Up Country by Nelson DeMille Page A

find Tran Van Vinh, I tell him he’s won an all-expense-paid trip to Washington, D.C. Right?”
    “Well . . . I don’t know.”
    “Well, neither do I. What do you want me to do with this guy if I find him alive?”
    “We’re not sure yet. In the meantime, we’re trying to come up with some possible suspects, and/or the possible murder victim. If we do, we’ll get photos to you of these guys from when they were in the army. If that happens, and if you find Tran, you’ll show him a series of photos—just like in any criminal case, and see if he can ID the suspected murderer and/or the victim.”
    “Yeah. I think I’ve done that a few thousand times. But my Vietnamese is a little rusty.”
    “You can hire an interpreter anywhere.”
    “Okay. Why don’t I take a video camera or tape recorder with me?”
    “We thought about that. But that sometimes causes problems at Customs. We might have your contact in Saigon give you a video camera or tape recorder. Did you bring a regular camera?”
    “Yes, as instructed. I’m a tourist. How about an international cell phone?”
    “Same problem. They’re very paranoid at the airport, and if they search your luggage and find things like that, they get nosy. Visa or no visa, they can turn you around and boot you out for almost no reason. We need you in the country.”
    “Okay.”
    “But we may get you a cell phone in Saigon. Be advised, however, that their cell phone system is very primitive, and they have more dead zones than a cemetery.”
    “Okay, so if you decide you want this guy in Washington, then what?”
    “Then we might go to the Vietnamese government and explain the situation. They’ll cooperate.”
    “If you don’t want their cooperation now in finding this guy, why do you think they’re going to cooperate after you tell them you’ve been snooping around their little police state and found one of their citizens who you need for a murder trial?”
    Doug Conway looked at me a moment and said, “Karl was right about you.”
    “Karl is right about everything. Please, answer my question.”
    Conway stirred his coffee a few seconds and said, “Okay, Mr. Brenner, here’s the answer to your questions, past, present, and future. The answer is, We are bullshitting you. You know that, we know that. Every time we bullshit you, you find little inconsistencies, so you ask another question. Then we give you more bullshit, and you have more questions on the new bullshit. This is really annoying and time consuming. So, I’ll tell you a few things right now that aren’t bullshit. Ready?”
    I nodded.
    “One, there is more to this than a thirty-year-old murder, but you know that. Two, it’s in your best interest that you don’t know what this is about. Three, it’s really very important to our country. Four, we need you because you’re good, but also because if you get in trouble, you’re not working for the government. And if you get busted over there, you don’t know anything, and that’s what you tell them because it’s true. Just stick to your story—you’re on a nostalgia trip to ’Nam. Okay? You still want to go?”
    “I never wanted to go.”
    “Hey, I don’t blame you. But you know you’re going, and I know you’re going. By now, you’re bored with retirement, you’ve got a deep-rooted sense of duty, and you like living on the edge. You were an infantryman once, you were decorated for bravery, then you became a military policeman, then a criminal investigator. You were never an accountant or a ladies’ hairdresser. And you’re here talking to me. Therefore, we both know that you’re not going home this morning.”
    “Are we done with the psychobabble?”
    “Sure. Okay, I have your tickets, Asiana Airlines to Seoul, Korea, then Vietnam Airlines to Ho Chi Minh City, known to us old guys as Saigon. You are booked at the Rex Hotel—upscale, but Saigon is cheap, so it’s affordable for Mr. Paul Brenner, retired chief warrant