Hwang Sok-Yong - The Shadow of Arms

“Sure. She charges us four fifty or even five dollars a can for beer she buys at a buck-fifty a can.”

“That’s a wholesale price. The retail price goes as high as six dollars at the moment, you know,” the chief sergeant said.

“For a guy so much in the know, how come you’ve been spinning your wheels without getting anything done? You better come with me to say hello to Colonel Cao. So much for the beer. As for that canteen sergeant at brigade headquarters, you should collar him, too. There’s liquor and cigarettes.”

“I understand.”

“And take good care of the boys, look after them. And rent a truck, too.”

“The owner of the place where I’m working now, he rents vans. Get one from him for now.”

“Well, that’s one more thing taken care of,” said the captain in a better mood. “What remains is the matter of the beer. It’ll leave us in an awkward spot if we end up clashing with the US side again.”

“We can solve that problem by reaching a compromise with the Vietnamese police superintendent. The basic information must have come from there. Korean beer was pushing out American PX beer all through the Da Nang circulation network. That was their way of irritating the US forces so that they would interfere with the marketing of our beer.”

“Right, we can arrange something with Cao. Anyway, since all the deals on the US side are made either at the harbor or in their warehouses — that is, within their compounds — the final responsibility was bound to fall on third-country nationals. We’ve got to get detailed information on the black market activities of the US economic operations team.”

Yong Kyu explained again what he had copied from Pak’s records. The captain listened for a while with his brow furrowed into a frown and then thought deeply.

“That’s it, A-rations are the goods least connected with the war. If stored too long, they turn into garbage, but fresh meat, fruit, and vegetables are daily necessities in central Da Nang. It makes price manipulation very easy. It’s produce consumed by the privileged of the city, but it raises problems of its own, and not just a few, either. If we pull the wrong thread, we might find ourselves holding a snake’s tail instead of a sack of potatoes. Once bitten, we lose.”

“The B-rations we pull out from Turen have little impact on the prices of other goods and the transactions are easy. I’ll try to dig up some details on the A-ration trading. I have a feeling something will turn up.”

“Will you begin with MAC?”

“No, sir. I’ll start at the opposite end,” Yong Kyu said with a smile. “Le Loi market.”

“Fine. If worse comes to worst, we’ll find ourselves back at square one. Why not take a look at the Americans’ turf? Just don’t get them upset.”

The captain agreed with Yong Kyu’s idea of digging up details on A-ration dealings. Once they understood the mechanism of price-fixing in the black market, other valuable information would fall into their lap as well. It was their best bet.

“The underground trade in dollars is important, too,” the captain went on.

“It’s not just military currency, sir. You can change anything: money orders, francs, deutsch marks, yen, you name it. Everything is quoted in piasters, though. They say money changers have been coming here all the way from Cholon and Saigon.”

On Wednesday afternoon, Yong Kyu made his regular rounds and drove a rec center Jeep through the convoy traffic to the Turen supply warehouse. He met Leon in front of the warehouse. The American looked worried and quickly ushered Yong Kyu inside.

“There’s a big problem.”

“What is it? Something gone wrong with our business?”

“No, that wouldn’t be so serious. You know Stapley, don’t you?”

“So, he’s the one in trouble?”

Yong Kyu had once enjoyed a night on the town with Sergeant Stapley, Leon’s best friend. Stapley was a blonde from New York, handsome as a French movie actor. He was always talking up his plans to become a cartoonist when the war was over. In some ways he was very different from Leon. He used the most imaginative swearing among the GIs to denounce the Vietnam War. He had something of an artistic gift and was in the habit of making medallions and bracelets by engraving sayings he composed himself in Gothic lettering on coins and strips of metal or plastic. He had given Yong Kyu a yellow plastic emblem with red lettering that read: “Do Not Crumple or Trample before Disposal!” Other creations of his said things like “God-Damned War” or “Fucking Murderers!” or “Baby Cookers” or sometimes titles or lyrics from popular rock songs. That night Leon had vanished early with a woman and Yong Kyu had spent the whole night drinking whiskey with Stapley. He remembered their conversation.

“I was a helicopter gunner. Even got a medal. That’s how I got to be a sergeant. Now I’ll never be a cartoonist. Listen to me, you smelly Asian boy, I’m gonna stay put right here and get promoted to be master sergeant with a moustache and then I’ll give a hell of a time to my men. You know that guy named Silverstein, right? He writes poems and illustrates them. What if we brought him over here and made him a sergeant, what d’you think?”

“You idiot, you don’t even know what would happen, do you? Either he’d sell the entire stock of Turen to fill his belly, or live on, like you, throwing a tantrum over the killing on the battlefield, or maybe just get killed himself,” Yong Kyu had said.

“Stapley’s disappeared,” Leon said.

“Maybe he’s just gone to China Beach again, to play poker and now he’s sleeping it off?”

“I wish that was all. But he took off with a truckload of poncho liners. Must be worth three thousand dollars.”

“Why the hell would he take poncho liners?”

“Because that warehouse was just finished inventorying. There were also jungle boots and tents.”

“How long’s he been gone?”

“Five days. An AWOL report already went up the chain.”

AWOLs were everywhere. Sometimes they would fake a transfer and show up at a foreign barracks, or loiter around one of the ARVN city detachment posts. Once in a while an AWOL American managed to hole up for months in a Vietnamese civilian household.

“Can’t you do something?” Leon asked. “I want to help him.”

“Me?” Yong Kyu rolled his eyes. “You must be out of your mind. We’re different from you guys. And this is your installation. How can I help you? Leon, I can tell you know where he is.”

“More or less. Probably trying to get some help from the AWOL Rescue Society.”

“What’s that? A group that helps out AWOLs?”

“It’ll be harder than down in Saigon, but I’m sure there’s also a group here. Please find him a civilian house where he can hide for a month. You know the locals. All of us boys in Turen love him. We don’t want to see him thrown in jail.”

Yong Kyu tried to come up with an idea. Leon again spoke. “The reward is no problem. Just tell me what kind of goods you want.”

“Shut up. I’m not after a reward. Let’s just find him and talk to him.”

“I have a feeling he’ll get in touch with me after a few days. We need to find him a hideout before then.”

Yong Kyu talked it over with Toi, who undertook finding a private home to take Stapley in.

“It’s interesting,” Toi said with a smile, “to see people proclaiming their neutrality like this.”

“Not to me. I have no position. I’m going home as soon as I can and then I’ll forget about all this.”

They emerged from Nguyen Cuong’s warehouse after stacking the goods they had delivered. Nguyen Thach pushed open the door leading into the marketplace and stepped out.