Macv, p.16
MACV, page 16
Gerber glanced at Fetterman and then asked, “How do you know this?”
“Oh, I don’t know for sure. I suspect it, though. It would be like Pittman, wanting to prove what an important man he is. Talking away, never thinking about what he was saying. Just that he was important because he had the inside scoop on everything.”
“So you think we don’t have to look any farther than Pittman.” Gerber was amazed that Reed, who had been reluctant to talk at first, now wouldn’t shut up.
“That’s what I think. Oh, he’ll deny it, but you know and I know that it has to be Pittman. No one else it could be.”
There was a knock at the door. Gerber glanced at Fetterman who opened it and stepped out.
“Anything else?” asked Gerber.
Now Reed laughed. “What more do you want? We all know that it was Pittman.”
Gerber sat there, elbows on the table, and said nothing. There was something else about the man that Gerber didn’t like. Maybe it was the way he was so sure that Pittman had to be the source of the leak. Maybe it was the way he stared Gerber in the eyes as if to prove how honest he was.
“Maxwell’s here,” Fetterman announced from the doorway.
Gerber stood up. “Well, I guess that covers it. You going to be around here for the rest of the day?”
“I work here. I’ll be around.”
Gerber moved to the door, but Reed didn’t budge. Gerber glanced at him, and then opened the door, and when he saw the look on Maxwell’s face, asked, “What in the hell happened to you?”
Maxwell pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his face with it. “Let’s go down to my office. We can talk in there.”
Gerber nodded at the door. “Reed’s sitting in there, waiting for you.”
“We can talk to him later.”
They all went downstairs, stopping at the gate to sign in. They moved through it, but before they went too far, Maxwell stopped. He looked at the MP. “Could you see if you could scare up some Cokes for us?”
The MP was about to tell Maxwell that he wasn’t a servant, but then he saw the look on Maxwell’s face. He said, “Might take a few minutes, I can’t leave my post.”
“I know that,” said Maxwell. “Just see what you can do for us.”
“Yes, sir.”
They then continued down the hall and Maxwell unlocked his door. He pushed it open, entered and turned on the light. Moving directly to the chair, he sat down and glanced at Gerber. “How do you stand it?”
“Stand what?”
“The butcher’s yard. The blood and the gore splattered all over everywhere.”
“You don’t stand it,” said Fetterman. “You get immune to seeing it, you control your emotions, but you don’t stand it. You still see the broken, ruined bodies, and you still smell the odor of death. It no longer makes you physically sick, but it’s always there in the background, reminding you what war is about.”
“Christ, I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Like what?” asked Gerber.
“That poor woman. Cut up and lying in her own blood in the bathroom. A real sadistic son of a bitch got at her. Wasn’t happy with just killing her.”
“The Viet Cong are famous for that,” said Gerber. “Killing someone isn’t enough. They have to send a message to everyone who sees the body.”
“We thought we had the man, the leak. Brought him out there to confront the woman. Pittman walked right in without blinking an eye.”
“Pittman do it?” asked Fetterman.
“I don’t think so,” said Maxwell. “As I say, he walked in without blinking, but then it seemed that he expected to talk to her. He was as surprised as the rest of us. Passed out when he saw her, and thinking back on it, he said absolutely nothing that suggested he knew she was dead.”
“Could Pittman be the source of the leak, and now that he’s burned, the VC killed the woman?”
Maxwell closed his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose. “I wouldn’t think so. No reason for the VC to kill her, even if Pittman is the leak. They could move her to Nha Trang or Da Nang or a dozen other places and put her to work again.”
“That leaves Pittman,” said Gerber.
“I don’t think so,” said Maxwell. “Pittman isn’t that dumb. He might have been fooling around with the woman — hell, probably was — but that doesn’t mean a thing. We don’t even know if she was VC.”
“I thought that had been established,” said Gerber.
“Nothing’s established yet except that the woman is dead. The MPs and the local police are trying to piece together the information now.”
There was a knock and Maxwell yelled, “Come.”
The MP opened the door and held up the three cans of Coke. Maxwell smiled slightly. “You may have just saved my life.”
Fetterman took the cans and passed them out. As the MP retreated, Maxwell opened his can and drank deeply. He set the can down and took a deep breath.
“We’re back to where we started,” said Maxwell.
“Not necessarily,” Gerber countered. “You say that you don’t think Pittman is the source. We’ve got a dead woman, and I’ll bet money that if we find the source of the leak, we find the killer.”
“There isn’t much in the evidence at the scene,” said Maxwell. “Oh, one thing. The man was cold. He took a shower after he did it. Cleaned himself up before he left.” Maxwell shook his head. “Cut her up and left her lying there while he cleaned himself.”
“Got a murder weapon?”
“No. A knife, but hell, what’s that mean? How many knives you have?”
Gerber shrugged. “Normally carry one. I could get another dozen without any trouble. Those survival knives, blades about six inches long are all over the place.”
“My point exactly,” said Maxwell. “No way to trace it even if we did have it.”
Fetterman crushed his empty Coke can. “We got to move quickly. Whoever it is has got to know that we’re out here looking for him. He’s going to fold his tent and strike his colors.”
“Then we’ve accomplished half the mission,” said Maxwell. “We’ve stopped him effectively. He’ll still have access, but he won’t be able to pass it.”
“Not enough,” said Gerber. “While he’s free, he’s still a threat. Besides, he’s responsible for the deaths of several Americans. Stopping him isn’t enough. We’ve got to identify him.”
“And then what?” asked Maxwell. “Kill him?”
Gerber hesitated. “Probably.”
CHAPTER 14
MACV HEADQUARTERS, SAIGON
Reed couldn’t believe the sudden rush of relief that came over him. He was sure that Gerber was going to order him arrested, but that didn’t happen. Gerber had left the room without a word. When Reed had told him that he had work to do, Gerber had assumed that he was going to stay at MACV headquarters. Reed knew that it was too late for that. He had to get out. It seemed everything was closing in on him.
As soon as the hallway was clear, Reed entered and walked to the front door. Gerber, his pet master sergeant and Maxwell would be downstairs for an hour or more. That would give him the time he would need.
He hurried down the sidewalk and across the parking lot to where he’d left his jeep. He climbed behind the wheel and then sat there for a moment, waiting and watching. He was sure that someone would come flying out of the building after him, and he didn’t want them to think he was running away if they did appear.
Finally he started the engine and drove out, forcing himself to keep it slow because he didn’t want to call attention to himself. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the MP in the guard shack step out into the sunlight, but the man just stretched his arms over his head. No one was paying the slightest attention to Reed.
He drove downtown through the growing mass of people who were coming out of the buildings and filling the streets. Ants moving in response to some unseen, unheard command. Reed grinned at the stupid people, moving through their lives while others made the decisions that affected them. Others decided who would live and who would die. And they weren’t even smart enough to realize it. They thought they controlled their own destiny.
He finally reached the downtown hotel, off the beaten path, that he used as a base. A five-story job, the front streaked with rust from the gutters around the red tile roof. High windows that were nearly opaque because of decades of dirt. The small building offered cheap rooms and cheap women. A few enlisted men also lived there. Reed knew he could hide from the brass hats and the political animals who haunted the first-rate hotels and the MACV headquarters.
Reed locked his jeep and entered the small and dingy lobby. The floor, which once might have been magnificent, was covered with years of grime. The desk at the far end had a hole in the front where an angry GI had kicked it. A potted palm had died and no one had bothered to take it out. Two men slept on the floor, off to one side, and a Vietnamese woman wearing the world’s shortest skirt sat near them like a dog guarding her master.
Reed walked across the lobby to the stairs and took them two at a time to the third floor. The hallway there was nearly pitch black. A window at the far end permitted just enough light that he could walk down the hall without tripping over the sleeping man or the single table. He pulled a key out of his pocket, unlocked the door, and entered his hideaway.
The room was hot and humid, stinking of vomit, urine and sweat. The last tenant had been a fat sergeant who drank himself unconscious nearly every night and rarely made the bathroom when he was sick. He’d lived with a Vietnamese woman who tried to clean up after him, but who didn’t understand the finer points of running water and flush toilets. Besides, the water was intermittent, and the toilet refused to flush half the time.
There was a single bed, a chair with a broken leg and an electric light hanging from a bare wire. But it was cheap and no one knew he had it.
Reed moved to the window and forced it open, hoping for a cool breeze where there was none. Only the sounds of the city and a cloud of diesel fumes and city dust. Having opened the window, he turned and was sure that he was going to have to run. It was all coming apart now. They were after him.
Then he remembered again that they didn’t know about the room. His safehouse. He sat down in the chair and closed his eyes. Safe for the moment.
Not that the dummies would figure out what was going on in the near future. Gerber had scared him because it seemed that Gerber knew he was the leak. The captain seemed to sense it, but couldn’t prove it, so he had left Reed alone. Gerber had given him the chance to escape.
Reed laughed out loud. “Those assholes,” he said. They’d never catch him. They were as dumb as Thi. She had thought she was pumping him for information. Oh, she had been pumping him, that was certain, but it wasn’t for information. She’d climb on board and take a ride, and then he’d let it drop that someone was patrolling in Tay Ninh, someone was searching for the supply base of the enemy, or whatever, and she wouldn’t be able to wait for him to leave. Thought that he didn’t know. Hell, everyone knew. He was making it a game for her, but it was one played by his rules.
He stood up and moved to the window. With a hand on either side of the frame, he leaned his forehead against the dirty glass and listened to the sounds of Saigon, while images played through his head. First Thi lying in her own blood because she was no longer useful to him alive, and then the Vietnamese woman who had spent the night with him. A young woman, no more than eighteen. But she had been willing and she had been limber. She had done everything he had wanted and then hoped to flee into the night with a fistful of money. Reed didn’t care about the money. Not now, anyway. But he couldn’t let her go, knowing about his secret room. She was a threat to him and had to die. A survival knife, picked up at MACV had done the trick easily and silently. She’d barely groaned as she died.
He walked over to the rickety nightstand and pulled out a notepad. He returned to the chair, sat down and started to write a letter. A note really, telling Thom that it was finally all over. He had pushed it too far too fast and now they were coming to get him.
“But don’t worry about me,” he wrote. “I know how to avoid them. Thi told me, never realizing that she told me. She talked about spending her afternoons, when I or Gary Pittman weren’t around, at the Cercle Raquette. When I’m finished here, I’ll go over there and arrange to get out of Vietnam somehow.”
He stopped writing and wondered if he should tell his friend what it had been like to kill the girl. About the power he felt as the knife plunged into her. He understood about power now, and manipulation, but killing someone might be an abstraction his friend didn’t fully comprehend. In the end he decided against it. When he returned to the States, if Thom was the man he remembered him to be, and if they were both drunk enough or stoned enough, he might tell him. But not until then.
There were so many things that he wanted to tell Thom. He’d learned so much since they had shared the basement office in Berkeley. He’d moved so far beyond the theories they had discussed. He knew how to use the system now. He could make it work for him, make it carry out his plans, and when things went wrong, knew how to shift the blame to someone else. He had more power than most people dreamed about.
He looked up from his writing pad, at the body of the Vietnamese woman lying in his bed. She had died easier than Thi. He learned something there too. Learned that the blood wasn’t necessary for the woman to die. A knife in the right place could paralyze the heart. He didn’t have to slash at the victim to kill her. There was some blood, but not the puddles of it that Thi had created.
Looking back at the letter, he decided that he’d better finish it. It was time to get out of the room and out of Vietnam. The others might be stupid, but they would eventually figure out what had happened.
Speaking out loud, as if to a superior, he said, “But it wasn’t my fault. I had to act quickly. There had been no time to plan things carefully.”
He folded the letter and put it into an envelope. He set that aside and moved to the bed, sitting on the edge. He stared at the dead woman, the single wound in her chest just under her breastbone. Blood had flowed from the wound, down her belly to spread over the sheets between her legs. He patted her bare thigh, the skin cold and unyielding.
“It’s time to get out,” he told her. He stood up, took his pistol from under the mattress where he hid it, and walked to the door.
Gerber sat in the chair, sipped his Coke and looked at the bare walls in Maxwell’s office. Finally he pointed and said, “Where the hell are your Indian fighter pictures?”
“Frames kept getting broken. I took them down.”
“Well shit,” said Fetterman. “I liked that Wagon Box Fight one.”
Maxwell looked at Fetterman and asked, “Why?”
“My great-grandfather, William Fetterman, once bragged that he could ride through the whole Sioux Nation with eighty good men. He tried one winter day in 1866, and forty minutes later all eighty good men were dead. Some say he killed himself to keep from being captured by the Indians, and others say he died in the fighting.”
“What’s that got to do with the Wagon Box Fight?”
“The following August,” said Fetterman, “Captain James Powell, facing a large force of Sioux, drove them off and became the hero of the Wagon Box Fight. That was the same Captain Powell who was supposed to rescue a woodcutting party until my grandfather pulled rank on him and rode out to his doom.”
“Which has nothing to do with the problem at hand,” said Maxwell.
“No, Jerry, but it’s an interesting story.”
“Sure. Interesting.”
Gerber stood up and walked toward the door, then over to the file cabinets and finally back to his chair. He looked at Maxwell and said, “It has got to be Reed. It’s got to be.”
“What do you have to go on?” asked Maxwell. “Other than your dislike for him and a gut feeling.”
“The man is too quick to point the finger at others. First tries to give up the Cambodians who are dead and unable to defend themselves, and when that fails, gives us Pittman.”
“Whose girlfriend was VC,” said Maxwell.
“According to Reed. Now she’s conveniently dead, too.”
“But Reed couldn’t know she was dead,” said Maxwell. “No way for him to know it, because we didn’t know it until we’d found the body; I came directly from the scene to MACV.”
Gerber sat bolt upright and glanced at Fetterman. “What did you say?”
“I came here from the scene.” Maxwell raised his eyebrows in question.
“No. Before that. You said that Reed couldn’t know the woman was dead because you hadn’t gotten back yet.”
Maxwell still didn’t understand. “The MPs knew and they passed the word to Waco, their control, to get the local police, but nothing about the reason.”
Gerber slapped the arm of his chair. “Got him!”
“What?”
Gerber looked at Maxwell and said, “While you were finding the body of the woman, Reed was upstairs telling me that Pittman must have killed her.”
Suddenly Maxwell understood. “The only way he could know the woman was dead was if he’d…”
“Killed her,” Gerber finished for him. “Exactly.”
Maxwell pulled his pistol from his shoulder holster and looked at it. “Then let’s go upstairs and have a chat with Mr. Reed. I have some very hard questions for him.”
Reed walked out of the hotel and onto the hot street. He stood there a moment, blinking, sure that he had forgotten something but couldn’t recall what it might be. There was nothing upstairs except for the dead woman. Nothing that belonged to him, and the Vietnamese clerk had been only too happy to take the ten dollars rather than see an ID card.
