The Tears of Autumn - Charles McCarry [51]
“I’ve learned to understand revenge,” Christopher said. “What I want to know I want to know for myself, not for any family or any government, or any other person. I understand that you won’t believe that, but it’s true.”
“And what is it you want to know?”
“First let me tell you what you get in return. Silence. I’ll tell no one—not in Saigon, not in Washington, not in Paris—what you are planning with heroin.”
“Why not? Do you care nothing for your countrymen?”
“Yes. But I’ll be truthful once again. They wouldn’t believe it—they underestimate you. They think you haven’t the intelligence or the resources, and they think they are too strong for you, as individuals and as a nation.”
“Then they are weaker than I thought.”
“No, they’re not weak,” Christopher said. “They just don’t see that the weak can strike at them. The senses travel very slowly in such an enormous body as America’s. Men like you can wound, but you cannot kill such a large organism. That’s your weakness.”
“So, what is it you want to know in return for your silence, and this lesson on philosophy?”
“Three things,” Christopher said. “First, is Lê Thu the code name of the operation that was carried out on November 22 in Dallas? Second, how was the message transmitted from Saigon to the North, and then to the man who recruited the American assassin? Third, what is the name of your relative in the intelligence service of North Vietnam who recruited the man who, in turn, activated Oswald?”‘
The priest sniffed; the drug had fixed a smile on his face, and his body rocked slightly as if in rhythm with the movement of the heroin through his bloodstream.
“You’re very direct,” he said. “You must not be afraid of consequences.”
“I’m careful of them. You’ve read detective stories, I suppose? The blackmailer always arranges that his information will pass into other hands if he is killed.”
“You’ve told me it would not be believed.”
“Not by any American you know about, or can conceive of. There are others who would believe it, and I advise you not to have contempt for them. As your recent success has taught you, contempt is a mistake.”
“Ah—it’s for these people that you want this information?”
“No, for myself. It’s an intellectual challenge—I’m accused of believing that everything can be discovered and understood.”
“If you already understand, or think you do, then why insist on discovery?”
“Before I realized what the heroin was for, I imagined that you had had revenge enough,” Christopher said. “So one discovers something new every day.”
The priest’s tic was awakening again. His blinking eye seemed to register Christopher as an automatic camera freezes the motions of an athlete.
“Do you want me to give you the information, assuming that it exists and that I know it?” he asked. “Or do you merely want us—me—to know that you have this idée fixe?”
“Have you the information?”
“No.”
Christopher stood up. “Then I’ll be in plain view all day tomorrow in Saigon. If anyone wishes to talk to me, I’ll be available.”
Christopher walked rapidly out of the church. He checked the doors of the Citroen for wires and looked at the motor and the undercarriage with a flashlight. There was no sign of explosives. Christopher had seen the woman go through a trapdoor in the priest’s room after she had given him his heroin, but the village VC would be out on patrol, and unless some of them were lying along the dirt track that led to the highway, they would not have had time to get back. He turned the car around and drove out of the village.
Halfway to Saigon, Christopher saw shapes move in the darkness beside the road, a hundred yards ahead of the car. He turned on the headlights, bathing three armed men in their glare. One of them threw his arm in a floppy pajama sleeve across his eyes. Christopher turned off the lights and blew the horn. In the rear-view mirror he saw muzzle flashes, like the burners of a gas stove. There were no tracers; that gave him confidence. Rounds struck the road behind the car and ahead of it, but none hit the Citroen before it