The Sixth Man Read online

  “If what you say is true, how would you proceed?”

  “Not by killing every old Montagnard mamasan on the street. That will only bring more gossip to the case.”

  “I didn’t shoot her. I’ve said that before and won’t again.”

  “And of course, that’s why the officers from Sai Gon’s finest did nothing more to find the killer. You must have thought she was going to do me harm. I’m more important now than any rag-wearing old cave woman.”

  We both knew who murdered the woman. She was what the western military called “collateral damage,” even if she was somehow involved, most likely as a sentry. When the North Vietnamese rounded up suspected American sympathizers, even old women who didn’t know anything about the round-eye invaders were tortured, expatriated, or killed. Those government lackeys just called it xin loi. Tough shit.

  Nguyen shrugged and waved his hand, signifying that the death of the old woman was meaningless and unworthy of further investigation or discussion.

  “Did you tell me that fable because you believe the Night Snake is back and working to avenge the supposed crimes against Luong’s village and the girls?” Nguyen asked. Obviously, Nguyen knew more than he was letting on, his typically annoying style. I’d have to be careful with what I said, even more so now that I realized Nguyen had intel on Luong.

  I stroked my chin, trying to look like the classic shrewd Chinese.

  “Just throwing a carp on your plate to see if it still swims,” I said, smiling. “There’s much more to the legend,” I said. “But only if you care to hear.”

  “Go on,” Nguyen said. “I’m totally hypnotized by your eloquence.”

  I bowed again, this time, acknowledging the compliment, even if it was as hollow as Phan’s head.

  The two small girls spoke little on the trek to the Highlands. Luong and Morgan had found the children cowering in a bedroom closet, the supposed property of the degenerate son of the president of South Vietnam. The youngsters weren’t there just to cuddle. Morgan burned the villa to the ground, starting the fire with his trusty Zippo. Ky was left to die, along with a squad of dead thugs. Outside, Morgan wished the trembling children good health and Luong promised to take care of the girls. Now, they’d made it through the Delta, past Pleiku and Kon Tum, and into the jungled ravines of Luong’s Montagnard tribe, the entire time knowing discovery by the Viet Cong or NVA would mean instant execution. The lack of conversation was OK for Luong, who wasn’t much fond of talking anyway, especially in Vietnamese, the only language the girls knew. But they’d been quiet and followed him into the mountains, the journey mostly on foot, except when Luong could steal a cyclo. They existed on water, grubs, overripe bananas, bamboo shoots, and moldy rice. As the three refugees got within a few klicks of the destination, Luong began to feel the dread of what he might discover as if a coffin were closing around them. Besides, Luong had found something inside Ky’s mansion that kept him focused on one thing.

  On the last visit to Dac Sun, Luong had found the village burned to the ground and nearly three hundred butchered at the hands of the Viet Cong and NVA. Afterward, the few who’d made it to safety in the bush began rebuilding the vil with Luong’s help. His work lasted only a few weeks. Then, he turned his energy into squeezing the blood out of every flatland Vietnamese he could kill, torturing the unlucky few he encountered when he had a few extra minutes. Luong had no illusions about what might await him this time in Dac Sun. He didn’t know where else to take the girls and wasn’t about to abandon them with any lowland Vietnamese, who were all thieves, pedophiles, liars, rapists, and murderers. Leaving the girls cowering behind a banyan tree, he silently approached the clearing that was Dac Sun.

  The houses were built on pine stilts, the roofs steep and thatched. Stairways led up to porches and open doors. Cooking pots and three-legged stools littered the verandas. Below the few homes, pigs were tethered and chickens pecked for crumbs and bugs. A few naked children chased each other with bamboo brooms, squealing in abandon. Dac Sun was not even a quarter the size it had been before the massacre, but it felt like the vil was about to reach adolescence, even if no men were in sight. Luong watched for nearly an hour, trying to sense danger. None came, and he went back to fetch the girls who were still cringing in the trees.

  “Den,” he said, come, and beckoned them to follow.

  When Luong and the girls stepped into the open ground of the vil, the children stopped playing, standing stiffly and staring, obviously knowing to run away from a man with an M-14 would be useless and probably a death sentence. Luong and his charges slowly approached, the girls softly whimpering.

  Seconds later, a grinning old woman with one yellow tooth, a long-sleeved white blouse, and a red rag wrapped around her head hurried down the stairs of the nearest hootch. Little barks of delight came from her mouth. Luong stopped and took off his bush hat, bowing. The woman picked up speed as she exited the steps. Holding up the hem of her ankle-length multicolored skirt, she crossed the patch of earth in a few heartbeats. She stopped in front of Luong, grabbed his left hand, and stared at his face, tears filling her milky eyes.

  Within minutes, the girls had been introduced to the village children and were led upstairs for an afternoon treat of pickled cabbage and dried deer meat. The two city girls were honored as if they were starving royalty from another planet, while the rest of the women came out and greeted Luong as the long-lost brother he was. No men. Luong hadn’t expected any. If any adult or teen male survived the massacre, they wouldn’t be hanging around in the daylight even years later. The war was still on and the lowlanders continued their slaughter of the hill people, the justification for their extermination made easier in a battle zone.

  Over the next few days, Luong told the women what he’d been doing as they nodded their toothless heads in approval, smiles crinkling their brown leathery cheeks. He’d never lose track of how many flatlanders he’d killed, and could recount every slaying to their satisfaction and glee. As the women wept, they became stronger, knowing there was someone avenging the souls of the innocent. Finally, Luong asked if any men had lived through the bloodbath. He was directed to a cave complex a few miles up the mountains, a site unapproachable without being spotted from a long way off. He left the girls the following morning and went higher into the cloud jungle.

  No one stopped him, even though he felt eyes studying his movements with every step through the dwindling canopy. Besides, he wasn’t trying to hide. The trails were easy to follow, and Luong had been on the numerous paths many times in his animal-hunting days. Now, he only stalked Vietnamese and didn’t catch a glimpse of the feared laughing Nguoi Rung, the Central Highlands’ Bigfoot, who roared with chuckles that resonated from his fat, hairy belly as he ate his prey.

  After a few hours of climbing, Luong reached the entrance to the hidden compound and was hugged by several men not in the least surprised to see him. He was introduced to others he’d never known and teenagers who’d been naked toddlers the last time he’d been around them.

  Again, he was required to spin tales of assassination, especially his partnership and adventures with the Night Snake, a man whose legend had even made it up the slopes of these ginseng-rich mountains and provided bloody, entertaining tales of ethnic-Vietnamese carnage. That night, the campfire sent its sparks high into the khasya pine trees, fueled by the hatred of a dozen Degar huddled close so they wouldn’t miss a word of Luong’s stories. Later, waking to the morning mist, Luong brushed off the dew and began his descent after a long good-bye to his Montagnard brothers.

  This time, the NVA hadn’t bothered to burn Dac Sun. When Luong entered the village, sobbing women surrounded dead bodies. Most of the murdered were young girls. Rice baskets, cooking pots, and the few possessions of the villagers were thrown around in the dirt. Chickens and pigs rooted through the debris, finding riches they’d never experienced. Luong walked slowly through the survivors, his M-14 switched to full auto. On a huge banyan tree that had once been the foca
l point of the vil, a pink scalp with long black hair hung nearly to the dirt. Someone had carved the words “Su chet choc den ke phan boi,” death to traitors, above the scalp.

  One of the women ran toward him, weeping. She was short, no taller than most of the dead girls and dressed in a multicolored skirt, now soiled with mud. Gasping for breath between each cry, she struggled to stay upright. Luong could see she had the village female trait of only one yellow tooth in the front of her mouth. When she got close, the woman balled her fists and struck Luong on the chest. “Ma quy. Ban giet ho.” Devil. You killed them. Luong gently held her arms while she continued howling, her face turned down toward the ground and tears puddling below.

  “Mot nguoi nao do se tra tien, me,” Luong said, softly squeezing her arms. Someone will pay, mother.

  “Ho da chup anh,” the woman gasped. They took pictures. “Va ho cuoi.” And they laughed.

  The street sounds were increasing, the tinny clatter and whiney honking. I watched Nguyen as I spoke the last words, sensing he was drifting into thoughts of his own as he finished his tea, staring down, his eyes almost crossing.

  “It seems Luong has found copies of the photos,” I said. “I don’t know how or when, but it must have given birth to these killings.” By now, there was no need to hide anything concerning Luong. Nguyen might have known even more about the Montagnard than me.

  Nothing. Nguyen continued to study his nearly empty cup as if it held the teachings of the Great Buddha, a spirit our masters had just recently officially acknowledged might have existed.

  It was hard to ignore that Nguyen was handsome. I wasn’t one to visit the monthly Bitch Boy parties in District One that featured naked cowboys with pink scarves and fake holsters as their only clothing, but I did appreciate quality art. Nguyen could have modeled for the finest Tran Van Can portrait. Tran was the Vietnamese answer to Rembrandt, and his oil paintings hung in museums around the world, selling for more than most Sai Gon citizens made in a lifetime. I especially liked the brooding Nguyen, a pose he was keeping long enough to make me feel a little uncomfortable. Finally, he looked up, just as a raucous group of drunken young students pushed through the door chanting, “Chung ta muon tra, chung ta muon tra.” We want tea. We want tea.

  Nguyen shook his head at the childish behavior and mumbled, “Too much TV.” He looked at me, no smile on his lips.

  “Did you hear about the murder of Vice President Ky’s son?” asked Nguyen.

  “The story didn’t make the Ho Chi Minh Globe,” I said. “But I did hear the rumors around headquarters. Sometimes, they forget I’m a spy for the People’s Republic of China.”

  “We didn’t publicize the killings,” Nguyen said. “It was a massacre and had to have been carried out by foreign devils with the help of some Vietnamese traitors. The decision was made not to disturb the balance of our harmonious society.” Not even Nguyen could keep from grinning at this absurdity.

  “I don’t have the details,” I said. “Is there a connection to these homicides?”

  “If the theory you’ve presented has merit, there may be.”

  “What would that be?”

  “We believe an American and a Degar were responsible. They had to be highly trained assassins to breach Ky’s villa and kill so quickly. It was a fortress. They must have had help from foreign spy agencies or organized crime. Or both.”

  “And you think it could be the Night Snake and Luong?”

  “One guard survived. He saw only two men. One was certainly a Yankee devil. The other, he wasn’t so sure about. But he did say he was ‘ugly, like one of the mountain baboons.’ We knew nothing about this ‘Luong.’ Now, your stories add up.”

  “Of course they do. Do you think I’ve spent twenty years without a promotion so I can recite fairy tales?”

  “How did you come to know Luong? Maybe it is you I should be investigating.”

  “It’s a common belief the Chinese are to blame for every dead dog on the highway, let alone murdered commissars. We are all still spying for Mao, even if he died nearly forty years ago.”

  “That is a well-known fact. You Chinese continue to hope you will conquer the Kinh people who are the ancestors of true and pure Vietnamese.”

  “Are those the same Kinh whose parents were a dragon and a fairy? A hundred children from one hundred eggs?”

  “Yes. The Hungs and the Lacs. Every schoolchild knows the story.”

  “Even the lowly Chinese were made to learn these fables about our country’s illustrious roots. I still don’t understand if the Hungs were communist or capitalists.”

  “Careful, coolie.”

  “I see you are not above racial smears, esteemed master.”

  “Not when you insult the Party.”

  Often, my tongue had nearly caused my arrest for treason, and this time I was pushing the limit. Tough mangoes. The murders were too much for Nguyen. It was obvious he needed me or my balls would already be wired for an electric charge in a dank basement somewhere under the Security Service Building.

  The problem was I had been trying to keep Nguyen occupied with my rudeness so I could decide who the two men across the street were studying so intently. While their attempt to look casual made them even more obvious as watchers, they might have been tailing the drunken students now arguing over who had the cutest kitty on the outside of their plastic cup. Not likely. It was either Nguyen. Or me. Their reflections in the mirror told me they were amateurs, not too comfortable with the crowds that shuffled past.

  Since the Montagnard legend said they were on earth long before the lowlanders and not born to dragons and fairies, they tended to have faces that appeared older and squarer. Most had thicker bodies and longer arms, prompting the city-dwelling Vietnamese to often call them “khi.” Monkey. The two men observing us were definitely mountain people and were as unmistakable as I was a Chinese half-breed. Nguyen would have called them “moi,” savage, the most common ethnic Vietnamese slur for Montagnards. Surely the hill people had earned that name with their unrelenting hatred of the lowlanders as their people were being hunted to extinction, down from a population of three million to a few hundred thousand still paddy farming and gathering wood in the Central Highlands. If Nguyen hadn’t noticed the stakeout, he should be demoted to directing cyclo traffic on De Tham Street. I moved aside, hoping that a bullet meant for Nguyen wouldn’t go through his chest and into me.

  The sirens prevented anything that might have happened. Echoing through the buildings that crowded the narrow street, two police Toyotas raced by, followed by an ambulance. When they were past, the watchers had melted into the pedestrian hordes. I moved back, while Nguyen smiled as if he knew what I’d just done.

  “You’ve been very entertaining, Nguyen said. “Still, you haven’t told me how you know about Luong and this Night Snake. I would like it if you tell me now and stopped playing mahjong in your pants. I’d hate to have to arrest you for withholding evidence. Your old, brittle bones might not survive the beatings.”

  Arrest. Detention. Prison. Repatriation. Re-education. Cleanse. All the same and Nguyen would never hear most of the story. No one would.

  Sai Gon. 1976. I was only a teenager. Too bad I was a half-breed Trung Quoc boy. Chinese. All the yellow people, even if only part chink, were suspected of having aided the Yankee fascists who’d just been thrown out with their devil’s tails between their legs. Now, it was time to teach us the superiority of communism and starvation.

  It was early evening, well past the time for a normal fish ball dinner. That was a luxury my family hadn’t shared in many months as the NVA approached, routing the ARVN along the way. We’d been forced to survive on whatever rice and grubs we could beg or salvage from the Cholon markets that were just beginning to reopen. No one knew what would happen next with the country now under the control of Northern barbarians.

  They came through the door like it was made of paper. The police were after my father, but I was old enough to have been painted b
y the brush of capitalism. We were pushed into a covered truck with other hysterical prisoners and taken to security headquarters, soon to be on our way to the Z30-D re-education camp. Unfortunately, we had not presented ourselves to the local cadre leaders. That meant we hadn’t demonstrated genuine remorse for our misguided behavior. Instead, we had chosen to hide, not having supported either side in the recent people’s victory over the running dog Americans. Those who had cooperated with the edict were promised they would be gone for a month at most, while our sentence was yet to be determined. Of course, the party defined what a “month” was and theirs didn’t have thirty days. Altogether, 2.5 million were sent back to school in the jungle.

  We rode through the night, bodies rubbing hard against one another at every bounce and turn. The driver seemed intent on hitting all the potholes in the dirt road. Breathing the moist air felt like I was wearing a soaking wet shirt tight over my head. The smell was of rotting fruit and water buffalo shit. There were no lights after we reached the farthest edge of the city and entered the forest canopy. No noise outside, either. Most everyone cried or prayed, the oldest clutching their hearts like the next jolt would be their last. The Montagnard beside me was named Luong, and he neither prayed nor wept, choosing to stare straight ahead as if he were intently planning to kill someone or escape very soon.

  At daylight, the truck stopped in a small clearing, the vegetation barely cleared enough to allow light to reach the mud we stepped into. A few small bamboo huts dotted the edge of the camp, and we were pushed and prodded outside, the men toward one of the outbuildings, the women to another. Only a few of us could fit inside the abandoned hootch, the rest forced to stand at attention in the sun by guards who hit us with sticks if we didn’t immediately obey their orders. Or if we did. Several times I had to grab Luong as he balled his fist and was about to strike one of our tormentors. “Khong phai bay gio,” I said, pulling him back. Not now.