A Dangerous Friend by Ward Just Read Free Book Online Page A

district. He's been there, oh, fifteen years. But times are hard now. Production has been disrupted owing to the revolution. The Americans are bombing his rubber trees.
    It's in a contested area, then, Sydney said.
    Monsieur Armand erupted in a furious burst of French, Missy listening with a wry smile. When he was finished, she translated. Papa says it wasn't contested until the Americans decided to contest it. Everyone was happy working the plantation. The revolution had nothing to do with the rubber and everyone got along. Xuan Loc was always a quiet sector until the Americans invaded with their infantry and aircraft. Their artillery that fires indiscriminately at night. Until the Americans arrived, Xuan Loc was as tranquil as Comminges, Papa says.
    This is true, Madame said from the doorway. We visited Claude and his wife four years ago. We remained two weeks and traveled everywhere with no difficulty. We went to Saigon for the shopping and to Cap St. Jacques on the sea. The people were always friendly and many of them spoke French. Of course there was politics. There's always politics, isn't that so?
    One artillery shell can ruin a dozen trees, Monsieur Armand said.
    Yes, Sydney began, but—
    And the production's ruined.
    Yes, Sydney said.
    It's a very old plantation, very dependable.
    The Viet Cong, Sydney said.
    Monsieur waved his hand, a gesture of contempt. Pah! he said.
    Still, Sydney said, and tactfully did not mention Dien Bien Phu.
    The real war, Monsieur said sharply, the war with the Viet Minh, the war we fought for twenty years, that was serious. And we understood them, too, what they were capable of, because we had governed them for so long, since the middle of the nineteenth century. In the North they are serious people with a serious army. These people in the South are not serious. The government isn't serious, either. And the Americans are too serious.
    Sydney smiled at that.
    It's a bad thing for the population, Monsieur said.
    I agree with you there, Sydney said.
    They should be left in peace, therefore.
    Tell that to the Viet Cong, Sydney said.
    Syd's going to South Vietnam, Missy put in.
    She translated while Sydney explained about the Llewellyn Group, a benevolent arm of the government wholly separate from the Pentagon. The two were as different as chalk and cheese. An enthusiastic, public-spirited Congress had appropriated two billion dollars for the improvement of roads and bridges, the security of the market, and new schools and clinics equipped with the latest medicines. All this to get South Vietnam on its feet once more, the government functioning both in the capital and in the provinces, the countryside pacified. Then the population would rally to the Saigon administration. The Communists would be licked, deprived of their base of support ... As Sydney spoke, he felt the power of the logic. Of course he was describing an illusion, but men died for illusions, at Thermopylae or Antietam, or Verdun. Illusion was another word for ideal, something serious and altruistic, neither heartless nor selfish. He was conscious of speaking with the authority of the government itself, and then he remembered something Rostok had said.
    It's a matter of hearts and minds, you see.
    In the sudden strained silence it was obvious that Monsieur did not see; and Missy was looking at him strangely. Sydney knew that he had failed to make his point. The French had a specific way of looking at things and always through the prism of their degraded colonial past. But their capacities were diminished. Their view of the world was no wider than this valley in Comminges, and now that he thought of it Sydney decided that the analogy would be to the not-much-of-a-future-but-oh-what-a-past American South, the cavaliers so backward, broken down and sentimental. The French were conscious of being on the fringes of things and without influence. No one cared what they thought or did beyond a few cineastes who thought the silver