Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

“That’s it. Let’s get you unhooked.” As Chambers removed the cuff and chest tube and finger clips and Sands slipped his arms into his shirtsleeves, Chambers said, “I’ll leave the query sheet with you for a bit. Look over the questions again while I excuse myself again.”

Sands sat looking over the questions without seeing them.

“If you button your buttons,” someone said, “we can go to lunch.”

Crodelle and Voss stood in the doorway with something of the air about them of older brothers who’d just paid his fare at a brothel.

“What?”

“Lunchtime.”

“Lunch?”

“It’s two-fifteen,” Crodelle said. “Are you hungry?”

“You mean go out?”

“Yeah. The Rex or someplace. Let’s go to the Rex.”

“All right.”

“All right?”

“Fine with me.”

“It’s a lull. You’ll read better if you hear the questions and then forget about them awhile.” “Forget about them. You bet.” He followed them down the hall past the marine sergeant and the

digit pad and the electric lock and up the stairs.

Before descending the steps outside, Crodelle stopped to place his green beret on his head and get it snug. The beret-flash was one Sands hadn’t seen before, black and white and gray, edged with yellow. They walked toward the concrete traffic barricades and Skip said, “Your hair’s a little long for uniform, isn’t it?”

“I’m not often in uniform.”

“What’s your insignia there,” Skip asked, pointing at his beret-flash.

“JFK Special Warfare Center,” Crodelle said.

“Where’s that located?” Skip asked, and as they stepped beyond the barricades he took off running, pounding along in a full-out sprint until he came up against a cross street, heading right, continuing along the path of least resistance. Where a woman guided her two children into the motor traffic he slowed to a walk and joined them and they threaded themselves through the deranged flow of small vehicles to the other side, and he ran again, following a series of right-angle zigzags through the city for half a mile, not once looking back. On Louis Pasteur he took to the park under the massive trees and adopted a pace he’d learned in the Boy Scouts of America, fifty paces walking, fifty paces jogging.

He observed the activity of the streetside beyond the trees and saw no one but the denizens of Saigon, gripped by a lust for survival, making their way through the moments. To reach here he must have leapt over sandbags and in and out of the street, must have paused, reversed, dodged left and right like a linebacker, and knocked some of these fine people to the pavement, but he kept no impression of any of it.

Coming out of the park he hailed a cab and collapsed perspiring in the backseat and sent the driver to the Cho Lon depot. This late in the day the buses had probably already stopped running. Until they started

again in the morning he’d take refuge in a barroom. Or in a temple or a church. A whorehouse, an opium den. A fugitive, a traitor. His cordovan shoes stank of the gutters he’d run through. He cranked the window down. He regretted having to miss the exam. Of the questions they’d prepared for him, he saw one as relevant:

“Do you enjoy telling lies?”

“Yes,” he would have answered truthfully.

Generally Dietrich Fest took his lunch at a soup place on the far side of Tu Do Street, the big thoroughfare a couple of blocks from the Continental. For supper he’d found better places, nothing with a German flavor but good enough that he worried about his weight. By now he was familiar with every restaurant he could walk to. He didn’t like the taxis. He dealt more easily with the cyclo boys.

He used the message drop in the Green Parrot’s lavatory only once — to change the location of the next drop. He chose a restaurant across the plaza from the Continental where he could watch the people going in and out. Only Major Keng used the drop.

He told the management his room was too small, and they moved him to another on the western side that got too much sun in the afternoon. That night he put the air conditioner at its coldest setting, and by morning its labors were muffled and its vents clogged with frost. He called downstairs to complain. Two workmen arrived and said if he set the controlling dial at medium the ice would melt and the machine would work better. They went away talking to one another in a language he found twangy, shrill, grating, a kind of buzzing whine.

He’d planned on a couple of weeks in Saigon. He’d been here almost two months.

Every few days he came to the management with a reason to move to another room.

His target lodged in a room in a mixed Chinese-Vietnamese neighborhood at the edge of the Cho Lon District. Across the street from the site of completion, a single shop sold fabric

and perhaps also made women’s dresses. On that side the rest of the block presented closed doors and a couple of alleyways in which noisy women and children appeared to pass most of their daily lives: crates for tables and boxes for chairs, fuming hibachis and leaking wooden tubs and lines of washing. Fest could watch a little, but there was no café on the street, no excuse for his presence. He stood next to the fabric shop as if waiting for someone.

The hotel’s entry matched every other wooden door on the block. Next door at street level the owner ran his business in a glass-windowed office and kept charge of the rooms upstairs. Major Keng had referred to this man as “a trouble agent.” Alone, smoking a cigarette with an air of tender introspection, the trouble agent sat between two electric fans positioned on the counter expertly so as not to disturb his papers. Fest could only guess at his profession—broker, lawyer, lender—identified as it was only by Chinese characters painted on his windows. While Fest stood across the street watching, a man arrived clutching a pasteboard portfolio under his arm and sat in a chair before the counter with his knees pressed together and his package in his lap, handing over documents one by one.

After ten minutes Fest felt conspicuous and left the neighborhood.

By their fourth meeting Fest had determined that communication with the Americans ran in only one direction. Possibly all commo had ceased. In any case Major Keng had no method of getting back to the Americans with Fest’s concerns. Either that or Keng simply didn’t care about the operation.

“I do not like our scenario. It has too many contingencies.”

“There are always problems.”

“I went to view the location. It’s difficult. I’m not able to keep an eye. There is no café on the street and no rooms for rent where I can take up an outpost. I can’t be sure of my ground.”

The major frowned. “Mr. Reinhardt. Parlez-vous Français?”

“No.”

“Your English is not so clear to me.”

“When I enter the room, I must be sure he’s alone.”

“He’s alone.” The major was smiling. “He is unarmed. He was brought to the location by a contact he trusts. He’s not going to stir from it until he is told. This contact has given us the keys. One to the street door, one to the room.”

“Then give me the keys, please.” “It’s better if I give them four days from now.” “Do you have the keys?” “I will have the keys four days from now.” “When is the time for completion?” “One week from now.” “Can you put some people to watch the location? We must be sure of

our ground.” “What do you mean? He can’t go out. It’s the only safe place for him. That is his belief. You can be confident.” Little brown clown. You tell me to walk through a closed door with a

gun in my hand and be confident. “May I make a suggestion?” “Of course, Mr. Reinhardt.” “Let me take him outdoors, away from his room.” “Take him? Do you intend to kidnap?” “Call him to a meeting in a location we can monitor. Perhaps his