point that Veil's uniform was clean when he walked out of the brothel, so the blood got there sometime between early morning, when he dropped off the children, and the afternoon, before he got into the helicopter. It was sometime during those hours when he found out about the plan to attack Loan Ka's village."

"You said the girl told you Kendry looked like hell. Maybe he already knew about the operation and had been brooding about it."

"Veil would have flown to warn the village as soon as he learned of the plan. If he'd known earlier, he could have avoided a situation where he had to shoot at his own people. No. He learned about it that same day, with only hours to go before the American and South Vietnamese commandos were scheduled to reach the village."

"Who did he learn it from?"

"The person or persons he went to see right after dropping off the children. Veil was enraged, so he would logically go to see the person he held responsible for the children ending up in a brothel-the man who'd made the decision to replace Veil with Colonel Po."

"One or both of the other two men in the helicopter."

"Right. Po was a monster, and everyone in the American and South Vietnamese command structure knew he was a monster. But not the Hmong. The Hmong finally unmasked him and drove him and his men out of the village, but not before they'd done irreparable damage to the children. This was the account Veil went to settle. There could have been a fight, with fists or guns, and Veil wound up with blood all over him. During the course of the confrontation, he learned about the plans for the attack. He just had time to abort it, but not to avoid actions that would brand him a traitor. It's doubtful that Veil would have known where to find Po so quickly; it was an American he went to see."

Garth absently sipped at his cold coffee, finally looked up at me and nodded in approval. "I like it, brother," he said simply. "It could very well have gone down that way."

"But it's still conjecture, without a shred of proof. And all the big pieces of the puzzle are still missing. That's why going upstate to at least try to talk to Po has to be the next step."

"Why don't I pick up the big guy who's tailing you and sweat him? It would be a hell of a lot safer."

I shook my head. "He won't sweat. Besides, he's nothing more than a hired hand who won't necessarily be able to tell us what we need to know. He was just told what to do, not given a look at the skeletons in the closet."

"He'll know who hired him."

"He was probably hired by some flunky way down the chain of command. Snatching him won't get me any closer to Veil, and it will only tip my hand. First, let me try to get next to Po. If that doesn't work and there are no other leads, then we can always try sweating the big guy."

My brother grimaced. "I don't like it, Mongo. I've got no jurisdiction in Albany, and no close contacts with any Albany cops. In fact, they might well resent me poking my nose into what they consider their business."

"I'll go alone. In fact, Po might be more willing to talk to me if I go alone."

"Bullshit. Even if I weren't specifically assigned to the arson and murder aspects of this case by the NYPD, I most definitely would be assigned to you by me. No heavy moves without checking with me first. Agreed?"

"Agreed. Garth, you don't look good."

"I don't feel good," Garth said, with what for him was remarkable candor in regard to his health.

"What's the matter?"

"I don't know. I've got headaches, nausea, loss of appetite, and general all-around crankiness, but those are just symptoms."

"Why don't you go see a doctor?"

"I did-while you were in Seattle."

"And?"

"He couldn't find anything wrong. He suggested it might be psychosomatic." Garth paused, laughed without humor. "He wanted to know if I'd been under any unusual kinds of stress during the past year or two."

That got me to laughing too, and we ended by slapping each other's arms. But Garth's pallor wasn't funny, and the bittersweet laughter died in my throat. "What kinds of tests did he run?"

Garth shrugged disinterestedly. "How the hell do I know?"

"You should check into a hospital."

"That's a great idea. Hell, we'll just ask the nice men who are after you and Kendry for a truce."

"Garth-"

"I'll be all right, Mongo. Right now, we've got business to take care of. Before you go merrily on your way into Po's nest of vipers to ask him pretty please to tell you the details of his dirty past, I think it would behoove us to sum up what we know, or can reasonably assume, to this point."

"Okay. We know that Veil was part of the C.I.A.'s secret war in Laos for better than four years, almost to the end of the war. If Kathy remembered correctly about the insignia on his uniform when she saw him in Saigon, he was a full colonel in 1972. He wasn't thirty yet, which means he had to be the youngest bird colonel in the whole damn army. And that means he was one hell of a soldier before he was sent into Laos.

"He was Special Forces. Because of the nature of his assignment, it's almost a sure bet that he was also a C.I.A. operative, possibly also highly ranked in that organization. We can reasonably assume that the man in the green raincoat who came to see him was his controller. They didn't get along.

"For whatever their reasons, the C.I.A. agreed to help the South Vietnamese solve the embarrassing problem of what to do with Colonel Po after his extracurricular activities were exposed. We don't know why Veil's sector was chosen, only that it was-despite the fact that the move didn't make any sense from a military point of view, since Veil was obviously very effective doing what he was doing, harassing the Pathet Lao and Viet Cong. To try to explain it, we have to start doing some heavy speculation."

"You're just the man to handle heavy speculation," Garth said dryly. "Let's hear it."

"The army and the C.I.A. had a new assignment for Veil, one that they considered even more important."

"At the end of the war?"

"Hey, c'mon: Don't you remember all those lights at the ends of tunnels? The generals didn't know it was the end of the war."

"Good point. Go ahead."

"Veil took strong exception, certainly to being taken out of Laos-and maybe to this hypothetical new assignment. Both the army and the C.I.A. knew Veil was going to resist, so the controller brought along Veil's commanding officer-the man in uniform-to back him up and enforce discipline."

Garth cocked his head to one side and scratched behind his left ear-a sign I was being less than convincing. "Four years in the jungles of Laos is a long time, brother, especially in view of the fact that the average tour of duty for officers in Viet Nam was one year.

Maybe Kendry's tour was simply up; it was time to give him a rest, whether he wanted it or not."

"There was nothing average about Veil, or his assignment. Besides, if it were just a matter of Veil's tour being over, he almost certainly would have been back in the United States six to eight weeks later, not wandering the streets of Saigon in the middle of the night. But he was in Saigon-and he may have had something very heavy on his mind.

"After rescuing the Hmong children and cleaning out the brothel, he probably went to see the big honcho who'd reassigned him and put Po in his place. He probably found out about the impending commando attack from this man, and may or may not have physically fought him. He most certainly did fly into Laos to warn the village and ended up shooting at his own countrymen. His helicopter was shot down, but he survived the crash. He must have made it through the jungle back to Viet Nam, where he either turned himself in or was captured. A relatively short time later he was a civilian, newly arrived in New York City."