I turned toward the big tent where everyone was gathering for the first class, but I walked as if on some sort of surface made of Jello. Ben’s comment, driving into my heart like a lance, caused me to literally shiver in apprehension. If McCain would do such a thing, as reveal the mission to the Vietnamese, and if there were prisoners still there, then the mission would not only fail but many of the vibrant, eager, and totally ignorant young men under my training command would not come home, and many who did would be as screwed up as I was, or worse.

My plan to conduct the first days of training included bringing the FNGs handed to me into the reality of what they would be facing, and that would also involve going totally against just about everything else they’d been trained to expect from participating in actual combat.

As I walked in the entire contingent came to attention. My instructions to the trooper evidently hadn’t been passed around or the troopers were going to pay their respects whether their training officer liked it or not. I smiled as I stood before them, as their action made them more like the Marines I knew in combat rather than like all the others I’d served with back home in training commands like the one I was now conducting.

Marcinko came out from behind a behemoth drawing table angled to be in the vertical position.

“Stand at ease and take your seats,” he commanded, sounding more like an officer in the Navy than I’d ever heard him before.

A compact disc player in the back of the tent was playing a Christmas song, not loud but there. Except for the song playing, the tent was in complete and motionless silence. The troopers had been well disciplined and trained before being selected for the special mission I knew and observed before me. I stood looking out at them but did not attempt to say anything until one of the stanzas in the song ended.

“But say a prayer and pray for the other ones at Christmas time, it’s hard but while you’re having fun,
there’s a world outside your window, and it’s a world of dread and fear where a kiss of love can kill you,
and there’s death in every tear,
And the Christmas bells that ring there are the clanging chimes of doom…
well, tonight we’re reaching out and touching you.”

I motioned to one of the troopers standing in the area where the music had to be coming from, and it almost instantly stopped. The words of the song had reached into my heart, as I knew that the Christmas season might well proceed with the loss of most of the boys and men in front of me when the actual ‘boots on the ground’ mission was in action.

I modified, in my mind, the entire presentation I had planned to start the training with. Instead of training the troopers on how to survive and accommodate the physical and psychological effects they were about to add or be added to their lives, I spoke of why they should not want to go. The very best seasoned vets still on the ground in combat, and those who had somehow made it through such circumstances and were alive, hated what they were doing and wanted to be any other place on the planet, or even sometimes dead, than be where they were and doing what they were doing in combat. The piles of dead that were usually the most evident sign that real combat was occurring close by were filled with those troopers who wanted to be there, who wanted to be combat veterans, who relished more than any combat decoration receiving the infantryman’s badge or combat action ribbon awarded for being a real combat vet.

I began with the story of a brand-new starched utility and shined jungle boots replacement dropped into the charnel house called the A Shau Valley in Vietnam.

‘On his first day when chow got passed out in the rain and mud, I asked him why he was with us. He told me that he volunteered to go into combat to get his combat action ribbon which he felt would be a really great thing to have as he advanced up through the ranks.
Neither I nor the other seasoned veterans nearby in the unit said anything at that.
The lieutenant was dead the next morning, hit by a piece of shrapnel from one of our own supporting aircraft bombs.
The Gunny looked upon the boy’s body before it was bagged and sent back on the chopper. “Make sure he gets his combat action ribbon,” the Gunny acidly commented to the men loading the body into the chopper.’ 

 The silence that came back at me from the gathered troopers was deafening in its way. I knew the recruits in front of me were ‘not ready for prime time’ as was said on television.

For the next two hours, I went right straight at my audience, introducing them not to jungle warfare but to the foundational survival principles that replaced all training for real close combat in any situation, until we broke for lunch. When I asked for questions, I was surprised to have not one hand go up or one trooper stand.

Kingsley waited with his ever-present backpack. Standing next to him was an obviously upset Marcinko. I ignored the troop commander and stopped in front of Kingsley.

“Alright, what’s in the backpack?” I asked, finally overcome by curiosity, my attention having been diverted from Ben pissing off Marcinko even more. I glanced over at the man while Ben answered my question, realizing that the man knew nothing of what might be going on and might well be a casualty himself if the mission proceeded.

Ben opened the pack and pulled back the top flap.

“The spices of India,” he said, with a big smile. “I brought them as a treat for your men.”

“They’re not his men,” Marcinko said with a snarl.

“That is very true, sir,” Ben replied in his formal sing-song way. “They are of the arena. Et Morituri te Salutamus.”

“What kind of gibberish is that?” Marcinko asked, looking over at me for some kind of explanation.

“Just an old Latin phrase from the Romans, fierce warriors that they were,” I answered, my eyes shifting over to Ben’s as I finished. “It’s honoring of troops about to go into combat, like you and your men.”

That it was forced to be spoken by gladiators entering the arena, as they looked up to the emperor, knowing they were probably going to die but honoring him in case they might be spared by his thumbs-up judgment. The ‘we who are about to die’ phrase had become part of the American lexicon of war protesting and more. I knew Ben had, no doubt, picked up on the expression from his study of Gandhi during the near-sacrificial war his people went through to free themselves from the yoke of British colonialism.

Lunch was served in a single tent about three times the size of the ‘residential’ tents that only held six troopers each. A sign at the door read something that was likely taken from a Marine mess somewhere; ‘take all you want but eat all you take.” The message seemed a little off-kilter to me as it was almost impossible for any human to know how much to eat until full while the process of eating, and not selecting what to eat, was underway.

Marcinko went through the cafeteria-style service and took a seat to my right with Kingsley to my left. None of the troopers sat at our table, which I understood and accepted. The command was a lonely position, not like in the movies.

Ben set six bottles of spice up in front of his plate and then offered both Marcinko and me a chance to make selections.

“Garam Masala and turmeric are the best,” he said, pointing at two of the bottles.

Marcinko ignored the Indian but I accepted the bottle of Garam Masala as I’d heard it was the most popular spice in Ben’s country of origin, not the curry that I, and just about everyone else in the U.S., thought.

“I read some of that Sun stuff you gave me,” Marcinko said, between bites of some of the best pork roast I’d ever been served, slightly degraded by the strange, but cloyingly attractive, spice Ben had powdered onto its surface.

The taste of the spice was so foreign to my taste buds that I couldn’t admit that it was any kind of improvement but, in glancing over at Ben and knowing he was waiting for a reaction, I had to smile and nod my head.

“I read some of that Sun stuff,” Marcinko repeated, “and I don’t get it. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Who talks like that and what about making sure the enemy is a friend and not because they don’t like someone you or I don’t like.”

“Sun Tzu writes of battle, combat, and survival, not social circumstance,” Kingsley said, leaning back to speak over toward Marcinko around me.

“You’ve read Sun Tzu?” I asked Ben in surprise before Marcinko could think to respond.

“India is much closer to the conflicts of the Asian world than the United States,” Ben replied. “The field of combat you are choosing in this coming engagement, Mr. Marcinko, isn’t of your own making. You will be fighting on the enemy’s prepared field of combat and Sun Tzu advises against such things.”

“What does he know?” Marcinko replied, eating his pork roast like a wolf eating a small ground animal.

I said nothing more as I finished the meal, my mind on Kingsley again. A diamond not even in the rough. The man knew Sun Tszu and knew the writings well. What environment had the man come out of? I foolishly had failed to question him about his background, but his wisdom and knowledge were beginning to indicate that they weren’t the product of book learning or schooling. Only life experience allowed for such definitive and conclusive comments about combat, and other parts of arcane uncommon violent interactions.

“We’re going in hot, high, and dry, and taking out anyone who gets in your way,” Marcinko said as if he was giving a pep talk to the troopers around us.

“You thought about after?” I asked my tone one of complete innocence.

“What do you mean, after?” Marcinko replied, stopping his tossing down the foot from his platter.

“Assume you have some of the troopers hit, where are you going to take them? I asked, my voice innocent in tone again

“Medivac them to the rear, of course, just like always.”

“So they go to a Navy medical center, hospital, or even on into the Veteran’s Administration care system?” I asked.

“That’s right, but what’s your point?”

“Oh, that they are not acting as a part of the military service they are part of and that the centers they might go to anywhere in the world, much less the United States would have to call the authorities, civilian and military, in order report combat wounds, particularly if those would be bullet holes.”

Marcinko’s eyes grew large and round as the information I’d given him began to sink in. The unit was very likely to take casualties. The problem of the wounded being treated without question was of great concern to any mission but even worse would be finding any trauma or war wounded facility equipped, ready, and willing to take in the wounded and do the likely extensive medical work and recovery that such wounds would take.

While Marcinko tried to digest what I’d informed him of, along with his huge chunk of pork, I turned to Kingsley, intending to ask him about his former military service, which it appeared he likely had. I glanced just beyond Ben’s back and saw someone.

Tony Herbert stood at the entrance to the tent, its big flap pulled back to allow him entry by a couple of the troopers. I watched him survey the crowded makeshift mess hall until he noticed me turning and looking back at him. He made no move to enter the tent mess hall, simply staring, and waiting.

I pulled back and nodded to Kingsley without clearing my platter, knowing he’d take care of it. Kingsley was becoming like the Gunny, with that man’s same intuitive skills but not the applied self-serving cunning and master gamesmanship the Gunny had used to survive.

As I moved toward Herbert he retreated out through the flap, still held open, probably at his instruction, waiting for me to join him just outside.

“What is it?” I asked him in a whisper, moving right up to where he stood, sort of hunched over toward me like a bird of prey.

“We don’t have to whisper,” he said, using his normal deep but slightly nasal voice.

“Inside,” I ordered the two troopers still holding different parts of the canvas.

I waited a few seconds until the flap was fully closed. Instinctively, I knew that whatever Herbert had to say wasn’t something I wanted splashed all over the unit, which it would be in mere moments if it was anything salacious or mission-related at all.

“What is it, Tony?” I asked, no longer whispering. Canvas wasn’t a perfect sound-deadening material but I knew it would do for blocking normal conversation.

“Nguyen,” he replied, his face expressionless.

A bolt of fear ran up and down my spine like it had continuously done in the A Shau Valley. I waited, once again saying nothing because there’d been no question. Herbert was going to tell me what he was going to tell me and my asking anything was superfluous. I controlled my breathing and stopped blinking my eyes as I stared, and waited for whatever the bad news might be, hoping it wasn’t the worst.

“He’s here,” Herbert said, after a few seconds.

“Here?” I asked, in shock. “Here where?”

I looked around for a second, then realized the futility of doing so. Nguyen was somewhere in New Mexico but probably not at the airport.

“He’s at your office; Banker’s Life,” Herbert replied, as if that was the most logical place at which such an important man in my life would be dumped to await a time when I could be available to him.

I walked over to the flap without saying anything further and threw it back before entering the big tent where everyone was waiting.

I headed for the stage area and started speaking as soon as I got to the microphone and turned it on.
“The audiovisual is set up as the lunch bell has rung. Gather in to watch as the biggest screen we could get isn’t that big.”

While I spoke several of the troopers moved a huge television out to the center of the area just in the middle of the stage near where I stood.

“The movie you are about to see is called “Deer Hunter” and it lasts for three hours. Watch and then be ready to critique what you’ve seen and heard against the training you’ve had and your expectations of conduct on this mission.”

I pushed the off button on the microphone and gently placed it on the nearby table before heading back out to Herbert who I hoped remained where he was.

The troopers were back to hold the canvas like I was some wandering king or president. I shook my head but smiled at both of them.
Herbert was waiting.

“Okay, he’s not here on a social call, what’s the deal?” I asked, my attitude all business and the tone of my voice indicating that.

“He’s an asset, as declared by you and in the computers so somebody added him to your staff for this mission, probably thinking you’d need all the help you could get.”

“Nguyen isn’t going on the mission,” I stated, my voice cold, hard, and flat.

There was no way I was going to put his life in danger after all he’d done for me. “He’s got a family now and is settling into a new culture.”

“Of course,” Herbert agreed, almost laughing at the stupidity of my thinking Nguyen would be sent back into combat. That they’d been willing to send me back didn’t make me give him a smile in return.

“I’ve got three hours so I’m going to see him,” I said, “Afterwards I’ll call you if you’re going to be around, and not caring for any of your other ‘control officers required’ agents.

“You are my only agent in the field,” Herbert replied, the smile leaving his face. “Why do you think I’m always there when you call, or somewhere they can reach me to get back to you right away?”

I didn’t know what to say.

“Just me?” I finally got out, surprised by the tone of my response. “I’m just one new agent without any training,” I finished.

“You’re kidding,” Herbert replied. “You just wrote a new chapter on how to get agents in and out of hostile and friendly countries with nobody having the least suspicion. You’re not an agent with no training, you are ‘the agent with no training.”

I’ll call from the office since I’m so important,” I intoned, not quite believing what the man said.

How my chaotic and near whimsical entry into the agency could be seen as much of anything but a rolling out-of-control ball bouncing down a hill in the fog was beyond me.

I turned to get Kingsley but ran into him instead, he wearing his spice pack strapped on again. No matter what, our food would have an Indian flavor I knew, my kindness and good manners at saying the stuff was good probably condemning me to many meals spiced beyond my ability to do anything but make believe I was loving them.

“Where,” Kingsley asked as we both headed for the Rover.

“Office,” I replied. “I’ll direct you.”

“Banker’s Life of Iowa,” Ben said, I heard you say that and I memorized the map. No need for you to disturb your reverie during the drive.”

I looked over at the strange man as I belted in. He was astounding in almost every way. I looked out through the front windshield and thought of his wife’s hug. I was not without friends for Christmas. Nguyen, the Kingsleys, and even Herbert if he would come. I smiled.

“You are happy with my driving,” Ben said, misinterpreting. Like with my ‘liking’ the spices, however, I indicated that I was pleased, indeed even though the man drove too slow and waited too long at four-way stops until everyone got confused about who was supposed to go first.

“You were in the army,” I said, once we got off the freeway and onto Rio Grande Boulevard.

“The 1971 war, yes,” Ben replied.

“How bad was it?” I asked, having no idea about units of the Indian army or even rank.

“I was of the 5th Gorkha Regiment,” Kingsley replied like that explained everything.

“What unit was that attached to?” I asked for clarification.

“Ghurka,” Ben breathed out, as if he wanted no one else, and there was no one with us, to hear.

I stopped to think for a moment. I knew the members of the Ghurka outfit were one of the most feared fighting forces on earth. I knew they generally were British in organization, going all the way back to the early eighteen hundreds.

“You lost 47,000 of your warriors, killed 120,000 of the enemy and its estimated 50,000 civilians in Vietnam. Your war was over about sixteen years. Our war with Pakistan lasted 9 days and we lost 5000 to their 8000 and then about 300,000 civilians.”

I was more than surprised. How could such a massive human nightmare go on without my knowledge? I could only stare at Ben’s unlined and innocent facial features.

Ghurka, Sun Tzu, the obvious PTSD, the calmness lightly held behind a ferocious predator. It was all there now in front of me. Kingsley was an Indian version of me. Like Nguyen. Like the Gunny. My respect went up to a level seldom considered by me, in my opinion of other men.

We pulled into the parking lot. I didn’t move and neither did Ben, likely waiting for me. I thought for a full minute or so before turning to face him.

“Henceforth, you are not my driver,” I said very slowly and with quiet intensity. “You are not my assistant. You are not my aide. You are my friend and my brother. Inside you’re going to meet another of the very rare, unnamed, and mostly unknown brotherhood we belong to. Let’s go.”

Kingsley got out without responding or saying a word and followed me, carrying his backpack in his hands. I stopped and put my hand on the door handle but didn’t activate it.

“I understand now. Your pack contains spices. What else is inside, as no one holds spices that closely to his body and with that kind of attention?

Ben rested the pack on the asphalt and gently eased a long curved knife, or bayonet, or maybe a small sword that looked like an Australian boomerang, but extremely sharp and dangerous.

I smiled at the seemingly simple and unassuming man, and I realized something else, we were a matched set. Affinity twins about to become triplets.
Instead of going to my office, I headed toward Pat’s desk in the clerical area. Before she could say anything, I asked where he was.

She looked up at me and I watched her expression change. I knew that she’d been about to ask me who I was talking about but then changed her mind.

She got up instead, and came around the desk, leading Kingsley and me toward my office.

Nguyen stood inside, in front of my desk, having chosen to stand and wait for me rather than sit in either my chair or one of the two visitor chairs. I smiled inside, showing nothing. It was his form of showing respect I knew, without anything having to be said.

“This is Ben Kingsley,” I said to Nguyen, wanting to hug the enigmatic man but knowing that would not be acceptable to him although he’d probably allow it from me. Mrs. Kingsley’s hug, if given to Nguyen would probably give him a heart attack.

Ben and Nguyen shook hands and then stepped back from one another. Nguyen stared into my eyes, and I caught a message.

“Leave us Ben and go introduce yourself to the staff and explore the office,” I said, my eyes locking on Nguyen’s own. I closed the door after Ben went through.

“They brought you here,” I began, but he held up one hand.

“I came when I learned and, it is Christmas,” Nguyen said.

I tried to reflect on the strangeness of his mentioning Christmas because the big annual celebration in Vietnam was called Tet and had nothing to do with Christianity. I looked at him with some skepticism but didn’t know what to say.

“Christmas,” Nguyen repeated, saying it in a way that I thought he might keep repeating if I didn’t get some message from the word.

“Christmas,” he repeated, as I thought he would.

What was it with Nguyen and Christmas, and then it hit me. The Nativity scene. The pieces. The gold jeweler’s powder filling them I’d never touched as I saw it as Nguyen’s gold and not my own, while he saw it just the other way.

“You need the gold?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“Yes, lieutenant, I need the gold to give to the FHA so we may have a house because we will not have proper residency with our documents for two more years.”

I listened and thought about the situation. The agency had purchased my house for my family, and I made the payments. There’d been no qualifying, no residency, or other requirements. It’d just been done.

I walked around my desk and picked up the phone. It took two minutes for Pat to get Herbert on the phone like he’d been waiting as I’d told him to but didn’t expect him to.

“Nguyen’s here, as you said,” I began. “You are correct that he’s an asset and now a member of the mission staff. I need him to accomplish a vital part of the mission, is that clear?”

“Okay, what do you want now?” Herbert shot back with no delay at all as if he’d been expecting such a request once more.

“I want Nguyen to have a house,” I said, holding my hand over the receiver and turning to Nguyen while Herbert asked his questions into my ear.

“How much is the house?” I asked, keeping my voice low.

“A hundred and fifty-five thousand U.S. dollars,” he replied.

I uncovered the phone and told Herbert the price.

Herbert started to argue but I cut him off.

“Just make it happen or I’m staying home for Christmas.

The phone went silent, but Herbert didn’t hang up, as I heard slight sounds in the background, and then a lot of talk, probably with Herbert on another line to whomever in the agency had the power to arrange such things.

“All right,” he said his voice making it sound like he was defeated. “Fax me the data.”

“And I want this residency bullshit cleaned up. No more residency requirements. That wasn’t the deal. They were supposed to go straight to the naturalization process without waiting for anything. Make it happen.” I hung up the phone in the style he’d taught me.

“You get your house, so you don’t need your gold,” I said to Nguyen.

“It is not my gold. It was my gold for a short period here, but now it is your gold again.”

I didn’t laugh except inside. The gold would stay and be there when one of us was in true need and that made me feel good.

“Thank you, once more for what you did for my family,” Nguyen said.

I looked into his expressionless eyes and didn’t reply. That I owed him my life several times over would never be discussed, I knew.

“Merry Christmas,” he said, finally smiling for one of the very rare times he’d ever done so in my presence. Now, for him, his family, me and my family, and for all the troopers and even Marcinko, I had to save all their lives if I could and keep them from going on a one-way mission to hell.