Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

“In Saigon?” “Or the environs.” The Philippines, and now this. And why send him across the world

on a single operation when whole armies crawl over the region? “It’s ten thousand miles to there,” Fest said. “That’s nearly accurate.” “Are you assigning me to the Phoenix Program?” “It’s not Phoenix, and it’s not ICE-X. We don’t want our people to

know about this.” “It’s quite a sensitive target, perhaps.” “I guess,” Showalter said in a way that meant he thought it, perhaps,

not so much a sensitive target as a senseless operation. “He’s been prom

ised our protection.” “I see. How much more can you tell me?” “Nothing. We’ll talk more in Langley. When we’re back on the

clock: ‘Will I hear from my people first?” ‘Consider that you’re hearing from them now. ‘No need to check about that.” ‘No need. And-Dirk.” ‘Yes, Charles.” It’s a war. Go ahead and use a gun.”

He now possessed a.380 automatic, a very American and warlike weapon. With it he could probably put together three-inch groups at forty feet. Beyond that range he found it unpredictable. Not quite as good as the sumpit, the blowgun. But how would he know until he aimed and fired?

No team, no discussion of scenarios, no drilling with the weapon.

Why couldn’t they have given him U.S. documents here in Saigon, official passports with genuine Vietnamese visas? Why stop in Hong Kong for German ones?

Because the documents were forgeries. The BND had no part in this. Yet Showalter had more than implied BND endorsement. Without the invisible stamp of the BND he was nothing more than a criminal.

There was a line. He’d crossed it. But the Communists had crossed it too. Criminals? In China, in the Ukraine, they’d done more killing than the criminal Adolph Hitler would have permitted himself even to contemplate. That couldn’t be said aloud, but it had to be remembered. Sometimes, perhaps—in order to grapple with such an enemy—one crossed to his side of the line.

His own cowardice revolted him; it hurt him physically, in his stomach. If he’d gone to Berlin in the summer instead of to New England … If he hadn’t avoided a last moment with his father, who didn’t love him … Just the same, I stand beside you. Old Father, you fought the Communists, and I fight them too.

Ski p Sands rode out of Saigon on Route One in a commercial van and caught a ride to Cao Quyen with a motorbike hauling a tiny trailer full of eight-foot boards, this latter leg taking nearly two hours.

Halfway along, he was surprised to see the colonel’s black Chevy coming the other direction, and he waved both his arms, nearly losing his perch behind the young cyclist. Too late. The Chevy went on. Sands recognized Hao but couldn’t see his passengers.

At the villa he found a white Ford sedan parked out front. The colonel waited inside, on the divan in the parlor, sipping from a coffee cup and looking at a book.

“Where’s Trung?”

“Gone,” the colonel said. “We had to get him out of here.” He couldn’t understand his own crashing disappointment. Moving

the double for a few days was what he would have suggested himself. “Where did he go?” “I don’t believe I can tell you.” “All right, I agree, as a temporary measure—” “It’s not temporary. It’s over.” “You’re shutting it down?” “It’s over for you. As far as your participation.” “But why?” “Quit acting the fool.” Skip had no response. “Sit down, Skip. I have some things to say to you.” Apparently the colonel had brought some mail: a couple of envelopes

on the coffee table. “Is that my mail?” “Take a seat, please.” He sat in the facing chair. “What’s the book?” His uncle turned up its face: The Origins of Totalitarianism. “Hannah

Arendt.” “The woman who reported from the Eichmann trial.” “When I can’t sleep, I read. And I haven’t slept in an impressive inter

val, my man. Not a wink. Hold this book in my hands and watch the words go by.” He let the pages fall open and read aloud: ‘… in the final stages of totalitarianism an absolute evil appears absolute because it can no longer be deduced from humanly comprehensible motives.’ ” He tossed the book onto the table. “There’s something to shrivel your balls on every page. These Jews are obsessed. As well they should be. Obsessed with their fate. But… they’re telling the truth about what we’re up against. Absolute evil.” The colonel’s cup, he saw, held black coffee. He might be sober—

Skip smelled no liquor—but he seemed quite drunk. ‘Tour Aunt Bridey wants a divorce from me.” Skip said, “But she’s Catholic.” “Nobody’s Catholic anymore. Not really. I haven’t been to Mass in

years.” “And so—have you lost your faith in God?” ‘Tes, I have. Haven’t you?”

sure.

The colonel drew a breath deeply, as if he would sigh, but he only

stared at Skip. “Mr. Trung, I admire you,” he said. Skip looked over his shoulder. They were alone. “She wants a divorce? She actually said that?” “She left McLean when I did. Last year. Year before last. The year be

fore Tet. Do you remember how we used to mark time as since JFK’s

assassination, and now it’s since Tet?” “And she told you then?” “She told me, but I didn’t believe her. Now I do. She’s engaged an at

torney and instituted a suit for divorce. Good for her. I won’t contest the

thing.” “Did she give any reason?” “God knows she has reasons enough.” “But specifically?—or it’s none of my business.” “She says I’m in this war to run from my failures in life. And she’s

right about the running. I’m here because I won’t go back to my homeland. Go back to what? A bewildering place full of left-leaning feminine weirdos. What if I do go back? What then? Retire to North Carolina and die and get a forty-foot bridge over a creek named after me. Anyway, she’s right. A war with absolute evil is one hell of an excuse to turn your back on the rest of it. So she’s divorcing me.”

“And it’s got you down,” Skip said, “it’s really got you down.”

Now the colonel let himself sigh deeply. “A lot of trouble around here lately. My own load of crap, this business with Trung … your mother and all. I’m sorry … Skip, I’m sorry.”

“About my mother? Or about the trouble in general?”

“About all of it. About your mother, sure … About whatever part of it I can be blamed for. Which is most of it. But none of us are going to come out of here any too happy. We’ve lost this war. We’ve lost heart.”

Speak for yourself, Skip had an impulse to say, but recognized it in

stantly as reflexive optimism. He said, “Do you want a drink?” “No, I don’t want a drink.” “All right.” “You go ahead.” He called for Tho. The colonel said, “Mr. Tho made coffee and I

sent him home.” Skip went to the kitchen and poured himself a shot and drank it off in a single pull. He poured another and returned to his seat to face his uncle, all his movements weakened by dread. He saluted with the glass. This second swallow brought tears to his eyes, and the colonel said, “That’ll straighten your hairs!” with such brittle falseness he himself seemed brought up short by it. He sat with his coffee cup in his grip, squinting, against what light Skip couldn’t say, as the day was nearly down… “I would not be comforted by angels,” he said.

Skip was aware of feeling as a child before an adult—before his mother, for instance, in her fits of loneliness —of wanting only to get through the moment, waiting to hear, That’s all, you can go, waiting for an end to this violating intimacy.

For many seconds his uncle stared as if they’d never met before. “Did you hear Nixon’s inaugural address?”