Free A Dangerous Friend by Ward Just Page B

finger. Syd saw that the writing was in English, introducing the bearer as the faithful Minh, who would drive him to Tay Thanh.
Welcome to the war. See you for dinner. Rostok.
    Tired and disoriented—the dregs of the bloody mary had left a rancid lemony taste in his mouth—Sydney stowed his luggage in the back of Minh's Scout. He stood swaying in the heat while Minh patiently held the door; waiting for him to climb inside; he did not fail to notice the ideograph drawn on the door, a pair of clasped hands. The Scout stumbled into traffic and turned away from the city. Saigon's anonymous suburbs unfolded, one following another indistinguishable villages, each with its market and roadside kitchens and stagnant river, some viscous tributary of the Saigon. Traffic began to thin, sedans yielding to trucks and trucks to Solex motocyclos, rickshaws, and pedicabs. Ordinary bicycles were everywhere along with foot traffic, mostly old women with bundles and children. Every few moments Minh would tap the horn but always moved respectfully to the side of the road when a military convoy needed to pass. When the convoy was American, Minh gave a smart salute.
    And suddenly they were in the country and alone on the road. The air was sour. The fifteenth century began just beyond the broken asphalt, water buffalo hauling wood plows, a weary farmer leaning on his plow. Beyond the field was the rain forest, dense and mysterious, feral, sickly green in the midmorning light. In the far distance low hills were visible through the haze. Here and there in clearings were temples where Buddhist monks in pumpkin-colored robes moved aimlessly about, apparently in contemplation. The temples seemed in no way distinguished architecturally, and
Sydney
was put in mind of the makeshift shrines beside roads in rural America commemorating the dead in a traffic accident. Mongrel dogs prowled the perimeter.
    They passed a guard tower surrounded by barbed wire, causing Syd to wonder whether the wire was there to keep the guards in or the enemy out; in any case, he could see no guards. He closed his eyes, sweating in the heat, his shirt stuck to his back and chest. He was unable to assimilate the environment. Eyes closed, he sensed the world turning and he was turning with it, molecules rearranging themselves as he sat dumbly in the front seat of a government Scout with its symbol of hope, clasped hands. He would never again travel this road in exactly the same way; the vacant guard tower would soon be as familiar as the stone bridges on the Merritt Parkway. No doubt at that hour momentous decisions were being made elsewhere in the world, in conference rooms in Washington or Moscow. And in due course a bomb would fall or not fall in his vicinity or someone else's and the war would creep forward, as promised.

    Minh let him out in the courtyard, fetched his bags from the rear of the Scout, and drove away. They had not exchanged a word since "you come" and "go away." The front door of Group House was not locked, yet there was no one present. The place had an abandoned look, as if it had been evacuated in the course of a hasty retreat. Typewriters and filing cabinets were intact but paper was loose everywhere on the floors and the ashtrays were filled to overflowing. Framed photographs of the ambassador and the President were askew on the wall; someone had drawn a moustache on the President, giving him a resemblance to Stalin. Sydney wrestled his bags upstairs to the living quarters. The bed in the big room was unmade, the towels in the bathroom mildewed. An empty whiskey bottle was lying in the tub, and women's underwear was draped over the single chair. Two more empty bottles filled the plastic wastebasket, along with discarded toothpaste tubes, aspirin vials, shaving cream, mosquito repellent, hair spray, deodorant jars, and Kotex cartons. Above the bed were various
Playboy
centerfolds, haphazardly taped to the plaster. An army-issue .45-caliber pistol was