Hand-Delivered

And gin with the Department of War

You got here first. Don’t get used to it.

You were careful, I’ll allow that. A particular book replaced at a slightly different angle. The third latch on my case relocked from the wrong side. The kinds of details that are only noticeable if someone has specifically arranged to notice.

I had.

You found nothing. I don’t travel carelessly, as you know, which makes me wonder what you thought was in that room worth the risk.

***

Hanoi. That morning I went to Bà Triệu Street, where I suspected the thread continued. There is a temple with a gray gate which most people walk past. Buddhist verses adorn stone columns, with painted statues ranged around a golden thousand-armed Avalokiteshvara at the center. Incense still burned from the morning’s first prayers. I lit some too and stayed until I was certain there was nothing there for me.

But the temple was not on its original ground. The French had moved it, and in the afternoon I went with the tourists to where it used to be, Hỏa Lò, the Hanoi Hilton. I was looking, but there was nothing left to find.

Your handwriting was in the visitor register. Two days before mine. I returned to my hotel and discovered your intrusion.

***

This called for a drink.

The man at the end of the bar had an American bearing, and an official one at that. Late fifties. The folder in front of him kept being closed and then opened again. His name was Mike. He worked for the Department of Defense, or I suppose it is the Department of War now. He had a tan line on his left ring finger which I pretended not to see.

He was nursing a gin. I ordered one too.

***

Mike works for the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. There is a pilot who had been missing since 1971. The plane was lost over a remote area with no military history, no subsequent development, nothing to recommend it to anyone. The original search found no wreckage, no impact zone, no evidence that an aircraft had come down there at all. The file stayed open because those files always do.

It recently became interesting again. And I now have a lead. I will not tell you about it just yet.

***

I hope you appreciate the trouble I went through to hand-deliver this dispatch.

You should have taken an interior room; the street noise where you are is considerable. While I was there I found your working notes in the inner left pocket of your jacket. I didn’t take them.

But I did peek.

— N.

"Hanoi Hilton Vietnam" by dronepicr, CC BY 2.0

Hỏa Lò Prison was built by French colonial authorities in 1896 and used to hold Vietnamese political prisoners for decades. During the Vietnam War it became a detention facility for American POWs, who gave it the sardonic nickname “Hanoi Hilton.” John McCain was among those held there. Most of the original structure was demolished in 1993; the remaining section operates today as a museum.