A Dangerous Friend (2 page)

Vietnam. You kept meeting the same people as you moved from post to post, diplomats you had served with, and of course the foreign correspondents. We were all connoisseurs of Third World adversity. I remember vividly a party I gave a few years ago. We sat up very late, about a dozen of us, diplomats and journalists; all of us had served in Vietnam during the early days. We made our bones in Vietnam, as American gangsters like to say—and none of us went home. It is equally true that none of our careers suffered, far from it. Service in the war gave you a leg up the ladder, even though, as seems so obvious now but wasn't obvious then, we were searching in a dark room for a black hat that wasn't there. And the same was true for the soldiers, at least for the officers. We survived and our reputations survived with us, and we, most of us, went on to succeed handsomely in the wider world. There is some irony here but no need to dwell upon it. The ironies of the effort are well known.

Yet for some of us the episode was only that, a brief wrestle in a dark room, a distant memory, so distant that whatever pleasure or pain there was has been forgotten. The foreign correspondents went on to other wars in other regions—and we, too. We were there with them. Some of them and some of us finally gave up on the Third World—we had been at the roulette table for too long, unsuccessfully playing the same number—and moved on to senior positions in London or Paris or Washington, or out of the business altogether, into banking or public relations, lobbying, consulting, where we could use the friendships we'd made and the valuable knowledge we'd gathered. The wars and famines were for younger men and women with faster feet and uncrowded personal lives and a powerful appetite for the unknown thing.

I was always surprised at those who were able to move on easily from Vietnam, the war one more experience in a lifetime of experiences, neither the worst nor the least. So vivid then, it receded, leaving only fugitive souvenirs and a few friendships. This was evident that night in my villa when we fell to talking of the early days of the Effort, the mid-1960s, before things went to hell and the plague arrived. Naturally we reminisced about our many blunders and about personalities, both the living and the dead. Six of us in the room remembered everyone mentioned, looks, job, eccentricities. Anecdote followed anecdote. I opened another bottle of cognac.

When someone said, Whatever happened to Dicky Rostok, I did not reply. I wanted to hear what the others knew, because Rostok had gone to considerable trouble not to make himself the black hat in the dark room.

One of the journalists laughed, not unkindly. He said that Rostok had stayed on in Vietnam until early 1968. Then, with his usual exquisite sense of timing, he resigned from the foreign service and went home. About two days before the Tet Offensive. Can you believe it?

Yes, I said.

You mean he knew?

Rostok had a nose, I said.

I saw him in Switzerland not long after the war, the journalist went on. He was running some stock fund, living very well in Zurich. He tried to get me into the fund but I didn't have any money and told him so. Mistake, he said. His fund was one of the most successful in Europe and friends always got a discount. He said he had turned down an ambassadorship because he needed to make money. He had a new wife. And the new wife had expensive tastes. Then he went into insurance, selling life insurance to GIs, as I remember. But there was something not quite right about the way he went about it. There were complaints and an investigation. A congressional committee held hearings but nothing came of them.

Funeral insurance, I said.

Was it funeral?

Black limousines, a bronze coffin, a gravesite in the cemetery of your choice, a Spanish veil for your mother, and an entertainment allowance for the party afterward. There were other benefits but I forget what they were. He made a lot of money before the company folded, 1970 was a great year for him.

I don't know anything about that, the journalist said. I never knew him well in the war. But when anything hush-hush was going on I'd pay him a call and he'd give me some help. Dicky liked ink. Dicky had time for you. And that paid off for him. I was thinking that we all learned a lot in Vietnam, especially at the beginning when we pulled together; trying to find our way. No one wanted to be left behind. Rostok was good where it counted. I can't remember the name of that outfit of his—

Llewellyn Group, I said.

Yes, the Llewellyns. They were spooks, weren't they?

They weren't spooks, I said.

I thought they were spooks. They acted like spooks. Rostok had a deputy, wouldn't give us dick when we came around for information. What was his name?

Sydney Parade, I said.

Yes, Parade. Whatever happened to him?

One of the other journalists cleared his throat and said irritably, Who the hell was Sydney Parade?

Friend of Dicky Rostok's, I said mischievously.

I don't remember any Parade.

He went into teaching, I said. But I did not add that he'd retired and now spent his days alone on an island off Cape Cod, reading his books, watching the evening news, and sketching the pier that adjoined his house, one line drawing after another. Sydney believed in repetition.

The reporter shrugged; he had no interest in anyone who had gone into teaching.

Sydney was only there for a year, I said.

Just a bit player in the war.

So the end of my narrative has come at the beginning, as if you are standing at a distance and hear the echo of the bells and can only guess at their size and location. It is always necessary to look forward and backward at the same time. Only in that way can we preserve our identities and live truthfully. You know the end of things as well as I do. We cannot pretend not to know them or deny that they exist. When we relate events from the past we know the results and must acknowledge them, whether or not they bring us understanding, or consolation, or shame.

The year is 1965, before the Effort, begun so modestly, turned into something monstrous. Take the measurements, interview all hands, and there's still a mystery at the heart of it. Sydney Parade told me Rostok's version of Conrad's tale of the
Tweed
and her dangerous skipper, and some of the other stories that appear in this book. Sydney was not always kind to himself, owing to his bad conscience and, by his own admission, to his naïveté in the beginning. Rostok was usually straight with the facts, though his ego got in the way of everything he did and didn't do. I have always believed that a mountainous ego resulted from an absence of conscience.

I play no part in this narrative and will shortly disappear from it. I would not be writing it now except for my position in the middle of things. I was the only one in-country intimate with the four principals, Rostok, Parade, the Frenchman, and the Frenchman's wife—yes, and Gutterman, too. Do not forget for a moment that I was also present in Vietnam years later, when the country was unified by force, and Rostok and Parade were long gone.

S
YDNEY PARADE
first learned of the intrepid family Armand from his stepmother's sister Missy, who had lived with them in France for a summer. Missy and the Comminges Armands became close that summer and subsequent summers, to the point where she became a virtual member of the family and au courant with its three branches, the Armands in Abidjan and Bangui and of course the Armands in Xuan Loc. She spoke of them as if they were characters in a nineteenth-century adventure novel. They traveled widely and lived dangerously. They chose warm climates and colorful marriages. They described themselves as industrial ambassadors, supervising the twilight hours of the French empire. Their specialties were oil, minerals, and rubber.

When Missy graduated from college, it was natural that she return to France to live. Except for her sister, she had no family in America; the Armands of Comminges were her family. Still, she always managed a visit to Connecticut on Thanksgiving, and it was at these family dinners with his father and stepmother that Sydney learned of the brothers Armand in Abidjan, Bangui, and Xuan Loc, how difficult and unsettled their lives were compared to the Comminges Armands, Papa and Maman, their stone house next to a crumbling Roman wall on the edge of a medieval village, their three charming daughters, their devotion each to the others and to the land where they had lived, well,
forever.

Missy was only a few years older than Sydney but he found her world adult and exotic—so close to Balzac, so far from Darien—though mysterious was probably the better word, for she never disclosed anything of her personal life, the pleasures and miseries of romance, or her work at the bank. Instead she rambled on and on about the Armands, so worldly, so cultivated, so diverse in their interests, so loyal to one another, so hospitable and droll. And you should taste Maman's lamb!

Where's Comminges? Sydney asked his father.

Foothills of the Pyrenees, his father replied.

And then, clearing his throat, he offered some advice. He said, Missy's promiscuous where France is concerned. She's become an expat, meaning she knows even less about her adopted country than she knows about this one. Thing about a foreign country, you never know what you don't know. Only a fool makes that mistake with his own. Then, because he was a great jazz fan, he muttered something about the Beale Street blues. She'll be lonesome her whole long life, he concluded cryptically.

For years Missy had urged Sydney to visit her in Paris. Every snake needed to shed its skin, often more than once; in that way you adapted to the environment. You can come any time, she said. Just give me warning. She had bought an adorable apartment in the rue du Louvre; there was a guest bedroom and a good museum across the street. The river was nearby. And if you come on a weekend, we can take the train to Comminges and you can meet the Armands at last. They'd love it. I've told them all about your family, Syd. What there is to tell.

For years plans were made and canceled, the occasion for much amusement around the dinner table at Thanksgiving, his father loudly whistling the Berigan chorus of "I Can't Get Started" while his stepmother laughed and laughed. Then the gears meshed and one Friday morning in the early spring of 1965 Sydney arrived with his bags at the church square that introduced the rue du Louvre. For a long time he stood in the chilly early morning mist looking at the third-floor window, its blinds open, lights within. He was reluctant to intrude because he felt the slightest bit uneasy that he was there with his own ulterior motives of which Missy would not approve; and she would discover them soon enough, no matter the subtlety of his approach.

Sydney had been told that a successful meeting with the Comminges Armands would pay handsome dividends in the months and years to come. There was no logical reason why they would not want to cooperate. Cooperation cost them nothing, and French interests were involved, not to mention the man's brother. Everyone in the West was in the same boat, and they were in it for the duration.

So Sydney picked up his bags and walked into the building, aware of the fumes of diesel fuel mixed with freshly baked bread, a specific French anomaly that made him smile self-consciously, the smile revealing his nervous excitement at the task at hand. He was nearly thirty years old, a stoutish American tourist in an anonymous corduroy jacket, chino trousers, and loafers, no tie; even the look of relief was American, for in one year he had managed to shed two skins, a wife and a job, one after the other. His wife was an ocean away in New York. Their daughter was with her.

Missy was standing in her doorway, chic in slacks and a sweater. She had seen him standing in the square and wondered at his hesitation. There was only one rue du Louvre after all. Americans were always ill at ease in Paris, uncertain what to say or do. She waved at him but he did not see her. He was looking at the window on the floor below, a mistake they always made; such a simple thing that the Americans couldn't get straight. In France it went ground floor, then first floor.

She gave him a cup of coffee and a croissant and suggested a nap before the noon train to Comminges. The journey was hours long but they should be there in time for a late dinner. The Armands would be thrilled to meet him at last.

Aren't you jet-lagged? she asked.

I've only come down from Brussels, he said.

Brussels?

I've been in Brussels seeing friends, Sydney said vaguely.

In Brussels? Her tone of voice suggested that no good could come from any visit to the Belgians.

Some old school friends, Sydney said, wondering if Missy knew that one of the more obscure American military commands was located at Brussels. Probably the Pentagon would not be one of her interests. In any case, the commander's aide-de-camp was an old school friend of Rostok's. And the briefing had been useless.

He brought her up to date on family news—her sister had bought a Buick, and she and his father had won the Darby and Joan at Abenaki, two up—while she showed him around her apartment, spacious and done in the modern style, white couches against white walls, huge white lamps, abstract art on the walls except for a pastel Laurencin nude over the fireplace. Sydney handed her a box of chocolates and a bottle of Scotch, and a package of snapshots from her sister. Missy casually leafed through the snapshots—several of the Buick, several more of her sister in golf clothes—but stopped, frowning, when she came to the one of the family at Christmas.

She said, I'm sorry about you and—

Karla, he said.

Yes, Karla.

It was time, he said.

Missy raised her eyebrows as if to say, Time for what? She disapproved of divorce, preferring instead the many civilized alternatives. She said, You have a son, I remember.

Daughter, he said. She's fine. We're all fine. Sydney smiled to conceal the lie. His daughter was not fine. She was a three-year-old with a broken heart. But his stepmother's sister was not entitled to that news.

It's always good to take a holiday after emotional upset, Missy said, though Sydney showed no signs of upset. How long will you be in France, then?