CHAPTER 17

They walked by the river, a nurse and her patient.

Stratton's confidence was returning with his strength. He had slept for nearly twenty-four hours, a half-life in which he had grayly drifted around reality without ever reaching it: sober-miened women scrubbing him; a middle-aged man probing gently at his leg; wondrous soup, piping hot, that tasted of the earth and scissored through the pain. And the beautiful woman who sat by him, whispering reassurance. That, he would never forget.

When Stratton had at last surfaced, tears of relief belied Kangmei's fixed smile.

He had reached out for her clenched fist and gently pried open the fingers.

"I'm all right. Really I am," he had comforted.

"I was afraid, Thom-as. So afraid."

Later, watching him wolf down a mound of rice with scraps of chicken, she had seemed like a little girl again.

"You must listen, Thom-as. To my mother's brothers I have said that you are a good man who is being pursued by evil men; nothing more. They are simple peasants, but good, and strong. They will not betray you. To the rest of the people in Bright Star my uncles are saying that you are a foreign expert from Peking who has come to show us new ways to grow better rice. I am your guide."

"I don't know anything about rice." Except what paddy mud feels like, wet, consuming.

"That is not important. When the people of Bright Star learn that you are our rice expert, they will not speak of you to members of the other production teams, or to the cadres at Man-ling. You will be safe then, do you not see?"

"I must not stay here, Kangmei," Stratton had insisted weakly. "I must try to help David."

"Yes, Thom-as. My uncles have cousins who work on the railroad. They think it would be possible to get you to Guangzhou."

Guangzhou in Chinese. In English, Canton, China's sprawling southern metropolis across the border from Hong Kong. Canton was still China, but from all he had read of it, the city was also a curious East-West hybrid infinitely more relaxed than Peking. In a teeming and sophisticated city where foreigners were no novelty, he had a fighting chance.

"Guangzhou would be fine."

He slept again, and when he awoke it was midafternoon. Kangmei laughed when he tried on clothes smelling of strong soap that had been neatly stacked alongside the bed. The trousers bottomed out four inches too soon. The shirt went across his shoulders, but only the bottom two buttons would fasten.

"These are the biggest we could find, Thom-as. But you will never be a peasant.

Come, let the people see their new rice expert."

Along the river there was a kind of promenade, a path of beaten earth flanked by shade trees. Stratton smiled at the peasants they met and tried to look knowledgeable.

"This is the end of Bright Star," said Kangmei. "Over there is Evergreen."

She gestured to the far side of the brown river, flanked on both sides by steep banks. The water flowed swiftly and looked deep.

"And beyond Evergreen is Man-ling, right?"

"Yes." She led Stratton to a spot where the promenade had been widened to include a graceful copse of palms. He sat beside her.

"This looks to me like Bright Star's lovers' lane," Stratton remarked.

"I do not understand."

When he had explained she smiled.

"It is true that many young people come here at night and that they do not always discuss politics."

They kissed.

And then she asked the question that Stratton had dreaded.

"Why are you afraid of Man-ling, Thom-as?"

It was not so much that she deserved to know. To his surprise, Stratton discovered that he wanted to tell her.

"I was there once. In a war. While you were a child."

She sat quiet for a time, tracing circles in the dirt with a stick. Stratton stared down at the river.

"Was it very sad, Thom-as?"

"Yes."

"I would like to know." She spoke to the stick.

He told her.

March 18, 1971 A black sergeant in plainclothes had brought the summons to the Saigon villa Stratton shared with Bobby Ho. An hour later, they were in a briefing room protected by concentric circles of invisible guards.

A squat, sweat-stained colonel abandoned an uneven struggle with a balky room air conditioner.

"Captain Black," the colonel said, shaking hands with Stratton.

"Captain White. Congratulations." The colonel gave Bobby Ho's hand an extra pump. He had been a captain only for six days, but no one outside the room was even supposed to know that Bobby Ho was in the army. Deniability, they called it. Officially, Stratton and Ho were civilian psychologists on contract to the government: studying stress.

"Rested up? Everybody's talkin' about it."

On the last one they had been close enough to see the lights of Hanoi.

"This one should be even more fun." He passed across aerial photos. "The Chinks are involved in this little old war, up to their slanty assholes."

"Who is that, Colonel?" Bobby Ho asked quietly. Stratton stifled a grin. Bobby Ho's parents ran a pawnshop in San Francisco. They had raised their son to be an American, but there was no way you could tell by looking at him. Vietnam had intercepted Bobby Ho between Stanford and medical school. He wanted to be a pediatrician, and he spent a lot of his time and most of his money working with some French nuns who ran a clinic near the village. When the army made him White for missions that didn't exist to places that were never named, Bobby Ho hunted with uncommon skill.

The colonel had the grace to color.

"The Chinese. The Chinese are teachin' the Viets how to brainwash our boys.

Remember what they did in Korea? I was there, man. The last thing you wanted to happen was to get captured by the Chin-Chinese. They turned people inside out; tell you Ike was a faggot and make you believe it."

The colonel poked a pudgy finger at the aerial photos.

"What we hear is that the Chinese are trainin' Viet interrogators in that building there in the middle of the picture. They got about a dozen of our POWs up there as guinea pigs."

"Where is it-the village?" Stratton asked.

"Jesus, I just told you. It's in China."

"Shit," said Bobby Ho.

"We supposed to go in and get them?" Stratton asked.

The colonel nodded. "Yeah, go get 'em out and fuck Chairman Mao. Does that offend you, Captain White?"

"Not a bit, Colonel," said Bobby Ho.

"What's the name of this place?" Stratton asked.

"Man-ling it's called. You guys see Joe and the boys. They got it all worked out, pictures, models, the whole shootin' match, just like usual." The colonel's eyes assumed a faraway cast. "If it was me, I'd take about four gunships and hit 'em so hard and so fast they wouldn't have time even to find their little red books. That's the only way to win this war, hard and fast. That's how I'd do it, if it was me."

Hot air. Stratton would write the operational orders and the colonel knew it.

"If it was you, I'd stay home," said Bobby Ho.

They took one chopper off a quiet carrier high up in the Gulf of Tonkin.

Stratton, Ho and four sergeants. Captain Black was traveling light. If he needed help, it was only minutes away in the air behind them.

For a landing zone, Stratton had chosen a paddy about three miles east of the village. He had wanted the farmland and the village between the chopper and the PLA camp that lay a few miles to the west. Intelligence said a regular infantry company used the camp. Intelligence had not said why it believed the nowhere village called Man-ling had been chosen to brainwash POWs.

They landed in driving rain and gusting wind, ankle-deep in water-killers dressed for the country in dark, rough civilian clothes without nationality. In the distance, at night, they might pass for peasants. Close up it would be harder. Stratton's peasants bore a Russian AK-47, Chinese grenades, a silenced East German pistol, a Thai killing knife and a cyanide capsule. On his back, each man carried a folding bicycle. They looked superficially like Chinese machines, but were half as heavy and twice as fast. Stratton had insisted. A question of image: See a man on a bicycle and you assume he lives nearby and knows where he is going. He belongs.