Up Country by Nelson DeMille Page B

First, it certainly did look like murder, though that might depend on what the argument was about. Second, it was a strange and interesting occurrence, as Sergeant Tran Van Vinh said.
    I began from the beginning of the letter—a government building within the Citadel. Many Vietnamese cities had citadels, built by the French in most cases. The Citadel was the walled and fortified center of the city that contained government buildings, schools, hospitals, military headquarters, and even residential sections. I knew the Citadel at Quang Tri because I was ordered to an awards ceremony there in July ’68, out on the parade ground, where the Vietnamese government was handing out medals to American soldiers for various battles. The Citadel was half in ruins, and I realized now that I must have been standing somewhere in the vicinity of where this incident had taken place six months earlier. I received the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, and the Vietnamese colonel who pinned it on me had, unfortunately for me, been trained by the French, and he gave me a kiss on both cheeks. I should have told him to kiss my ass, but it wasn’t his fault I was there.
    In any case, I could sort of picture where this incident took place. I tried to picture, also, these two American officers coming into the half-ruined building within the Citadel, while the battle raged around them, and Tran Van Vinh lying there with his itchy trigger finger on his AK-47, bleeding from an American artillery shell burst.
    The American officers were definitely not combat infantrymen, or they’d have their troops all around them; these guys were undoubtedly rear echelon types, most probably MACV advisors, and, as I recalled, they had their headquarters somewhere in the Citadel. Somehow they’d gotten separated from whatever South Vietnamese army unit they were attached to, or the South Viets had taken a powder, which they sometimes did. This was partly speculation on my part, but it was the most logical explanation of how two American officers wound up alone, without troops, in a city that was garrisoned solely by the South Vietnamese army.
    So, these two guys are caught in the middle of a slugfest between the North and South Viets, the city is a killing zone, and these two find the time to go off on their own and have an argument about something that leads to one guy blowing away the other guy. Strange. And I agreed with
Tran Van Vinh—“I can attach no meaning to it.” But I had a feeling that whatever that argument was about was what this whole thing was about.
    I glanced at the letter again: the captain ran out of the building . Tran Van Vinh, smart survivor that he is, doesn’t move until nightfall, then he goes down to the body of the lieutenant, has some water, which is his first priority, then takes the dead American’s C rations, and rifle, and also his pistol—probably a Colt .45—his wallet, and “other items from his body.” Such as what? The dog tags undoubtedly. This was a big prize for the enemy and was proof that you’d killed an American, and it got you a piece of fish or something. But as Sergeant Tran Van Vinh noted, if he were captured with any American military items, he’d be shot, Geneva Convention notwithstanding. So, he had to decide what to do with these items, these war trophies.
    Maybe he kept them, and maybe, whether or not he was still alive, they were proudly displayed in his little family hut somewhere. Maybe.
    So, what was missing from the translation of this letter? The phrase and other items from his body may have been substituted for Vinh’s actual words.
    But I could be reading too much into this, and maybe I was more suspicious than I needed to be. A little suspicion and speculating are good; too much and you start to outsmart yourself.
    I realized that we were almost on the ground. A few seconds later, the 747 touched down, rolled out, and taxied toward the terminal.
     

     
    I nside Terminal Two of Seoul’s Kimpo